How do we remember public events? Pioneering a new area of everyday memory research

Abel, Magdalena; Berntsen, Dorthe

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104745

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 107 publications

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“…In a more recent set of studies, Shrikanth and Szpunar (2021) asked American participants to remember positive and negative events from their past and their nation’s past from the last week, year, and 5–10 years. The results of this study similarly demonstrated that participants remembered more positive than negative events from their past but more negative than positive events from their nation’s past (see also Abel & Berntsen, 2021). Critically, not only did these studies demonstrate a valence-based dissociation between the personal and national past and future within the same participants, but they also used the same tasks across these various domains of event cognition (see Topcu & Hirst, 2022, for relevant discussion).…”

Section: Personal and National Event Cognition: The State Of The Lite...supporting

confidence: 67%

Structure and dynamics of personal and national event cognition.

Liu¹,

Szpunar²

2023

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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The psychological and sociological literature indicate that personal events are remembered and imagined as more positive than negative, whereas public events are remembered and imagined as more negative than positive. We discuss daily experiences, scripted events, and the impact of living in a particular moment of historical time within a nation as cultural phenomena providing plausible mechanisms for the emotional climate that characterizes personal compared to public events. We take into account narrative processes, especially personal versus group/intergroup narratives that provide meaning for negative events and foster a sense of personal and collective continuity for people living as cohorts in time. Difficult objective situations are theorized to bring memory for personal lives and national events together in a theoretical account of identity fusion. We conclude by highlighting the implications of collective cognition for group interactions, education, public policy, and collective action.

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Section: Personal and National Event Cognition: The State Of The Lite...supporting

confidence: 67%

Structure and dynamics of personal and national event cognition.

Liu¹,

Szpunar²

2023

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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“…However, in terms of FBM confidence, the effect of spatiotemporal involvement is not significant. The possible reason is that FBM is spontaneous (Abel and Berntsen, 2021;Berntsen, 2021), people do not deliberately remember details related to themselves at the time of being informed other than the original incident, and their confidence in this part of the memory almost has nothing to do with the location at the time of the incident. However, it can be found that participants' confidence scores were all high (above 4 with a full score of 5) regardless of their level of spatiotemporal involvement, which fits in with previous research: Confidence is often at the ceiling for FBMs and often remains that high for at least months after the event (Christianson, 1989;Christianson and Engelberg, 1999;Niedzwienska, 2003;Weaver III and Krug, 2004;Otani et al, 2005;Talarico and Rubin, 2007).…”

Section: Discussion Fbm Performances Across Different Levels Of Spati...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the role of digital media dependency on the relationship between personal involvement and flashbulb memory during the pandemic: Empirical evidence from Mainland China

Wan

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Flashbulb memory (FBM) is viewed as a special type of autobiographical memory due to its richness of individuals’ self-related details when hearing the news and the long duration. It also helps shape people’s impression of public events to some extent. Given that personal involvement is one of the important antecedent variables of FBM, this study proposed to investigate it from spatiotemporal involvement (spatiotemporal distance) and empathic involvement (empathy level) to explore the impact of personal involvement on the formation of FBM during the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, digital media dependency was considered in the influence of involvement on the FBM since it is a crucial information source for individuals and a path to spread information about their lives and work during the pandemic. In this study, a total of 546 valid questionnaires (from May 1, 2022, to May 7, 2022) and 349 valid questionnaires (from May 10, 2022, to May 17, 2022) were collected through a two-stage online survey in Shanghai, China towards the epidemic wave at the end of March 2022. The mediating mode of digital media dependency was also examined on personal involvement in FBM performance, which consists of FBM specificity, confidence, and consistency. Results showed that empathic involvement had a significant negative influence on FBM specificity, namely the higher the empathy level was, the worse the FBM specificity would be, in which digital media dependency played a suppressing effect. Individuals’ spatiotemporal involvement was proved to have a significant positive influence on FBM specificity and consistency. It was one of the first to investigate the FBM formation process around “small peak” events in the context of the ongoing pandemic. Innovatively, empathy was adopted as the index of memory arousal for empathic involvement, and digital media dependency was considered an important mediator variable in the memory study. The research results have practical significance for promoting the process of epidemic recovery integrated with digital media and can provide a social reference for the shaping process of disaster memory from the perspective of digital information and emotional transmission.

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“…According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, people construct their future from the components of the past and remembering the past and imagining the future share similar neural mechanisms Szpunar & McDermott, 2009). Since people mostly remember positive events from their personal past but negative events from the collective past (e.g., Abel & Berntsen, 2021), these may give rise to more positive personal and more negative collective future thoughts, respectively. On the other hand, although past and future valences are correlated, they do not always correspond.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valance and Perceived Control in Personal and Collective Future Thinking

Mert

Wang²

2023

Preprint

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Prior studies have shown that people imagine their personal future to be more positive than their country’s future. The present research extends the nascent literature by examining the valence and perceived control of personal and collective future events in a new experimental paradigm, the cultural generalizability of the findings, and their relations to psychological well-being. US college students (Study 1) and US and Turkish community participants (Study 2) imagined what might happen to them and their country in three time points (i.e., next week, next year, and in 10-15 years). They then rated the emotional valence and perceived control of the events and completed a psychological well-being measure. Both US and Turkish participants imagined their personal future to be more positive than their country’s future, whereas they attributed higher perceived control to their countries for collective future events than to themselves for personal future events. The positivity of personal and collective future events predicted better psychological well-being, whereas perceived control did not. These original findings enrich our theoretical understanding of future thinking.

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How do we remember public events? Pioneering a new area of everyday memory research

Cited by 13 publications

References 107 publications

Structure and dynamics of personal and national event cognition.

Structure and dynamics of personal and national event cognition.

Exploring the role of digital media dependency on the relationship between personal involvement and flashbulb memory during the pandemic: Empirical evidence from Mainland China

Valance and Perceived Control in Personal and Collective Future Thinking

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