But when we do misremember, our mistakes aren’t random. The daily, dissonance-reducing distortions of memory help us make sense of the world and our place in it, protecting our decisions and beliefs. The distortion is even more powerful when it is motivated by the need to keep our self-concept consistent, by the wish to be right, by the need to preserve self-esteem, by the need to excuse failures or bad decisions, or by the need to find an explanation, preferably one safely in the past, of current problems.
