Keys to a Future Majority - Reminiscence Bumps, Collective Memory, and Generations

This is the third installment of my thesis, Keys to a Future Majority. Click here for the introduction, and here for the second piece

"I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty." Kerry proclaimed as he saluted the crowd at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he would accept the Democrats nomination to run for President. Kerry's biographical film had just ended, with about half of it dedicated to Kerry's Vietnam experiences. This was not the first time that Kerry used his Vietnam experiences during the campaign- many people credited his victory in Iowa to his appearances next to the Vietnam Vets that he served with.

Soon after the convention ended the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" began running ads questioning many aspects of Kerry's Vietnam service, from where he was on a certain Christmas night, to the events surrounding his combat metals, to the severity of his battle scars, to his membership in the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Kerry wasn't the only one dogged by his activities during Vietnam; Bush's service in the Air National Guard, as well as his alleged AWOL status, also became an issue, though it seems to have affected Dan Rather, who was forced out as CBS News' head anchor, more than Bush. It may seem odd that the 2004 election would be so focused on a war that ended almost 30 years ago while over 100,000 US troops occupied Iraq, but after doing research on a phenomenon known as "the reminiscence bump," as well as media effects theories (for various college courses), I came to the realization that this was not only the obvious course that the election would take, but almost inevitable (I first proposed a study to prove this theory in November of 2003). In this post I'll talk about the reminiscence bump and in the next post I'll turn to media effects.

The Reminiscence Bump

Psychologist David Rubin conducted a series of interesting experiments that shed some light on why a 30-year-old war would come to dominate a current election. In Rubin's experiments subjects were given a random word and then asked to give a memory from their life, i.e. an "autobiographical memory," for the word. Subjects were then asked to give the age from which the memory occurred. For example, the subject could be given the word "car", and then would say something like "I drove in a car this morning on my way to work" or "The first time I drove a car I got into an accident." In the first case the memory is recent, in the second the memory would be from an earlier time in the person's life. What Rubin, and others who have conducted similar experiments, have found, over numerous occasions, is that two periods of time in the lives of adults dominate their memories.

The first time period that dominates our memories is the period that just happened, something that psychologists call the "recency effect." This is probably pretty intuitive to most people. For example, you'd have a lot easier time remembering the contents of a test that you just took over a test that you took a few months ago. Or, you would remember the haircut you just got, more easily than you would remember a haircut that you got a year ago.

For older people, those past their mid-thirties, there is a second time period which dominates their memory- those memories that occurred when they were roughly between the ages of 16 and 26. (Rubin & Schulkind, 1997; Rubin, Rahhal, & Poon, 1998, Rybash, 1999). This phenomenon is known as "the Reminiscence Bump" (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: A typical reminiscence bump graph.
(Source: Rybash, J.R. & Monaghan, B. E., Episodic and semantic contributions to older adults' autobiographical recall, The Journal of General Psychology; Jan 1999)

Three reasons have been given to explain this phenomenon.

First, some researchers have suggested that the increase in availability of memories from this period happens because the brain is more active at this time and that the increase in activity at the time that the memories are formed. This would mean that the effect was physical- your memories are stronger because your brain was working harder or more efficiently when you experienced the event.

The second plausible explanation for the reminiscence bump is that new experiences cause a stronger memory. How many things can you think of that you experienced for the first time when you were between 16 and 26? To name a few from my life- I had my first romantic experiences, I used alcohol and drugs for the first time, I moved out of my parents house and began to learn to take care of myself, etc. Because all of these important memories, each of which affected my experiences and decisions later in life, happened when I was between 16 and 26, I refer back to them when I think about a (general category/type) of the similar event.

The third explanation is that this time period is critical in the development of our identity (Schrauf & Rubin, 1998). This explanation looks very similar to #2, but primarily concerns the ways in which we see ourselves in relation to the rest of the world. The recognition of the importance of this period in the development of your identity has led it to be termed the "critical period" of human development.

So which of these is correct? In a series of studies, Schrauf & Rubin showed that people who emigrated to a foreign country, where a different language was spoken, after their initial reminiscence bump period had a different reminiscence bump period- that period where they emigrated. This suggests that one or both of the latter two explanations for the bump is correct- that our memories are tied in closely to our identities, and that this may have to do with new or novel experiences.

While many people may intuitively realize that their ideologies and identities become set at an early age, I don't think that most people understand how profoundly this affects their memories and thoughts. A little later I will come back to the importance that easily accessed memories have on individual political decision making, but for now let's move on to how this phenomenon relates to our views of world events and the formation of a generation.

Collective Memory and Generations
Assuming that our identities and ideologies are directly tied into our political beliefs and behaviors, it should come as no surprise that these become solidified at the same time. For example, it is widely acknowledged that a person's partisan beliefs, which are fairly elastic at an early age, become stable after the "bump period" (Alwin & Krosnick 1991). Equally unsurprising then is the idea that people's memories of political events, which are connected with their political identities, are also tied to this period of life.
Sociologist Howard Schuman and his colleagues extended these studies to the realms of political and collective memory by asking large groups of people to name "the most important public or political event of the past 70 or so years. (Schuman & Scott, 1989; Schuman, Belli, & Bischoping, 1997; Schuman, Akiyama, & Knauper, 1998).
Schuman and his colleagues found that when they asked this question most people would give memories from their adolescence or early adulthood. For example, those people who came of age in the WWII area would give that war as most important public event, while those who came of age during Vietnam were much more likely to give Vietnam as the most important political event of the past 70 years (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Reminiscence Bumps Of The Vietnam War and World War II
(Source: Schuman, H & Scott, J., Generations and collective memories, American Sociological Review. Albany: Jun 1989. Vol. 54, Iss. 3)

In his surveys, Schuman also found that people almost always give those memories that affected them directly, rather than those generally associated with that time period. For example, amongst German's who gave WWII as the most important political event, none who were in the bump period at the time gave the Holocaust as one of the most important events (more gave the moon landing than the Holocaust). These people were much more likely to give one of their own experiences, for example the firebombing of the German cities, where hundreds of thousands of women, children and elderly were killed by allied bombing. In a survey of Americans, Schuman noted that African-Americans were much more likely to mention the civil rights movement as the most important event, while women were more likely to mention the women's liberation movement.

Another personal factor that can influence what we give for the most important political event of the past 70 years is education (Schuman & Rodgers 2004). For example, because I enjoy studying history I would probably give WWII, the Cold War, and the explosion of the Internet, as the three most important events, even though only one of those happened during the "critical period" of my development. However, Schuman and Rodgers note that while references to certain high-profile historical events, such as protracted wars, are affected by historical knowledge, others are not. For example, very few people give JFK's assassination as one of the most important political events other than those who were in their critical period at the time. But while education can affect the answers people give to this question, I doubt that this knowledge would have the same effect on the ways people view the world. It's very different to learn about Vietnam and the 60's through history books and movies then through growing up while the war was raging on, and thus I would expect that those who were in their critical period during that period would have much more deeply ingrained and complex memories of it. I would also suspect that you would have many more emotions attached to what you personally experienced than to events that you read about in history books.

These findings support the idea of a generational unit or cohort (a cohort is a term often used to refer to a generation) that has a shared generational identity (Conway 1997; Holmes & Conway 1999). Everyone has heard the term "Generation" being thrown around ("The Greatest Generation," "Generation X", "Generation Y," etc.), but what exactly is a "generational unit?" Martin Conway put forth the best definition of a generation that I have seen. According to Conway a generation is formed by "shared cultural experiences, shared experiences of a type of event, common ways of responding to the world, common existential problems and shared conceptual knowledge" . (Conway, 1997, Pg. 29)
One thing that is important to note here is that a generational unit is not strictly determined by the time period in which a person was born. If we use Conway's definition of generation, people who are born in different societies and cultures should be considered separate generations. Also- given that there are sub-cultures within different societies and nations, it seems obvious to me that there are different sub-groups within each generation. For example, as Schuman and Scott's study points out, African Americans and women have a different set of shared experiences from white American males (Schuman & Scott, 1989) (see Figure 3). Maybe it would make more sense for African-Americans who came up in the 60s and 70s to be referred to as the "civil rights movement generation" or "the women's rights generation" instead of simply baby-boomers. Regardless of whether or not you think it's appropriate to break down different groups within a society into separate sub-generations, the research that I have noted above gives credence to the idea that a generation is a real phenomenon, and that they are formed based on the collective experiences of the group during the critical period of their development.

Figure 3: Reminiscence Bump Of The Civil Rights Movement Amongst Blacks and Whites.
(Source: Schuman, H & Scott, J., Generations and collective memories, American Sociological Review. Albany: Jun 1989. Vol. 54, Iss. 3)

One interesting phenomenon surrounding the idea of generation is that there appears to be a 20-30 year cycle of commemoration following an event, both official commemorations, such as war memorials and popular commemorations, such as movies. Three reasons have been given for this. First, the reminiscence phenomenon doesn't become really pronounced until those in their early adulthood have distanced themselves from that period, sometime in their late-thirties or forties. Second, commemoration takes a great deal of resources; movies and memorials are expensive to produce, and thus you won't see commemorations of certain periods until those who were at the critical stage at the time have the money and time to make them happen. The last explanation that has been given is that people need emotional and chronological distance from an event, especially a traumatic one, before they can deal with the expensive and time-consuming process of commemoration (Pennebaker & Banasik, 1997).

Whatever the reason for the formation of a generational unit, I believe that by looking at the 2004 election we can see just how powerful generational identity is, and we can see that how we view the world during that critical period of life will have an effect on how we view the world for the rest of our lives. In fact, all of our memories, from those dealing with the smallest details of our personal lives to the ways that we look at the world, are solidified from our teens to mid-twenties. These images remain the easiest to access for the remainder of our adult lives, and as I will examine in my next post, this has a very strong effect on how and why we make our political decisions.

The Vietnam Generation has finally arrived at a position of power, and the politics of this generation is tainted by their experiences in the 60s and 70s. In a later post I will come back to look a little deeper at what the war meant for the Vietnam generation, and what this says about the outcome of the 2004 election, but for now I simply want to note that the war was seen in different ways by different ideological and social groups within the United States. Next, however, I will look at what effects the ease of accessibility of these memories have upon our political decision making.

Sources:
Alwin, D. F. & Krosnick, J. A. (1991). Aging, cohorts, and the stability of sociopolitical orientations over the life span. American Journal of Sociology.97(1), 169-195.
Conway, M. A. (1999). The inventory of experience: Memory and identity. In J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez,, & D. Rime, (Eds.),
Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 21-43). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Finkelstein, L. M., Gonnerman, M. E., & Foxgrover, S. K. (2001). The stability of generation identification over time and across contexts. Aging Research. 27, 377- 397.
Holmes, A. & Conway, M. A. (1999). Generation identity and the reminiscence bump: Memory for public and private events. Journal of Adult Development. 6 (1), 21-34.
Olick, J. K., & Robbins, J. (1998). Social memory studies: From "collective memory" to the historical sociology of mnemonic practices. Annual Review of Sociology. 24,105-140.
Olick, J. K. (1999). Collective memory: The two cultures. Sociological Theory. 17, 333-348.
Pennebaker, James W. and Banasik, Becky L. (1997). On the creation and maintenance of collective memories: History as social psychology. In: J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez & D. Rimé, (Eds.), Collective memory of political events : Social psychological perspectives.
Rubin, D. C., Rahhal, T.A., & Poon, L.W. (1998). Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best. Memory and Cognition, 26, 3-19.
Rubin, D. C. & Schulkind, M. D. (1997). The distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan. Memory and Cognition. 25, 859-866.
Schrauf, R. W. & Rubin, D. C. (1998).Bilingual autobiographical memory in older adult immigrants: A test of cognitive explanations of the reminiscence bump and the linguistic encoding of memories. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 1-21.
Rybash, J. M. (1999). Aging and autobiographical memory: The long and bumpy road. Journal of Adult Development, 6(1), 1-9.
Schuman, H, & Scott, J. (1989). Generations and collective memories. American Sociological Review. 54(3), 359-381.
Schuman, H, & Rieger, C. (1992). Historical analogies, generational effects, and attitudes towards war. American Sociological Review. 57, 315-326.
Schuman, H., Belli, R. F. Bischoping, K. (1997). The generational basis of historical knowledge. In J.W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, & B. Rime. (Eds.), Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 47-77). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Schuman, H., Akiyama, H., & Knauper, B. (1998). Collective memories of Germans and Japanese about the past half-century. Memory. 6(4), 427-454.
Schuman, H; Rodgers, W. L. (2004). Cohorts, chronology, and collective memories. Public Opinion Quarterly. 68(2), 217-254.