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

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.

Is the negative always that bad? Or how emotion regulation and integration of negative memories can positively affect well-being.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether coherent integration of negative memories into the self could positively predict well-being over time, and whether certain emotion regulation strategies could facilitate this coherent integration. In turn, coherent integration of negative memories was expected to further facilitate adaptive emotion regulation strategies over time. METHOD: A total of 303 participants took part in this longitudinal study. At Phase 1, they completed measures of emotion regulation and well-being. Three months later, they described the memory of the most negative event they experienced since Phase 1, and completed measures assessing its integration. One month later, participants completed the well-being measures again, and another month later, their emotion regulation was reassessed. RESULTS: Adaptive emotion regulation predicted adaptive memory integration, which in turn led to increases in well-being and adaptive emotion regulation. Contrariwise, the incapacity to adaptively regulate emotions predicted poor memory integration, which in turn led to decreases in well-being. CONCLUSION: The way people regulate their negative emotions acts as an individual difference influencing how negative memories are integrated into the self, which can in return alter well-being and emotion regulation capacity over time.