Remembrance is a powerful instrument of social mobilisation, identity construction and political competition. Its impact on individual and shared beliefs or attitudes makes it an object of government’s interest, because remembrance can be used to legitimise ideologies or policies. Theoretical considerations of a government’s role as a narrator lead us to the general definition of the government’s remembrance policy, which we understand as a complex of narratives and interpretations presented to influence citizens’ attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and identities. The paper develops the definition with five theoretical hypotheses on the effectiveness of remembrance narratives. It argues that the government’s remembrance policy is myth-motoric, non-scientific, emotional, based on commitment and that it is a type of social influence. The study is an initial verification of theoretical approach, and I believe that my arguments will motivate other researchers to investigate different aspects of a government’s desire to narrate past events. 

The paper presents results of the experimental study on the government's remembrance policy, attitudes towards it, and the influence of remembrance narratives. It discusses individual differences of participants on three different grounds: (1) interest in history or politics, and level of historical knowledge, (2) features of cognitive motivation measured by the need for closure questionnaire: preference of order, desire for predictability, discomfort with ambiguity, closed-mindedness and decisiveness, and (3) response to the presented narrative, including inspired emotions and an assessment of a story. Collected data and research observations offer an interesting and valuable insight into relationships between various factors and citizen's support for the remembrance policy. They also lead the team to formulate three conclusions which may be used to develop theoretical understandings of this aspect of politics within political science and related disciplines.

The report presents results of the experimental study on relationships between arousal of emotions and commitment, and an effectiveness of the government’s remembrance policy. In measurements, the team manipulated emotions inspired in a narrative (neutral vs. positive vs. negative) and participants’ commitment to popularization of a narrative (no commitment vs. low commitment), and it observed how different conditions influenced independent variables: memorization of information, attitude change and real-life behavior. Besides presentation of collected data, the report also includes brief introduction to the theoretical background of the study (especially theoretical hypotheses which verification was project’s objective) and a short discussion of final results.