Collective Memory and Universal History: Subjective Evaluation and Importance of Events and Historical Characters

Collective memory refers to how social groups remember, forget or re-appropriate knowledge of the social past. Following previous studies that take history as an object of social representation, it is analyzed how events and characters of universal history are grouped together according to their evaluation and importance (n = 379, 55.7% women, age = 18-69). Data was collected through the internet using a self-administered questionnaire. Twenty-eight events and 24 characters from world history were presented, and participants had to indicate to what extent they seemed positive or negative and what importance they attributed to them. Two hierarchical cluster analyzes were performed, one for subjective evaluation and one for importance. For the subjective evaluation three clusters were obtained and for importance two clusters were found. The stimuli evaluated in the most negative way belong to the last century and are related to wars or political and economic problems. Those evaluated most favorably are associated with discoveries or with the fight against oppression (abolition of slavery, democratic system). Regarding the importance attributed, all the stimuli presented obtained a high importance, reaching events higher scores than characters. Events and characters considered most important were related to advances in human rights and freedom, knowledge and changes in social life. These findings are discussed within the framework of collective memory.