The monetary value of collective memories and their associated monuments.

Collective memories are a group's shared memories about its collective past.These memories are psychologically valuable-they serve identity, social, and directive functions for the group.Might this psychological value translate into monetary value?Across two experiments, we addressed this question by asking people to allocate hypothetical government funding toward maintaining six U.S. Federal monuments associated with a collective memory (e.g., the World War II Memorial).We manipulated the accessibility of the collective memory associated with a monument.When a memory was more accessible, people allocated more funding toward its associated monument.Moreover, more funding for a monument was linked to greater psychological value of its associated collective memory-its social, directive, and identity functions.These results suggest collective memories imbue objects with monetary value, and their monetary and psychological values are related.Our findings extend the literature on collective memory, its functions, and its importance, as well as extended systems of collective remembering. General Audience SummaryCollective memories are a group's shared memories about its collective past.At a national level, collective memories are the stories citizens hold and share about their country's past.These national-level collective memories are psychologically valuable-they help form and maintain a consistent national identity, people of one nation share them with other countries to build and maintain relationships, and people draw on them when facing similar current issues.Put another way, these memories serve identity, social, and directive functions.Might the psychological value of these memories translate into monetary value?To answer this question, we had people imagine the U.S. government was looking for recommendations about how to allocate a hypothetical "monument maintenance" budget.People recommended how much of this hypothetical budget should be allocated toward maintaining six U.S. Federal monuments, each associated with a collective memory (e.g., the World War II Memorial and the collective memory of World War II).We manipulated how easy the associated collective memory was to bring to mind-or its accessibilitywhen people made this budget recommendation.When a collective memory was more top of mind (or more accessible), people allocated its associated monument a larger portion of the hypothetical budget.Moreover, there was a relationship between the amount of funding a monument received and how psychologically valuable people rated its associated memory.More specifically, people allocated a monument more funding when its associated memory served more identity, social, and directive functions.Taken together, these results suggest collective memories imbue objects with monetary value, and the monetary and psychological values of a collective memory are related.Our findings extend what we know about the functions of collective memory and the role that monuments play in the human memory system.