A positive Living-in-History effect: the case of the fall of the Berlin Wall

Abstract

Research has shown that individuals use a combination of cultural life script events and historical events when dating personal memories, providing evidence for a cultural life script effect and Living-in-History (LiH) effect on the temporal organization of autobiographical memory. Yet, in contrast to life script events, the LiH effect has only been found for negative events such as war or natural disasters. Therefore, this study tested whether a positive historical event, here the fall of the Berlin Fall, also elicits a LiH effect and whether this effect would differ due to the subsequent changes in life. Comparing West and East Germans, we found a moderate LiH effect for the fall of the Berlin Wall in East Germans but not in West Germans. Yet, the LiH effect in East Germans did not relate to the perceived change in life or the valence of the historical event. Additionally, this study replicated the finding that life script events serve as temporal landmarks when navigating through one's autobiographical timeline.

Beliefs About Transitional Events: The Effect of Experience and Life-Script Consistency

“…Prior research has demonstrated that script-consistent and script-divergent events organize autobiographical memory and spawn memorable experiences. As noted in the introduction, both types of events serve as temporal landmarks (e.g., Bohn and Habermas, 2016;Shi and Brown, 2016;Gu et al, 2017;Camia et al, 2019), can give rise to "bumps" in the temporal distributions of recalled events (e.g., Pillemer et al, 1986Pillemer et al, , 1988Kurbat et al, 1998;Thomsen and Berntsen, 2005;Uzer and Brown, 2015;Brown et al, 2016;Shi and Brown, 2016;Gu et al, 2017;Thomsen et al, 2021) and are mentioned when people narrate their life stories (Glück and Bluck, 2007;Thomsen and Berntsen, 2008;Rubin et al, 2009;Bohn, 2010;Haque and Hasking, 2010;Dickson et al, 2011;Thomsen et al, 2011;Gu et al, 2017Gu et al, , 2019 and when adult children recall their parents' lives (Svob and Brown, 2012;Svob et al, 2016;Gu et al, 2019). Transition Theory (Brown et al, 2012(Brown et al, , 2016Brown, 2016Brown, , 2021 contends that these phenomena reflect the degree of change engendered by the transitions in question.…”

“…Instead, what is important is how much change has followed in its wake. Consistent with this point, both script-consistent transitions and script-divergent ones are frequently used as temporal landmarks (e.g., Bohn and Habermas, 2016;Shi and Brown, 2016;Gu et al, 2017;Camia et al, 2019) and give rise to a relatively large number of memorable personal experiences (Pillemer et al, 1986(Pillemer et al, , 1988Kurbat et al, 1998;Thomsen and Berntsen, 2005;Uzer and Brown, 2015;Brown et al, 2016;Shi and Brown, 2016;Gu et al, 2017;Thomsen et al, 2021). In addition, both types of events are often mentioned when participants are asked to recall important events from their own lives (Glück and Bluck, 2007;Thomsen and Berntsen, 2008;Rubin et al, 2009;Bohn, 2010;Haque and Hasking, 2010;Dickson et al, 2011;Thomsen et al, 2011;Gu et al, 2017Gu et al, , 2019 and from the lives of their parents (Svob and Brown, 2012;Svob et al, 2016;Gu et al, 2019).…”

“…Interestingly, such script-divergent events (also known as nonnormative events , Baltes et al, 1980 ) are at the center of a second line of transition-focused research, research that has established the existence of collective transitions (e.g., wars, natural disasters). This line of investigation has demonstrated that both collective transitions and individually-experienced script-divergent transitions (e.g., immigration, relocation) have a strong predictable effect on the contents and the structure of autobiographical memory (Schrauf and Rubin, 2001 ; Brown et al, 2009 , 2012 , 2016 ; Brown and Lee, 2010 ; Zebian and Brown, 2014 ; Nourkova and Brown, 2015 ; Uzer and Brown, 2015 ; Bohn and Habermas, 2016 ; Enz et al, 2016 ; Shi and Brown, 2016 ; Gu et al, 2017 , 2019 ; Camia et al, 2019 ).…”

Living-in-history effect in the dating of important autobiographical memories

“…For example, the LiH effect ranged from 17% to 23.9% for the Bosnian Civil War (1992–1995), 5.5% to 26% for WWII (Bohn & Habermas, 2016 ), 5.3% for the Kosovo War, 13.70% to 26.62% for Lebanese Civil War, and 4.3% for the breakup of Yugoslavia (Brown & Lee, 2010 ; Brown et al, 2009 ) (see Supplementary Table 1 , Online Supplementary Material). Other historical/public events that produced significant LiH effects were the Chinese Cultural Revolutio (11.8–25.9%; Gu et al, 2017 ), earthquake in Turkey (0.3–13.9%; Brown et al, 2009 ), migration to Canada (15%; Shi & Brown, 2016 ), and Fall of Berlin Wall (1.0–7.1%; Camia et al, 2019 ). However, the LiH effect was less apparent in the region where the public events had less impact on the citizens.…”

“…Camia et al ( 2019 ) administered TIS to the participants recruited from East Germany to assess the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Their results showed that East Germans experienced significantly higher material change but less psychological change.…”