Someone you know wins the lottery. Would you be more likely to then think he or she is a moral or immoral person because of this? Or, imagine that something negative happens to you. Would this effect your memories of yourself?
A series of studies (here and here) have recently tested these questions.
In one study, people were randomly assigned to read either an account of an employee who was hired for a fair reason (he or she was qualified) or an unfair reason (there was a mix up). Weeks later, participants were asked to recall why the person was hired. When the employee was hired for a fair reason, people tended to remember this correctly. However, when the employee was hired unfairly, people tended to make a memory error towards the fair reason. That is, there was a memory bias towards thinking the event was fair and just.
In another study, people had something bad happen to them that was outside of their control, or something good happened to them outside of their control. They then were asked to recall good or bad things they had done in the past. People, when they had received a positive outcome, recalled more good things that they had done. That is, there was a memory bias towards perceiving the self's past behavior more favorably when something good had happened to the self but worse when something bad had happened to the self.
This research built on research showing that people have a strong tendency to (even a need to) perceive the world as fair and just. This research also stands in a long line of evidence suggesting that memory is not just a carbon copy of what actually happened. It is a mixture of a wide range of things, such as what you are currently thinking about, what is in the physical environment, smells, sounds, emotions, and even things like prejudice and the need for (perceived) justice and fairness.
We want to perceive the world as fair and just. So our memory is set up to bias ourselves towards believing, for instance, that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. And, once something happens, our memories are biased to perceive this as fair and just.
This of course isn't to say that we always will conclude something is fair and just, but that our memories are biased towards making this very conclusion.
