Do public speeches induce “collective” forgetting? The Belgian King’s 2012 summer speech as a case study

Although social scientists have examined how political speeches may help forge and/or shape collective memories, they have done so with little to no input from psychologists. We address this deficit, demonstrating how a modified version of a well-established and empirically derived psychological phenomenon – socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting – helps explain the mnemonic consequences associated with political speeches, in this case, the Belgian King’s 2012 summer speech. To this end, we analyzed the responses of 43 French-speakers and 49 Dutch-speakers. Of these individuals 35 of the... Mehr ...