Remembering the big game: social identity and memory for media events

Shared event‐memory for a public event in young and older adults

“…Future studies should replicate the current findings while using an event that happened in the participants' country (e.g., Brussels terrorist attack for Belgian participants). Indeed, inter-subjects similarity for a closer and more traumatic event could be higher than in the current study owing to recent evidence showing that social identity is an important factor regarding the formation of collective memories (Merck et al, 2020). An alternative possibility would be to compare directly concerned and indirectly concerned participants about a target event.…”

“…The results showed that many participants remembered the same events occurring during these periods (e.g., when remembering the unfolding of World War II, the participants mentioned the Pearl Harbor attack, Hitler's suicide, German surrender, etc.). Some events (e.g., the Pearl Harbor attack) were mentioned by almost 90% of the study sample (Merck et al, 2020; Zaromb et al, 2014). These findings emphasize that individuals separately remembering the occurrence of historical events show similarities in the content of what they remember.…”

“…In collective memory psychology, attention has been paid to the shared nature of memories for public events, and a few studies have compared retrieved memory details across participants. In these studies, participants were asked to remember events about historical periods (e.g., World War II; Zaromb et al, 2014) or sports championships (e.g., baseball; Merck et al, 2020). The results showed that many participants remembered the same events occurring during these periods (e.g., when remembering the unfolding of World War II, the participants mentioned the Pearl Harbor attack, Hitler's suicide, German surrender, etc.).…”

“…Emotions are strongly linked with the formation of flashbulb memories (Brown & Kulik, 1977; Finkenauer et al, 1998) as they may act as a cement to boost memory for the details regarding the unfolding and the encoding context of a flashbulb memory event. Additionally, Merck et al (2020) stated that social identity had some impact on the formation of flashbulb and collective memories. Together, these studies suggest that the formation of flashbulb and collective memories are both related to social factors such as the personal importance of the event.…”

“…Interestingly, a recent meta‐analysis has revealed that aging was associated with a small to moderate decrease in the amount of flashbulb memories characteristic features (Kopp et al, 2020). The lack of consistency between above‐mentioned studies might be explained by factors related to the nature of the remembered episode that would influence the encoding and the retrieval of flashbulb memories to a different extent in young and older adults: emotional content, social identity, personal relevance and rehearsal (Davidson et al, 2006; Kopp et al, 2020; Merck et al, 2020; Wolters & Goudsmit, 2005).…”