Why do siblings have different memories of the same event?

Memory is very fallible. Emotion affects memory a lot. Also, sometimes we rewrite a memory or someone suggests something to us and it alters a memory or even creates a memory.

Sometimes we unwittingly fill in blanks to make our story make sense.

My sister remembers doing air raid exercises in school and being very afraid. That memory is false. Her age group never did that. I double checked with friends from school and everyone confirms we never did that. We did see movies about it.

Memories are based on face. The details get filled in by personal perspective.

I’m too late to edit. I don’t know why that came up as face. It was supposed to say facts.

This is why they say eyewitness accounts are the worst kind of evidence. Memory is so much more than a simple recording process for playback. Information is constantly sorted and linked with other bits to create context. Parts that don’t fit easily are smoothed and twisted and jammed into place. We change our memories to meet other people’s accounts. Recalling a memory has been shown to alter it. The more you recall a memory, the less accurate it is likely to be.

In short, your sister and you have different relationships with these past events, and therefore you remember them differently.

@Patty_Melt I guessed as much.

My sister forgot an entire story of our townhouse. Like she couldn’t remember there was a second story. I laughed and asked her where she thought we slept. (All the bedrooms were upstairs.)

She’s probably not the norm though.

@raum That’s funny. How old was she in that house?

Most of her high school years!
(She’s ten years older than me.)

^^Oh wow. I thought you were going to say 5 years old.

Yeah. If she were younger,
it’d be way less bizarre.

Parental favoritism. (“Mom always did like you best.”)

Children process experiences and information in their own unique way and that way often includes protection from harm by the memory. We have all kinds of defenses built in. Cool, huh?