PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

The spread of COVID-19 has brought major disruption and mass suffering globally. However, little is known about the impact of the pandemic on the construction of collective memory among Malaysian generational cohorts. Data was collected among 1,526 respondents in September 2020 (during the pandemic phase) and 883 respondents in October 2022 (during the endemic phase) using repeated cross-sectional quantitative surveys. Specifically, the studies were set to address two issues. First, to investigate the impact of the pandemic on Malaysians’ collective memory and second, to determine whether the development of collective memory was connected to a critical period of adolescence. We specifically requested that Malaysians report “the historical events in Malaysia or in the world” that they felt were particularly significant and explained their answers. The data showed that COVID-19 was the most commonly reported event, as expected. Using logistic regression, we found that age was the strongest predictor of the highest-mentioned historical event, COVID-19. Although more than two years have elapsed since the pandemic, COVID-19 has significant cohort effects on collective memory, with the older generation registering lower recall relative to the younger generation, supporting the Critical Years Hypothesis.

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