Social representations of history: preliminary notes on content and consequences around the pacific rim

Abstract

Social representations of world history were examined among student populations in four Pacific Rim cultures: Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Nominations of the five most influential figures in the last 1000 years revealed a preponderance of political and wartime leaders (59 and 37% overall ), with Hitler number one by a wide margin. Nominations of the seven most important events were complementary, with politics and war again dominating. World War II was named most frequently, World War I next. There was little cultural variation in the emphasis on politics and war, and all nominations centred around the 20th century. Each culture showed evidence of relative in-group ontogeny, or a focus on their own ethnic or national in-group, but Europe was central to all representations, and neighbouring cultures relatively unimportant. Absolute ontogeny was found only at the level of ethnicity, not nationality, with Japanese showing the least ontogenic focus. Taken as wholes, Chinese and Japanese representations showed potential for conflict, but broad historical perceptions were unrelated to individual differences in political preferences or strength of social identity.