How Memory Shapes Political Responses: A Case from Public Health Crises

• In Event: How the Past Shapes Our Future: Memories and Intergenerational Socialization

Abstract

How does long-term memory shape people's political responses and decisions? This is always an intriguing yet puzzling topic for political psychologists, especially due to the difficulty of identification. This study conquers this problem by constructing an experimental design utilizing the unique experiences of SARS and COVID-19 in China. With the survey experiment based on a representative sample of the population in 2021, this study randomly triggers subjects' memory about SARS and examines its impact on political attitudes and policy responses to a similar public-health crisis two decades later. The research has three targets: first, providing a memory profile about what composes the memory of crisis governance, the event, government reactions, or social responses; second, analyzing the severeness of the past crisis on today's responses to crisis policies; and third, examining the influence of the experience and memory of the past crisis governance on current public evaluation of government performance.

Author

• Yue Hu, Tsinghua University