The Science of Memorable Moments
Deep Dive
Takeaway: If you want to make the most out of your experiences, then you should be willing to think outside the box and break some rules. Do this by violating a key tenet of the category you use to file the memory away in your brain.
The Science of Memorable Moments
Our tour inside one of the most beautiful places almost didn’t happen.
It was 2018, and the one thing my girlfriend wanted to do during our trip to Spain almost didn’t happen. (Talk about feeling like a terrible boyfriend…)
During that trip, we did a lot of things: I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, we sipped cava while watching the sunset over the beach in Ibiza, and we dined at one of the best restaurants we’ve ever been to (a restaurant that was later ranked as one of the top 50 in the world).
On our second-to-last day, we got up early and made our way to purchase tickets to see the inside of La Sagrada Familia—one of Spain’s biggest attractions.
They were sold out.
There were no available tickets for that day or the next, our only remaining opportunities to see this magnificent place.
We should have bought tickets ahead of time, but we didn’t. We screwed up. My girlfriend was visibly sad and I don’t blame her. I dragged her an extra four hours north to let me run with the bulls, and now we weren’t going to do the one thing she wanted out of the whole trip.
As we began walking back to our Airbnb, we brainstormed ideas. We couldn’t give up yet.
We kept walking, passing the various tour offices lining the streets adjacent to the cathedral. That’s when it hit me.
We ducked into a nearby café, jumped on the Wi-Fi, and began searching for third-party tours with open spots. I figured these tour companies must purchase tickets ahead of time for their guests. That could be our way in.
We scoured the internet for open tours, but they were all sold out. Still, no luck.
Eventually, we found the last available tour for the next day with two spots remaining. It was our only chance. There was just one small problem: The tour was in German.
We were both a little apprehensive, but we booked it anyway.
Neither of us speaks German. We figured even if we didn’t understand any of the tour, we’d still be able to see the inside of the cathedral. So, we rearranged our schedule and showed up the next evening.
The next morning, when we entered the office to check-in, I asked the receptionist:
“We’ve signed up for the German tour that starts soon. Neither of us speaks German, which is totally fine. I knew that when we booked the tickets. If there’s nothing you can do that’s no problem, but are there any spots in English tours available, or anything you can do?”
She checked us in, asked us to take a seat, and said she’d get back to me. Fifteen minutes later, she called me back over:
“It looks like enough people in your group speak English that we’re just going to give the tour in English.”
And so, we made it into the cathedral with a happy ending. This event became one of the most memorable moments of the trip, and we left with a great story about how we “snuck” into La Sagrada Familia by joining a German tour.
This story piqued my curiosity.
What makes something memorable? Why is this experience, one of the more stressful points of the trip, also one of the fondest memories we took home?
Typically, the memories we easily recall involve a strong emotional reaction: an engagement or wedding, a heartbreak or family loss, an adrenaline-filled activity that heightens our sense of fear and excitement.
These strong emotional reactions solidify these memories in our minds, staying with us while countless others come and go.
According to Pascal Boyer, a cognitive psychologist, we more easily remember ideas and concepts that fulfill a certain set of criteria.
The first requirement is that the concept fits into a general category.
“Animals” is one such category. Even if we can’t distinctly express how animals differ from, say, insects, we still have a general sense that they’re different. This is why most abstract ideas can be fit into one of these categories.
Take aliens, for example. In most depictions of aliens, they have distinctly human qualities. They walk upright on two limbs and have the skeletal structure of a human or other animal-like creature. If a concept or idea completely violates all of the general categories we use to place these concepts, it’ll be too hard to comprehend, and thus, won’t be remembered (according to Boyer).
This is true for experiences, too.
If I asked you to imagine what it would be like to attend a wedding, a funeral, or a family reunion, most people would likely imagine a similar series of events—even if they had never actually experienced these events in real life. Just like ideas and objects, we categorize events and experiences into general categories as well.
The second requirement is that the concept or experience needs to violate its category in a distinct way.
Aliens might have distinct human characteristics, but we can still tell they are different. They have large eyes, long tentacle-like fingers, or green skin.
A groom being left at the altar by an unsure bride. That would be a wedding story you could more easily recall in the future because it violates the experience you expect to have during a typical wedding ceremony.
The categorization of an idea or experience helps us understand and fully comprehend what we’re seeing, but it’s the violation of a key tenet of the category that helps it become memorable.
An architectural tour in Europe fits easily into a category of expected experiences. However, the emotional rollercoaster of scrambling to get tickets, followed by the violation of those expectations via a tour in a language I didn’t understand, is what makes this memory so powerful.
With these insights, you too can create more powerful memories.
Finding ways to create heightened emotional responses (the adrenaline of a rollercoaster) and breaking expectations (violating innocent social norms) can foster some of the most potent memories of your life.
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