History as the narrative of a people: From function to structure and content

Abstract

We summarize our perspective on social representations of history first presented by Liu and Hilton and extended in later publications. We situate our functional approach in the context of contemporary social psychological approaches to intergroup relations, particularly realistic conflict theory, social identity theory, and the literature on social cognition/stereotypes. We note that this approach leads us to analyze social representations of events and people as narratives, with properties of verisimilitude rather than factuality often governing their acceptability. We highlight the moral functions of historical figures for a group, as well as the lessons (schemas) afforded by historical events, and analyze history as a symbolic reserve for constructing social identities with historical narratives. We review evidence supporting our functional analysis of the group functions of social representations of history and focus on the “charters” that sometimes form the core of these representations. We identify future challenges, in particular the need to better understand how to characterize the narrative structure and elements of social representations of history.

Keywords

collective remembering historical historical charters nationalism social memory social representations of history

Introduction

From the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, Europe has seen a resurgence of nationalisms. With the collapse of communism and the Soviet bloc, Germany was reunified in 1990, and nationalism was rekindled in the former Yugoslavia with the secession of Croatia, and the attempts of Serbia to assimilate Serb populations in Bosnia–Herzegovina and Kosovo into a greater Serbia. While some, such as Francis Fukuyama (1989), were tempted to see the collapse of the communism and the seeming triumph of liberal capitalism as signifying The End of History, readers of Christopher Clark’s (2012) The Sleepwalkers, a widely read account of the events leading up to World War I, might see it more in terms of the return of history. For example, the account given of the ideology and methods of Serb nationalists in the years up to 1914 eerily prefigure the discourse and actions of their successors in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Once the supranational carapace that had been Tito’s Communist Yugoslavia was thrown off in 1990, it seems that older national traditions were again free to dictate Serb policy and actions.

Our research program has been designed to understand how groups’ representations of their history influence their collective attitudes and behavior. In particular, we are interested in groups that may be considered to be “peoples,” that is, who reproduce themselves as a collective from generation to generation and consider themselves to have a shared culture that is different from that of other peoples. Peoples include not only nations but also tribes, some ethnicities, and a few groups in diaspora. One key characteristic that differentiates peoples from other social categories like bankers and manual workers is that peoples produce narratives about their history that help them as a collective to endure the vicissitudes of time. Historians have long recognized the importance of the “invention” of tradition for creating and maintaining a group’s sense of identity (Hobsbawm, 1983; Nora, 1989), and sociologists have taken advantage of this in the literature on collective remembering (Olick and Robbins, 1998). We saw our task as drawing from this interdisciplinary literature and laying the basis for a social psychological analysis of how social representations of history determine a people’s sense of itself. As we wrote in Liu and Hilton (2005), “History provides us with narratives that tell us who we are, where we came from and where we should be going” (p. 1).

The uses of social representations of history

Moscovici (1963) writes that “social representation is defined as the elaborating of a social object by the community for the purpose of behaving and communicating” (p. 251). Because his seminal concept of representations is focused on socially elaborated content (and meaning), it augments traditional social psychological approaches to the study of intergroup relations that focus on process (see Moscovici, 1988). Bringing these approaches together, Liu and Hilton (2005) suggested three broad functions for social representations of history. The first function is anchored in realistic group conflict theory which argues that conflicts arise out of competition for scarce resources (Sherif et al., 1961): in this view, social representations of history keep track of who our friends and enemies are. The second function reflects social identity concerns (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), such as the need to maintain sources of collective pride and to expiate feelings of collective shame and guilt (see also Bilewicz et al., this issue). Examples of this are the tendency of groups to selectively recall positive events and not mention (or forget) negative events concerning their own group, while not showing a similar asymmetry in recall of other groups’ behaviors (Sahdra and Ross, 2007), or to propose (or resist) redress to victimized groups when reminded of shameful or guilt-inducing conduct to them (Doosje et al., 1998). A third function is cognitive, as a source of shared experiences and narratives that can serve as “lessons of history” and delineate “honoured ancestors” for a group: for example, the salience of the Munich analogy predicts interventionist attitudes in Americans’ foreign policy judgments (Ghilani et al., this issue; Gilovich, 1981; Spellman and Holyoak, 1992), whereas the salience of the Vietnam analogy predicts noninterventionist ones (Schuman and Rieger, 1992).

History as a symbolic reserve: narratives for the “insider view”

Following the seminal work of Janos László (2008), who argues that social representations take narrative forms, a group’s canonical narrative provides its “inside view” of itself. Unlike behaviors, narratives have to be heard or read to be understood, as they are full of meaning. This contrasts to the stereotyped “pictures in the head” of groups studied in public opinion research (Lippman, 1922) (e.g. Italians are expressive and gesticulate a lot). This may result in an “outside view” of other groups whereby stereotypes are formed on the basis of attributed personality traits (McCauley and Stitt, 1978; Peabody, 1985), inferred from observations of overt behavior. In contrast, an “inside view” of national identity gained by understanding the narratives that groups (e.g. Italians) share about their history requires looking at their monuments, sharing in their commemorations (Olick and Robbins, 1998), listening to their stories about history, and reading their mass media and textbooks.

Both “outside” and “inside” views may fruitfully be studied in the study of the evolution of social representations of one’s own and groups through time. For example, Knight (2014) gives a thoughtful review of how the “outside view” of stereotypes as “an association of attributes with a certain group of people” (p. 243) can be used to study historical stereotypes (e.g. English stereotypes of Protestants and Catholics from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and of English pro- and anti-Reformers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). But we would also like to draw attention to the importance of studying the “insiders’ view” of core events and characters, for example, the moral roles (heroes, villains, fools, etc., see Hanke et al., 2015) that a group uses as raw materials for its historical narratives. As an illustration, the “Anti-Popery” movement that structured English political discourse from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries seems to us to have the narrative elements needed to buttress protestant England’s determination to stand up against Catholic opponents (Harris, in press; Miller, 1973). Thus, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, with its gruesome stories and graphic depictions of the cruelties inflicted on true Christian believers (from early Christians in Roman times through the Spanish Inquisition to English protestants under Queen Mary, only 5 years before the book’s first publication in 1563), was held in every English church during this period and—after the Bible—was the most read book in England. The Book of Martyrs was continually republished with new stories of Catholic attempts at the oppression of Protestants, such as the story of the Spanish Armada (1588) and the Gunpowder Plot (1603). According to Lake (1989: 77), the schematic story given by the Book of Martyrs is

an account of the struggle between the true and false Churches, underground groups of humble believers had kept the true Church alive while the ecclesiastical hierarchy of priests and bishops, aided by the princes of the world, had proved the leading agents of persecution.

This story maps well onto the identity position of a valiant English underdog facing up to repeated attempts from Catholic powers from the continent (Spain, France) to subjugate it. The extent to which the English anti-Popery narrative structured shared perceptions can be gauged by the characterization by members of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge (founded in 1660) of continental science as a form of Popish chicanery garnished with rituals, illusions, and magic tricks, to be contrasted with the solid English science based on factual observation, experiment and rejection of all other forms of scientific authority (Iliffe, 2014).

A group’s stories about itself contain a narrative structure that needs to be captured theoretically (László, 2008). Stories often follow an underlying pattern (Frye, 1970) that resembles the formulaic structure of the folktale (Propp, 1968). Successful historical stories are likely to resonate in popular collective memory by proposing exciting and identifiable figures (e.g. heroes, villains, and fools) as well as providing memorable narratives. The validity of these narratives will depend on their “credibility, authenticity, relevance, and coherence, which in turn are dependent on the proper use of narrative features—time, plot, characters, perspective, narrative intentions and evaluation” (Liu and László, 2007: 87).

Social representations of history can be elaborated to form a historical charter

Following Malinowski (1926), social representations or narratives of history can be elaborated, particularly under the identity entrepreneurship of political elites (Reicher and Hopkins, 2001) to produce an historical charter—a reified and canonical representation of history that is used to legitimize social arrangements which provide “foundational myths” that legitimize social order in society. In Malinowski’s words,

Myth comes into play when rite, ceremony, or a social or moral rule demands justification, warrant of antiquity, reality and sanctity … myth is not only looked upon as a comment of additional information, but is a warrant, a charter, and even a practical guide to the activities with which it is connected.

Building on this, Hilton and Liu (2008)

define an historical charter as a widely shared and iconic representation where selective elements of group history, its causes, and consequences have been elaborated into a quasi-legal form that gives moral and sometimes legal implications for group action. Historical charters anchor debate by providing a common understanding through which dialogue flows (Billig, 1988; Moscovici, 1988). They can be used to justify certain privileges and social arrangements in society, and be perceived as part of the fabric of social reality … (p. 351)

Charters explain and legitimize a group’s current political settlement, facilitate self-enhancing group categorizations, and structure political debate and justify collective courses of action. Any breaking with a charter would be angst-inducing, especially for people highly identified with the in-group (see Jetten and Wohl, 2012) because this would involve changing the “essence of who we are” (see also Klar and Bilewicz, this issue).

Our utilization of the concept of charters connects the political ideology of modern states to psychological and societal processes of narrative making that have helped maintain group continuity over time for less complex collectives. Of course, in a modern state, an historical charter might be more anchored in verifiable facts, whereas for tribes, an historical charter could be more shrouded in mythology. But in our view, it is verisimilitude rather than factuality per se that governs the psychological force of narrative for group identity (Liu and László, 2007).

Charters are normative (they establish do’s and don’ts), constitutive (they confer legitimacy on groups and establish roles within the collective), and dynamical (they allow continuity amid change, as they can be (re)negotiated or reinterpreted) societal functions. Below, we provide an illustration of a national charter that has been extensively studied, before moving on to review work on a global and supranational charter.

The Treaty of Waitangi, signed between indigenous Māori and white (Pakeha) settlers in New Zealand (Aotearoa) in 1840, forms part of a national charter. In 1840, it acknowledged Māori property rights, as well as their rights to British citizenship, and agreed that the British Crown had the right to governorship (or sovereignty) and the right to purchase land from Māori. The Treaty of Waitangi disappeared from New Zealand political discourse during the apex of colonization in the late nineteenth century, only to be revitalized in the 1970s when Māori used it (successfully) to contest iniquities in the division of resources and attribution of rights in New Zealand (see Liu and Robinson, 2016; Sibley et al., 2008). Treaty claims in recent decades have been built on both formal recorded history and tribal oral histories.

The Treaty of Waitangi is today part of a hegemonic or canonical representation of New Zealand history that has been both informally elaborated as part of a national charter and formally written into legislation that allows biculturalism (between British settlers/Crown and indigenous Māori) to be a viable narrative influencing interpretation of current political arrangements (Liu et al., 2014). Biculturalism affords Māori a special place in the national identity of New Zealand while maintaining British institutions (such as Parliament) as the legitimate political institutions governing the land. This legitimacy is rooted in history and the Treaty and has implications for the political psychology of New Zealanders today.

Liu et al. (2014) have shown that it is events that specifically have charter status that predict political attitudes. The foundational event (charter) of the Treaty of Waitangi has implications that another well-known event, Hone Heke’s (an important Māori chieftain around the time of the signing of the Treaty) cutting down of a British flagpole in 1844, does not. Liu et al. (2014) showed that it is belief in the importance and continuing relevance of the Treaty of Waitangi (but not Hone Heke) that predicts attitudes to biculturalism, even after standard social psychological measures (social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, and ethnic and national identification) were controlled for. The Treaty of Waitangi thus provides a culture-specific warrant of legitimacy for political attitudes and behavior in New Zealand.

World War II as a global charter: universal or unique perspectives?

Data from the World History Survey (Liu et al., 2005, 2009) revealed the prominence of World War II (WWII) in freely recalled representations of world history, as this event was nominated as the most important in 22 of the 24 countries studied. Hitler was the most important historical figure named in most countries as well. References to WWII abound to this day, from Prince Charles’ comparison in May 2014 of Putin to Hitler following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea to Greece’s demand in April 2015 that Germany repay €278 billion in war reparations. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the historical narratives of students globally, the World Wars can be theorized as providing a “global charter” that explains and justifies the structure of the modern world.

Giner-Sorolla et al. (2014) have suggested that WWII serves as a “moral” charter, within which historical actors are allocated identifiable moral roles (Gray and Wegner, 2009) such as moral agents (heroes and villains) and moral patients (beneficiaries and victims). Across the eight countries sampled (Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Serbia, and the United States), there was considerable agreement in evaluations (on a 1- to 5-point scale) of how each of the eight main protagonists (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, and the United States) fitted each moral role. Thus, Britain and the United States were widely seen as good exemplars of heroes and Germany as the leading exemplar of a villain followed by Italy and Japan. Poland was seen by all groups as a victim, and France, Poland, and Britain as the major beneficiaries. Italy, Germany, and Japan were more likely to be seen as fools than the other powers. While there were some idiosyncratic responses (e.g. Poles saw the Russians as almost as villainous as the Germans), the considerable consensus among these samples in their allocation of moral roles among the protagonists encourages the belief that WWII might serve as a universal moral charter in modern Europe.

Nevertheless, although the outlines of representations of WWII may be broadly similar, groups often focus on different aspects of the narrative. Evidence for this may be adduced from the Second World History survey conducted by Hanke et al. (2015), in which respondents were asked to endorse statements about WWII. Compared to the British, the modern Germans in the sample clearly saw WWII as significantly less necessary and just and as more catastrophic than do the British (Table 1).¹ Importantly, the different meanings attributed to WWII have implications for a group’s political attitudes.

Table 1.

British, French, and German evaluations of World War II as necessary, just, or catastrophic (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree).

Was World War II a	France	Germany	United Kingdom
Necessary war?	3.38	2.72	4.26
Just war?	4.86	3.56	4.67
Catastrophe?	6.22	6.08	4.93

In a societal-level analysis of data from the World History Survey, Paez et al. (2008) found that willingness to fight for one’s country today in 22 countries that participated in WWII was predicted by having been a victorious nation in the war and by a more positive evaluation of the war. In a follow-up analysis of country-level data from the World History Survey, Bobowik et al. (2014) found that willingness to fight for one’s country was predicted positively by beliefs about WWII as a just war and as a necessary war and negatively by belief that it was a social catastrophe.

Perspective effects may also be noted in how social representations of history affect political attitudes. For example, Hilton et al. (1996) investigated attitudes to European unification at the time of the Maastricht treaty (1992) in British, French, and German samples. They found evidence for the “pocketbook politics” approach as respondents’ beliefs that the treaty would further “utilitarian” objectives (e.g. improve the job market and improve national security) were correlated with favorable attitudes in all three samples. However, independent of this, beliefs about history were also predictive: British and French samples were more favorable to unification if they attributed Hitler’s rise to power to the circumstances of the period, perhaps reflecting the belief that could “share a house” with Germany if the causes of Nazism were external to the Germans themselves. In contrast, the German sample was less favorable to currency union if they attributed Hitler’s rise to power to monetary instability in the Weimar Republic, perhaps reflecting collective trauma about hyper-inflation in this period. Writing in 2016, one cannot but note how stringent the German insistence on financial discipline in the Eurozone has been compared to many of its partners.

What to do if you contest the historical charter?

Given the capacity of a charter to influence attitudes to political events, what options are available to groups that wish to contest those attitudes? Ignoring them does not seem to be an option, as they are—by definition—widely known in the group, and a source of collective emotions (see Jetten and Wohl, 2012; Pennebaker et al., 1997). One strategy is to deny that the event is relevant to the issue at hand. This strategy is known as historical negation, where historical injustice is acknowledged as factual but argued to be irrelevant or inappropriate to the situation in hand. This was studied in New Zealand by Sibley et al. (2008) who found that Pakeha (white) New Zealander students were generally opposed to affirmative action in favor of Māori and typically drew on egalitarian discourses to argue that categorically favoring Māori in resource allocations was unfair. Pakeha often hedged their opposition by acknowledging historical injustices but claiming that resource allocations in favor of Māori would constitute reverse racism. By framing targeted scholarships in favor of Māori within a bicultural partnership frame (the Treaty as a long-term partnership between the two founding peoples of New Zealand), Sibley et al. (2008) were able to reduce Pakeha opposition specifically to targeted scholarships but not their opposition to affirmative action in general. Similarly, Sibley et al. (2008) found that historical negation justified opposition to both resource-specific and symbolic aspects of policy in support of Māori among both students and representative samples. Historical negation in turn was predicted by right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.

Conversely, given the legitimacy afforded them by the Treaty of Waitangi and the material disadvantages facing them today, Māori are reluctant to allow their sense of grievance over the injustices of colonization fade the way Pakeha (NZ Europeans) would like them to (see Sibley and Liu, 2013): historical grievance is to some extent part of Māori identity today, and avoiding/coming to terms with this is a part of Pakeha identity too.

Thus, there is often dynamics of negotiation and renegotiation around exactly how and when the provisions of a charter should be applied. Furthermore, most charters involve more than one element to be valued—in New Zealand, biculturalism between Māori and Pakeha (as indexed by the Treaty of Waitangi) is weighed up against the ideal of individual equality and freedom (which we have suggested might be “charter” aspects of British liberal democracy enshrined in British Common Law and Parliamentary system that governs New Zealand—see Liu and Robinson (2016) for the ebbs and flows of biculturalism vs enlightenment discourses over time). Disputants attempt to be reasonable by acknowledging both sides’ point of view, but nevertheless argue that their interpretation of the charter is more relevant.

A related but perhaps more risky strategy is to acknowledge that the charter event has been important and relevant in the past but to suggest that it is now out-of-date. This strategy has been adopted by the younger generation in Germany, who are more likely than the older generation to say that it is time to “draw a line” under Germany’s Nazi past (Schluβstrich) and break with the past to move on. Those who endorse the Schluβstrich are less likely to express shame or guilt and more likely to express regret for Germany’s Nazi past. Experimental induction of a Schluβstrich has similar effects (Imhoff et al., 2012), as does information indicating that a group’s past historical misdeeds no longer have an effect on people who endorse it (see also Zimmermann et al., 2011). The tendency to “draw a line under” (or break with) the past also predicts pardon for historical transgressions by respondents in offended countries (Hanke et al., 2013)

However, attempts to break with the past may be met with opposition—as is illustrated by the continuing controversy around Imperial Japan’s war crimes (e.g. the use of comfort women) in Korea and China before and during WWII (Liu and Atsumi, 2008). While young Japanese know very little of Japan’s war crimes, this ignorance is not accepted as innocent by young people in China and Korea. Periodically, interpretive conflict breaks out between these countries regarding the depiction of past conflict. While some representations of history may simply “die out” with an older generation (as may be the case with Belgian representations of the colonization of the Congo, see Licata and Klein, 2010), in other cases, representations are more likely to transform and change gradually over time rather than disappear (Liu and Robinson, 2016; Sibley et al., 2006, 2008), especially when there is continuing historical dialogue between victimized and offender groups.

Why are some historical events telling? Narrative structure and historical trajectories

As noted above, charters explain and justify the current political state of affairs and help dictate group policies. They incorporate not just widely remembered events but events that are perceived to have had made a difference to a group’s sense of itself. Charters are likely to be based on events that are perceived to have had causal effects and to have been critical in having changed the course of a group’s history in an important way (see also Bruckmüller et al., this issue). Here, an event’s importance is likely to rely on causal and counterfactual reasoning to evaluate its impact on the state of the world today (e.g. Hilton et al., 2005; Tetlock and Lebow, 2005). Work on story understanding suggests that events that are evaluated as important in a narrative are those which are central in a network of counterfactual dependencies (Trabasso and Sperry, 1985). Such reasoning can explain why WWII is so prominent in representations of world history, as the world today would look very different if it had not taken place. However, if an event is not perceived to have changed the current political settlement, it is unlikely to be perceived as having charter status, however widely it is remembered. To illustrate this point, consider the different status of two prominent events in American collective memories: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 and the Kennedy assassination (Schuman and Rieger, 1992). While the attack on Pearl Harbour may be said to have charter status in that it was used to justify the American response to 9/11 as that of a powerful democracy responding to unprovoked attack on its own shores (Schuman and Rodgers, 2004), the Kennedy assassination is simply a commonly known event, without consequence for America’s sense of itself. Perhaps things would have been different had Kennedy’s assassination led America to change its liberal gun laws: in this case, the event would not just be widely remembered but also contend for charter status as part of a narrative justifying change to (or change to the interpretation of) the American constitution.

Another important feature of narrative structure is sequence. For example, László et al. (2002) theorized that nations may have a sense of “historical trajectories” whereby they may see themselves as being in a period of historical ascent or decline. How can narrative templates of this kind be studied? Part of the answer lies in the way questions are asked in history surveys and responses arranged. For example, László et al. (2002) asked Hungarian respondents to list positive and negative events separately: for positive ones, “Describe the historical event of which you are the most proud and would have like to have participated in,” and for negative ones, “Describe the most negative event that the country ever went through and which should never have happened.” László et al. then arranged the events in chronological order (see Table 2), so revealing a preponderance of positive initial events and negative later events in Hungarians’ representations of their history (first victory and then defeat).

Table 2.

Social representations of positive and negative events in Hungarian history (evaluations of events).

Hungarian historical events (in chronological order)	Positive events	Negative events
Conquest of the homeland	+21
The great medieval kings	+18
Mongol invasion		−5
Victory over the Turks	+27
Ottoman occupation		−19
Austrian battles	+24
Failure of Anti-Austrian uprising		−25
World War I		−25
Treaty of Trianon		−28
World War II		−48
Soviet domination		−11
End of the Soviet Era	+7

László et al.’s (2002) analysis of Hungarian “historical templates” paralleled Wertsch’s (2002) identification of a Russian historical narrative template derived from an in-group favoring summary of their historical experiences in dealing with Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions (inviting a purely defensive response of the motherland “coincidentally” used to justify the post-war occupation of other nations). Wertsch (2002) suggests that Russians have internalized a collective representation of “first defeat and then victory,” as Mother Russia recoils under the invasion, only to reassert her strength at the end; this narrative might act as a self-fulfilling prophecy to deter future aggressors from attacking Russia, and it might spur Russian aggression in “protecting” its borders. In contrast, László and colleagues inferred that a narrative structure of “first defeat, then victory” was absent from Hungarian historical narratives and claimed this was responsible for the relatively low frequency and positivity of free recall nominations for the end of Russian occupation in 1989. Hungarians, László et al. suggest, have a historical narrative that predisposes them to emphasize a glorious (but distant) past followed by a troubled recent 500 years that may lead them to underestimate the promise of their present and future.

These findings illustrate an important contribution of research on social representations of history to the psychology of intergroup relations: the Hungarian case and many others show that in-group favoritism is inflected by historical content and is purposefully expressed in complex ways that leverage historical context (especially prior conflict) to lead to phenomena like competitive victimhood rather than competition over positive attributes (Noor et al., 2012) or the triumph of fear over hope in intergroup relations (Bar-Tal, 2001).

Individual differences in profiles of the content of social representations

While social representations of history will include narrative elements and be peopled by heroes, villains, and fools, the particular content of these representations may vary from individual to individual rather than be characteristic of a population. For instance, an important distinction between religious and secular orientations toward heroes emerged in a large cross-cultural study conducted by Hanke et al. (2015) using data from a second, quantitative World History Survey. Hanke et al. (2015) named the two most prevalent profiles (or socially shared patterns) of young people rating historical figures in Western (and Catholic/Orthodox Christian) countries as “Secular Idealists” and “Religious Idealists.” These groups rated Hitler, Saddam, and Osama bin Laden very negatively and scientific, religious, and democratic/human rights leaders very positively. However, “Secular Idealists” rated heroes less positively, especially religious figures (e.g. Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed). Latent profile analysis found over 90% of Westerners (and more than 80% in the Catholic/Orthodox country clusters) fell into one of these two representational profiles or patterns of evaluative ratings. In Asian and Islamic societies, however, two other representational profiles were common: political realists and historical indifferents. Political realists rated dictators, generals, and terrorists less negatively than the idealists and rated communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin rather positively. But their ratings of the heroes of science and democracy were quite similar to the idealists’ profiles, suggesting that people differ more in who they find to be villains than who they find to be heroes. People in the developing societies of Asia and the Islamic world, where survival is by no means assured (see Inglehart and Baker, 2000), probably see the world as a place where a Machiavellian attitude toward power is sometimes necessary. People from Islamic societies were also frequently indifferent to the historical figures used in the World History Survey, perhaps because these figures were mainly non-Muslims.

The results intersect with what qualitative researchers such as Condor and Abell (2006) have been arguing for some time: that individuals work up the raw materials of history into a discursive form that looks far from canonical and deploy these for meaning-making purposes that reflect social context and self-expression. However, as the work on latent profile analysis is quantitative, it derives larger patterns of shared meaning (from evaluative ratings) among far larger collectives of individuals than would be possible or desirable to encompass with qualitative research methods; the system of meaning in this quantitative research is latent and imposed by statistical methods from the outside researcher, rather than being based on explicit meanings generated by participants themselves. For deeper discussion of these issues, and their potentially complementary nature, see the debate between Liu et al. (2010) and Gibson and Noret (2010) published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

In their attempt to articulate a better understanding of cross-cultural differences in political psychology, Liu and Sibley (2009) argued that history could be an important social object bridging the European theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1988) and Asian and other social psychological theories focusing on culture: by identifying culture-specific symbols responsible for a culture-specific political psychology (see Liu et al., 2014). Universal symbols (e.g. mother’s love) bring people together, and culture-specific symbols, such as Jesus and Mohammed, can pull them apart (Hanke et al., 2015).

Conclusion

We have proposed a view of social representations of history that supply groups with representations of themselves and others in the form of event schemas (and narrative structures) and prototypical heroes and villains that that political elites can work up into legitimizing myths and group agendas to reify boundaries and engineer national identity (Reicher and Hopkins, 2001). We have focused on core elements of these representations, that we call charters, which structure political discourse and felt emotions in a group, such that opponents of the charter cannot ignore it, but have to position themselves with respect to it, by, for example, denying its relevance. They also predict distinct aspects of people’s political attitudes, independently of many conventional predictors of social and political attitudes and sometimes in interaction with social identities.

Having established why and how social representations of history matter, we identified some outstanding questions for future research. Why are some historical events telling and thus candidates for charter status? What can be learned by identifying key aspects of the narrative structure of histories? In what way do respondent characteristics determine the contents that are focused on in social representations of history? We look forward to answers being furnished to these questions in the coming years.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Part of this paper was presented as a keynote address—Telling histories: A tribute to János László’s “Science of stories”—given to the mid-term meeting of the COST IS1205 initiative Social psychological dynamics of historical representations in the enlarged European Union in Pécs, Hungary 9–11 April 2015. We would like to dedicate this article in fond remembrance to our friend and colleague, János László.

Notes

Author biographies

Denis J Hilton has been professor of Social Psychology at the University of Toulouse since 1998. His research is on social cognition, the pragmatics of conversation and reasoning, judgment and decision-making, and experimental economics. He is currently an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology.

James H Liu is a professor of Psychology and Head of School at Massey University in New Zealand. His research is in cross-cultural, social, and political psychology, specializing in digital influence and social representations of history. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology from 2008 to 2011 and President of the Asian Association of Social Psychology from 2013 to 2015. A naturalized citizen of two countries, he describes himself as a “Chinese-American-New Zealander.”

References

Bar-Tal

(2001) Why does fear override hope in societies engulfed by intractable conflict, as it does in Israeli society? Political Psychology 22: 601–627.

Bilewicz

Witkowska

Stefaniak

. (2017) The lay historian explains intergroup behavior: examining the role of identification and cognitive structuring in ethnocentric historical attributions. Memory Studies 10(3): 310–322.

Billig

(1988) Social representation, anchoring and objectification: a rhetorical analysis. Social Behaviour 3: 1–16.

Bobowik

Paez

Liu

. (2014) Victorious justifications and criticism of defeated: involvement of nations in world wars, social development, cultural values, social representations of war, and willingness to fight. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 43: 60–73.

Bruckmüller

Hegarty

Teigen

. (2017) When do past events require explanation? Insights from social psychology. Memory Studies 10(3): 261–273.

Clark

(2012) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914. London: Penguin.

Condor

Abell

(2006) Romantic Scotland, tragic England, ambiguous Britain: constructions of ‘the Empire’ in post-devolution national accounting. Nations and Nationalism 12(3): 453–472.

Doosje

Branscombe

Spears

. (1998) Guilty by association: when one’s group has a negative history. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75: 872–886.

Frye

(1970) The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society. London: Methuen.

10.

Fukuyama

(1989) The end of history? The National Interest 18: 3–18.

11.

Ghilani

Luminet

Erb

H-P

. (2017) Looking forward to the past: an interdisciplinary discussion on the use of historical analogies and their effects. Memory Studies 10(3): 274–285.

12.

Gibson

Noret

(2010) Historical experiences, collective memory, and willingness to fight for one’s country: comments on Paez et al. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 41: 445–450.

13.

Gilovich

(1981) Seeing the past in the present: the effect of associations to familiar events on judgments and decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40: 797–808.

14.

Giner-Sorolla

Erb

H-P

Hilton

. (2014) Moral schemas of World War II. Paper presented at Working Group Meeting 2/4 COST IS1205, Nicosia, 16–17 May.

15.

Gray

Wegner

(2009) Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96: 505–520.

16.

Hanke

Liu

Hilton

. (2013) When the past haunts the present: intergroup forgiveness and historical closure in post World War II societies in Asia and in Europe. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 37: 287–301.

17.

Hanke

Liu

Sibley

. (2015) “Heroes” and “villains” of world history across cultures. PLoS ONE 10(2): e0115641.

18.

Harris

(in press) Anti-Catholicism and anti-popery in seventeenth-century England. In: Haefeli

(ed.) Anti-Popery in the Anglo-American World. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

19.

Hilton

Liu

(2008) Culture and inter-group relations. The role of social representations of history. In: Sorrentino

Yamaguchi

(eds) The Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: The Cultural Context. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 343–368.

20.

Hilton

Erb

H-P

McDermott

. (1996) Social representations of history and attitudes to European unification in Britain, France and Germany. In: Breakwell

Lyons

(eds) Changing European Identities. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 275–295.

21.

Hilton

McClure

Slugoski

(2005) The course of events: counterfactuals, causal sequences and explanation. In: Mandel

Hilton

Catellani

(eds) The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking. London: The Psychology Press, pp. 44–73.

22.

Hobsbawm

(1983) Introduction: inventing traditions. In: Hobsbawm

Ranger

(eds) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–14.

23.

Iliffe

(2014) Trade, technology and inventors’ identity in the early Royal Society. Paper presented at conference on stereotyping in early modern British spheres: history as fieldwork 16-17 June. London: University of London.

24.

Imhoff

Bilewicz

Erb

(2012) Collective regret versus collective guilt: different emotional reactions to historical atrocities. European Journal of Social Psychology 42: 729–742.

25.

Inglehart

Baker

(2000) Modernization, cultural change and the persistence of traditional values. American Sociological Review 65: 19–51.

26.

Jetten

Wohl

(2012) The past as a determinant of the present: historical continuity, collective angst, and opposition to immigration. European Journal of Social Psychology 42: 442–450.

27.

Klar

Bilewicz

(2017) From socially motivated lay historians to lay censors: epistemic conformity and defensive group identification. Memory Studies 10(3): 334–346.

28.

Knight

(2014) Historical stereotypes and histories of stereotypes. In: Tileagă

Byford

(eds) Psychology and History: Interdisciplinary Explorations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 242–267.

29.

Lake

(1989) Anti-popery: the structure of a prejudice. In: Cust

Hughes

(eds) Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603–1642. London: Longman, pp. 72–106.

30.

László

(2008) The Science of Stories: An Introduction to Narrative Psychology. London; New York: Routledge.

31.

László

Ehmann

Imre

(2002) Les représentations sociales de l’histoire: la narration populaire historique et l’identité nationale. In: Laurens

Roussiau

(eds) La mémoire sociale. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, pp. 187–198.

32.

Licata

Klein

(2010) Holocaust or benevolent paternalism? Intergenerational comparisons on collective memories and emotions about Belgium’s colonial past. International Journal of Conflict and Violence 4: 45–57.

33.

Lippman

(1922) Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt Brace.

34.

Liu

Atsumi

(2008) Historical conflict and resolution between Japan and China: developing and applying a narrative theory of history and identity. In: Sugiman

Gergen

Wagner

. (eds) Meaning in Action: Constructions, Narratives, and Representations. Tokyo, Japan: Springer-Verlag, pp. 327–344.

35.

Liu

Hilton

(2005) How the past weighs on the present: social representations of history and their role in identity politics. British Journal of Social Psychology 44: 537–556.

36.

Liu

László

(2007) A narrative theory of history and identity: social identity, social representations, society and the individual. In: Moloney

Walker

(eds) Social Representations and Identity: Content, Process and Power. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 85–107.

37.

Liu

Robinson

(2016) One ring to rule them all: master discourses of enlightenment—and racism—from colonial to contemporary New Zealand. European Journal of Social Psychology 42: 137–155.

38.

Liu

Sibley

(2009) Culture, social representations, and peacemaking: a symbolic theory of history and identity. In: Montiel

Noor

(eds) Peace Psychology in Asia. New York: Springer, pp. 21–42.

39.

Liu

Goldstein-Hawes

Hilton

. (2005) Social representations of events and people in world history across twelve cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 36: 171–191.

40.

Liu

Paez

Slawuta

. (2009) Representing world history in the 21st century: the impact of 9-11, the Iraq War, and the nation-state on the dynamics of collective remembering. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 40: 667–692.

41.

Liu

Paez

Techio

. (2010) From the gist of a wink to structural equivalence of meaning: towards a cross-cultural psychology of the collective remembering of world history. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 41: 451–456.

42.

Liu

Sibley

Huang

(2014) History matters: the impact of culture-specific symbols on political attitudes and intergroup relations. Political Psychology 35: 57–79.

43.

McCauley

Stitt

(1978) An individual and quantitative measure of stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36: 929–940.

44.

Malinowski

(1926) Myth in Primitive Psychology. London: W.W. Norton & Company.

45.

Miller

(1973) Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

46.

Moscovici

(1963) Attitudes and opinions. Annual Review of Psychology 14: 231–260.

47.

Moscovici

(1988) Notes towards a description of social representations. European Journal of Social Psychology 18: 211–250.

48.

Noor

Shnabel

Halabi

. (2012) When suffering begets suffering: the psychology of competitive victimhood between adversarial groups in violent conflicts. Personality and Social Psychology Review 16(4): 351–374.

49.

Nora

(1989) Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire. Representations 26: 7–26.

50.

Olick

Robbins

(1998) Social memory studies: from “collective memory” to the historical sociology of mnemonic practices. Annual Review of Sociology 24: 105–140.

51.

Paez

Liu

Techio

. (2008) “Remembering” World War II and willingness to fight sociocultural factors in the social representation of historical warfare across 22 societies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 39: 373–380.

52.

Peabody

(1985) National Characteristics. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.

53.

Pennebaker

Paez

Rimé

(1997) Collective Memory of Political Events. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

54.

Propp

(1968) Morphology of the Folktale (trans. Scott

). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

55.

Reicher

Hopkins

(2001) Self and Nation. London: SAGE.

56.

Sahdra

Ross

(2007) Group identification and historical memory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33: 384–395.

57.

Schuman

Rieger

(1992) Historical analogies, generational effects, and attitudes toward war. American Sociological Review 57: 315–326.

58.

Schuman

Rodgers

(2004) Cohorts, chronology, and collective memories. Public Opinion Quarterly 68: 217–254.

59.

Sherif

Harvey

White

. (1961) Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment, vol. 10. Norman, OK: University Book Exchange.

60.

Sibley

Liu

(2013) Relocating attitudes as components of representational profiles: mapping the epidemiology of bicultural policy attitudes using latent class analysis. European Journal of Social Psychology 43: 160–174.

61.

Sibley

Liu

Kirkwood

(2006) Toward a social representations theory of attitude change: the effect of message framing on general and specific attitudes toward equality and entitlement. New Zealand Journal of Psychology 35: 3–13.

62.

Sibley

Liu

Duckitt

. (2008) Social representations of history and the legitimation of social inequality: the form and function of historical negation. European Journal of Social Psychology 38: 542–565.

63.

Spellman

Holyoak

(1992) If Saddam is Hitler then who is George Bush? Analogical mapping between systems of social roles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62: 913–933.

64.

Tajfel

Turner

(1979) The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. In: Worchel

Austin

(eds) Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall, pp. 33–48.

65.

Tetlock

Lebow

(2005) Theory- vs. imagination-driven thinking about historical counterfactuals: are we prisoners of our perceptions? In: Mandel

Hilton

Catellani

(eds) The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking. London: The Psychology Press, pp. 199–216.

66.

Trabasso

Sperry

(1985) Causal relatedness and importance of story events. Journal of Memory and Language 24: 595–611.

67.

Wertsch

(2002) Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

68.

Zimmermann

Abrams

Doosje

. (2011) Causal and moral responsibility: antecedents and consequences of group-based guilt. European Journal of Social Psychology 41: 825–839.