How does information about a person's past, accessed now, affect individuals' impressions of that person? In 2 survey experiments and 2 experiments with actual incentives, we compare whether, when evaluating a person, information about that person's past greedy or immoral behaviors is discounted similarly to information about her past generous or moral behaviors. We find that, no matter how far in the past a person behaved greedily or immorally, information about her negative behaviors is hardly discounted at all. In contrast, information about her past positive behaviors is discounted heavily: recent behaviors are much more influential than behaviors that occurred a long time ago. The lesser discounting of information about immoral and greedy behaviors is not caused by these behaviors being more influential, memorable, extreme, or attention-grabbing; rather, they are perceived as more diagnostic of a person's character than past moral or generous behaviors. The phenomenon of differential discounting of past information has particular relevance in the digital age, where information about people's past is easily retrieved. Our findings have significant implications for theories of impression formation and social information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

中文翻译：

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差异贴现和过去信息的当前影响。

现在访问的有关某人过去的信息如何影响个人对该人的印象？在2个调查实验和2个具有实际诱因的实验中，我们比较了在评估一个人时，该人过去的贪婪或不道德行为的信息是否比其过去的慷慨或道德行为的信息更便宜。我们发现，无论一个人过去有多贪婪或不道德的举止，有关其消极行为的信息几乎丝毫不减。相反，关于她过去的积极行为的信息被大打折扣：最近的行为比很久以前发生的行为更具影响力。关于不道德和贪婪行为的信息少打折不是由于这些行为更具影响力，令人难忘，极端，或吸引注意力；相反，他们被认为比过去的道德或慷慨行为更能诊断一个人的性格。过去信息差异贴现的现象在数字时代特别重要，在数字时代，人们的过去信息很容易获得。我们的发现对印象形成和社会信息处理的理论具有重要意义。（PsycINFO数据库记录 我们的发现对印象形成和社会信息处理的理论具有重要意义。（PsycINFO数据库记录 我们的发现对印象形成和社会信息处理的理论具有重要意义。（PsycINFO数据库记录