Essays on Ethics

de Lisa L. Shu

Does memory conspire with morality? Essay 1 details evidence from four experiments demonstrating that dishonest behavior impairs memory for moral rules. After engaging in cheating behavior, individuals dispel conscience from consciousness through pushing aside memories of burdensome moral rules. Across four experiments, cheaters demonstrated moral forgetting relative to control and honest participants. Moral forgetting appeared to result from suppressed access to morality in general after cheating.