Over at You Are Not So Smart is a post about the “misinformation effect”, a term coined to describe the misconception of memories as accurate playback of events.

In truth, memories are reconstructed each time we recall them which can lead to one telling a small lie in a memory and eventually believing that lie to be true further down the road.

The video above tells how this might happen in a real-world situation. I’ve fallen for this before and it’s weird to have it explained to me.