Implicit intertemporal trajectories in cognitive representations of the self and nation

Abstract

Individual selves and the collectives to which people belong can be mentally represented as following intertemporal trajectories—progress, decline, or stasis. These studies examined the relation between intertemporal trajectories for the self and nation in American and British samples collected at the beginning and end of major COVID-19 restrictions. Implicit temporal trajectories can be inferred from asymmetries in the cognitive availability of positive and negative events across different mentally represented temporal periods (e.g., memory for the past and the imagined future). At the beginning of COVID-19 restrictions, both personal and collective temporal thought demonstrated implicit temporal trajectories of decline, in which future thought was less positive than memory. The usually reliable positivity biases in personal temporal thought may be reversable by major public events. This implicit trajectory of decline attenuated in personal temporal thought after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions. However, collective temporal thought demonstrated a pervasive negativity bias across temporal domains at both data collection points, with the collective future more strongly negative than collective memory. Explicit beliefs concerning collective progress, decline, and hope for the national future corresponded to asymmetries in the cognitive availability of positive and negative events within collective temporal thought.

Valance and Perceived Control in Personal and Collective Future Thinking

“…One limitation of the present study is that the data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Extant literature has demonstrated COVID-19 influenced individuals' cognition (e.g., Mert et al, 2022;Yamashiro et al, 2022). As discussed, some of our null findings and findings contradicting our hypothesis about perceived control might be the result of these unprecedented times.…”

Themes for future research on memory, mind and media

“…This idealised outlook leaves little room for negative events such as slavery in the US (Ionescu et al 2022), which may account for the strong negative reaction by many American commentators to the idea that the true origin story should be the arrival of African slaves, as proposed in The 1619 Project (Hannah-Jones et al 2021). Yamashiro et al (2022) were able to document further relationships of collective memory and collective future thought during the COVID-19 pandemic by American and British subjects. They reported that at the beginning of COVID restrictions, both individual and collective future thinking showed negative trajectories, with future thought being less positive than memory.…”

“…But focusing on origin stories of America, Yamashiro et al (2022) found that a different pattern sometimes emerges. Their analysis revealed a positive, idealised view of the foundational past with the top three most mentioned events among Americans being the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and the Columbus's so-called discovery of the Americasall deemed as positive events by the majority of participants (Yamashiro et al 2022).…”

“…But focusing on origin stories of America, Yamashiro et al (2022) found that a different pattern sometimes emerges. Their analysis revealed a positive, idealised view of the foundational past with the top three most mentioned events among Americans being the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and the Columbus's so-called discovery of the Americasall deemed as positive events by the majority of participants (Yamashiro et al 2022). This idealised outlook leaves little room for negative events such as slavery in the US (Ionescu et al 2022), which may account for the strong negative reaction by many American commentators to the idea that the true origin story should be the arrival of African slaves, as proposed in The 1619 Project (Hannah-Jones et al 2021).…”

“…Like national narrative templates, these are implicit because they are 'inferred from common patterns in the way people tell personal or collective stories' rather than made explicit in their narratives. Yamashiro et al (2022) report that personal and collective patterns often do not show parallels, leading them to conclude that with regard to 'the question of the extent to which personal and collective trajectories track with one another, the answer seems to be that although there is some relation, the relation is quite weak'. This aligns with other research in Western countries indicating that personal and collective temporal thought are largely dissociable domains of thought (Shrikanth and Szpunar 2021;Shrikanth et al 2018;Yamashiro and Roediger 2019).…”