Letter to Cortex

Collective representations elicit widespread individualfalse memories

Stefania de Vito

, Roberto Cubelli

*and Sergio Della Sala

Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, Centro interdipartimentale Mente/Cervello, Universita` di Trento, Italy

Laboratorio di Psicologia Sperimentale, Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Napoli, Italy

It is well known that the need to simplify a story, to preserveits consistency and to avoid discontinuity gaps, leads tomemory distortions (Schacter, 2001). These biases allow oneto preclude possible dissonances between the accuraterecollection of past events and one’s own current knowledgeor present situations upon which one should act.While most memories are specific to individuals, there arememories that are shared by entire groups of people who arehomogeneous for social, ethnic and cultural characteristics orare connected by a common experience of a given event. Thesocial nature of these collective memories is testified not onlyby their content, but also by the way in which they are fabri-cated. These memories are prone to ‘‘mental filters’’ (Zer-ubavel, 2003) which influence the mental representations of the events. These mental filters are instrumental in intro-ducing modifications (e.g., inserting or omitting details) whenmembers of the relevant group are asked to reconstruct theoriginal event or the circumstances surrounding it, thus elic-iting false memories which may reify as settled symbols. Inturns, commemorations and symbols would frame anysubsequent observations distorting their recollection toreconcile them with the frozen shared knowledge. Shouldindividual distortions concerning a shared public event over-lap,theywouldresultintheformationofadistortedcollectivememory.The present study examined memories concerning one of the worst and deadliest terrorist attacks in Italian history, theBologna massacre. On the morning of August 2nd, 1980, at10.25, a bomb exploded in the main station of Bologna, Italy.Eighty-fivepeoplediedandover200werewounded(seehttp://www.stragi.it/index.php). A large clock on the outside wall of the main building broke during the explosion (seeFig. 1). Soonafter, it was repaired and continued working for the next 16years. The picture of the clock with its hands fixed at 10.25became the symbol of the event, and as such is reproducedonposters and banners during each annual commemoration. In1996 the clock stopped working, and it was decided to set itpermanently at 10.25, as a remembrance symbol. It has beennoted anecdotally that people remember the clock as having been always set at the time of the explosion (Tota, 2003)showing a possible effect of a strong social symbolic repre-sentation on the accuracy of personal memories.We administered individually a formal questionnaire to180 healthy participants (90 males and 90 females) aged 54.39(SD 7.7, range: 46–67) familiar with the Bologna station orworking there inquiring on their knowledge of the event. Therelevant questions focused on whether interviewees remem-bered the clock working normally or as set at the explosiontime during the 16 years in which it had been working. Of the173 participants who knew that the clock is now stopped, 160(92%) stated that the clock has always been broken. 127 (79%)further claimed to have seen it always set at 10.25, including all21railwayemployees.Mostintervieweesdidnotknowthatthe clock had been working for over 16 years and stated that ithad always been broken. From the 173 people who knew thatat the time of testing the clock was stopped, a subgroup of 56citizens who regularly take part in the annual officialcommemoration of the event has been further considered:only six (11%) of them correctly remember that the clock hadbeen working in the past.

Corresponding author

. Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, Centro interdipartimentale Mente/Cervello,Universita`di Trento, Corso Bettini 31, I-38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy.E-mail address:roberto.cubelli@unitn.it(R. Cubelli).

available at www.sciencedirect.comjournal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/cortex

0010-9452/$ – see front matter

cortex 45 (2009) 686–687