Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

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The Lay Historian: How Ordinary People Think about HistoryOlivier KleinResearch in cognitive psychology shows that people tend to appraise a contingencybetween two phenomena as the product of a design or as a form of determinism ratherthan as the fortuitous outcome of chance. We often behave like the XVIIth century Frenchphilosopher Bossuet, who wrote«Let us stop talking about chance or fortune; or just as a name we use to concealour ignorance: What is chance for our uncertain foresight, is a concerted designto a higher foresight, that is, to the eternal foresight which encompasses allcauses and affects in a single plan» (Bossuet, cited by Riley, 1990, pp. XXVIII).Of course, the deity to which Bossuet alludes can be replaced by «destiny» or by «history»(in the marxist sense) depending on one’s philosophical inclinations. Historiographershave much debated about the threats posed by determinism (cf. Leduc, 2010). Research onthe “conjunction fallacy” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983) may provide one of the reasons whypeople are so keen to adopt such deterministic explanations of the past. In research on thiscognitive bias, subjects are presented an outcome and two prior events that may explainit. For example, if the outcome is “John had a car accident” and the two antecedents are “itrained on that day” and “he lost control of his car”, they may estimate the joint probability ofthe two antecedents as higher than that of each event considered separately, which violatesthe law of probability (the joint probability of two events cannot be higher than the probabilityof any of these events considered separately).Recent studies precisely suggest that inferring a single mechanism accounting forthe two outcomes (“The accident is due to the rain obscuring his view, which his wearingeyeglasses could not compensate”) is responsible for this conjunction fallacy and leads us tounderestimate the role of chance (Ahn & Bailenson, 1996). Everything seems linked. This isparticularly conspicuous when considering accounts of 9/11 in which disparate facts (“TheFBI was uninformed”, “Rumsfeld was not at the Pentagon”, …) can be combined to make thewhole event appear to be part of a conspiratorial scheme.Besides, some events (e.g., weather patterns) can be more readily appraised as fortuitousthan others. The conjunction fallacy reflects an intuitive causal explanation. It wouldbe particularly promising to consider how this fallacy affects our perception of historicalevents, possibly leading us to exaggerate the role of foresight and intentionality in theoccurrence of disparate events.The hindsight biasOne of the distinctive aspects of the historians’ position resides in their knowledgeof the outcome of the phenomena they investigate. It is very difficult to put oneself inthe shoes of the «men of the past» (to borrow Bloch’s expression) who did not yet knowthis outcome. Ignoring outcome knowledge is an arduous task indeed and may lead us toview the past as more foreseeable than it was. When describing the Munich agreements of1938, contemporary historians know that Daladier and Chamberlain’s concessions did notprevent WWII. In addition, the historian is strongly motivated to explain how and why thewar occurred in spite of (or thanks to) these agreements. In doing so, he may fall prey to theNarratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches34
The Lay Historian: How Ordinary People Think about HistoryOlivier Kleinfamous “retrospective illusion of fatality” (Aron, cited by Leduc, 2010), or “hindsight bias”:believing that an event is «more predictable after it becomes known that it was before itbecame known» (Roese & Vohs, 2012, p. 411). After the fact, the war may seem more predictablethan it was then.Thus historian Florovsky writes:«The tendency toward determinism is somehow implied in the method of retrospectionitself. In retrospect, we seem to perceive the logic of the events whichunfold themselves in a regular or linear fashion according to a recognizablepattern with an alleged inner necessity. So that we get the impression that itreally could not have happened otherwise” (cited by Fischhoff, 1975, p. 369).The hindsight bias was initially studied by Fischhoff (1975). Participants in one of hisfirst studies on this topic read the description of an obscure war between the British andthe Nepalese Ghurka in the XIX century. Fischoff then manipulated the outcome of this warby presenting the victor as either the British, the Ghurka, or neither (stalemate). In a controlcondition, the outcome was not disclosed. Knowing the outcome of the war led participantsto perceive this outcome as predictable not only for themselves but for others or for theactual parties engaged in the war. This was true regardless of the ending that was presentedto participants. However, after this pioneering study, the role of the hindsight bias in theappraisal of historical events has been somewhat neglected 3 (although it has been appliedto many other fields: for a list, see Roese & Vohs, 2012).When considering series of successive events, the mere postulation of a causaltheory seems to generate, or at least facilitate, the occurrence of a hindsight bias (Nario &Branscombe, 1995). When aware of the outcome of the war, one tries to explain it. To do so,one is likely to elaborate a causal chain accounting for it. This leads us to isolate the antecedentsthat fit in this causal scheme and to neglect the others, which may rapidly disappearfrom our memory (cf. Blank & Nestler, 2007). In turn, this further contributes to making theoutcome appear more necessary than it was. For example, knowing that the British havewon against the Ghurka, I may infer that the inadequate weaponry of the latter accounts forthis outcome. Conversely, had the Ghurka prevailed, I may have postulated that their superiorknowledge of the field had rendered their victory foreseeable. As a consequence, I maybetter remember information that coheres with my favored explanation. Having forgottenalternate accounts, my prediction of what «should have happened» may be biased: I maythen overestimate the role of the factors I have managed to keep in mind (e.g., weaponry,knowledge of the field).In research on the hindsight bias, antecedents are often pretested in such a way thatthey predict a specific ending. However, this may not always be the case: depending on how itis interpreted, a same antecedent can be construed as predicting an outcome or its opposite.For example, for the British, having Nepalese guides may be viewed as a «strength» or as a«weakness» depending on whether one assumes that the guides have good or bad intentionstowards the British. After the facts, such ambiguous antecedents may be interpretedin line with the ending. In a study by Klein et al. (2010), people read the diary of a barman3 For an early exception, see Fischhoff (1980). See also: Rudmin (2012)Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches35
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Part IIMedia(ted) Narrativesand Pub
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Researching Identity Narratives in
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Drawings and Narrative: the Inmates
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