When the personal and the collective intersects: Memory, future thinking, and perceived agency during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Do collective crises have an impact on the characteristics of mental time travel for individuals and collectives? The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique context to address this question due to the intersection it created between the personal and the collective domains. In two studies (N = 273), we examined the valence and perceived agency involved in memory and future thinking for personal and collective domains. The second study also included a longitudinal component with 43 participants completing both studies. In research done prior to the pandemic, a valence-based dissociation between personal and collective events was consistently observed in Western samples. We wanted to see if these patterns changed during different stages of the pandemic. In the first study, participants no longer exhibited the usual positivity bias for the personal future, while in the second study, they did not exhibit the usual negativity bias for the collective future. The second aim of the current article was to assess the agency people attribute to themselves and their nation over events and how that relates to valence. People always attributed more agency to themselves over positive events than negative events in both personal and collective domains. Perceived nation agency, however, was associated with positivity in the collective domain but with negativity in the personal domain. Longitudinal analyses confirmed these patterns. Taken together, these results indicate that a collective crisis that has immediate and profound effects on personal lives can alter the patterns observed for mental time travel, especially for the future. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A day that America will remember: flashbulb memory, collective memory, and future thinking for the capitol riots.

ABSTRACTThis study explores the topics of flashbulb memory, collective identity, future thinking, and shared representations for a public event. We assessed the memories of the Capitol Riots, which happened in Washington DC, on 6 January 2021. Seventy Belgian and seventy-nine American citizens participated in an online study, in which they freely recalled the unfolding of Capitol Riots and answered questions regarding their memory. Inter-subjects similarity of recalled details was analysed using a schematic narrative template (i.e., the event, the causes and the consequences). Results revealed that representations of the event, and its causes were more similar among Belgians compared to Americans, whereas Americans' representations of the consequences showed more similarity than Belgians'. Also, as expected, Americans reported more flashbulb memories (FBMs) than Belgians. The analysis underlined the importance of rehearsal through media and communication in FBM formation. This research revealed a novel relation between FBM and future representations. Regardless of national identity, participants who formed an FBM were more likely to think that the event would be remembered in the future, that the government should memorialise the event, and that a similar attack on the Capitol could happen in the future compared to participants who did not form FBM.

Collective mental time travel: Current research and future directions.

In this chapter, we will provide a review on the emerging psychological literature on collective mental time travel (MTT). Our review will focus on the cognitive aspects of remembering the collective past and imagining the collective future. We will explore factors such as specificity, phenomenal characteristics, content, and valence. We will also include brief overviews of cultural and social psychological research that is relevant to the topic of collective MTT. In these overviews, we will examine the research on narratives, collective continuity, collective angst, and human action. Three main themes will emerge from these discussions: the connection between collective past and future thinking, the differences between collective past and future thinking, and the role of goals, perceived agency, and collective action. We will integrate the findings of cognitive, cultural, and social psychological work through these three themes and offer ways to move collective MTT research forward.

Remembering a nation's past to imagine its future: The role of event specificity, phenomenology, valence, and perceived agency.

People are routinely involved in remembering the national past and imagining the national future, especially when making political decisions. These processes, however, have not been explored extensively. The present research aims to address this lacuna. In 2 experiments (N = 203), participants were asked to remember and imagine events that involve the United States. Later, they rated these events in terms of phenomenal characteristics, valence, and perceived agency (circumstance, self, other-people, nation). Their responses were also coded for specificity and content. Past and future responses correlated for specificity, phenomenology, valence, and the four domains of perceived agency. Despite this strong correspondence between past and future thinking, there were also differences. Future responses were less specific and more positive than past responses. Moreover, people thought that they themselves and their nation will have more control over their nation's future compared with the control they attributed to themselves and their nation over its past. The bias to be more optimistic about the nation's future was partly explained by this tendency to see the nation as more agentic in the future. Taken together, these results reveal striking similarities and divergences between autobiographical and collective mental time travel. The present research provides an exploration for the newly emerging field of collective mental time travel. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).