Cultural life script theory and the reminiscence bump: A reanalysis of seven studies across cultures

Abstract

When asked to recall memories from their personal lives in response to word cues, adults older than 40 years report a significantly greater amount of memories from the time when they were 15–30 years old. This phenomenon is called the reminiscence bump. Cultural life story theory is a cultural explanation of the reminiscence bump. According to this account, the reminiscence bump is heavily influenced by the cultural life script – that is, shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in an ordinary life course. Life scripts locate a high proportion of major transitional life events in the second and third decades of life. The main purpose of this article was to review the empirical evidence and validity for the cultural life script theory. First, I describe the reminiscence bump and briefly mention the theories that attempt to explain why it occurs. Second, I describe the cultural life script theory and how the theory is related to autobiographical memories via life story events. Third, I describe the methodology that has been used to test the cultural life script theory. Finally, I provide a reanalysis of seven studies, based on the cultural life script theory conducted in four countries: Denmark, the USA, Turkey, and the Netherlands. As a part of this reanalysis, I examine the degree to which cultural life scripts guide recall of autobiographical memories by comparing the temporal distribution of life events obtained from the cultural life script (the cultural life script bump) and personal life story events (the reminiscence bump). Results of this reanalysis show that all life scripts across cultures have a lifespan distribution resembling the reminiscence bump. Furthermore, the distribution of the events of the life script generated by a group of old Danes in one of the studies resembles the distribution of their own life story events, suggesting that they used the information contained in the life script to retrieve personal memories.