Testing the effects of schema-congruency and agency on collective memories by roleplaying a fictional collective identity

Abstract

The role of agency in collective memory is largely unexplored, and evidence that schema-congruent collective events are more readily integrated than incongruent ones remains largely correlational. Studying these factors experimentally is challenging because real-world collective identities are difficult to manipulate. To address this, we developed a novel paradigm in which 51 participants were trained about a detailed fictional state and collectively role-played its citizen identity for a week. After the training, participants played a role-playing game in which they made decisions during events of collective significance. Events were manipulated along two dimensions: congruency with the collective's master narratives (congruent vs. incongruent) and the degree of agency afforded to the player (agency vs. no agency). After gameplay, participants completed a recall task and later rated the perceived agency phenomenology of the events. Events involving agency were recalled more frequently, more often from a first-person perspective, and received higher ratings of perceived agency and phenomenology. Although congruency did not affect recall frequency, incongruent events were associated with higher perceived agency and enhanced phenomenological qualities across several dimensions. Findings are discussed in terms of self-referential processing and highlight the potential of interactive fiction as a simulative tool for studying collective memory.