No enhanced recognition memory, but better source memory for faces of cheaters

Abstract

Previous studies sought to test for the existence of a “cheater-detection module” by testing for enhanced memory for the faces of cheaters, but past results have been inconclusive. Here, we present four experiments showing that old–new discrimination was not affected by whether a face was associated with a history of cheating, trustworthy or irrelevant behavior. In contrast, source memory for faces associated with a history of cheating (i.e., memory for the cheating context in which the face was encountered) was consistently better than source memory for other types of faces. This pattern held under a variety of conditions, including different types of judgments participants made about the stimulus persons (attractiveness in Experiment 1; likeability in Experiments 2–4), different retention intervals (a few minutes in Experiments 1, 2 and 4; 1 week in Experiment 3), whether the behaviors were exceptional or ordinary (Experiments 1–3) and whether the social status of the characters was low or high (Experiment 4). Given no differences in old–new discrimination, enhanced source memory for faces of cheaters may be useful for avoiding cheaters in future interactions.