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

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.