Cultural Identity Changes the Accessibility of Knowledge

AUTHORS: MATTHEW L. STANLEY, MORGAN K. TAYLOR & ELIZABETH J. MARSH

Culture plays a significant role in determining what people believe and claim to know. In five studies, we examined how activating participants’ American identities influenced their ability to retrieve well-known information: the 50 U. S. states. Activating participants’ American identities—relative to other cultural identities—led them to retrieve more U. S. states over brief periods of time; the effect disappeared over longer periods of time. These results suggest that the identity activated affects the speed with which relevant knowledge is retrieved, but that the effect is not large in magnitude. This work provides the first evidence that cultural identity influences not only what one knows but also its accessibility.

Living Historical Memory: Associations with National Identity, Social Dominance Orientation, and System Justification in 40 Countries

AUTHORS: JAMES H. LIU, FOUAD BOU ZEINEDDINE, SARAH Y. CHOI, ROBERT JIQI ZHANG, ROOSEVELT VILAR & DARIO PÁEZ

Living historical memory (LHM) was assessed amongst representative samples of adults from 40 societies, who completed online surveys asking them to name three historical events in living memory that have had the greatest impact on their country. The number of LHM nominations was related to a stronger sense of national identity, lower social dominance orientation, and lower system justification. LHM appears to support national identity and instills critical systemic evaluations in developing countries especially. It appears that LHM in developing countries has progressive functions, contextualizing current disadvantages as being linked to history, but nonetheless drawing from living memories to band people together in positive collective remembrance of the advent of nationhood.

How Culture Shapes Constructive False Memory

AUTHORS: JIANQIN WANG, HENRY OTGAAR, PEKKA SANTTILA, XIANTING SHEN & CHU ZHOU

Culture plays a critical role in memory. Memory is also known to be constructive and prone to errors. However, little is known about how culture potentially shapes the formation of false memories. We examined influence of culture on false memory by comparing European and Chinese samples. We embedded the Deese-Roediger/McDermott (DRM) pictures in different contexts and paired them with participants’ own name or other people’s name. European participants had more phantom recollection for non-presented lure pictures while Chinese participants were more likely to form familiarity for lure pictures. Furthermore, European participants formed more self-related false memories of item-context bindings than Chinese participants. These findings suggest that cultural differences in constructive false memories using the DRM paradigm.

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