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 Western tradition's spiritual pietas (or Catholic devotions), as follows: These "evil thoughts" can be categorized into three types: In AD 590 Pope Gregory I revised this list to form the more common list. Gregory combined "tristitia" with "acedia", and "vanagloria" with "superbia", and added "envy," in Latin, "invidia". Gregory's list became the standard list of sins. Thomas Aquinas uses and defends Gregory's list in his "Summa Theologica" although he calls them the "capital sins" because they are the head and form of all the others. The Anglican Communion, Lutheran Church, and Methodist Church, among other Christian denominations, continue to retain