Lichtgedanken 02

Editorial 54 Contact Dr Stefanie Hechler Institute of Psychology Humboldtstraße 26, D-07743 Jena, Germany Phone: ++49 3641 945256 Email: stefanie.hechler@uni-jena.de www.psychologie.uni-jena.de Original Publication Hechler S et al. The infamous among us: Enhanced reputational memory for uncoope- rative ingroup members. Cognition (2016), DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.08.001 The psychologist Dr Stefanie Hechler has discovered together with colleagues that we have particularly good recall of persons who show misbehaviour remo- ved from the norm. we would cooperate within our group, we expect them to do the same,« says Dr Hechler. If group members violate norm, they are perceived as a danger to the group and our alarm bells ring, she explains. Non-conformists may be a danger to the whole group »Our results show that even such basic psychological processes as person me- mory, which we most often do not con- trol consciously, are affected by self- categorization,« says Stefanie Hechler. »A norm violation, such as non-coope- ration within the group, is perceived as a threat to the group and thus, we remember the person responsible and their behaviour especially well.« The psychologists were able to con- firm these results in a second study. It was designed in a similar way to the first one. However, this time the other people taking part in the experiment did not just behave either fairly or unfairly but in some cases also incon- spicuously or neutrally. Once again, the participants main- ly remembered the uncooperative members of their own group – iden- tified this time by a scarf of a certain colour. They were noticed, especially by comparison with those whose be- haviour was neutral. And they were recognized as troublemakers signifi- cantly more frequently than members of the other group whose behaviour was equally uncooperative. A further interesting result of the Jena study: »Although uncooperative behaviour in our own group is remembered more often, participants’ guessing behaviour indicated that they expect such beha- viour rather from outgroup members,« Hechler states. »This implicates, that we heuristically think that our group members behave more cooperatively than outgroup members.« The present results also raise new re- search questions for the psychologists which they want to pursue in their further research work, for example on how stable the positive image of one’s own group is. How long and to what ex- tent is uncooperative behaviour tolera- ted within one’s own group until group members distance themselves from it? And what role do processes of percep- tion and memory play? »We are won- dering whether this memory bias for uncooperative group members can be extended to any norm-violation, even if it does not have actual negative conse- quences,« Dr Hechler says. The resear- chers also want to look more closely at the psychological basis for the different powers of recollection. Is it the unfair action itself that strengthens the me- mory or is it the associated exploitation of the other members of the group who themselves are behaving fairly? The research results presented have come about as part of the project »Cooperation in social groups: cheater perception and memory in intergroup contexts«, which forms part of the FSU’s Research Group »Person Percep- tion« funded by the German Research Foundation.