The reminiscence bump and the self: evidence from five studies on positive and negative memories

ABSTRACT

A plethora of studies have shown that people persistently remember public and personal events experienced during adolescence and early adulthood, particularly with a positive valence. In five studies, we investigate the reminiscence bump (RB) for positive and negative memories of public events (Studies 1 and 2), private events (Study 3), music-related events (Study 4), and cross-cultural memory differences (i.e., China and US) (Study 5). Participants retrieved either one positive or one negative memory, indicated their Age of Encoding, and provided secondary measures, i.e., memory vividness and rehearsal (Studies 1 and 3) and emotional intensity (Studies 2 and 4). About 10,000 memories were collected and positive memories appeared generally older than negative recollections, but the RB emerged for both positive and negative memories. Furthermore, the peak was earlier for positive memories of public events (<15 years old) than for negative memories (20–40 years), while no differences were found for private events or music-related experiences (15–25 years). Chinese had their RB later than US respondents. Finally, autobiographical recollections have moderate to low associations with secondary measures of phenomenological features of memory. These findings are consistent with the identity-formation theory, providing additional and important information on the development of the Self.

KEYWORDS:

• Reminiscence bump
• positive and negative memories
• autobiographical memories
• cross-cultural differences
• self

Acknowledgements

MC designed the studies and collected the data; AC and FB wrote the Introduction and the Discussion; AC run the analyses and wrote the Method and Results; FD supervised the analyses; TL provided a critical revision of the ms. All authors listed have made substantial, direct and intellectual contributions to the work, and approved it for publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, AC, upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 For this reason, we are unable to provide details on the ethical approvals which have reasonably been obtained by MC.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.