The Effect of Culture on Memory (DP IB Psychology): Revision Note

The effect of culture on memory

• Culture refers to the shared products of socialisation within a group, society or nation and involves a set of rules, norms and customs that members agree upon and follow

• Culture is active, not passive; individuals contribute to and are shaped by the cultures they experience

• Culture is a bi-directional process: people create culture and culture influence their development

• Culture is not static; it changes over time by advancing technologies, by social change, and geographical movement

Flashbulb memories & culture

• A flashbulb memory (FBM) is a vivid, long-lasting, emotionally significant memory triggered by a surprising or meaningful event

  • Autobiographical memories can be a type of FBM as many of these memories have great meaning attached to them due to their emotional nature

• FBMs are thought to be more vivid, detailed, long-lasting and enduring than everyday memories

• FBMs may be formed from episodic events in a person’s life

  • E.g., winning a race, a birthday party, falling from a tree

• FBMs are described as being 'captured like a photograph', stored in long-term memory for years or even a lifetime.

Research support for the effect of culture on memory

Wang et al. (2008)

Aim:

• To investigate autobiographical memory for childhood events in three culture groups

Participants:

• The participants were all college students

  • 101 participants from the USA

  • 104 participants from England

  • 97 participants from China (210 female; 92 male)

Procedure:

• The participants were allocated to small groups and were asked by a researcher to recall as many childhood events as possible from when they were five years old

• Each participant was then asked to recall:

  • the date when each event occurred

  • how old they were at the time of each event (to the nearest month)

• They were then asked to use a five-point scale to rate each memory in terms of its:

  • frequency as a talking point in their family

  • how important it was to them

  • how clear, detailed, emotional and positive/negative it was

  • where it came from (from themselves or from someone else)

Results:

• Participants from the USA recalled the highest number of memories from childhood

• Participants from England had the second highest recall rate

• Participants from China recalled the fewest childhood memories

• The Chinese participants recalled memories from a later age than did the American and English participants

• The best-recalled memories were those that had been rehearsed to some extent

• Most of the memories came from the individual rather than from others

Conclusion:

• Chinese people may be less prone to recalling vivid events from childhood than American or English people due to cultural influences

• American people are more likely to view their childhood from an individualistic perspective, i.e., what is relevant to the individual

• Chinese people are more likely to view their childhood from a collectivist perspective, i.e., what is relevant to the groups to which they belong

Evaluation of the effect of culture on memory

Strengths

• Culture permeates every aspect of a person's life (even if they are unaware of its reach), which means that research such as Wang's has good external validity

• Participants recalled childhood events within the same five-year time frame, which means that the researchers compared the frequency, number and quality of the memories across the 3 cultural groups

  • This means that emerging patterns could be clearly identified, which increases the reliability of the findings

Limitations

• Individual differences may have confounded the results:

  • some of the participants may have had more eventful childhood experiences than others, making the memories more vivid and therefore easier to recall

• Some people have better memories than others, which is another individual difference not accounted for in Wang's study

Link to concepts

Causality

• In Wang's study participants were given only five minutes to collect their thoughts and retrieve childhood memories

  • This means that the findings could be the result of the pressure of trying to recall such events within a short period of time, which could have resulted in some false memories or in a temporary loss of a specific memory

    • Perhaps given more time the results would have been more similar across the groups

Bias

• Only one collectivist culture (China) was represented in the sample, whereas two individualist cultures were represented

  • This means that the findings are biased towards the individualistic cultures and may even suffer from an imposed etic, that is, a culturally-specific idea is wrongly imposed on another culture

  • E.g., the assumption is that autobiographical memory is experienced in ways which are only meaningful when given an individualistic perspective