Please join Bilkent University’s Psychology Department next Tuesday for the seminar of Dr Meymune Topçu.
Speaker: Meymune N. Topçu, New School for Social Research
“Imagining the collective future: Valence, perceived agency, and narratives”
Date: Tuesday, 11 April 2023
Time: 12:30
Room: C Blok amphitheatre
Abstract:
Imagining the future is an integral part of the memory system and it is tightly connected to the ability to remember the past. As innately social beings, however, people are not only capable of imagining their personal future but also the collective future – i.e., the future of the groups that they belong to. This talk will present empirical findings on the phenomenon of collective future thinking, with a focus on the role of valence, perceived agency, and narratives. The discussion will address the following questions: Do people rely on collective memory when imagining the collective future? What are the different patterns observed in collective memory and future thinking? How does personal and collective cognition interact during the acts of remembering and prospection? The talk will also include a discussion on present and future research projects that build upon the extant findings.
About the speaker:
Meymune N. Topçu is a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research. She received her PhD from the Cognitive, Social, and Developmental Psychology program at The New School in 2021. Her research broadly involves the relation between memory and future thinking for individuals and collectives. Her previous work has been published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: LMC, Memory Studies, Memory, and Progress in Brain Research. She is currently working on various projects funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation, in which she explores national goals, collective anxiety, and counter-narratives in the context of future thinking.