While there are many good concepts that caught my attention in Psychology 1001 the one that I will most likely remember is false memories and the concepts that come with it. This is largely because the idea that I may be tricked into believing something that never really happened, even by myself, bothers me in many ways. While I hope to never be in a scenario where suggestive memory techniques are used against me in some form, this isn't exactly what I'm afraid of as I know the chances of this happening are slim.
What I do see in daily life is a lot of source monitoring confusion and cryptomnesia. While this may not be the easiest thing to prevent, save for possibly adapting better encoding techniques, it should make people less certain of concepts that they remember but cannot place origins to, and make people boast less about accomplishments that they can't even recall being their own (I think we've all claimed to have done something that we cannot recall doing).
The misinformation affect is also interesting because of the ways it can be manipulated. When trying to recall past events I often throw out "maybe" events that I recall without knowing why, and these could be completely fabricated events. As such it is a factor that must be taken into account in crime, as details can easily be added or subtracted from our memories without our knowledge of the manipulation. The benefits of writing down things either on lists or in journals are evident because of false memories.
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