Perceived societal anomie and the implicit trajectory of national decline: Replicating and extending Yamashiro and Roediger (2019) within a French sample

Abstract

To date, most research has investigated people’s representations of the national past and future separately and the few that examined the relationships between the two overlooked the role of the group’s present. The present study aimed to replicate previous results showing an implicit trajectory of national decline among Americans within a French sample and additionally examined whether perceived societal anomie— that is, perceiving that present society is disintegrated and disregulated—would accentuate this trajectory of decline. Results first showed a positivity bias for the French past and a negativity bias for the French future; thus, replicating previous results showing an implicit trajectory of national decline in another national context. Moreover, the trajectory of decline was steeper for participants who perceived present French society as highly anomic; but only because they projected more negative national futures. Explanations for the conflicting results in the literature regarding valence biases in collective memory are discussed.

Keywords

collective future collective memory collective mental time travel perceived societal anomie trajectory of decline

Contrary to cognitive psychology, which has provided a very proficient literature on the dynamics of individual mental time travel and how memory relates to future projection (e.g. D’Argembeau and Van Der Linden, 2004; Schacter and Addis, 2007), social psychology has long overlooked that social groups also possess a past, a present, and a future (Condor, 2006; Sani et al., 2007). As a result, there is to date very little empirical research on the collective counterpart of mental time travel (i.e. collective mental time travel; e.g. Merck et al., 2016; Topcu and Hirst, 2020); and more broadly, on the links between collective memory and collective futures (i.e. people’s projections of their group’s future; e.g. Szpunar and Szpunar, 2016). This lack of work seems all the more odd when one realizes that a better understanding of the dynamics between people’s representations of the national past and future is crucial to grasp, explain and decode present political and social struggles (e.g. Brescó de Luna, 2017; Jetten and Wohl, 2012; Levinger and Lytle, 2001; Mols and Jetten, 2014).

For a couple of years, however, the scientific interest in collective temporal thought has increased. In this vein, Yamashiro and Roediger (2019) recently found that Americans’ representations of their nation over time were characterized by an implicit trajectory of decline. These findings, which echo many contemporary declinist discourses within Western countries (e.g. Mols and Jetten, 2014), have allowed research on the relationships between collective memory and collective futures to go a step further. Nevertheless, and despite its appreciable contribution, this work overlooked the influence of the collective present on how individuals perceive their nation across time, although the latter is known to play a significant role in shaping people’s representations of the collective past and future (e.g. Bartlett, 1932/1995; Halbwachs, 1925/1994; Szpunar and Szpunar, 2016).

In the present research, our objective was twofold. First, we examined whether the implicit trajectory of national decline observed by Yamashiro and Roediger (2019) would be found among French participants and using a slightly different methodology. Declinist discourses being widely prevalent in the French political landscape and media (e.g. Waters, 2013), we wanted to examine whether these representations of national decline would also be found among the average French citizen. In this endeavor, the use of Yamashiro and Roediger’s (2019) paradigm seemed particularly relevant, as it allows to test this without explicitly asking participants about their perception of the group’s trajectory over time; thus, preventing some response biases. Extending Yamashiro and Roediger’s original work, we additionally focused on the role of the group’s present in these declinist representations, by investigating whether people’s representations of national decline would be even steeper when the collective present is perceived as anomic (e.g. Durkheim, 1897; Teymoori et al., 2017).

Collective memory and collective futures

Although there is a long-going debate about what can be called collective memory (e.g. Olick, 1999), we will define it here in a socio-psychological perspective, as people’s representations of their national group’s past; and more precisely, as “a shared set of representations of the past based on a common identity” (Licata and Klein, 2005: 243). Contrary to history, collective memory responds to identity motivations and does not seek an objective and exhaustive narrative of the group’s past (e.g. Halbwachs, 1925/1994; Wertsch and Roediger, 2008; Yamashiro et al., 2019). Indeed, people’s representations of their Nation’s past are usually underpinned by a more or less accepted national narrative; that is, an implicit schemata that guides how people recall and interpret events of their national group’s past (e.g. Bartlett, 1932/1995; Wertsch, 2002). Far from informing us precisely about what really happened in the past, collective memory rather tells us a story about where we come from, who we are today, and where we are going in the future (Liu and Hilton, 2005). Therefore, representations of the collective past intrinsically relate to projections of the collective future, as they serve as a basis for (and are also possibly driven by) the imagination of the country’s future (e.g. Brescó de Luna, 2017; Merck et al., 2016; Spzunar and Spzunar, 2016; Topcu and Hirst, 2020).

While the scientific interest in the relationship between people’s representations of their group’s past and future is relatively new, recent theoretical and empirical work suggest that people’s representations of their Nation’s past could indeed influence how they imagine its future, and vice versa (e.g. Merck et al., 2016; Spzunar and Spzunar, 2016). For example, Topcu and Hirst (2020) found positive correlations between emotional valence of the collective past and future; thus, suggesting a “repetition” pattern in collective temporal thought (Yamashiro and Roediger, 2019).

“How we have fallen”

However, when comparing for different temporal trajectories in a sample of 2000 Americans, Yamashiro and Roediger (2019) did not find this “repetition” pattern. Instead, their results revealed that the collective past was characterized by a positivity bias—especially for origin events (i.e. events regarding “how the group or nation came into existence”; Yamashiro et al., 2019: 2) but also for normative-memory events (i.e. events that all group’s members have a duty to remember; Yamashiro and Roediger, 2019)—whereas the collective future was characterized by a negativity bias, thus indicating an implicit trajectory of “decline” in national temporal thought. Although these findings are inconsistent with Topcu and Hirst’s (2020) results and with recent work highlighting a negativity bias for public memories (Shrikanth and Szpunar, 2021), they are nevertheless in line with other empirical evidence. For example, Cyr and Hirst (2019) also found that people’s representations of the national past were characterized by a positivity bias (see also: Mukherjee et al., 2018); while Shrikanth et al. (2018) showed a negativity bias for the collective future (see also Shrikanth and Szpunar, 2021, Study 5). Moreover, a survey conducted in 27 countries (including France; Smeekes et al., 2018) showed positive relationships between national nostalgia (i.e. a longing for the national past, often based on biased, idealized representations of the Nation’s past; e.g. Davis, 1979) and collective angst (i.e. group-based anxiety that stems from the concern that the Nation may not endure in the future; Wohl et al., 2012); thus, indirectly associating positive representations of the past with negative projections of the future. Based on these findings and given the prevalence of declinist discourses in France (e.g. Waters, 2013), we therefore expected an implicit trajectory of national decline within our sample composed of French respondents. As people’s representations of the collective past and future are continually (re)constructed according to the current societal anchoring (Bartlett, 1932/1995; Halbwachs, 1925/1994; Jovchelovitch and Hawlina, 2018; Sahdra and Ross, 2007; Szpunar and Szpunar, 2016), we additionally assumed that people’s perceptions that present society is anomic (e.g. Durkheim, 1897; Teymoori et al., 2017) would accentuate their implicit representations that France is in decline.

Perceived anomie within present society and the implicit trajectory of decline

It was the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1893, 1897) who made the concept of anomie popular and defined it as a consequence of modernization and the weakening of societies’ moral regulatory power that accompanies it. Although the level of analysis and definition of anomie is still much debated today both in sociology and psychology (e.g. Abrutyn, 2019; Bjarnason, 2009), we will define it here from a social psychology perspective (Teymoori et al., 2017), as people’s perception that current society is (1) disintegrated, through the perceived erosion of clear moral standards and trust between society’s members (i.e. perceived social fabric disintegration) and (2) disregulated, that is, perceiving that the political system no longer regulates society effectively and legitimately (i.e. perceived leadership disregulation). According to this definition, perceived societal anomie is thus considered as a macro-level perception that present society is “breaking down” (Teymoori et al., 2017: 1011) and differs from objective country-level indicators of social and economic stability (Teymoori et al., 2016). Hence, the very definition of perceived societal anomie, by suggesting that the past moral order is threatened and that society is going down the drain, already closely links anomie to enhanced declinist representations of the Nation. Moreover, extant empirical data also suggest that perceived societal anomie could foster positive representations of the national past and negative representations of the national future; thus, steepening even more people’s implicit trajectory of national decline. For example, anomie is positively associated with feelings of nostalgia regarding the Nation’s past (Ådnanes, 2007), while being negatively linked to perceptions of collective continuity (Sani et al., 2008). Recent experimental work additionally revealed that making anomie within present French society salient (and especially, the disintegration of current social fabric) lead to even more positive representations of a past national figure (i.e. Charles de Gaulle, former president of France and leader of the French resistance during WWII; Ionescu et al., 2021a). Moreover, perceiving present society as anomic is associated with feelings of hopelessness and despair toward the collective future (Ådnanes, 2007; Durkheim, 1897; Ionescu et al., 2021b; Teymoori et al., 2016). Finally, the notion of a “degenerate” or chaotic present—features close to those of perceived societal anomie—is often used in national narratives of decline and seems to reinforce the downward slope between how glorious the Nation was in the past and how bleak its future will be (e.g. Mols and Jetten, 2014; Murphy, 2009).

The present research

This study first aimed to examine whether we would find an implicit trajectory of national decline (Yamashiro and Roediger, 2019) within a French sample. By doing so, we wanted to provide additional data on collective temporal thought and collective mental time travel; an initiative that also responds to the necessities raised by the replicability crisis in social psychology (e.g. Świątkowski and Dompnier, 2017). As for the original study, we focused on the emotional valence associated with the collective past and future. Participants were asked to list elements that are important in the foundation of France (i.e. origin events), elements from France’s history that all French people should remember (i.e. normative-memory events), and elements regarding the Nation’s future; and to rate each event for emotional valence. Although several methodological changes were made compared to the original study (see method section), we expected the same results as for Yamashiro and Roediger (2019); that is, a positivity bias for the collective past (and especially, for origin events) and a negativity bias for the collective future, thus indicating an implicit trajectory of decline in national temporal thought.

Second, we aimed to extend these results and examined how perceptions of the Nation in the present could affect the implicit trajectory of decline in national temporal thought. More precisely, we measured participants’ perception of anomie (i.e. perceived disregulation and disintegration) within current society. In line with the literature presented above, we expected an even steeper decline trajectory when current society is perceived as highly disintegrated and disregulated (i.e. highly anomic). Data and supplementary information are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/gmsk6/?view_only=d45bd8dc357e47dc96de79a5840dbc94.

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited in early October 2020 via the crowdpanel.io platform and were compensated 1.07€ for 8 minutes participation. The present study was entirely completed by 805 participants. After removing participants who (1) were under 18 years of age, (2) were not French, and (3) did not answer correctly to our attention check items, our final sample was composed of 766 participants (49% identified as women; 10% students; from 18 to 72 years old, M_age = 39.07, SD_age = 13.04). Additional information regarding the sample is available on the Supplementary Material document hosted on the OSF.

Procedure

Participants first read a short text that briefly described the subject of the study and reassured them about anonymity. Participants were also informed that they could stop the completion of the survey at any moment. They indicated whether they consent to participate and were then invited to indicate their age, gender, and nationality. Next, participants completed the measures described in the section below. We manipulated the orders of presentation of the future- and past-related tasks, in order to control them in the analyses. More precisely, some participants started by the collective future task, while others started by the past-related tasks (origin and normative-memory events). We additionally controlled for the order of presentation of the past-related tasks: some participants began with the origin-events task, while others started with the normative-memory events task. In any case, the perceived anomie items were completed after the collective future and past-related tasks.

At the end of the survey, participants were asked for additional information (e.g. native language, occupation) and were invited to place themselves on a political scale and on a social status scale (more detailed information is available in the Supplementary Material document hosted on the OSF). Finally, participants were debriefed and thanked for their participation.

Measures¹

The following changes were made compared to the original study: (1) when assessing representations of the nation’s past (both origin and normative-memory events), participants were asked for only three elements (instead of five and 10 in the original version), in order to shorten the completion time and ensure participants’ full concentration; (2) we used a free association task (e.g. Lo Monaco et al., 2017) and not a fluency task (Shrikanth et al., 2018) to assess participants’ representations of the national future, in order to ensure consistency with our measures of collective memory; (3) finally, when assessing the emotional valence of the elements, participants were provided with a continuous scale ranging from strongly negative to strongly positive and not with a binary choice, in order not to force them to choose between negative and positive when they considered the event to be neutral. The measures are described in more details below.

Representations of the national past

We translated and adapted Yamashiro and Roediger’s task (2019) to collect participants’ representations of the collective past. For the Origin events, participants received the following instruction: “In your opinion, what are the origins of France? Please indicate the three most important events, elements or figures of the French past that brought about France as a nation.” Then, they were asked to rate each event for emotional valence, using a 7-points scale ranging from −3 (“Strongly negative”) to +3 (“Strongly positive”), 0 indicating a neutral valence. For the Normative-memory events, participants were asked to indicate “the three events, elements, or figures of France’s past that all French people should remember.” Again, they were invited to rate each event for emotional valence, using the same response scale.

Projected national futures

Participants were invited to indicate three events or situations that came directly into their mind when thinking about the future of France (e.g. Lo Monaco et al., 2017) and were asked to rate each event/situation for emotional valence, using the same response scale as for the collective past.

Perceived anomie within current society

We used a revised French version of the Perceived Anomie Scale (Ionescu et al., 2021b; for the original version, see: Teymoori et al., 2016). Participants were asked to think about current French society and to indicate their level of agreement with 20 statements, using a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (“Strongly disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly agree”). We computed an average score gathering 10 leadership disregulation items (e.g. “The political system is legitimate,” reversed; α = .95) and a score gathering 10 social fabric disintegration items (e.g. “The end justifies the means”; α = .88). Higher scores indicate greater perception that current society is disregulated/disintegrated.

Results

Replicating Yamashiro and Roediger’s findings: valence biases and trajectory of decline

We first tested whether Yamashiro and Roediger’s (2019) results would be replicated within our French sample, by examining: (1) if participants’ representations of the national past would be characterized by a positivity bias (for both origins and normative collective memory; although we expected the positivity bias to be stronger for the former) while their representations of the national future would be characterized by a negativity bias; (2) thus indicating an implicit trajectory of decline in their representations of the Nation across time. We used the almost identical statistical analysis strategy as for the original study (Yamashiro and Roediger, 2019).

Preparing the proportion positive scores

First, we calculated the proportion of positive elements for each temporal thought domain (past-origins, past-normative, and future). To do so, we first recoded our scores of emotional valence into categories. The emotional valence associated with each of the participants’ evocations were recoded as follows: evocations that were =0 were recoded as “Neutral,” the ones that were <0 were recoded as “Negative,” and finally, the ones that were >0 were recoded as “Positive.” The number of events evaluated as neutral/negative/positive by the participants is available in the Supplementary Material document hosted on the OSF (see Supplementary Table 1). Then, as for the original study, we computed three proportion of positive elements scores, one for each temporal thought domain (past-origins, past-normative, and future), as follows: Count_Positive/(Count_Positive + Count_Negative). We excluded the elements assessed as neutral by participants, in order to only take into account the valenced elements of the collective past and future. However, we find the same effects when the neutral elements are accounted for in the proportion positive score (see Supplementary Material document: Supplementary Tables 2 to 10 and Supplementary Figures 1 to 3).

Valence biases in collective memory and collective future

To examine the valence biases in collective memory (origins and normative) and collective future, we conducted three one-sample t-tests (one for each proportion positive scores). One-sample t-tests allows to determine whether the sample mean is statistically different from a test value. We used the value of .50, which indicates an equal number of positive and negative elements and defined a valence bias as a proportion of positive that is significantly different than a test value of .50 (Yamashiro and Roediger, 2019). A proportion of positive score significantly inferior to .50 would indicate a negativity bias, while a score significantly superior to .50 would indicate a positivity bias.

Results revealed the expected positivity bias regarding participants’ representations of national origins, M = .85, SD = .28, M_diff from test value of .50 = .35 [.34, .37], t(765) = 35.48, p < .001, d = 1.28; and representations of normative-memory events, although the difference was smaller, M = .70, SD = .33, M_diff from test value of .50 = .20 [.17, .22], t(765) = 16.52, p < .001, d = .60. Moreover, the collective futures showed the expected negativity bias, M = .40, SD = .40, M_diff from test value of .50 = −.10 [−.13, −.07], t(765) = −6.91, p < .001, d = −.25.

The implicit trajectory of decline

As for the original study, we subsequently conducted a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) to examine the implicit trajectory of decline. We included the temporal thought domain (past-origins, past-normative, and future) as the independent variable and the proportion of positive elements score as the dependent variable. A significant effect of temporal thought domain would indicate significant differences in the proportion of positive elements across temporalities, that is, that the proportion of positive elements between people’s representations of the Nation’s origins, normative collective memory, and projected national futures is significantly different. As a methodological control, we additionally included the orders of presentation of the future- and past-related tasks (i.e. (1) the order of the future task and the past tasks; (2) the order between the origins and normative-memory tasks) as between-subject factors in the analysis. Here, a significant interaction between the order and temporal thought domain would indicate that the implicit trajectory of decline is different depending on whether participants start thinking about the (1) France’s future or past and (2) the origins of France or normative-memory events.

The results revealed the expected differences in the proportion of positive elements across temporal thought domain, F(2, 1524) = 344.78, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .31. Origin events were significantly more likely to be positive than normative collective memories, M_diff = .16, t(1524) = 8.87, p_tukey < .001. More importantly, representations of the past (both origins and normative) were significantly more likely to be positive than collective futures, M_diff = .46, t(1524) = 25.84, p_tukey < .001 for origins, M_diff = .30, t(1524) = 16.97, p_tukey < .001 for normative collective memory; and the difference was smaller for normative events, as expected. A graphic representation of the decline trajectory is displayed in Figure 1. Hence, the present results corroborate the implicit trajectory of decline found by Yamashiro and Roediger (2019) within a French sample. Our participants’ representations of France across time went from very positive representations of France’s origins, through a slightly less but still positive normative collective memory, to a rather negative future.

Figure 1.

Average proportion of positive elements for the collective past (origins and normative memory) and collective futures. Points located above (below) the dotted horizontal line indicate a positivity (negativity) bias.

Regarding the order effects, the analysis revealed that none of the interactions with temporal thought domain were significant, all ps > .10; thus, indicating that the implicit trajectory of decline was identical regardless of the order in which the tasks were completed. There was only a small main effect of the order of presentation of the future and pasts-tasks, F(1, 762) = 6.32, p = .012, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .01; suggesting that participants who started by completing the collective futures task produced lower positive elements, all temporalities combined, than those who started by the past-related tasks (see Supplementary Tables 11 and 12 and Supplementary Figure 4 on the OSF for additional information).

Does perceived anomie within current society accentuate the implicit trajectory of decline?

Finally, we examined whether the two dimensions of perceived anomie (i.e. perceived disregulation and perceived disintegration within current society) would impact participants’ proportion of positive past and future elements and would thus moderate the implicit trajectory of decline. In line with the information presented in the introduction section, we assumed that people who perceive current society as highly disintegrated and disregulated (i.e. anomic) would probably reconstruct (project) the national past (future) as even more positive (negative); therefore making their implicit trajectory of decline even steeper.

To test this assumption, we followed the same analysis strategy Yamashiro and Roediger (2019) used when examining whether the implicit trajectory of decline was moderated by participants’ endorsement of American exceptionalism; that is, we included the two components of anomie as between-subject factors in the repeated measures ANOVA on temporal thought domain. To do so, we first dichotomized the perceived leadership disregulation (LD) and the perceived social fabric disintegration (SFD) variables on the basis of their observed medians (Median_Anomie-LD = 4.50, Median_Anomie-SFD = 5.00; see also Supplementary Table 13 on the OSF for additional information). Participants having a leadership disregulation (LD) score superior or equal to the median were categorized as “higher-anomie-LD,” while those having a LD score strictly inferior to the median were categorized as “lower-anomie-LD.” Similarly, participants having an SFD score superior or equal to the median were categorized as “higher-anomie-SFD,” while those having an SFD score strictly inferior to the median were categorized as “lower-anomie-SFD.” Finally, we included these two variables as between-subject factors in the repeated measures ANOVA. Here, a significant interaction between temporal thought domain and perceived anomie-LD (-SFD) would indicate that the implicit trajectory of decline is different depending on whether participants perceived current society as strongly disregulated (disintegrated) or not.

The results showed the same main effect of temporal thought domain as presented above, F(2, 1524) = 396.73, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .34. Unexpectedly, there was also a significant main effect of perceived leadership disregulation, F(1, 762) = 23.73, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03, indicating that higher-anomie-LD participants produced less positive events overall, M = .61 [.59, .63], than lower-anomie-LD participants, M = .69 [.67, .71]. However, the main effect of perceived social fabric disintegration was not significant, F(1, 762) = 1.38, p = .24.

More interestingly, the expected interaction between perceived leadership disregulation and temporal thought domain was significant, F(2, 1524) = 8.36, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .01; and so was the interaction between perceived social fabric disintegration and temporal thought domain, F(2, 1524) = 7.83, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .01. The pattern of results was identical for perceived disregulation and perceived disintegration and indicated that the two components of perceived anomie impacted people’s projections of the collective future, but not their representations of the national past (see Table 1 for the descriptive results). Indeed, compared to lower-anomie participants, higher-anomie participants produced significantly more negative future events, M_diff-LD = −.15, t(2201.06) = −6.28, p_tukey < .001 and M_diff-SFD = −.09, t(2201.06) = −3.76, p_tukey < .01. However, the differences of proportion positive regarding origin events and normative events were not significant, M_diff-LD = −.04, t(2201.06) = −1.65, p_tukey = .57 and M_diff-SFD = .02, t(2201.06) = .65, p_tukey = .99 for origin events; M_diff-LD = −.04, t(2201.06) = −1.61, p_tukey = .59 and M_diff-SFD = .02, t(2201.06) = .82, p_tukey = .96 for normative-memory events.

Table 1.

Average proposition of positive elements for collective past (origins and normative memory) and collective futures, as a function of participants’ levels of perceived disintegration and disregulation within current society.

	Past		Future
	Origins	Normative memory	Future
Higher-anomie-LD	.83 [.80, .87]	.68 [.64, .75]	.33 [.29, .36]
Lower-anomie-LD	.87 [.84, .91]	.72 [.68, .72]	.48 [.45, .52]
Higher-anomie-SFD	.86 [.83, .89]	.71 [.67, .74]	.36 [.32, .39]
Lower-anomie-SFD	.84 [.81, .88]	.69 [.65, .72]	.45 [.42, .48]

LD: leadership disregulation; SFD: social fabric disintegration.

The numbers between square brackets represent the 95%CIs.

Because of their stronger negativity bias for collective futures, participants who perceived current society as more disintegrated and disregulated showed a steeper implicit trajectory of decline in their representations of France than those who perceived present society as less anomic (see Figures 2 and 3). More precisely, for higher-anomie-LD participants, the proportion of events that were positive decreased by 51% from national origins to collective futures, M_diff = .51, t(1524) = 22.76, p_tukey < .001 vs 39%, M_diff = .39, t(1524) = 16.66, p_tukey < .001 for lower-anomie-LD participants; and by 35% from normative events to the collective futures, M_diff = .35, t(1524) = 15.76, p_tukey < .001 vs 23%, M_diff = .23, t(1524) = 10.01, p_tukey < .001 for lower-anomie-LD participants. Similarly, for higher-anomie-SFD participants, the proportion of events that were positive decreased by 50% from national origins to collective futures, M_diff = .50, t(1524) = 21.95, p_tukey < .001 vs 39%, M_diff = .39, t(1524) = 17.27, p_tukey < .001 for lower-anomie-SFD participants; and by 35% from normative events to the collective futures, M_diff = .35, t(1524) = 15.24, p_tukey < .001 vs 24%, M_diff = .24, t(1524) = 10.34, p_tukey < .001 for lower-anomie-SFD participants.

Figure 2.

Average proportion of positive elements for the collective past (origins and normative events) and collective futures, as a function of participants’ levels of perceived anomie—leadership disregulation within current society. Points located above (below) the dotted horizontal line indicate a positivity (negativity) bias.

Figure 3.

Average proportion of positive elements for the collective past (origins and normative events) and collective futures, as a function of participants’ levels of perceived anomie—social fabric disintegration within current society. Points located above (below) the dotted horizontal line indicate a positivity (negativity) bias.

In summary, the results were mostly in line with our assumption. Participants who perceived current society as highly disintegrated and disregulated (i.e. as highly anomic) projected even more negative collective futures than those with lower levels of perceived anomie; therefore, making their implicit trajectory of decline even steeper, as expected. However, greater perceptions of anomie within current society were not associated with greater proportion of positive past elements, whether foundational or normative.

Discussion

Replicating Yamashiro and Roediger (2019): how France has fallen

In the present study, we first aimed to examine whether we would find the same results as Yamashiro and Roediger (i.e. a positivity bias for the national past and a negativity bias for the national future, indicating an implicit trajectory of national decline; 2019) within a French sample. Our results corroborated the valence biases and implicit trajectory of decline observed in the original study.

Valence bias in collective memory and collective future

Our results first showed the expected positivity bias regarding participants’ representations of the national past (which was as expected more pronounced for origins events than for normative-memory events) and the expected negativity bias regarding their projections of the national future. By replicating Yamashiro and Roediger’s (2019) results, these findings also corroborate recent work showing that people’s projections of the national future are characterized by a negativity bias (e.g. Shrikanth et al., 2018; Shrikanth and Szpunar, 2021), while their representations of the collective past show a positivity bias (e.g. Cyr and Hirst, 2019). However, they contradict other empirical evidence showing that the collective past is characterized by a negativity bias (Shrikanth and Szpunar, 2021; Topcu and Hirst, 2020). In this on-going debate, we believe that methodological elements (e.g. the instructions participants were given) might account, at least partially, for these contradictory results. For that matter, when trying to explain Cyr and Hirst’s (2019) positivity bias for the national past, Shrikanth and Szpunar (2021) already mentioned the instruction participants were given, which asked them not to mention events related to the World Wars. Although this explanation does not apply to our research, other differences in the instructions may still account for the opposite results in the literature. First, as Yamashiro and Roediger’s study, our instructions for the collective past did not specify any temporality, contrary to Shrikanth and Szpunar (2021) or Topcu and Hirst (2020), which specified a timeframe for the past events to be cited (1 week, 1 year, 10 years or more for the former, 1–50 years for the latter). Limiting the recall of past collective events to a short timeframe probably prevented participants to mention origin events (usually assessed as strongly positive) when asked for their representations of the collective past; thus possibly diminishing the positive valence of the national past. Second, Topcu and Hirst (2020) additionally asked for specific events (i.e. “unique events that occur at a particular time and place and that can last a few minutes or hours but not more than a day,” p.5); which could have fostered the recall of past (recent) events that are emotionally charged and often negatively valenced, such as flashbulb memories (e.g. Hirst and Phelps, 2016). Finally, instead of asking our participants to think about events of the national past—as it was the case in Shrikanth and Szpunar (2021) or Topcu and Hirst (2020)—we asked them to think about events, elements, or figures of the past. Putting this together with a recent worldwide survey (Ipsos MORI, 2016) that showed that in most countries, more than half of the respondents “would like their country to be the way it used to be” (Smeekes et al., 2018: 311), thus suggesting that they assess the collective past as broadly positive, one could assume that the negativity bias might be specific to events of the national past, while other elements of the collective past—such as past national figures or more broadly, abstract representations of how the Nation was in the past—would be characterized by a positivity bias. We therefore believe that future research should examine whether the methodological differences we just noted might explain the contradictory results observed in the literature.

The implicit trajectory of decline

Going back to the present study, our repeated measures of ANOVA also revealed the expected implicit trajectory of decline in national temporal thought; a trajectory that starts from very positive representations of France’s origins, through a slightly less but still positive normative collective memory, to a rather negative collective future. These results are in line with previous research showing a national decline rhetoric in right-wing politicians’ speeches (Mols and Jetten, 2014) and work associating nostalgia for an idealized national past and angst regarding a frightening national future (Smeekes et al., 2018). By replicating Yamashiro and Roediger’s (2019) findings in another population and using a slightly different methodology, our results also respond to the necessity for replication raised by the replicability crisis in psychology, while also contributing to the still recent interest in collective mental time travels (e.g. Merck et al., 2016; Topcu and Hirst, 2020); and more broadly, to the literature on the temporal aspects of social groups (e.g. Sani et al., 2007). These findings moreover suggest that the implicit trajectory of decline is not specific to the United States. However, France being also a Western country, future studies should examine implicit temporal trajectories in non-Western countries. As previous research showed that Chinese people tend to endorse a more cyclical, non-linear thinking (i.e. they anticipate more reversals of on-going trends) compared to Americans who tend to predict change in a linear fashion (Ji et al., 2001), further research seems indeed essential to determine if this implicit downhill slope in national temporal thought is specific to Western national narratives or not.

Nevertheless, the present results do not, at first sight, corroborate Topcu and Hirst’s (2020) findings—that is, positive correlations between past and future’s emotional valence. Here again, we must note that a methodological difference, and more precisely, a difference in the analysis strategy, might explain these opposite patterns. While Topcu and Hirst (2020) performed correlations between the mean emotional valence of past and future events, we conducted mean comparisons analyses, as for the original study we aimed to replicate (Yamashiro and Roediger, 2019). When looking at the correlations between our proportion positive scores, we also found significant and positive, yet very low, correlations; in particular, between normative-memory events and projected futures (r = .15, p < .001), the correlation between origin events and projected futures being almost null (r = .08, p = .032). Again, this highlights that the findings and resulting interpretations can differ drastically, depending on the methodology and analyses that are performed; while the repeated measures ANOVA leads to conclude that there is a trajectory of decline, the correlations may suggest a repetition pattern (although the size of the correlations leads us to favor the first interpretation). According to us, these inconsistencies stress the fact that additional research is absolutely needed in order to clarify the nature of the relationships that may exist between the collective past and future. This also suggests that collective temporal trajectories might depend on the past anchor used, and that origin events appear to be that of the implicit trajectory of national decline. Indeed, how could people perceive their nation other than declining if the starting point is a glorious, idealized founding past? Therefore, future research could also examine implicit temporal trajectories when using other past anchors (e.g. representations of the French past regarding disadvantaged groups, such as Women or Black people).

Perceived anomie within current society accentuates the trajectory of decline

The second purpose of the present study was to go one step further and to examine whether and how perceptions of anomie within current society would affect the implicit trajectory of decline. More precisely, we examined whether perceiving that current society is highly anomic (i.e. highly disintegrated and disregulated) would strengthen the positivity bias for the national past and the negativity bias for the national future, thus making the trajectory of decline even steeper when current society is perceived as highly anomic. Our results were partially in line with this assumption. The trajectory of decline was indeed steeper for participants who perceived current society as highly disintegrated and disregulated (i.e. anomic); but this was only because they projected more negative national futures and not because they were reconstructing the collective past as more positive.

On the one hand, these findings are consistent with previous work showing that perceiving anomie within current society is associated with feelings of despair regarding the collective future (e.g. Ådnanes, 2007; Durkheim, 1897; Teymoori et al., 2016). On the other hand, they do not corroborate extant results suggesting that perceived societal anomie could foster more positive representations of the national past (e.g. Ionescu et al., 2021a). The score we used to determine the emotional valence associated with the national past and future could possibly account for this (lack of) result. Indeed, in order to remain as close as possible to the analysis strategy used in the original study, we calculated a proportion positive score that informed us about the number of positive elements that participants cited but did not tell us about how intense this positivity was (i.e. quite positive or strongly positive). However, the difference between high- versus low-anomie participants might not lie on the number of positive elements of the national past that are cited but rather, on the intensity with which the elements are considered positive. Specifically, one can assume that people have positive representations of the past regardless of their level of perceived anomie within current society, but that this positive emotional valence is even stronger (i.e. more intense) for individuals who perceive that current society is highly anomic. This assumption is actually consistent with previous work on anomie and representations of the national past (Ionescu et al., 2021a) showing that, although all participants had positive representations of a past national figure (i.e. Charles de Gaulle), these were even more positive for participants for whom anomie within current society was made salient. As we initially collected continuous scores for emotional valence, we were able to test this alternative hypothesis (see Supplementary Tables 14 to 17 and Supplementary Figures 5 and 6 on the OSF). However, the results of these supplementary analyses showed the exact same pattern of results that was obtained when using the proportion positive scores (i.e. perceived anomie was not associated with an increased positivity bias for the national past). This lack of effect, coupled with Ionescu and colleagues’ (2021a) results might lead us to alternatively argue that perceived anomie within current society could affect people’s representations of particular events or elements of the national past, but not their overall representations of the national past.

Anyhow, by showing that people’s perceptions of an anomic present affect their implicit trajectory of national decline across time, the present results emphasize the role of a “degenerate” present in national narratives of decline (e.g. Mols and Jetten, 2014; Murphy, 2009). More broadly, these findings stress the prominent position that should be given to the group’s present in the study of collective mental time travel (e.g. Bartlett, 1932/1995); and future research could besides examine how other perceptions of the present, especially those framed in a positive manner (e.g. perceptions of present technological/social progress), influence the implicit trajectory of national decline. On another note, one could here alternatively argue that perceived anomie within current society (or other perceptions of the collective present) could mediate, and not moderate, the relationships between representations of the collective past and future (i.e. that the link between representations of a strongly positive collective past and a strongly negative collective future is explained by people’s greater perceptions of anomie within current society), and this assumption would make sense. However, thinking the collective temporal trajectory as linear and unidirectional (i.e. representations of the past that would impact projections of the future through perception of the present) is too simplistic and, to a certain extent, inconsistent with recent work emphasizing the cross-influences between the different temporalities. For example, Brescó de Luna (2017) suggested the existence of back and forth between the group’s past, present, and future and assumed that imagining a certain national future could lead us to reinterpret past events (somehow in line with the notion of “future as forethought” proposed by Szpunar and Szpunar, 2016). For that matter, our data show that participants who first completed the collective future task, compared to those who started with the past-related tasks, produced on average lower positive elements, all temporalities combined (see Supplementary Figure 4 on the OSF). These complementary results, although they must be taken with caution due to the imbalance between conditions (Order Future-Past: N = 501; Order Past-Future: N = 265), offer preliminary evidence suggesting that future projection may indeed influence how the collective past is evaluated. In any case, further studies that try to disentangle the direction of the influences between people’s representations of the Nation’s past, present, and future (using experimental or longitudinal designs) are definitively needed to refine our understanding of the dynamics of collective mental time travel.

Limitations

In addition to the limitations previously outlined, two elements that might limit the scope of the present results must be noted. First, our analyses were based on a sample that is not strictly representative of the French population. Indeed, although the mean age and percentage of women in our sample were quite close to those of the French population,² other demographics were not (e.g. participants’ educational background). The present results therefore need further corroboration in a sample that is fully representative of the French population.

Finally, the present research did not address the consequences of perceived national decline on present attitudes and behaviors, and therefore overlooked the functional aspect of collective mental time travel (e.g. Brescó de Luna, 2017). In line with previous work suggesting that far-right leaders commonly use a decline rhetoric to serve their political goals and justify their anti-immigrants positioning (e.g. Mols and Jetten, 2014), future empirical research should examine whether people’s implicit representations of national decline indeed predict their political preferences (e.g. far-right vote) and negative attitudes toward outgroups.

Conclusion

The present research replicated previous findings showing an implicit trajectory of decline in national temporal thought within a French sample and went one step further in the study of collective mental time travel by highlighting that this trajectory of decline was even steeper when current society was perceived as highly anomic. Although there is still much left to do, the present findings provide new empirical elements to the still nascent literature on collective temporal thought and collective mental time travel and offer lines of thought for future research on the subject.

Footnotes

Author contributions

All authors have contributed significantly and agree with the content of the article, and authorship reflects individuals’ contributions.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The present research was part of a doctoral thesis funded by the Observatoire B2 V des mémoires ().

ORCID iDs

Octavia Ionescu

Jean Louis Tavani

Data availability statement

Data that support the findings of this study are openly available at

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author biographies

Octavia Ionescu is a PhD in social psychology and currently holds a teaching and research fellow position at Université Paris Nanterre (France). Most of her work focuses on (1) how threatening perceptions of the present affect people’s representations of the national past and future and the resulting collective emotions and (2) how the latter shape people’s current sociopolitical attitudes and behaviors.

Julie Collange is an assistant professor in personality and social psychology at Université de Paris (France). Her work focuses on (1) how opportunities and threats to personal and social identity influence social (dis)integration (e.g. intergroup relations; social support) and (2) how, in turn, the latter affect individuals’ well-being and group behaviors.

Jean Louis Tavani is a full professor in social psychology at Université Paris 8 (France). His work focuses on collective memory and more particularly on the links between collective memory and social identity through (1) the identity function of shared memory and (2) the impact of perceived collective continuity on intra- and intergroup relations.

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Perceived societal anomie and the implicit trajectory of national decline: Replicating and extending Yamashiro and Roediger (2019) within a French sample

Abstract

Keywords

Collective memory and collective futures

“How we have fallen”

Perceived anomie within present society and the implicit trajectory of decline

The present research

Method

Participants

Procedure

Measures 1

Representations of the national past

Projected national futures

Perceived anomie within current society

Results

Replicating Yamashiro and Roediger’s findings: valence biases and trajectory of decline

Preparing the proportion positive scores

Valence biases in collective memory and collective future

The implicit trajectory of decline

Does perceived anomie within current society accentuate the implicit trajectory of decline?

Discussion

Replicating Yamashiro and Roediger (2019): how France has fallen

Valence bias in collective memory and collective future

The implicit trajectory of decline

Perceived anomie within current society accentuates the trajectory of decline

Limitations

Conclusion

Footnotes

Author contributions

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Data availability statement

Supplemental material

Notes

Author biographies

References

Measures¹