How others see our identity depends on moral traits, not memory

http://ekaweb01.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/afps-hos081715.php

Public Release: 17-Aug-2015
How others see our identity depends on moral traits, not memory
Association for Psychological Science

We may view our memory as being essential to who we are, but new findings suggest that others consider our moral traits to be the core component of our identity. Data collected from family members of patients suffering from neurodegenerative disease showed that it was changes in moral behavior, not memory loss, that caused loved ones to say that the patient wasn't "the same person" anymore.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"Contrary to what you might think -- and what generations of philosophers and psychologists have assumed -- memory loss itself doesn't make someone seem like a different person. Nor do most other factors, such as personality change, loss of higher-level cognition, depression, or the ability to function in daily activities," says psychological scientist Nina Strohminger of the Yale University School of Management, lead researcher on the study. "This is interesting because it shows that someone can change quite a bit and still seem like basically the same person. On the other hand, if moral faculties are compromised, a person can be rendered unrecognizable."

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