A Cornell psychologist says viewing a person as dishonest or immoral can result in one’s recalling that person as being worse than he or she really was.

In other words, our study shows that morally blaming a person can distort memory for the severity of his or her crime or misbehavior, said David Pizarro, assistant professor of psychology.

Pizarro and three colleagues gave 283 college students a story about a man who left a restaurant without paying his bill, including what the man ate and drank and the amount of his bill.

Half the participants read the man walked out without paying because he was a jerk who liked to steal, and half read that the man left without paying because he received an emergency telephone call.

One week later the people who were told he was a jerk remembered a higher bill — from 10 percent to 25 percent more than the bill actually was. Those who were told he had an emergency phone call remembered a slightly lower-than-actual bill, said Pizarro.

The study will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Memory and Cognition.