Have you ever thought about what you consider to be the most important events that have happened in your life so far? Do you think that all the events you consider important in your life are perceived that way by everyone? Or is the evaluation of our experiences somehow culturally conditioned?
Our autobiographical memory—that is, what we recall from our own past—is strongly influenced by the culture in which we grew up and live. This phenomenon has been studied across many cultures, and the results point to an interesting pattern. The research was conducted in various countries with a large number of respondents over the age of 40; their task was to describe the seven most important events in their lives so far. The first interesting and important finding was the so-called “memory boom,” which occurs across all cultures. It is characterized by an increased prevalence of positive memories during the period between the ages of 15 and 30 (Berntsen & Rubin, 2004). Another interesting finding from the studies was that these significant and important memories varied from country to country. What is considered important in the life of an American may not be significant at all for someone from Europe or Asia. For example, Americans often ranked starting high school among their most important events, while people in Turkey consider first love or university entrance exams to be among the most important events (Ahu Erdoğan et al., 2008). In contrast, older Danes often spoke of moving into a retirement home (Rubin & Berntsen, 2003). However, there were also events that were the same across all cultures, such as the birth of children or the start of married life.
These studies also suggest how the age threshold for certain events is shifting and how the age at which people take certain important life steps varies across cultures. In the Czech Republic, for example, the age at which people have their first child is changing significantly; the previous generation considered 25 to be the appropriate age to start a family, whereas today it is around 30. In Denmark, it is common to start attending university around the age of 25; most young people do not enroll in college immediately after finishing high school. These nuances are certainly interesting from the perspective of changing times, but they also suggest how strongly culture can influence not only our lives but also which events in our lives will carry the most weight for us in old age—and which we will remember best.
Sources:
- Berntsen, D., & Rubin, D. C. (2004). Cultural life scripts structure recall from autobiographical memory. Memory & Cognition, 32 (3), 427–442.
- Erdoğan A., & Baran B., & Avlar B., & Cağlar Taş A., & Tekcan A. İ. (2008). On the persistence of positive events in life scripts. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22, 95–111.
- Rubin, D. C., & Berntsen, D. (2003). Life scripts help to maintain autobiographical memories of highly positive, but not highly negative, events. Memory and Cognition, 31 (1), 1-14.
