Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T21:26:15.727Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Making History: Social and Psychological Processes Underlying Collective Memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
James W. Pennebaker  and
Amy L. Gonzales
Edited by
Pascal Boyer  and
James V. Wertsch
Pascal Boyer
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis
James V. Wertsch
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
Get access

Summary

The field of history is premised on the idea that knowledge of our past can inform our behaviors in the future. Indeed, this idea is central to many assumptions within personality, developmental, and clinical psychology. Implicit in this thinking is that history is somehow made up of immutable facts that are set in stone in society's memory. Who, after all, could doubt the accuracy of America's role in World War II, the facts surrounding the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492, the bravery and upstanding characters of the men who defended the Alamo in 1845, or the profound effect of the Magna Carta in 1215? These events, of course, are not as straightforward as we were taught in grade school. Events such as these undergo rethinking, reinterpreting, and even forgetting to become part of the permanent fabric of collective memory. But the transition from cultural upheaval to history does not happen all at once. The macrocosm of how a collective memory is built over centuries takes place on a much smaller scale beginning in the days, weeks, and months following an event.

The purpose of this chapter is to suggest that our current psychological state shapes our thinking about historical events in the same way that historical events shape our current thinking. Just as the key to the future may be the past, the key to the past may be the present. What about an event that makes it memorable?

Type
Chapter
Information
Memory in Mind and Culture , pp. 171 - 193
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, W. (1989). War stories: Movies, memory, and the Vietnam War. Comparative Social Research, 11, 165–189.Google Scholar
Bok, S. (1983). Secrets: On the ethics of concealment and revelation. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Carver, C. S. (2007). Stress, coping, and health. In Friedman, H. and Silver, R. (Eds.), Foundations of health psychology (pp 117–144). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chung, C. K., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). The psychological function of function words. In Fiedler, K. (Ed.), Social communication: Frontiers of social psychology (pp 343–359). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, S., & McKay, G. (1984). Social support, stress, and the buffering hypothesis: A theoretical analysis. In A.Baum, S. E. Taylor, , & Singer, J. E. (Eds.), Handbook of psychology and health, Volume IV: Social psychological aspects of health (pp. 253–268). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Cohen, S., & Wills, T. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 310–357.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohn, M. A., Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001. Psychological Science, 15, 687–693.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conway, M. A. (1990). Autobiographical memory: An introduction. Philadelphia: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Crow, D. M., & Pennebaker, J. W. (1998). Talking about, remembering, and forgetting the Persian Gulf War. Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin: Unpublished technical report.Google Scholar
Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Festinger, L. (1964). When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study. New York: Harper-Collins.Google Scholar
Gortner, E., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2003). The archival anatomy of a disaster: Media coverage and community-wide health effects of the Texas A&M bonfire tragedy. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 22, 580–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, M. (1976). Stress response syndromes. New York: Jacob Aronson.Google Scholar
Laszlo, J. (2003). History, identity, and narratives. In Laszlo, J.-Wagner, W. (Eds.), Theories and controversies in societal psychology. Budapest: New Mandate Publishers, 180–192.Google Scholar
Levinson, D. J., Darrow, C. M., Klein, E. B., Levinson, M. H., & McKee, B. (1978). The seasons of a man's life. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Liehr, P., Mehl, M. R., Summers, L. C., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). Connecting with others in the midst of a stressful upheaval on September 11, 2001. Applied Nursing Research, 17, 2–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lira, E. (1997). Remembering: Passing back through the heart. In: Pennebaker, J., Paez, D., & Rimé, B. (Eds.), Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 223–235). Hillsdale, NJ, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Mannheim, K. (1968). Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. (originally published 1952).Google Scholar
Mehl, M. R. (2004). The sounds of social life: Exploring students' daily social environments and natural conversations. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation.
Mehl, M., Pennebaker, J. W., Crow, D. M., Dabbs, J., & Price, J. (2001). The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): A device for sampling naturalistic daily activities and conversations. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 33, 517–523.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, G. A. (1995). The science of words. New York: Scientific American Library.Google Scholar
Mitchell, G. W., & Glickman, A. S. (1977). Cancer patients: Knowledge and Attitude. Cancer, 40, 61–66.3.0.CO;2-#>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Morrow, J., & Fredrickson, B., (1993). Response styles and the duration of episodes of depressed mood. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 102, 20–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pennebaker, J. W., Francis, M. E., & Booth, R. J. (2001). Linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC): LIWC2001 (this includes the manual only). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Publishers.Google Scholar
Pennebaker, J. W., & Harber, K. (1993). A social stage model of collective coping: The Persian Gulf and other natural disasters. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 125–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennebaker, J. W., Mehl, M. R., & Niederhoffer, K. (2003). Psychological aspects of natural language use: Our words, our selves. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 547–577.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pennebaker, J. W., Páez, D., & Deschamps, J. C. (2006). The social psychology of history. Psícologia Política, 32, 15–32.Google Scholar
Pyszczynski, T. A., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2002). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Rimé, B. (1995). Mental rumination, social sharing, and the recovery from emotional exposure. In Pennebaker, J. W. (Ed.), Emotion, disclosure, and health (pp 271–292). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Rimé, B., Philippot, P., & Boca, S. (1991). Beyond the emotional event: Six studies on social sharing of emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 5, 435–465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, D. C., Wetzler, S. E., & Nebes, R. D. (1986). Autobiographical memory across the life span. In Rubin, D. C. (Ed.), Autobiographical memory (pp 202–221). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawislak, K. (1995). Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871–1874. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schachter, S. (1959). The psychology of affiliation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, B. B., Carr, A. C., Peretz, D., Kutscher, A. H., & Cherico, D. J. (1975). Advice of the bereaved for the bereaved. In Schoenberg, B., Gerbner, I., Wiener, A., Kutscher, A., Peretz, D., & Carr, A. (Eds.), Bereavement: Its psychological aspects (pp 362–367). New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Schuman, H., Belli, , & Bischoping, (1997). The generational basis of historical knowledge. In Pennebaker, J. W., Paez, D., & Rimé, B., (Eds.), Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives (pp 47–77). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, Assoc.Google Scholar
Shils, E. A. (1981). Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Silver, R. C., Holman, E. A., McIntosh, D. N., Poulin, M., & Gil-Rivas, V. (2002). Nationwide longitudinal study of psychological responses to September 11. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 288, 1235–1244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stone, L. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2002). Trauma in real time: Talking and avoiding online conversations about the death of Princess Diana. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24, 172–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilford, J. N. (1991). The mysterious history of Columbus: An exploration of the man, the myth, the legacy. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×