Why We Make Mistakes: Post #9--Tidy Things

We Like Things Tidy: Our mind likes to clean up things. When we retell a story, especially in a funny way, we edit the facts to fit the memory we want to have. And how often does this happen? In 61% of the time. That’s a lot of story changing. Turns out that storytelling is not really about accuracy but about “impression management.” Thus, facts end up taking second place to creating the impression we want to make.