Is It Gaslighting or Unethical Amnesia?

People, even those who report that they value morality, often act unethically and then put it out of their mind.

Source: Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

A psychologist charged her usual fee of one hundred dollars for a session. After her patient paid cash and left, she rubbed the bill and noticed he had overpaid her with two crisp one hundred bills stuck together. The thought popped into her head that she could keep the extra hundred-dollar bill, and nobody would ever know. Psychologists are supposed to be the vanguards of ethical and moral conduct as they treat the public. And they are required to take annual continuing education credits to maintain their licenses. Yet, the most common ethical violations psychologists commit are breaking patient confidentiality, sexual misconduct, and insurance mismanagement.

Many highly-reputable people claim to have lofty ethical standards and denounce others for dishonesty, while violating their own principles by cheating on their taxes, telling “little white lies,” or being accused of sexual misconduct with subordinates. Famous evangelists have made national news preaching high morals from the pulpit before getting snared in a sex scandal in a sleazy part of town.

Ethical Misconduct Among Corporations

Well-known international car manufacturers made the news after cheating on emissions tests and manipulating test data for years. Other examples of unethical behavior occur in other industries from banking to insurance to health care. Another form of corporate abuse is known as gaslighting—a form of psychological manipulation in which a company sows seeds of doubt among its employees, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment. Some corporations have been accused of deliberately manipulating worker consciousness for profit. They set tight deadlines impossible to meet, hint at nonexistent competitors and tell employees that clients are dissatisfied when in fact they’re not. These corporate tactics create paranoia, stress, and mistrust among workers, unsure which crises are real and which are fabrications. These organizations that manufacture crises as a ploy to pressure employees to produce have been dubbed, “cultures of sacrifice.”

How does a moral human mind reconcile these inconsistencies? Scientists call it “unethical amnesia.” We tend to remember our altruistic behavior more easily than selfish actions or misdeeds that go against our own moral sense. Unethical amnesia is driven by the desire to lower distress that comes from acting unethically and to maintain a positive self-image as a moral individual.

Research on Unethical Amnesia

Researchers Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino found evidence of unethical amnesia across nine experimental studies involving 2,109 diverse sample populations. Participants had the opportunity to cheat on a die-throwing game to earn money by misreporting their performance. The research duo then measured participants’ memory a few days later and found that unethical participants who cheated had less clear, less vivid, and less detailed memories of their actions, compared to ethical participants who behaved honestly. “When people fail to live up to their own moral standards, this knowledge is unpleasant and threatens their self-image as honest and good,” Kouchaki and Gino concluded. “Consequently, they engage in various strategies to reduce their distress, including forgetting these memories. Such memory biases and distortions are not accidental; rather, they are motivated to support our self-concept and identity.”

Earlier this year, a team of French researchers solicited 1,322 volunteers in an online experiment held over two sessions and further investigated the unethical amnesia phenomenon. In first session participants were given 20 repetitions of a lottery task to determine their monetary payoff. The participants had an opportunity to cheat when they self-reported the outcomes. The second session took place three weeks later when the same participants were paid to recall as accurately as possible the outcomes they had reported in the previous session. Half of the volunteers were informed they would then have the opportunity to voluntarily return some of the money if they had over-reported their outcomes in the first session. This part of the experiment was when the participants were more likely to exemplify amnesia—forgetting the details of their cheating when they knew they had to make a moral decision again, even though they could earn more money if they remembered the reported outcomes. The researchers concluded that people forget their past lies more often when amnesia can serve as an excuse not to engage in future morally responsible behavior.

Implications of Unethical Amnesia

Many major ethical scandals are directly attributed to the wrongdoings of individuals and corporations who should have been well aware of the potential damage their actions could cause. Why do organizational leaders and employees (even those who care about being honest people) consistently engage in morally questionable behaviors over time? Scientists conclude that when people fail to live up to their own moral standards, that knowledge is unpleasant and threatens their self-image as honest and good. They engage in various strategies to reduce their distress, including forgetting the memories.

Although unethical amnesia is an adaptive mechanism for coping with the psychological distress and discomfort of behaving unethically, it doesn't change the results of or excuse unethical actions. Whether it’s cheating in a game of cards with friends or hiding income from the tax office, the consequences of being revealed are never worth the temporary gain. However, understanding the psychology that drives decisions can help make sense of corporate cheating scandals or ethical violations on a smaller scale among family and friends.