Evidence for a memory advantage for prosocial behaviors

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Prior work in the memory domain has shown that certain social information is especially well‐remembered such as information for social targets who cheat. Less work, however, has investigated the extent people remember information for social targets who engage in prosocial behaviors (e.g., helping) in social interactions. The current investigation examines whether there is a memory advantage for social targets who perform prosocial behaviors. Methods Across two experiments, participants formed impressions of social targets engaging in prosocial and non‐prosocial behaviors. Participants were then tested on their memory for the impression as well as the specific behavior each social target performed. Results Results of Experiment 1 showed that memory for impressions was better for social targets engaging in prosocial compared to non‐prosocial behaviors. Results of Experiment 2 showed marginally better behavior memory for targets performing prosocial compared to non‐prosocial behaviors. Conclusion Overall, results of both experiments provide converging evidence of a prosocial advantage in memory, which suggests that people are attuned to prosocial behaviors exhibited by others in the social domain.

Keywords

• impression formation
• impression memory
• memory
• prosocial behavior
• recognition