Lichtgedanken 02

Editorial 52 Troublemakers stick in the memory »I’ll make a note of that face!« That’s what often goes through our minds when a colleague at work jumps the queue in the canteen, a football player repeatedly fouls his opponent or even when a neighbour you don’t know pinches your parking space. Psychologists have found out that this is no empty threat and that our memory is indeed very good at storing such people — at least if they belong to our own group. P S Y C H O L O G Y BY SEBASTIAN HOLLSTEIN AND UTE SCHÖNFELDER Building the pyramids in Ancient Egypt, landing space probes on Mars or mastering the current global crises in politics and business – if people want to achieve a goal together, a high degree of cooperation is required. And that applies not just to mammoth un- dertakings such as the ones mentioned above. Different people also cooperate in a small personal setting, their fa- mily, circle of friends or at work, pool their resources and skills, and by do- ing so, they are able to benefit from each other – as a social group. But it only works if things are done fairly. »A shared group membership in- creases people’s willingness to coope- rate. If individual group members take advantage of these high levels of cooperation, by not contributing, they put the group functioning at risk,« says Dr Stefanie Hechler. To maintain their ingroup cooperation, group members benefit from recogni- zing and remembering unfair beha- viour or deceit in order to penalize it or avoid it in the future, the psychologist explains. Together with her colleagues, Prof. Dr Thomas Kessler and Prof. Dr Franz Neyer, Stefanie Hechler is investiga- ting these recognition and memory mechanisms. »If we observe people who misbehave beyond the norm – show deceit, for example – we remem- ber them particularly well as they ac- ted differently to what we expected,« Hechler explains. The person memory investigated ad- dressed two kinds of information: »That means we not only remember their faces, but also behaviour that was previously associated with them,« Hechler continues. After all, she ex- plains, when you next meet them, it is better not only to remember that you have already seen them but also that they acted uncooperatively. As the Photo above: Small car – big space. Anyone parking like that in the company car park is likely to be remembered by their colleagues.