How autobiographical memory serves morality: Prevalence and properties of memories with moral content.

Morality is central to human nature. Being morally accountable requires an understanding of oneself as existing through time and space and an ability to remember past events. We present the first series of studies systematically examining the frequency and characteristics of autobiographical memories for morally themed events using open-ended sampling of autobiographical memories followed by independent coding for morality, following a predefined coding scheme. Overall, the findings show that autobiographical memory plays a central role in relation to morality. Across three studies, using different cueing methods, a substantial proportion of memories referred to a moral theme, with the theme of caring (vs. harming) being especially pronounced. The frequency of memories with moral content increased with greater self-relevance of the memory cue. Across cueing conditions, we found a predominance of memories referring to events in which the person was the agent for a morally good act. Personal misdeeds, being the target for misdeeds, and the target for good deeds were remembered less frequently and dated to have taken place more distant in time. Analyses of self-rated memory characteristics showed a tendency to downplay the narrative importance and self-relevance of memories for personal misdeeds but yielded little support for the idea of impaired memory for such events. The findings are related to evolutionary theory of the development of complex social systems and integrate the study of autobiographical memory with the growing field of moral psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Duke Scholars

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