Social reperesentations of world history: events relevance and aroused feelings in an argentinian sample

DELFINO, G.; SOSA, F .; ZUBIETA, E.

Conferencia; XII International Conference on Social Representations; 2014

history and collective memory in social psychology involves designing construction and maintenance as a dynamic socio-psychological process. This position aims to understand how history and historical representations acquire a social character as a result of a variety of activities, forms of interpretation and stories over time Collective memory studies involved two lines of approaches, one interested in the processes of memorization and recall while influenced by membership in a social group, and other which emphasizes the same content as collective product representations (Olick, 1999). representations of history are crucial to public beliefs about the legitimacy of political systems and central to justifications for political action. History is recognized across the social sciences and by politicians as an important symbolic resource to be mobilized in arguments for and against political regimes and their agenda. In order to verify the findings of previous studies related to the overwhelming of politics and warfare, the recency effect and the eurocentrism pattern, 379 residents from Buenos Aires city were asked to answer a self-administered questionnaire with 28 events of world history.All events negatively evaluated belong to the twentieth or twenty-first century (e.g. Holocaust, atomic bombings, world wars), involving at least in part, the United States and Europe, and related to war or, in its absence, political and economic problems. Positive events principally refer to technological developments, medical/scientific discoveries or human rights. Finally, a positive association between felling and importance given to events was verify. Thus, events evaluated as more negative tends to be seen as less important (e.g. Iraq War, Cold War and Great Depression), while more positive events are given more importance (e.g. Industrial Revolution, digital era, invention of printing press and slavery abolition). This association is statistically significant. Finally, when calculating the correlation coefficient for the relationship between evaluation in the positive-negative dimension (feeling), and the importance given it is verified that the better the stimulus presented is evaluated, the more importance is given. History is embodied through characters and events widely recognized and legitimized by the group giving temporality through the imposition of a narrative structure. Both are powerful tools in the construction of identity with dynamic implications for action. These descriptive components embody the collective experience and its emotional implications.