Why Historical becomes Personal? Spontaneous Historical Content of Individual Autobiographical Memory

Abstract

In the present paper we suggest that people experience history from four perspectives: Participant, Witness, Contemporary and Successor. These perspectives differ in the proportion of experience, knowledge and personal meaning that is available. We empirically demonstrated greater malleability of memories about terrorist attacks that were experienced as a Witness than as a Contemporary. We also review research on the extent to which people spontaneously use historical events as a reference for dating personal memories. In our Moscow sample (N = 476), historical references were present in 5% of people. We found that 17% of participants listed historical memories in their life stories, as indicated by where they placed events along a Life Line. There was a tendency to balance negative historical experience with positive events from the Contemporary perspective (Gagarin'61, Olympic Games'80). Older participants included historical memories in their Life Lines more often than younger participants did, while the majority of historical memories referred to the age before 29. Participants recollected historical memories only from periods in their past that fell within what is called the "reminiscence bump"—a lifetime period that covers the age interval between 18-28 years. The proportion of historical content in individual autobiographical memory is determined by: 1) objective history; 2) experiencing historically transitional events in youth; 3) being older than the "reminiscence bump" period and 4) having at least a decade time distance toward historical event. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract)