Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science pp 1–10Cite as

Recall of Cheaters

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:

  • 64 Accesses

Synonyms

Memory; Reputational memory; Social cooperation; Social norm violation; Source memory

Definition

Memory for others is enhanced by details violating one’s social expectations.

Introduction

All too often we encounter individuals engaging in behaviors that go against societal expectations. In a recent survey report, over one-third of graduate students, over two-thirds of college undergraduates, and over 90% of high school students admitted to knowingly cheating or plagiarizing academic work (McCabe 2017). As another example, we know that rates of cheating among married couples range between 2% and 4%, with infidelity being cited as the most common cause for divorce (Fincham and May 2017). Certainly, academia and romance are not the only examples in which deception can be encountered. Although engaging with individuals who have behaved in a socially deviant fashion may not always be avoidable, through evolution we have evolved mechanisms that assist in minimizing the potential...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211(4489), 1390–1396.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Balliet, D., Li, N. P., Macfarlan, S. J., & Van Vugt, M. (2011). Sex differences in cooperation: A meta-analytic review of social dilemmas. Psychological Bulletin, 137(6), 881–909.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barclay, P., & Lalumière, M. L. (2006). Do people differentially remember cheaters? Human Nature, 17(1), 98–113.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baumert, A., Otto, K., Thomas, N., Bobocel, D. R., & Schmitt, M. (2012). Processing of unjust and just information: Interpretation and memory performance related to dispositional victim sensitivity. European Journal of Personality, 26(2), 99–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, R., & Buchner, A. (2009). Enhanced source memory for names of cheaters. Evolutionary Psychology, 7(2), 317–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, R., & Buchner, A. (2010). Justice sensitivity and source memory for cheaters. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(6), 677–683.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, R., & Buchner, A. (2011). Source memory for faces is determined by their emotional evaluation. Emotion, 11(2), 249–261.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, R., & Buchner, A. (2012). How adaptive is memory for cheaters? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(6), 403–408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, R., Giang, T., & Buchner, A. (2012). Partial and specific source memory for faces associated to other- and self-relevant negative contexts. Cognition & Emotion, 26(6), 1036–1055.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, R., Schain, C., & Echterhoff, G. (2014). How selfish is memory for cheaters? Evidence for moral and egoistic biases. Cognition, 132, 437–442.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, R., Mieth, L., & Buchner, A. (2017). Separating conditional and unconditional cooperation in a sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma game. PLoS One, 12(11), 1–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buchner, A., Bell, R., Mehl, B., & Musch, J. (2009). No enhanced recognition memory, but better source memory for faces of cheaters. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(3), 212–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buss, D. M., Larsen, R. J., Westen, D., & Semmelroth, J. (1992). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science, 3, 251–255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chiappe, D., Brown, A., Dow, B., Koontz, J., Rodriguez, M., & McCulloch, K. (2004). Cheaters are looked at longer and remembered better than cooperators in social exchange situations. Evolutionary Psychology, 2, 108–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Confer, J. C., Easton, J. A., Fleischman, D. S., Goetz, C. D., Lewis, D. M. G., Perilloux, C., & Buss, D. M. (2010). Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations. American Psychologist, 65(2), 110–126.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31(3), 187–276.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. W. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 163–228). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1997). Evolutionary psychology: A primer. Retrieved from http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html

  • Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2005). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 584–627). Hoboken: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drigotas, S. M., & Barta, W. (2001). The cheating heart: Scientific explorations of infidelity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(5), 177–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farrelly, D., & Turnbull, N. (2008). The role of reasoning domain on face recognition: Detecting violations of social contract and hazard management rules. Evolutionary Psychology, 6(3), 523–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fincham, F. D., & May, R. W. (2017). Infidelity in romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 70–74.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gómez-Gardenes, J., Reinares, I., Arenas, A., & Floría, L. M. (2012). Evolution of cooperation in multiplex networks. Scientific Reports, 2(620), 1–6.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hechler, S., Neyer, F. J., & Kessler, T. (2016). The infamous among us: Enhanced reputational memory for uncooperative ingroup members. Cognition, 157, 1–13.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jacoby, L. L., Kelley, C., Brown, J., & Jasechko, J. (1989). Becoming famous overnight: Limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(3), 326–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kensinger, E. A., & Schacter, D. L. (2008). Memory and emotion. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. F. Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 601–617). New York: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kroneisen, M. (2018). Is he important to me? Source memory advantage for personally relevant cheaters. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 1129–1137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kroneisen, M., & Bell, R. (2013). Sex, cheating, and disgust: Enhanced source memory for trait information that violates gender stereotypes. Memory, 21(2), 167–181.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kroneisen, M., Woehe, L., & Rausch, L. S. (2015). Expectancy effects in source memory: How moving to a bad neighborhood can change your memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 179–189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mattarozzi, K., Todorov, A., & Codispoti, M. (2015). Memory for faces: The effect of facial appearance and the context in which the face is encountered. Psychological Research, 79, 308–317.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • McCabe, D. (2017). International Center for Academic Integrity: Statistics. Retrieved from https://academicintegrity.org/statistics/

  • Mealey, L., Daood, C., & Krage, M. (1996). Enhanced memory for faces of cheaters. Ethology and Sociobiology, 17, 119–128.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mehl, B., & Buchner, A. (2008). No enhanced memory for faces of cheaters. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(1), 35–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nairne, J. S., Thompson, S. R., & Pandeirada, J. N. (2007). Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(2), 263–273.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ochsner, K. N. (2000). Are affective events richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(2), 242–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orbell, J., & Dawes, R. M. (1991). A “cognitive miser” theory of cooperators’ advantage. The American Political Science Review, 85(2), 515–528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudman, L. A., & Fairchild, K. (2004). Reactions to counterstereotypic behavior: The role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(2), 157–176.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schaper, M. L., Mieth, L., & Bell, R. (2019). Adaptive memory: Source memory is positively associated with adaptive social decision making. Cognition, 186, 7–14.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Scofield, J. E., Buchanan, E. M., & Kostic, B. (2018). A meta-analysis of the survival-processing advantage in memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(3), 997–1012.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sekaquaptewa, D., & Espinoza, P. (2004). Biased processing of stereotype-incongruency is greater for low than high status groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 128–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Süssenbach, P., Gollwitzer, M., Mieth, L., Buchner, A., & Bell, R. (2016). Trustworthy tricksters: Violating a negative social expectation affects source memory and person perception when fear of exploitation is high. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A., Pakrashi, M., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2009). Evaluating faces on trustworthiness after minimal time exposure. Social Cognition, 27(6), 813–833.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winke, T., & Stevens, J. R. (2017). Is cooperative memory special? The role of costly errors, context, and social network size when remembering cooperative actions. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 4(52), 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement, 9(2), 1–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

    Allison M. Wilck & Jeanette Altarriba

Authors
  1. Allison M. Wilck
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jeanette Altarriba
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Allison M. Wilck .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, MI, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Kevin M. Kniffin

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Wilck, A.M., Altarriba, J. (2020). Recall of Cheaters. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3453-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3453-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation