Collective Cognition

Remembering the past and imagining the future are not only personal acts. People also remember and anticipate events on behalf of the groups to which they belong, from families and communities to nations. These collective representations connect individuals to a shared history, contribute to a sense of collective identity, and provide a framework for understanding the present and envisioning what lies ahead. Yet collective memories and future projections are not fixed reflections of reality. They are constructed within cultural, social, and historical contexts and can vary substantially across cultures and over time.

We investigate how culture shapes what people remember about their groups and how they imagine their groups’ futures, how collective and personal memories are related, and what factors contribute to the specific representations of the collective future. Across this work, we examine how people remember and imagine collective experiences at different scales, including personal and collective memories of major global events across cultures and genders, as well as representations of the future for groups ranging from smaller social communities to societies and nations.

Selected Publications

Wang, Q., Mert, N., Cao, Y., & Hou, Y. (2026). Chinese anticipate their country’s future to be as bright as their personal future. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, 1704285. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1704285

Duman, Ç., & Wang, Q. (2026). Gender in personal and collective event memories from the COVID‐19 pandemic. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 40(4), e70248. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.70248

Wang, Q., & Mert, N. (2025). Collective future thinking at a time of geopolitical tension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 29(5), 393–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.02.004

Mert, N., & Wang, Q. (2025). Why do Americans foresee a grim future for their country? The influences of country well-being, national identity, and news coverage. Cognition, 256, 106052. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.106052

Mert, N., Hou, Y., & Wang, Q. (2023). What lies ahead of us? Collective future thinking in Turkish, Chinese, and American adults. Memory & Cognition, 51(3), 773–790. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-022-01321-2

Wang, Q. (2008). On the cultural constitution of collective memory. Memory, 16(3), 305–317. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210701801467