Recently, researchers have endeavored to extend cultural perspectives of collective remembering by examining communicative or living historical memory (collective memories that emerge from informal communication between ordinary people). The current study examined the content and subjective evaluation of living historical memory from open-ended nominations of historical events provided by samples from 39 societies. Results showed that Western societies were dominated by living memories of terrorism, reflecting a distinctly negative climate. By contrast, many developing societies displayed a more positive climate in living memory that was rooted in events related to their nation’s foundation. The current study opens up avenues for conceptualizing the role of collective remembering in shaping emotional climates that influence (or may be part of) national political culture.

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Living historical memory (LHM) was assessed amongst representative samples of adults from 40 societies (N = 22,708), who completed online surveys asking them to name three historical events in living memory that have had the greatest impact on their country. Multilevel analyses revealed that the number of LHM nominations was positively but variably related to national identity, with stronger links in developing countries. LHM was consistently and more strongly associated with lower social dominance orientation, and lower system justification. LHM appears to support national identity, especially in developing countries where there is greater need for national progress. While LHM fosters bottom-up aspirations for group-equality universally, it instills critical systemic evaluations in developing countries especially. It appears that LHM in developing countries has progressive functions, contextualizing current disadvantages as being linked to history, but nonetheless drawing from living memories to band people together in positive collective remembrance of the advent of nationhood.

The Narrative Categorical Content Analysis toolkit (abbreviated as NarrCat) decomposes narratives into distinct, quantifiable psychological processes. In this study, NarrCat was applied to analyze New Zealand’s historical “Speeches from the Throne” from 1854 to 1913 (68 speeches). Specifically, NarrCat’s cognition, emotion, and intention modules were applied to analyze patterns of psychological perspective, or psychological states, attributed to various groups in the speeches (Māori, British settlers, and British governing elites). This allowed us to examine infrahumanization bias, as denoted by patterns of language, in New Zealand’s governing discourses during colonization. Results showed that Māori were infrahumanized compared with the British settlers overall. However, only British Governing elites were attributed significantly greater agency (i.e., cognition and intention) in inferences of their psychological perspective compared with other groups. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed through the lens of infrahumanization theory, as well as colonizing discourses like the British Enlightenment and Good Māori–Bad Māori discourse.

While national parochialism is commonplace, individual differences explain more variance in it than cross-national differences. Global consciousness (GC), a multi-dimensional concept that includes identification with all humanity, global prosociality, and respect for cultural diversity, transcends national parochialism. Across cultures (N = 11163), most notably the USA and China, individuals high in GC were more generous allocating funds to the other in a dictator game, cooperated more in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma, and differentiated less between the ingroup and outgroup on these actions. They gave more to the world and kept less for the self in a multi-level public goods game. GC profiles showed 80% test-retest stability over 8 months. Implications of GC for cultural evolution in the face of trans-border problems are discussed.