Although past research has offered important insights into how people seek to maintain their moral standing, it has generally portrayed this process as a matter of aggregating essentially static interpretations of a target's discrete acts. The present research reveals, however, that such interpretations are often far from static, and that they can change more than targets realize as new events unfold. More specifically, we find that: a) people can discount the diagnostic value of a target's initial deed if that party commits a subsequent act of the opposite valence, b) this occurs when an initial good deed is followed by a bad deed but not when the order is reversed, c) this occurs when evaluating the actions of others but not when evaluating the self, and d) this actor vs. observer difference can ultimately produce divergent beliefs about the target's overall morality, trustworthiness and subsequent trusting behaviors. We also identify a key mediating mechanism for these effects (i.e., the retrospective imputation of nefarious intent). Implications for reputation management, as well as the maintenance and repair of trust, are discussed.

尽管过去的研究对人们如何寻求维持其道德地位提供了重要见解，但它通常将这一过程描述为对目标离散行为的基本静态解释的聚合问题。然而，目前的研究表明，此类解释通常远非静态，并且随着新事件的展开，它们的变化可能比目标意识到的要多。更具体地说，我们发现：a) 如果目标一方随后做出相反价的行为，人们可以低估目标初始行为的诊断价值，b) 这种情况发生在最初的好行为之后是坏行为，而不是当顺序是相反的，c）这发生在评估他人的行为时而不是评估自我时，d）这个演员与 观察者的差异最终会导致对目标的整体道德、可信度和随后的信任行为产生不同的信念。我们还确定了这些影响的关键调解机制（即恶意意图的追溯归咎）。讨论了对声誉管理以及信任的维护和修复的影响。