Identifying stories of ‘us’: A mixed-method analysis of the meaning, contents and associations of national narratives constructed by Americans
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Date
2024-03-01
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.
Rights
(c) 2023 The Author/s
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Abstract
How do lay individuals reconstruct, appropriate or resist culturally sanctioned narratives about their nation's past? The current study examined this question through an open-ended survey administered to a US sample, stratified by age and gender (N = 399). We identified three major historical narratives that were popular among Americans. Specifically, we identified positive narratives of the nation's progress over time and glorifying narratives of American exceptionalism, alongside a popular counter-narrative that was critical of the nation as reproducing ongoing cycles of injustice. Representations of national origins were significantly more salient for the narratives of Progress and Glorification, while more recent and lived events were salient for Critical narratives. Progress and Critical narratives were both associated with a constructive orientation to national identity, while Glorifying narratives were associated with blind patriotism. Critical and Glorifying narratives were consistently opposed in their associated political attitudes and in their patterns of endorsement across party affiliations. Overall, it appeared that narratives of progress were most popular and least polarised. We discuss the implications of these findings through the perspective that narratives provide dynamic content for identity construction as well as the means for articulating resistance to hegemony within specific historical and political contexts.
Description
Keywords
historical narratives, mixed-method analysis, national identity, social representations of history, system justification
Citation
Choi SY, Liu JH. (2024). Identifying stories of ‘us’: A mixed-method analysis of the meaning, contents and associations of national narratives constructed by Americans. European Journal of Social Psychology. 54. 2. (pp. 431-448).