“End-Of-Life” Biases In Moral Evaluations Of Others

Cognition Volume 115, Issue 2, Pages 343-349

By George E. Newman, Kristi L. Lockhart and Frank C. Keil

When evaluating the moral character of others, people show a strong bias to more heavily weigh behaviors at the end of an individual’s life, even if those behaviors arise in light of an overwhelmingly longer duration of contradictory behavior. Across four experiments, we find that this “end-of-life” bias uniquely applies to intentional changes in behavior that immediately precede death, and appears to result from the inference that the behavioral change reflects the emergence of the individual’s “true self”.

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