This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: What happens to our memories when we learn disturbing news about a beloved artist? New research from the University of South Florida finds that after a scandal, the brain tricks us: it reconciles a fallen artist with their adored art by rewriting our memories in two completely different directions.
Take Bill Cosby, for example. In the 1990s, "The Cosby Show" dominated prime-time television, and Cosby, who mesmerized the nation with his wit and humor, found himself at the center of a cultural fallout. A series of lawsuits in 2014 forced his fans to reevaluate their support for Cosby and his shows, raising the question of whether they still remembered him and his work as fondly as they once did.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, finds that people may mentally separate creators like Cosby from their creations when reconstructing memories, a phenomenon described as "differential memory reconstruction." "In retrospect, (they) selectively downgrade past views of the creator while keeping past enjoyment of the creation shielded," said Sally MyungJin Shin, assistant professor of marketing at the Muma College of Business and the study's lead author. Rather than focusing on how scandals damage fans' present-day admiration of an artist, Shin and her co-authors—Paul Rozin of the University of Pennsylvania and Gal Zauberman of Yale University—wanted to investigate if a fall from grace could reshape past attitudes. The researchers found that supporters reevaluated their past fondness for the creator but preserved their fond memories of the creations.
This psychological phenomenon isn't limited to television actors. It crosses from film to music. When listeners learned about Ray Charles' history of parental negligence, their present-day opinions of both him and his music declined.
However, their memories of how much they loved his music remained just as positive and protected. A similar pattern emerged with John Lennon. When people were introduced to Lennon's history of physical abuse, their present admiration for both him and his music dropped.
Yet people still remembered loving his music just as much as before. The researchers conducted the study through five experiments examining participants' evaluations of creators and their work before and after they learned about creator transgressions. Rather than resetting the entire memory from the past, their brains performed what the researchers called "moral surgery." In doing so, people rewrote how they remembered the creator while leaving the memories of their work completely untouched.
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