The theoretical foundation of the study rests on Social Representations Theory, a framework first proposed by social psychologist Serge Moscovici in 1961. The theory examines the commonsense knowledge that groups produce through social communication, and it identifies two core processes: objectification, in which abstract ideas become concrete and real, and anchoring, in which new information is integrated into pre-existing systems of thought. Crucially, later work by William Doise and colleagues argued that social representations are not necessarily sets of fully shared beliefs. Instead, they function as organizing principles of position-taking, meaning that people can hold divergent, even opposing, views of the same object while remaining anchored in a common symbolic framework. This insight is what makes the Brazilian case so revealing: consensus and dissensus coexist, structured by deeper shared principles.

Brazil offers a particularly fertile setting for such an investigation. The country’s contemporary political landscape is marked by intense polarization, weakening democratic institutions, and the strategic mobilization of historical narratives by political actors seeking to reshape collective memory along ideological lines. The authors note that the traditional founding myth of racial democracy, the idea that Brazil’s identity rests on harmonious fusion of white, Black, and indigenous peoples, has lost its unifying power. As animosity between political camps has grown, this myth has diluted, leaving social groups more distant from one another and national identities more fragmented. In a polarized environment, competing versions of the past become weapons in symbolic conflicts over the present.

To capture these dynamics empirically, the researchers recruited 420 Brazilian adults through online channels, including messaging groups and university networks, supplemented by snowball sampling. The sample included 173 participants aged 18 to 30, 111 aged 45 to 65, 98 aged 30 to 45, and 9 over 65. Women made up 63 percent of respondents, and politically, 38.2 percent identified with the Left, 34.7 percent with the Center, 9.5 percent with the Right, and 17.6 percent with no political camp. Each participant rated their positive and negative emotions toward ten historical events on a seven-point scale: the Arrival of the Portuguese Royal Family, Independence, Abolition of Slavery, the Proclamation of the Republic, the Military Dictatorship, the Free Vote Movement, the 1988 Federal Constitution, the Real Plan, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the 2022 presidential election.

The analytical engine of the study was Latent Profile Analysis, a statistical technique conducted in RStudio that identifies hidden subgroups within a sample based on patterns of responses. Similar in spirit to factor analysis, LPA uses mixture modeling to cluster individuals who answer in statistically similar ways, producing mutually exclusive profiles. The researchers evaluated competing models using three indicators: the Akaike Information Criterion and the Bayesian Information Criterion, both of which favor simpler, more efficient models with lower values, and Entropy, which measures classification accuracy on a scale from 0 to 1. After balancing these indicators, a six-subgroup model emerged as the best statistical fit, revealing six distinct ways of emotionally positioning oneself toward Brazilian history.

The first profile, labeled Nationalists, tended to rate highly positive those events that showcased Brazilian autonomy and initiative, such as Independence, the Proclamation of the Republic, and the homegrown economic stabilization program known as the Real Plan, while rating lower events in which Brazil did not take the leading role, like the arrival of the Portuguese Royal Family. A second profile, the Youth Nationalists, shared much of this national pride but diverged in evaluating the 1980s: they rated the Free Vote Movement and the 1988 Constitution lower, while expressing strong positivity toward the 2022 election. As their name suggests, 58.1 percent of this group was under 30, illustrating how social insertion, in this case generational position, shapes position-taking on the national past.

The Democrats profile, representing 8.8 percent of the sample and composed predominantly of women with left-wing affiliations, celebrated events embodying equality and citizenship, such as the Free Vote Movement and the Citizen Constitution of 1988, while rating the Royal Family’s arrival and the Military Dictatorship negatively. Intriguingly, this group also rated Abolition of Slavery lower than other profiles did. The authors interpret this not as a rejection of emancipation but as a historically informed disillusionment: abolition in 1888 functioned largely as a legal rupture that left the hierarchies of the slaveholding elite intact, and the Democrats’ enthusiasm for the 1988 Constitution suggests they value events that produced genuine structural change over symbolic milestones that did not. The Oligarchs profile, by contrast, was exclusively male and half right-leaning, and it rated events concentrating power in specific groups, such as the Royal Family’s arrival and the Military Dictatorship, very positively, while disfavoring egalitarian moments like the Republic’s proclamation and the 1988 Constitution.

Two further profiles completed the picture. The Historical Constants, 7.38 percent of the sample, rated nearly all events uniformly high, above 4.5 except for the dictatorship, showing little differentiation. Drawing on prior cross-cultural research by Hanke and colleagues, the authors interpret this consistency not as disengagement but as a distinct evaluative orientation marked by low polarization and a preference for non-extreme positions. Finally, the Republicans, the largest profile at 45.47 percent, displayed strongly polarized ratings: extreme positivity toward Independence, the Republic’s proclamation, abolition, the 1988 Constitution, and the 2022 election, paired with sharp negativity toward the dictatorship and monarchical power. Predominantly female and left-affiliated, this group exemplifies what Doise described as emotionally charged consensus anchored in core moral beliefs, a cohesive collective narrative celebrating democratic institutions and civic engagement.

Perhaps the study’s most striking theoretical contribution lies in what unites these six divergent profiles. Despite their conflicting evaluations, all subgroups appear organized around a single common principle: an orientation toward a project for society and an imagined collective future. The same event can serve as a utopia for one group and a dystopia for another, a future to be achieved or a future to be avoided. Building on work by Zittoun and Gillespie on collective imagination and by de Saint-Laurent on the role of memory in envisioning possible futures, the authors argue that remembering is fundamentally future-oriented. Groups select which past events to valorize in order to delineate the society they wish to construct, effectively sketching competing versions of Brazilian national identity. The authors caution that their sample, recruited online and overrepresenting left-leaning participants, does not fully represent Brazil’s population, and that the single-item emotional scale cannot capture participants’ subjective meanings directly. Still, the findings carry practical weight: in a world marked by rising polarization, understanding how groups use memory to imagine the future may illuminate not only what divides societies, but also what could bring them together.

Subject of Research: Group variations in emotional position-taking toward major Brazilian historical events and their link to imagined collective futures

Article Title: Historical Memories of Great Brazilian Events: Group Variations in Position-Taking

Article References: Eskinazi, R., de Fátima de Souza Santos, M., & Wagoner, B. (2026). Historical Memories of Great Brazilian Events: Group Variations in Position-Taking. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-026-00517-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43076-026-00517-8

Keywords: collective memory, social representations, Brazil, historical memory, Latent Profile Analysis, social psychology, polarization, national identity, political affiliation, collective future, Trends in Psychology, intergroup relations