Adaptive moral character judgments: comparing memory and decision bias for immoral and moral targets

Evaluating others’ moral characteristics is a fundamental interpersonal process, since failing to accurately evaluate others’ morality can have profound consequences on one’s social life, and accordingly, survival. Therefore, it is likely that people exhibit adaptive cognitive tendencies when processing information about others’ moral character, and that these tendencies help people thrive in their social worlds. Consistent with this, prior research has shown that people have a better memory for targets described in morally relevant (vs. morally irrelevant) ways. However, findings diverge on whether targets described as immoral (vs. moral) are more memorable. The first aim of this dissertation is to compare memory for targets whose character is described as moral or immoral using cognitive modeling methods that better capture memory accuracy relative to previous methods. A second goal is to investigate people’s tendency to make memory errors about moral character, as this can provide additional insight into the adaptive structure of cognition. Given that humans adjust their decision-making to minimize costly errors, this dissertation additionally examines whether people exhibit systematic biases toward recalling previously presented social targets as moral or immoral. To examine these questions related to memory and bias in memory tests, memory and bias parameters for moral and immoral targets were computed using decision-tree (Study 1) and signal-detection methods (Study 2). Across the two studies, memory was enhanced for immoral relative to moral targets, and there was a bias to judge targets as moral rather than immoral. Study 2 also examined two potential mechanisms for decision bias—the belief that people are generally good, and the perceived social costs associated with falsely accusing others of immorality. However, these mechanisms were not supported. Overall, these findings support the argument that moral character judgment involving memory is adaptive.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Han, Da Eun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Laurent, Sean M.
• Cohen, Dov
• Stern, Chadly D.
• Sanchez, Carmen
• Cervantes, Víctor H.

• Moral Character Judgments
• Decision Bias
• Memory
• Moral Decision-making

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Da Eun Han

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130209

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F130209