Living in history: How some historical events shape our memory

The experiment was conducted in two parts and included participants from ten cities around the world. First, the participants were shown a list of words and had to write down personal memories associated with those words (e.g., when they learned to ride a bike or when they were by a river). Next, they thought aloud as they remembered when those personal events occurred. The participants were tape-recorded during this part of the experiment and the researchers analyzed the recordings to see how often public events were mentioned.

The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that "historically-defined autobiographical periods" (H-DAPs; e.g., "during the war") do exist, although H-DAP formation depends on the intensity, duration, and novelty of the public event, as well as how close it is to a population. Analysis of the tape recordings reveals that two groups frequently used H-DAPs to date personal events: Bosnians often referred to the civil war and Izmit Turks frequently mentioned the devastating earthquake which struck Turkey in 1999.

In contrast, participants from Canada and Denmark, relatively conflict-free countries, almost never mentioned public events when describing their memories. Surprisingly, Israeli participants did not use H-DAP references to date their memories. The researchers note that "this lack of H-DAPs reflects the chronic nature of the conflict that afflicts the region." They surmise that "in Israel, group conflict is a fact of life, and psychological, social, and physical responses to this fact are part of the daily routine." H-DAPs were also absent from (post-9/11) protocols collected in New York City and elsewhere in the U.S. The authors speculate that the 9/11 references were missing from the US samples because the attacks had, at most, a limited effect on the lives of most Americans — it is true that things changed after 9/11, it's not true that "9/11 changed everything."

These findings suggest that public events can be categorized as "emotionally charged" (e.g., the September 11 attacks), which affect people's emotions, attitudes, and beliefs or "epoch-defining" (e.g., the Siege of Sarajevo), which change the way people live. The results of this study indicate that it is epoch-defining public events — those with personal significance, and not necessarily historical importance — that cause personal memory and history to become entwined, leading to the formation of H-DAPs and causing us to "live-in-history."

Source: Association for Psychological Science (news : web)