Collective memory
Collective memory is the shared pool of memories, knowledge and information of a social group that is significantly associated with the group's identity. The English phrase "collective memory" and the equivalent French phrase "la mémoire collective" appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. The philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs analyzed and advanced the concept of the collective memory in the book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire.
Collective memory can be constructed, shared, and passed on by large and small social groups. Examples of these groups can include nations, generations, communities, among others.
Collective memory has been a topic of interest and research across a number of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, and anthropology.
Conceptualization of collective memory
Attributes of collective memory
Collective memory has been conceptualized in several ways and proposed to have certain attributes. For instance, collective memory can refer to a shared body of knowledge ; the image, narrative, values and ideas of a social group; or the continuous process by which collective memories of events change.History versus collective memory
The difference between history and collective memory is best understood when comparing the aims and characteristics of each. A goal of history broadly is to provide a comprehensive, accurate, and unbiased portrayal of past events. This often includes the representation and comparison of multiple perspectives and the integration of these perspectives and details to provide a complete and accurate account. In contrast, collective memory focuses on a single perspective, for instance, the perspective of one social group, nation, or community. Consequently, collective memory represents past events as associated with the values, narratives and biases specific to that group. Some scholars have examined how dominant interpretive paradigms influence debates over contested wartime histories, including analyses by Marshall Wordsworth and others.Studies have found that people from different nations can have major differences in their recollections of the past. In one study where American and Russian students were instructed to recall significant events from World War II and these lists of events were compared, the majority of events recalled by the American and Russian students were not shared. Differences in the events recalled and emotional views towards the Civil War, World War II and the Iraq War have also been found in a study comparing collective memory between generations of Americans.
Perspectives on collective memory
The concept of collective memory, initially developed by Halbwachs, has been explored and expanded from various angles – a few of these are introduced below.James E. Young has introduced the notion of 'collected memory', marking memory's inherently fragmented, collected and individual character, while Jan Assmann develops the notion of 'communicative memory', a variety of collective memory based on everyday communication. This form of memory resembles the exchanges in oral cultures or the memories collected through oral tradition. As another subform of collective memories, Assmann mentions forms detached from the everyday; they can be particular materialized and fixed points as, e.g. texts and monuments.
The theory of collective memory was also discussed by former Hiroshima resident and atomic-bomb survivor, Kiyoshi Tanimoto, in a tour of the United States as an attempt to rally support and funding for the reconstruction of his Memorial Methodist Church in Hiroshima. He theorized that the use of the atomic bomb had forever added to the world's collective memory and would serve in the future as a warning against such devices. See John Hersey's 1946 book Hiroshima.
Historian Guy Beiner, an authority on memory and the history of Ireland, has criticized the unreflective use of the adjective "collective" in many studies of memory: In its place, Beiner has promoted the term "social memory" and has also demonstrated its limitations by developing a related concept of "social forgetting".
Historian David Rieff takes issue with the term "collective memory", distinguishing between memories of people who were actually alive during the events in question, and people who only know about them from culture or media. Rieff writes in opposition to George Santayana's aphorism "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", pointing out that strong cultural emphasis on certain historical events can prevent resolution of armed conflicts, especially when the conflict has been previously fought to a draw. The sociologist David Leupold draws attention to the problem of structural nationalism inherent in the notion of collective memory, arguing in favor of "emancipating the notion of collective memory from being subjected to the national collective" by employing a multi-collective perspective that highlights the mutual interaction of other memory collectives that form around generational belonging, family, locality or socio-political world-views.
Pierre Lévy argues that the phenomenon of human collective intelligence undergoes a profound shift with the arrival of the internet paradigm, as it allows the vast majority of humanity to access and modify a common shared online collective memory.
Collective memory and psychological research
Though traditionally a topic studied in the humanities, collective memory has become an area of interest in psychology. Common approaches taken in psychology to study collective memory have included investigating the cognitive mechanisms involved in the formation and transmission of collective memory; and comparing the social representations of history between social groups.Social representations of history
Research on collective memory has compared how different social groups form their own representations of history and how such collective memories can impact ideals, values, behaviors and vice versa. Research has proposed that groups form social representations of history in order to develop their own social identity, as well as to evaluate the past, often in order to prevent past patterns of conflict and error from being repeated. Research has also compared differences in recollections of historical events, such as the examples given earlier when comparing history and collective memory.Differences in collective memories between social groups, such as nations or states, have been attributed to collective narcissism and egocentric/ethnocentric bias. In one related study where participants from 35 countries were questioned about their country's contribution to world history and provided a percentage estimation from 0% to 100%, evidence for collective narcissism was found as many countries gave responses exaggerating their country's contribution. In another study where Americans from 50 states were asked similar questions regarding their state's contribution to the history of the United States, patterns of overestimation and collective narcissism were also found.
Cognitive mechanisms underlying collaborative recall
Certain cognitive mechanisms involved during group recall and the interactions between these mechanisms have been suggested to contribute to the formation of collective memory. Below are some mechanisms involved during when groups of individuals recall collaboratively.Collaborative inhibition and retrieval disruption
When groups collaborate to recall information, they experience collaborative inhibition, a decrease in performance compared to the pooled memory recall of an equal number of individuals. Weldon and Bellinger and Basden, Basden, Bryner, and Thomas provided evidence that retrieval interference underlies collaborative inhibition, as hearing other members' thoughts and discussion about the topic at hand interferes with one's own organization of thoughts and impairs memory.The main theoretical account for collaborative inhibition is retrieval disruption. During the encoding of information, individuals form their own idiosyncratic organization of the information. This organization is later used when trying to recall the information. In a group setting as members exchange information, the information recalled by group members disrupts the idiosyncratic organization one had developed. As each member's organization is disrupted, this results in the less information recalled by the group compared to the pooled recall of participants who had individually recalled.
Despite the problem of collaborative inhibition, working in groups may benefit an individual's memory in the long run, as group discussion exposes one to many different ideas over time. Working alone initially prior to collaboration seems to be the optimal way to increase memory.
Early speculations about collaborative inhibition have included explanations, such as diminished personal accountability, social loafing and the diffusion of responsibility, however retrieval disruption remains the leading explanation. Studies have found that collective inhibition to sources other than social loafing, as offering a monetary incentive have been evidenced to fail to produce an increase in memory for groups. Further evidence from this study suggest something other than social loafing is at work, as reducing evaluation apprehension – the focus on one's performance amongst other people – assisted in individuals' memories but did not produce a gain in memory for groups. Personal accountability – drawing attention to one's own performance and contribution in a group – also did not reduce collaborative inhibition. Therefore, group members' motivation to overcome the interference of group recall cannot be achieved by several motivational factors.