7.1 Culture and Autobiographical Memory

Culture plays a significant role in shaping our memories, particularly our autobiographical memories. For example, think about your earliest memory of seeing a doctor. What do you recall about this visit? How old were you? Are your memories more general, or can you recall specific details, such as the number of vaccines you received, the name of the friendly nurse who sang songs to console you, or the flavor of lollipop you received for your good behavior? Interestingly, culture seems to play a role in determining both the age and specificity of our earliest autobiographical memories.

The overwhelming majority of people experience some childhood amnesia, and the age of the very first memory people can retrieve is often referred to as a “boundary” of childhood amnesia (Peterson, 2021). As noted, culture is an important determinant of the age of one’s first memory. For instance, research has shown that Canadian children have earlier first memories than Chinese children and that people who grow up in urban environments have earlier first memories than people who grow up in rural environments (Goz et al., 2017; Peterson et al., 2009).

One way that culture influences the age of our earliest memories is by emphasizing or de-emphasizing the importance of telling our stories (MacDonald et al., 2000). In many cultures—for example, New Zealand Māori, Native American, and West African cultures—storytelling is valued not only as a form of entertainment, but also as a vital method of knowledge maintenance and transmission. From the time they learn to speak, children in these cultures are often taught important cultural stories. In the process, they are also taught how to be effective storytellers. Children quickly learn that stories can be used to entertain and educate close others about their own experiences. As stories are highly effective tools for remembering information, there’s evidence that people from storytelling cultures are able to recall earlier memories than people from cultures that do not place as much emphasis on storytelling.

Culture also influences our ability to recall more specific and general details of our early memories. For example, when asked to describe early childhood memories, White people in the United States tend to recall more specific autobiographical memories than Chinese and Chinese American children, and women tend to recall more specific autobiographical memories than men. In contrast, people from Asian cultures are more inclined than people from non-Asian cultures to encode and recall general event information (Wang 2006, 2009).

What explains these differences? One answer has to do with emotion. White American children and women in many cultures are often raised to develop rich emotion knowledge—that is, an understanding of what they are feeling and the situations that trigger different feelings. Across cultures, there are strong neural links between emotion and memory. As a result, White American children and those socialized as girls and women are more inclined to remember details about how they felt during a given episode of their lives (MacDonald et al., 2000; Wang, 2008), and these emotions activate cascades of detailed associated memories.

Another explanation for cultural differences in autobiographical memory has to do with differences in social orientations. People in Eastern cultures, such as Japan and China, are more inclined to have a sense of self that is intertwined with their group rather than independent from the group (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). This social orientation is tightly intertwined with a second cultural difference, the tendency toward more holistic (versus analytical) thinking (Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). In other words, people in Eastern cultures are more inclined to see themselves as part of a group and to have cognitive biases toward groups and systems versus individuals. This may explain why people from Eastern cultures are better able to remember general details about autobiographical events. Interestingly, many of these differences seem to follow us into adulthood (Millar et al., 2013).

For additional context on these differences, see Noba Unit: Culture and Emotion.