Emergence of collective mental time travel pathways upon remembering consequential elections

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Political Psychology

Background:

• Collective memory and future outlook are shaped by sociopolitical identity.
• Mental time travel, the ability to mentally project into the past and future, is a key cognitive process.
• Public events can significantly influence collective representations of time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and define collective mental time travel pathways.
• To investigate how reflection on critical public events, like elections, shapes these pathways.
• To explore the link between sociopolitical profiles and distinct mental time travel pathways.

Main Methods:

• Study 1 involved 403 participants recalling the 2023 Turkish Presidential Elections and other past/future events, rating event characteristics.
• Participants' ratings were used to identify four unique collective mental time travel pathways.
• Study 2 (N=201) examined event recall without specific event reflection to compare pathway activation.

Main Results:

• Four distinct collective mental time travel pathways were identified, bridging past and future representations around the election.
• Specific pathway characteristics, such as election vividness and perceived national agency, predicted future individual agency.
• Remembering a positive past with high agency correlated with future political group agency.

Conclusions:

• Collective mental time travel pathways provide nuanced insights into sociopolitical profiles.
• Critical and consequential elections can activate these pathways, demonstrating their role in shaping collective temporal cognition.
• The findings highlight the dynamic interplay between public events, collective memory, and future orientation.