The tendency to "bask in reflected glory" (BIRG) by publicly announcing one's associations with successful others was investigated in three field experiments. All three studies showed this effect to occur even though the person striving to bask in the glory of a successful source was not involved in the cause of the source's success. Experiment 1 demonstrated the BIRG phenomenon by showing a greater tendency for university students to wear schoolidentifying apparel after their school's football team had been victorious than nonvictorious. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect by showing that students used the pronoun tee more when describing a victory than a nonvktory of their school's football team. A model was developed asserting that the BIRG response represents an attempt to enhance one's public image. Experiments 2 and 3 indicated, in support of this assertion, that the tendency to proclaim a connection with a positive source was strongest when one's publk image was threatened.

This study examined late adolescents' self-defining memories about relationships. Participants were 88 European Americans (mean age ϭ 19 years) who reported 3 self-defining memories of their choosing and were selected for the study because they reported a memory about parents and/or peers. Memory narratives were coded for themes of separation, closeness, and conflict and for 2 kinds of meaning: learning lessons and gaining insight. Parent memories emphasized separation more so than peer memories, which emphasized closeness. Within parent memories, however, separation and closeness were equally prevalent. Parent separation was exemplified by experiences of parental divorce, parent closeness by comforting a grieving parent, and peer closeness by episodes of first-time romance. Conflict was more prevalent in parent than peer memories and was associated with meaning-making. Findings are discussed in terms of the usefulness of self-defining memories for illuminating contexts of relationship development in late adolescence and for understanding the emergence of identity and the life story.

This study examined which kinds of self‐defining memories show spontaneous references to larger meanings, and listener responses to two kinds of meaning—lessons and insights. Narratives of three self‐defining memories and episodes of telling the memories to others were collected from each of 168 late adolescents (M age=19). Narratives were coded for event type (relationship, mortality, achievement, and leisure) and for references to tension and to meaning (lesson or insight). Narratives of memorable episodes of having told the memories to others were coded for listener response (positive or negative). References to meaning emerged in one‐fourth of the memory narratives, and meaning was more common for self‐defining memory narratives that contained references to tension. Memories that reportedly had not been told to others in the past showed the same proportion of meaning as did memories that had been told to others (23%), with insights more prevalent than lessons. For memories that had been told to others, insights were more likely to be accepted by listeners than lessons. Implications were discussed for understanding the development of meaning in self‐defining memories and the collaborative construction of identity.

Although personal memories have been appreciated by psychologists for nearly a century, their significance for personality development has tended to be relegated to internalized representations of early childhood experiences. Recent research, however, suggests that adolescence and early adulthood are the most memorable parts of the life span and perhaps the broadest period of memory telling. This article integrates recent work in cognitive and developmental psychology into a framework for studying how and why tellers proffer and make sense of momentous emotional events, and how families and friends collude in self-making. Promising areas for future research include individual differences in readiness for memory telling, gendered ecologies of memory telling, the developmental significance of parents' stories, and reconciling personal memories and personality traits. Personal memory telling is not just for fun and entertainment, but, more important, drives social and emotional development in concrete moments of social life.

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