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  • RESEARCH BRIEFINGS

Personal motivations polarize people’s memories of the COVID-19 pandemic

How accurately a person recalls the COVID-19 pandemic is affected by motivational factors, including how they feel about their vaccination status. The recollections of vaccinated and unvaccinated people are skewed in opposite directions, leading to different retrospective narratives about the pandemic. This distorted recall influences how individuals evaluate past political action, and will complicate preparation for future crises.

This is a summary of: Sprengholz, P. et al. Historical narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic are motivationally biased. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06674-5 (2023).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03082-7

‘Expert opinion’ is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

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