Memories about our unethical actions fade sooner

Research has detected a new selective memory dynamic.

Despite the fact that in movies and TV series evil characters tend to be unquestionably evil and selfish, it has long been known that even humans who have committed real atrocities are able to retain a deep-rooted sense of ethics in their day-to-day lives and believe that what they do is not wrong. In a sense, it seems as if self-image and whether or not to break norms are relatively independent of each other, so that even people who are most likely to betray their principles are able to retain a kindly view of themselves..

How can this happen? Researchers such as Dan Ariely argue that human beings have an incredible capacity for self-deception. or, rather, to allow our "rational" side to pass only that part of the information that is of interest. Thus, we would not have to devote any effort to constructing a biased account of why we have acted unethically: this account would be constructed automatically, based on a totally self-interested filtering of data and from which our self-image would come out well.

Recently, research by psychologists Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino (from Northwestern University and Harvard University, respectively) has provided evidence of similar filtering affecting memory. According to their results we have a harder time remembering unethical actions than other types of events.. In other words, we experience what they call "unethical amnesia", or amnesia of the immoral, and it is possible that this phenomenon exists for our own good.

Suspiciously forgetful: ethics is blurred

The raison d'être of unethical amnesia is hypothetically based on the state of discomfort generated by the knowledge that one has acted unethically and in violation of the vital principles one seeks to follow. and in violation of the vital principles that one is trying to follow.

The appearance of this uncomfortable tension, which would generate a kind of dissonance between "what should be" and "what is" would activate some defense and coping mechanisms made to make the discomfort disappear, and one of them would be the tendency to be particularly forgetful of events that compromise our sense of ethics.

The experiments

In one of the tests conducted by Kouchaki and Gino, 279 students had to perform a simple exercise in which they had to try to guess the number that came up when they rolled a six-sided die over twenty rolls. Each time they guessed the number, they received a small amount of money as a prize.

Some of these participants were forced to say in advance the number they thought should come up, while others could simply say whether their prediction had been fulfilled or not, so that it was very easy for them to lie and take a sum of money that, according to the rules, they were not entitled to. and take a sum of money that, according to the rules, they were not entitled to.

After going through this short test, all participants had to complete a questionnaire that included questions about feelings of moral dissonance and self-concept designed to record the extent to which they felt good about themselves, whether they felt somewhat embarrassed, and so on. As expected, in general, those in the group of participants who were given the opportunity to lie tended to reflect a greater sense of self-consciousness than those in the group of participants who were given the opportunity to lie. tended to reflect a greater sense of discomfort in their questionnaire responses..

Days later...

And this is where forgetting about unethical actions comes in. Two days after the die test and the completion of the questionnaire, the people in the group of participants who had been allowed to cheat showed more difficulties in remembering the details of the experiment..

Their memories of the dice-rolling task were less intense, less clear, and with fewer elements than those of the other volunteers. Possibly, something in the brains of these people had been acting to relatively quickly get rid of the information about what happened.

Returning to the initial situation

In addition to obtaining evidence for this curious mechanism of strategic forgetting of uncomfortable information, the two researchers also came to another conclusion: the people in the group who had been allowed to cheat felt good about themselves again very quickly.. 

In fact, two days after playing with the die, their self-concept and moral dissonance questionnaire scores were no different from those of the other participants.

Is amnesia of the immoral useful?

Given that in our day-to-day lives it is relatively easy for us to break certain moral rules several times, no matter how small, it may be that unethical amnesia keeps us safe from anxiety crises produced by the fact that time and again we are unable to meet certain ideal goals. In this sense, making it more difficult to evoke negative memories about one's ethics may be a useful and adaptive mechanism..

However, the existence of this phenomenon would entail certain drawbacks, considering that it can lead us to have very few motives to act according to our ethical scale and to skip all the rules opportunistically.

Amnesia about what is to come

In fact, in another part of the earlier research, Kouchaki and Gino had the dice-rolling test followed by one in which participants had to solve word puzzles, earning money for each correct guess. Participants in the group that had been allowed to cheat on the dice game were significantly more likely to cheat on this second test as well.

This could be a sign that the amnesia of the immoral would not only have consequences on what just happened, but it could open a window of opportunity for us to act dishonestly again..

There may be certain mental mechanisms that help us keep a good opinion of ourselves, but they could also make it easier for us to spiral into ethical transgression.