Memory is not a recording but a reconstruction, shaped by suggestion, conversation and every retelling. Vividness, detail, emotion and confidence can make a memory feel unquestionably real—even when the event never happened that way.
Confidence is visible, while competence often hides behind hesitation, nuance and doubt. Loud certainty travels faster than careful reasoning, and our minds too easily mistake a coherent performance for reliable knowledge.
Under high stress, we enter a state of increased physiological arousal, inherited from the ancient world to deal with physical emergencies, results in reduce perceptual and cognitive capacities in specific areas.
We think we can usually predict people’s behaviors, if we only know their thoughts and their feelings, but the reality is much more complex.
