The Good, the Bad, and the Neutral: Integrating Morality Information in Memory

Authors: Francesca Taddei, Marissa Britton, Sofia Sinta, Micheal Dulas

Field of Study: Integrative Neuroscience

Program Affiliation: Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (C-STEP), First-year Research Immersion (FRI)

Faculty Mentors: Micheal Dulas

Easel: 50

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: Successful social interactions depend on judgments about others’ character. These judgments rely on the memory about a person’s actions; however, research has not examined how contradictory moral information, and memory for those actions, is processed in relational memory. In this experiment, participants studied faces and rated how good or bad they perceived each person to be: first with no prior knowledge of the person, and then after learning of actions each person performed that were positive, negative, or neutral. After a delay, participants recalled the actions and their judgments of the faces. Results demonstrated that participants integrated both actions when forming judgments, even when incongruent, but the second action carried greater weight. However, morality and actions were poorly remembered after the delay, though participants remembered “bad” individuals more accurately. Overall, morality judgments reflect integration of multiple actions, with more recent information being more important. However, such morality judgments may be fleeting.