Unethical Amnesia

Some time ago I published this updated Flatland model of how the human mind works at a broad level. Read the linked-in source for more detail.

Today I want to illustrate how the Internal Representation of the "self" works. A new study published at PNAS nicely serves that purpose. It's called Memories of unethical actions become obfuscated over time.

Don't be intimidated by the seeming complexity of the Flatland model shown above. You'll see that this stuff is not as hard as it might first appear.

Here are the significance and abstract of the new study, which is so packed with mathematics that it is virtually unreadable for the layman. These summaries are easy to understand.

Significance

We identify a consistent reduction in the clarity and vividness of people’s memory of their past unethical actions, which explains why they behave dishonestly repeatedly over time. Across nine studies using diverse sample populations and more than 2,100 participants, we find that, as compared with people who engaged in ethical behavior and those who engaged in positive or negative actions, people who acted unethically are the least likely to remember the details of their actions.

That is, people experience unethical amnesia: unethical actions tend to be forgotten and, when remembered, memories of unethical behavior become less clear and vivid over time than memories of other types of behaviors.

Our findings advance the science of dishonesty, memory, and decision making.

Abstract

Despite our optimistic belief that we would behave honestly when facing the temptation to act unethically, we often cross ethical boundaries. This paper explores one possibility of why people engage in unethical behavior over time by suggesting that their memory for their past unethical actions is impaired.

We propose that, after engaging in unethical behavior, individuals’ memories of their actions become more obfuscated over time because of the psychological distress and discomfort such misdeeds cause. In nine studies (n = 2,109), we show that engaging in unethical behavior produces changes in memory so that memories of unethical actions gradually become less clear and vivid than memories of ethical actions or other types of actions that are either positive or negative in valence.

We term this memory obfuscation of one’s unethical acts over time “unethical amnesia.” Because of unethical amnesia, people are more likely to act dishonestly repeatedly over time.

A summary of the research appears at Quartz. It's called Scientists say there’s such a thing as “ethical amnesia” and it’s probably happened to you (May 16, 2016).

Most of us like to think that we have moral standards, and there may be a psychological reason why...

“Unethical amnesia is driven by the desire to lower one’s distress that comes from acting unethically and to maintain a positive self-image as a moral individual,” the authors write in the paper...

“We speculated…that people are limiting the retrieval of memories that threaten their moral self-concept and that is the reason we see pervasive ordinary unethical behaviors,” researcher Maryam Kouchaki wrote in an email.

Intuitively, these results make sense. We don’t like to think of ourselves as immoral people, and may come up with justifications [post-hoc rationalizations] for our behavior that would indicate the contrary.

The authors write that these results could indicate why certain acts of dishonesty are so pervasive, like hitching free rides on public transportation, stealing from the workplace, and even cheating on taxes.

OK, now look at the updated Flatland model above. You will see a link "Flatland compromises Associated Memory".  One of the key components of Flatland is maintaining a positive self-image (see the first and third essays). Let's go through a simple example.

1. You cheat on an exam to gain an advantage. That behavior originates in Flatland. Simple self-interest explains it.

2. But cheating on the exam conflicts with maintaining a positive self-image. Somehow, a person "knows", at least unconsciously, that he is doing something "wrong", but humans constantly deceive themselves (and others) by means of post-hoc rationalizations. The conflict must be resolved to "lower psychological distress."

3. There are two possibilities — 1) either the fact that you cheated never enters associated memory; or 2) the fact that you cheated is stored in associated memory, but only very weakly in a way which makes it subject to deletion later, or makes it very hard to recall later (selective amnesia). In either case your memory has been compromised.

Here's the key text from the study (repeated from above). This is the definition of unethical amnesia.

That is, people experience unethical amnesia: unethical actions tend to be forgotten and, when remembered, memories of unethical behavior become less clear and vivid over time than memories of other types of behaviors.

And from the abstract—

we show that engaging in unethical behavior produces changes in memory so that memories of unethical actions gradually become less clear and vivid than memories of ethical actions or other types of actions that are either positive or negative in valence.

There you go. I hope this simple example is instructive. Human memory is notoriously unreliable. But in important cases like this, where "unethical" behaviors are concerned, memory is selectively unreliable.

Finally, note that the Flatland model strongly predicts the kind of results we see in this new study. If humans are to ever understand themselves, more studies of this kind will need to be done. Unfortunately for humans, truly understanding themselves will inevitably conflict with maintaining a positive self-image 

Comments

[Dan]

Compelling stuff. I think your model is resting on pretty solid ground. A good model makes testable predictions about the future (in this case, future actions) as well explains and is consistent with past occurrences. I think once you run through a few example scenarios the model as illustrated above becomes pretty easy to follow.

I wonder, did the researchers truly understand the significance of their findings? Or perhaps they may have rationalized away their own past unethical behavior as separate from what they were seeing with study participants, as in it never actually happened. I am probably doing that now myself!