Zusammenfassung
Collective memories refer to a group's shared representation of the past. They are slow to change over time but do change. To investigate such potential shifts, representative samples of American and German younger adults (YAs) and older adults (OAs) rated the emotional valence of 12 national historic events for their country. Additionally, both age groups were then asked to mentally time travel: ...
Zusammenfassung
Collective memories refer to a group's shared representation of the past. They are slow to change over time but do change. To investigate such potential shifts, representative samples of American and German younger adults (YAs) and older adults (OAs) rated the emotional valence of 12 national historic events for their country. Additionally, both age groups were then asked to mentally time travel: OAs reported their past emotional valence on the same events, and YAs provided ratings of their imagined future emotional valence. The results indicated that YAs and OAs hold differing opinions on numerous events today, suggesting shifting public perceptions between generations. Mentally traveling back in time, OAs also perceived changes in their own opinions about the events. YAs, on the other hand, anticipated few changes in the future. Our study captures change in collective remembering, which seems to be perceived across a lifetime, but is not anticipated in advance.
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