Remembering the good and bad and the self and others in a culturally modulated self-memory system

ABSTRACT

Wang and Conway (2006, Autobiographical memory, self, and culture. In L.-G. Nilsson, & N. Ohta (Eds.), Memory and society: Psychological perspectives (pp. 9–27). Psychology Press) posit that remembering takes place in a culturally modulated self-memory system in which working self-goals are shaped by society and, in turn, influence the encoding and construction of memories in a culturally canonical fashion. The current research examined the self-goal of competence, which manifests through self-enhancement versus self-improvement motivations, in influencing remembering in different cultural contexts. We conducted two cross-cultural studies to examine memories for personal successes and failures (Study 1) and autobiographical and vicarious experiences (Study 2) in connection with individuals’ positive self-views. European Americans recalled a greater number of success than failure memories (Study 1) and US participants recalled a greater number of autobiographical than vicarious memories (Study 2), which was further associated with positive self-views at the individual level. In contrast, Asian (Study 1) and Chinese participants (Study 2) recalled even-handedly the different types of memories, and the memory retrieval was unrelated to individuals’ self-views. We discuss the findings in light of the different manifestations of the competence goal in shaping memory in the culturally modulated self-memory system.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-memory system
• culture
• success and failure memories
• autobiographical memory
• vicarious memory
• self-goals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This study was part of a larger project that investigated success and failure memories across cultures. Participants also completed the Self-Construal Scale (Singelis, 1994), the Self-Motive Scale (Gregg et al., 2011), and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) (Diener et al., 2010). These measures were for separate research questions and were not included in this study.

2 Although both difference and proportion scores may index relative accessibility to success versus failure memories, their meanings and usages differ. We used difference scores given that our research question and method (with within-subjects, repeated measures) focused on how many memories participants recalled pertaining to success relative to failure, rather than how likely participants recalled success relative to failure memories.

3 Participants also completed the Self-Construal Scale (Singelis, 1994) that was for separate research questions and not included in this study.

4 The pattern of results was identical with or without the covariates. Age did not interact with culture or other independent variables. The pattern of results also remained the same after participants over 65 years old (1 US and 9 Chinses) were excluded from analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Hatch grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Qi Wang.