Autobiographies are often unreliable, as we have long suspected and as new research now confirms. According to a Monday NY Times article by Benedict Carey, entitled Why Indiscretions Appear Youthful, not surprisingly, most people actually see themselves as morally righteous, at least in the present. And, if we do perceive a time that our morality was lacking, it was always long ago. The article outlines recent research into recollections of good and bad behavior, concluding that people “date their memories of moral failings about 10 years earlier, on average, than their memories of good deeds.”
In recent years psychologists have exposed the many ways that people subconsciously maintain and manage their moral self-image. They rate themselves as morally superior to the next person; overestimate the likelihood that they will act virtuously in the future, see their good intentions as praiseworthy while dismissing others’ as inconsequential. And they soften their moral principles when doing a truly dirty job, like carrying out orders to exploit uninformed customers. . . .Now, scientists are beginning to learn how memory assists and even amplifies this righteous self-messaging. In piecing together a life story, the mind nudges moral lapses back in time and shunts good deeds forward, these new studies suggest – creating, in effect, a doctored autobiography. . . .
“The main finding is that if I ask you to tell me about a positive moral memory, you’ll tell me something recent,” Dr. Escobedo said. “If I ask you to tell me about bad moral memory, you’re going to give me something from much further in the past.”
[T]o talk about moral lapses at all, people first needed time to reimagine themselves as having evolved– as being a different person from the one who fleeced his customers, lied to her spouse or snatched a few purses over at the senior center. . . .Future selves score the best reviews of all, said David Dunning, a social psychologist at Cornell. “People seem to situate themselves in time differently than they do others,” Dr. Dunning wrote in an email. “Ask students what’s important for gaining an accurate impression of them and they emphasize more their unwritten future potential than they do when asked the same question about another person. We presume that future potential is more rosy than the past is.”
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6 responses to “Objects in the Rear View Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear”
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Fascinating! Great post. Thanks Ron.
Wow… Ron, this is just so good.
this has NO chance of not making it into a sermon or Bible study. Thanks for pointing it out!
Is this perhaps related to one's view on original sin, or total depravity?
Many preachers exhort their listeners that they can sin less and become more holy in their daily actions.
As a LCMS Lutheran, I know that I sin because I am a sinner, not vice versa.I know that I sin daily, not just at some point in my past. I don't get better every day because, at the basic level, I don't just sin, I AM a sinner. Any "good" works that I do are not good, but are pleasing to God only as far as I am living out my vocations.
I also know that I am forgiven because of the work of Christ.
Yes, this is a really interesting post. I liked the last paragraph a lot, too:
“The weirdest thing about reading about all these bad moral choices,” Dr. Escobedo said, “is that it makes you kind of feel good about yourself. Just seeing how everyone makes mistakes and regrets not doing what was morally right: It makes you feel more attached to humanity.”
That's really fascinating in itself….
(I should add that it is quite possible and even likely that people do "evolve," in fact, as they grow and learn and suffer (and by this means learn to empathize with others). I mean, we all do make a lot of mistakes when we're younger primarily because we haven't had enough experience in certain things. And people do continue to learn throughout life.
Which doesn't say anything about changing our status as "sinners." It's just a fact. We are all blind to ourselves and our own behavior in many ways, and will likely make the same mistakes over and over again in some things for our entire lives – but suffering is a great teacher.
Anyhow, there's no chance of growing out of the status of "sinner," so I'm not sure that's really at issue. Nobody's perfect, as they (all) say….)