How much can we really trust people to remember an experience? Richard Walker reflects on the fleeting nature of memory, and what it means for research when we ask people to recall experiences weeks or months later.
First things first, very little alcohol was involved this weekend. This post is not about THAT type of forgetfulness. It’s about knowing things are (or were) generally good, satisfactory or even delightful, without necessarily being able to explain why – or, for that matter, remember the details.
I’d wager that I’m not the only one to have had several Teams calls on Tuesday and Wednesday this week that were front-loaded with “How was your long Bank Holiday weekend?”. And I’d wager I’m not the only one to have both uttered and heard the standard response:
“Great, thanks. But didn’t it go quickly?“
The August Bank Holiday only finished a couple of days ago. Many people benefitted from a day off. Thank you to the key workers and hospitality workers who didn’t. And sorry Scotland, but you had yours while we were working.
We did things. We saw people. We took photos. We made memories. And yet, try to reconstruct exactly what you did over those three days (and when) and it gets surprisingly difficult. Particularly when put on the spot.
What DID you do and WHEN? In what order? Who were you with? Why did you decide to go there? What else did you consider doing? What did you buy? What did you spend? Go on. You were there. Surely you remember?
Our memories are surprisingly slippery things. We mostly experience things in the moment, and we don’t carry around a perfect recording of everything that happens to us. We remember some things vividly, forget others completely and fill in the gaps with what feels like a reasonable version of events.
As market researchers we ask people to do this all the time. “Thinking about your last visit to…”. “Thinking about the last time you…”. “Why did you choose…?”. “How did you feel about…?”. “What influenced your decision?”.
Sometimes we’re asking them to do this weeks or even months after the experience.
My example of a Bank Holiday is quite a good test case because it should be relatively memorable. It was recent. It was different from a normal weekend. It likely involved doing something you don’t usually do.
Now think about something much more mundane. What did you buy from the supermarket three weeks ago? Why did you choose that particular brand? What made you go into that shop? Did you consider going somewhere else? What did you think about the experience?
Most people can probably give me an answer to those questions. But how much of it is actual recall, and how much is reconstruction?
What happened, what we remember and what we report
There are at least three different things going on for us to reconcile. First, what actually happened. Second, what we remember happening. Third, what we tell a researcher happened. They can overlap considerably, but they don’t have to and won’t always. The longer the gap between the experience and the research, the more opportunity there is for the detail to disappear. In research terms, this is one of the challenges of recall bias.
This matters when clients need to understand the little things that influence behaviour or make a difference. The marginal gains.
Maybe you chose the attraction because your kids had been asking to go for months. Or because you saw an advert that morning. Or because it started raining and you needed something to do. Or because someone happened to mention it on the train.
Six weeks later, you might remember that you had a great day. You might remember the attraction itself. You might remember that the weather was rubbish.
You might NOT remember the tiny things that make the difference. The trigger that made you choose it. The little touches that made it magical. Or the small annoyances that took the shine off.
Which is why we sometimes need to be in-the-moment with research participants
If we’re trying to understand an experience, a retrospective interview or survey can be exactly right. We can learn a huge amount from people’s reflections and memories. But sometimes getting closer to the experience uncovers something different.
Diary studies. Mobile ethnography. Accompanied journeys. Intercepts. Online communities with tasks.
These approaches can capture what people notice, do and feel while the experience is still fresh.
It also makes me question how realistic we need to be when designing surveys
If someone struggles to remember a three-day bank holiday accurately a few days afterwards, perhaps we should be a little more cautious about expecting perfect recall when asking them to reconstruct a journey from six months ago.
And the longer and more complicated the questionnaire becomes, the more work we’re asking people to do to retrieve those memories.
So, to all those I’ve asked about their bank holiday this week.
And to those I haven’t asked yet…
You probably did have a great time.
I just wouldn’t necessarily trust you to remember EXACTLY what happened.
And, even as a researcher, I probably shouldn’t trust myself either.