The Role of Forgetting in Undermining Good Intentions

Abstract

Evaluating others is a fundamental feature of human social interaction–we like those who help more than those who hinder. In the present research, we examined social evaluation of those who not only intentionally performed good and bad actions but also those to whom good things have happened (the lucky) and those to whom bad things have happened (the unlucky). In Experiment 1a, subjects demonstrated a sympathetic preference for the unlucky. However, under cognitive load (Experiment 1b), no such preference was expressed. Further, in Experiments 2a and 2b, when a time delay between impression formation (learning) and evaluation (memory test) was introduced, results showed that younger (Experiment 2a) and older adults (Experiment 2b) showed a significant preference for the lucky. Together these experiments show that a consciously motivated sympathetic preference for those who are unlucky dissolves when memory is disrupted. The observed dissociation provides evidence for the presence of conscious good intentions (favoring the unlucky) and the cognitive compromising of such intentions when memory fails.

Social class differences produce social group preferences

“…This finding is consistent with other work showing that social preferences are often dissociated from the capacity to remember the information that caused those preferences (e.g. Johnson, Kim & Risse, ; Li et al ., in press; Olson, Heberlein, Kensinger, Burrows, Dweck, Spelke & Banaji, ; Tranel & Damasio, ).…”

Children's Initial Responses and Beyond: Effects of Niceness and Similarity on Preference, Giving, and Memory

“…In some situations, people maintain their social evaluations even after forgetting what drove them (Johnson et al., ; Somerville, Wig, Whalen, & Kelley, ; Todorov & Olson, ). Notably, other research exploring the relationship between immediate and delayed judgments suggests that they can reverse with time (Li et al., ; Olson et al., ). In our study, some children's understanding of the characters appeared to change after a delay.…”

Plans or Outcomes: How Do We Attribute Intelligence to Others?

“…Attributing intelligence to outcomes . Outcomes are a common way of assessing decisions (Baron & Hershey, 1988; Frank, 2016; Lerner, 1980; Martin & Cushman, 2016; Olson, Dunham, Dweck, Spelke, & Banaji, 2008; Olson et al., 2013). Boyd (2017) builds a theory of cultural learning on imitating others with good outcomes, as a mechanism of gaining practical skills without having to understand the reasoning behind them.…”