Cost Action IS 1205:
Social psychological dynamics of historical representations in the enlarged
European Union
Working Groups
The Action will coordinate research activities on four interrelated topics through which the interplay between lay representations of history, social identities, and intergroup conflicts can be addressed: the formation of lay representations of history (Topic 1), their contents and properties (Topic 2); their media of transmission (Topic 3); and their social-psychological effects (Topic 4).
Working Group 1: The role of social cognitive processes in shaping lay representations of history
Leaders: Olivier Klein, Karen Douglas, & Susanne Bruckmüller
The goal of this topic involves investigating the psychological processes underlying the way individuals elaborate representations of the past. By drawing on research conducted in cognitive psychology and historiography, a better understanding of these processes could be achieved. Cognitive psychologists have studied human memory extensively. Memory is seen as a product of several processes such as attention, encoding, elaboration, or retrieval. Just like other forms of memory, lay representations of history are naturally a function of these processes. Hence, the absence of specific events in accounts of the past can either be due to a failure to encode them or to a failure to retrieve them (e.g., because of “social taboos”). Considering the interplay between process and content should therefore be on the agenda of both social psychologists and historians.
An important goal of this Topic would be to consider parallels in the way «naive» people and professional historians appraise the past. Thus, it is possible that historians are less susceptible to cognitive biases affecting the appraisal of history because their approach to the past is consciously monitored and because they benefit from a formal training in avoiding some of the pitfalls of historical endeavour. But they may also be more susceptible to certain biases because of the way they approach the past. Thus, cooperation between historians and psychologists would be an ideal fertile ground for developing and implementing new research ideas that may prove novel and productive in both fields.
Working Group 2: Lay representations of history in Europe: Concepts of nationhood and identities
Leaders: Denis Hilton, Chantal Kesteloot, & Alberto Sà
This topic focuses on the content, structure, and properties of social representations of history, and how they relate with ethnic, national, and European identities. While extensive data have now been collected in 30 countries in Europe, Asia, Australasia, North and South America on conceptions of world history, no comparable data exist about conceptions of national and European history. The Action therefore plans to study conceptions of national and European history in the participating countries. Several questions can be addressed in this framework:
- What are the commonalities and differences in representations of the same historical events across European countries and across generations?
- How does identification with the nation and with Europe correlate with differences in conceptions of national and European history?
- What are the “moral lessons” that people draw from historical events?
- How do conceptions of nationhood and lay representations of national and European history relate with current intergroup attitudes, such as readiness to fight for one’s country?
- How do conceptions of nationhood and lay representations of national and European history relate with attitudes towards immigrants and acculturation processes?
Working Group 3: Social-psychological studies of the narrative transmission of history
Leaders: Tibor Polya & Eva Fülöp
This topic will focus on transmission processes of historical representations. Hence, the analysis of narratives presented in history textbooks will introduce a key dimension to the research, adding to our knowledge of how the institutional presentation of the past is diffused and received by younger generations. The planned research is based on two assumptions: a) texts representing history in school textbooks can be studied as social representations and b) historical texts, because of the inevitably narrative nature of history writing, necessarily contain story elements, which evoke empathy. Thereby these texts are not only sources of knowledge, but they are also sources of identification. While the invention of tradition and the projection of nationalism into history are problem areas for historians, they are grist to the mill for social psychologists, who see in these distortions expressions of the interplay between processes of social identity and social representations.
Other media also play a fundamental role in the production and transformation of representations as well as in the presenting of competing representations of the past. To this effect, press coverage of selected historical events (e.g. WWI and II, colonial past), novels, docufictions, and movies will be studied through content and narrative analyses.
Working Group 4: The roles of lay representations of history and group-based emotions in inter-group conflict and reconciliation processes
Leaders: Michał Bilewicz & Sabina Čehajić-Clancy
This topic will concentrate on effects of different depictions of the past. In the social psychological and historical literature, specific history-related emotions such as collective guilt, shame and pride play a pivotal role as mediators of intergroup reconciliation. For example, contemporary young Germans may feel “guilty by association” for the crimes committed by the Nazi regime. According to research on group-based emotions, collective guilt is elicited in response to harm committed, in a remote or close past, by ingroup members towards outgroup members. And the experience of this emotion is moderated by the degree of identification with the ingroup.
Only low group identifiers feel guilty. While research on collective guilt has yielded important results, it should be extended in several ways. Some outstanding enigmas of reconciliation include: the conditions under which intergroup apologies and reparations satisfy their target and offering groups; why some people defend against national guilt and others accept it; how does victimisation influence intergroup attitudes; and how to temper the role of historical moral schemas in presentday
political attitudes.
The Action will gather social psychologists and historians working on different theoretical models of intergroup reconciliation processes focusing on representations of the past, group-based emotions, intergroup attitudes, and behavioural intentions towards outgroup members, in order to discuss theoretical models, share results, and collaborate on common research projects.
These 4 topics will be addressed through different methodologies. Topic 1 will be based on an epistemological dialogue between historians and social psychologists, as well as on experimentation; Topic 2 will mostly rely on qualitative and quantitative survey methods; Topic 3 will mobilise methods of content analysis; whereas Topic 4 will mostly rely on experimental or quasi-experimental methods. These 4 Topics are obviously interrelated; so one priority of the Action will be to ensure regular and effective communication between researchers focusing on these different topics. This will be achieved by encouraging participants to get involved into more than one Working Group; by sharing information through the Action website; and by organising plenary conferences where advances in the 4 Topics will be presented to all the participants.
The WGs will be relatively independent in order to ensure that each WG will be free to choose the most appropriate methods to reach its goals. However, the following tasks will be common to all WGs:
1. Reviewing the relevant literature. Participants will review existing research in the field of their particular Topic. Sharing this knowledge between social psychologists and historians will ensure that research projects will really advance knowledge in that Topic (the danger being that social psychologists reinvent the wheel after historians, or the other way around). This phase will also allow for identifying possibilities of cooperation with other research teams and programmes.
2. Defining a concerted research project. As the Action primarily aims at sharing expertise, participants are not expected to abandon their own research agenda, but they will be expected to collaborate on one or more common research projects. Starting from the research needs identified through the first task, and taking into account their own research agenda, participants will collaborate on a well-defined concerted research agenda. For some of the WGs, this could include the design of common research methods and international data collection. This research agenda will be regularly updated as new research ideas are expected to emerge during, and thanks to, the Action.
3. Mutualising research findings. Participants in each WG will share, discuss, and integrate their empirical findings in order to build a comprehensive picture regarding lay representations of history, social identities, and intergroup relations.
4. Dissemination. Beyond its main scientific focus, the Action aims at informing the general public, educationalists, and decision makers regarding the social psychological correlates of lay representations of history. The target audience could vary as a function of the WG and its relative Topic. For example, WG 3 will yield conclusions that will be of interest to historians, history teachers and teacher trainers; whereas WG 2 will yield empirical results that could meet the interests of political decision makers or NGOs interested in peace keeping and reconciliation processes. Therefore, in each WG, a special attention will be devoted to draw the main societal implications of the theoretical ideas and empirical findings, to synthesise them in a comprehensive way, and to communicate them to their respective audience.