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  • Perspective
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A framework for vicarious and collective memory, future projections and narrative identity

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 4, pages 292–305 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Memories of the past enable people to project into the future and to build identities and narratives at individual and community levels. In this Perspective, we explore the intersections and shared functions of vicarious memory (memory of events that happened to other individuals) and collective memory (memory of events shared across a community). We introduce ‘allobiographical memory’, a category that subsumes vicarious and collective memory, and discuss its connection to personal memory (memory of personally experienced events). We suggest that allobiographical memories and the future projections they ground are organized into temporally extended allobiographical narratives of social entities (for instance, ‘my mother’ or ‘my nation’). We review key findings on vicarious and collective memory and future projections, their organization into allobiographical narrative identities, and their functions for sociality and social embedding of personal identity. Finally, we present a future research agenda guided by this framework.

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Fig. 1: Allobiographical memory.
Fig. 2: Collective memory study paradigms.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Dorthe Kirkegaard Thomsen, Robyn Fivush.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Dorthe Kirkegaard Thomsen

  2. Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Robyn Fivush

  3. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Alin Coman

  4. Department of Psychology, The New School, New York, NY, USA

    William Hirst

  5. Research Institute for Psychological Sciences (IPSY), Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Olivier Luminet

  6. Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium

    Olivier Luminet

  7. Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

    David B. Pillemer

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  4. William Hirst
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  5. Olivier Luminet
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All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content. All authors wrote the article, with D.K.T. and R.F. in lead roles. All authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission. A.C., W.H., O.L. and D.B.P. are listed in the author list in alphabetic order.

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Kirkegaard Thomsen, D., Fivush, R., Coman, A. et al. A framework for vicarious and collective memory, future projections and narrative identity. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 292–305 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00429-x

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