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In two studies, we examined Chinese students’ memory for the names of the leaders of China. In Study 1, subjects were cued with the names of periods from China’s history. Subjects listed as many leaders as possible from each period and put them in the correct ordinal position when they could (see
The study of collective memory, defined as a form of memory that is shared by a large group of people and that represents the group’s identity (
In recent years, however, psychologists have begun to apply quantitative and statistical techniques to probe collective memory (e.g.,
The serial position effect is a commonly observed pattern describing an individual’s ability to recall a series of items learned earlier. Probability of recall follows a bow-shaped (“U”-shaped) function based on the position in which each item was presented. Items presented at the beginning of a list of to-be-learned materials as well as those presented at the end are usually recalled with significantly higher probabilities than those in the middle (these are called primacy effects and recency effects, respectively; e.g.,
In a recent paper,
Thus, this research aimed to investigate the collective memory of Chinese people for the national leaders of China’s 2000-year history and extend
Accordingly, we proposed two primary hypotheses:
Within each specific historical period (e.g., Tang Dynasty, PRC), subjects’ recall of each national leader would follow the serial position function (i.e., earlier and later leaders within periods would be remembered better than intermediate leaders);
The average recall probability for national leaders from each historical period, averaged within periods, would also follow a serial position function across periods (i.e., leaders from earlier and later periods, on average, would be remembered better than leaders from intermediate periods).
To investigate these hypotheses, we conducted two studies. Study 1 examined Chinese university students’ collective memory for the names of national leaders from Chinese history. In Study 2, we attempted to replicate and extend the results of Study 1. In addition, Study 2 also examined the sources through which Chinese students remembered these national leaders as well as the relationship between the community environment and collective memory.
Four hundred thirty-three students (312 women and 121 men) from Nanjing Normal University, a public university in mainland China, were recruited by course instructors. Subjects’ ages ranged from 18 to 24 years (mean age = 20.9). The study was approved by the Ethics Committee at Nanjing Normal University. All subjects gave written informed consent.
Subjects wrote down the names of the national leaders in Chinese history on a questionnaire. The questionnaire included a section collecting demographic information (sex and age) and 10 groups of blank spaces, respectively, corresponding to the 10 different periods in Chinese history. We provided the name of each historical period (e.g., Qin Dynasty) at the beginning of each group of blank spaces and numbered the lines corresponding to the number of leaders from the period. We also clarified in the questionnaire that the national leaders we referred to were the emperors of feudal dynasties and the presidents of the ROC and PRC.
We excluded the historical periods in which the nation was divided by a number of regimes and no national leader was identified (i.e., the Northern and Southern Dynasties Period, 420–589; and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, 907–960). There was no overlap between any two historical periods. Subjects had the opportunity to recall a maximum of 128 leaders correctly (i.e., 128 blank spaces were provided). We note that there have been disputes concerning the division between some historical periods and the ordinal position of national leaders. We constructed the questionnaire using two commonly used historical textbooks for Chinese university students majoring in history (
We told subjects to recall as many national leaders from each historical period as possible (measuring free recall) and to place them into the correct ordinal position when possible (measuring ordinal position recall). The criterion for correct free recall of a leader’s name was whether a subject had written it down in any blank space following the leader’s corresponding historical period. The criterion for a correct ordinal position recall of a leader’s name was whether a subject had not only written it down but also placed it in the correct position according to the chronological ordinal position of the leader in the corresponding historical period. For example, if the name Mao Zedong was written in
All subjects completed the task in a classroom under a researcher’s supervision. A small pilot study suggested that 8 min was enough time for recall of as many leaders as possible. Therefore, in Study 1, we provided subjects with 10 min to complete the questionnaire. We used JASP and Microsoft Excel to analyze data and create the figures for both Study 1 and Study 2.
The probabilities of successful free recall and ordinal position recall for each leader are shown in
For the free recall probabilities in the rest of the historical periods (except Qin Dynasty and Sui Dynasty, which had only two national leaders in each), the primacy effect frequently occurred (i.e., the recall probabilities of first several leaders in each period were generally high); however, recency effects were absent.
In China’s different historical periods, some leaders recalled with notably high probabilities were not among the earliest national leaders in their corresponding periods (e.g., the 16th leader in Han Dynasty and the 7th leader of ROC were well remembered). Similar findings were also shown in
The ordinal position recall results, shown in
The average probabilities of successful free recall and ordinal position recall of national leaders within specific historical periods, on average, are presented in chronological order in
We note that there are challenges to interpreting
In sum, Study 1 mostly supported our hypotheses, but also showed some unexpected findings.
We conducted a second study to replicate and extend the findings of Study 1. In Study 2, we asked subjects to recall the names of Chinese leaders, but we also queried subjects regarding the source of their memory for the leaders that were named. This information described how students were able to remember each leader. We also examined the social environment from which students may have learned that information by examining the number of Internet search hits for each of the different Chinese leaders, and relating that information to recall proportions.
A second independent group of 247 students (185 women and 62 men) from Nanjing Normal University were recruited. Subjects’ ages ranged from 18 to 23 years (mean age = 20.8). The study was approved by the Ethics Committee at Nanjing Normal University.
We explored the sources to which subjects attributed recall of national leaders via a questionnaire. In this study, we focused on memory for the 42 leaders from the four most recent historical periods – Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty, ROC, and PRC. Like in Study 1, we provided the names of each historical period and asked subjects to recall as many national leaders as possible and write their names down in the correct ordinal position when possible. Moreover, beside each name we asked subjects to choose the source from which they remembered the named leader. Four sources of recall were given as options: (1) history class, (2) non-fiction readings or lectures occurring out of class, (3) fiction in popular media (e.g., from novels or TV), or (4) “other sources.” Subjects were required to choose one to four sources. No subjects chose “other sources,” so this option was dropped from further analysis. All subjects answered the questionnaire in a classroom under a researcher’s supervision.
In addition, we also investigated the relationship between the quantity of information available on each leader on the Internet and memory for those leaders. We searched Baidu, the most popular internet search engine in China, and counted the number of search hits for each of the national leaders from the four periods of interest.
Free recall probabilities of the 42 leaders in Study 2 were strongly correlated with those for the equivalent 42 leaders in Study 1,
Additionally, the correlations of the overall free recall probabilities with probability of recalling from class (Option 1), out of class (Option 2), and historical fiction (Option 3) were all strong (according to
With regard to the Internet environment, the number of search hits for each leader is shown in
In conclusion, the findings of Study 2 show that students attributed successful recall of Chinese leaders mostly to class and coursework, and less so to experiences occurring outside of the classroom, at least in regards to the four most recent periods of Chinese history.
Additionally, the Internet did appear linked to subjects’ collective memory for the national leaders of Chinese history to some degree. Rather than predicting the overall pattern of recall, however, perhaps the Internet is one way to help identify reasons for outliers that deviate from the general pattern predicted by the serial position curve. These results, taken together, show the interplay between collective memories held by individuals, and collective memories endorsed by culture.
In these two studies, we examined Chinese university students’ collective memory for national leaders from Chinese history and investigated the source of these memories. Consistent with
However, unlike the findings for collective memory of U.S. presidents in
Furthermore, we found in Study 2 that resources available on the Internet to Chinese university students may help account for unexpected findings in collective remembering. These results hint at the role of the community environment in collective remembering. The finding is consistent with previous research showing that public silence leads to forgetting (
Last, we found in Study 1 that the hypothesized patterns emerged more clearly in ordinal position recall than they did in free recall. Similar results were also shown in
As a last point, the literature suggests that there are two different viewpoints used to explain how collective memories are stored – “in the world” vs. “in the individual” (
We found a complex pattern of collective remembering for Chinese national leaders among Chinese university students. Our findings suggest that collective memory largely follows the rules that govern individual memory, and that collective memory can be studied in an objective way. The absence of recency effects in collective memory for most historical periods of Chinese history needs further explanation, however. We also found that community environment may be considered as a potential account of the memory patterns that objective rules fail to predict. We hope that future research can validate and extend these findings in other populations outside of China.
MF, YX, KD, and T-FY designed the study, all authors but KD performed the study, and all authors analyzed the results and wrote the paper together. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
We thank Henry L. Roediger, III for his helpful comments in the early stages of this research.