Why do we remember famous people from our own country better?
The recognition of historical figures and celebrities is strongly influenced by where they come from and what language they speak. People find it easier to recall famous individuals who share their nationality or language. This is the main conclusion of a study conducted with the involvement of Corvinus University of Budapest and published in the October issue of the scientific journal PNAS Nexus.
The researchers analysed the Wikipedia biographies of more than 50,000 famous individuals – e. g. politicians, inventors, actors – and the associated 138 billion page views. They also developed an online quiz in which more than 41,000 participants answered questions about famous people.
The findings show that a shared national and linguistic background has a positive effect on who we remember, independently of how well-known a person is. Quiz participants were approximately 9–10 percentage points more likely to answer correctly when the famous person came from the same country as they did. Speaking the same language provided an additional advantage of around 3–6 percentage points. This effect remained significant even after the researchers accounted for the individual’s domestic and international fame.
Fame can mean different things locally and internationally. For example, the biography of American football player Johnny Unitas is read primarily in English, making him a predominantly local celebrity. By contrast, only around half of the interest in Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, also an American, comes from English-language readers. She also attracts considerable attention from five or six other linguistic communities.
“We also examined how Nobel Prizes, Academy Awards and deaths affect visits to the corresponding Wikipedia biographies, as well as local and international recognition. We found that the patterns over time were similar in all three cases. Biography page views and local interest temporarily spike, while international recognition grows gradually but persistently. We also identified several distinctive patterns. For example, Nobel Prize winners are generally less famous before receiving their award than Oscar winners,” says César Hidalgo, co-author of the study and researcher at Corvinus University.
Nobel Prizes have the most lasting impact. In the year the prize is awarded, page views increase more than fourteenfold and remain five times higher even five years later. By comparison, attention towards Oscar winners increases by up to 110%, while their international recognition rises by a maximum of 86%.
Following a celebrity’s death, biography page views jump by an average of 181%. Although this additional attention fades within a few years, the deceased person’s international recognition continues to grow gradually, reaching a level 50% above the pre-death figure after five years. Local interest, meanwhile, increases more modestly, by around 23%, and only for a short period.
The authors emphasise that Wikipedia traffic and quiz responses provide an indication of how recognisable famous individuals are, but only partially capture the depth and complex meaning of the collective memory associated with them. Still, these results offer a valuable snapshot of what people choose to view before information seeking started shifting towards an AI-mediated world, one in which algorithms increasingly shape not only what people see… but potentially what societies remember.