The Seven Sins of Memory The Seven Sins of Memory The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers is a book () by Daniel Schacter, former chair of Harvard University's Psychology Department and a leading memory researcher. The book revolves around the theory that "the seven sins of memory" are similar to the Seven deadly sins, and that if one tries to avoid committing these sins, it will help to improve one's ability to remember. Schacter argues that these features of human memory are not necessarily bad, and that they serve a useful purpose in memory. For instance, persistence is one of
Seven deadly sins by laziness, but by a state of depression that caused spiritual detachment. Vainglory (Latin, ) is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he folded "vainglory" into pride for his listing of sins. According to Thomas Aquinas, it is the progenitor of envy. The Latin term "gloria" roughly means "boasting", although its English cognate – "glory" – has come to have an exclusively positive meaning; historically, the term "vain" roughly meant "futile" (a meaning retained in the modern expression "in vain"), but by the 14th century had come to have the strong narcissistic undertones, that