The stability of life script and life story events of Nigerian young adults across religion and gender

Probing life scripts for important life events in a multi-ethnic society

When asked to recall memories from their personal lives in response to word cues, adults older than 40 years report a significantly greater amount of memories from the time when they were 15–30 years old. This phenomenon is called the reminiscence bump. Cultural life story theory is a cultural explanation of the reminiscence bump. According to this account, the reminiscence bump is heavily influenced by the cultural life script – that is, shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in an ordinary life course. Life scripts locate a high proportion of major transitional life events in the second and third decades of life. The main purpose of this article was to review the empirical evidence and validity for the cultural life script theory. First, I describe the reminiscence bump and briefly mention the theories that attempt to explain why it occurs. Second, I describe the cultural life script theory and how the theory is related to autobiographical memories via life story events. Third, I describe the methodology that has been used to test the cultural life script theory. Finally, I provide a reanalysis of seven studies, based on the cultural life script theory conducted in four countries: Denmark, the USA, Turkey, and the Netherlands. As a part of this reanalysis, I examine the degree to which cultural life scripts guide recall of autobiographical memories by comparing the temporal distribution of life events obtained from the cultural life script (the cultural life script bump) and personal life story events (the reminiscence bump). Results of this reanalysis show that all life scripts across cultures have a lifespan distribution resembling the reminiscence bump. Furthermore, the distribution of the events of the life script generated by a group of old Danes in one of the studies resembles the distribution of their own life story events, suggesting that they used the information contained in the life script to retrieve personal memories.

Autobiographical memories are typically thought of as people's memories for personal life events. Yet, life stories do not exist in isolation; they are shaped by the shared social norms and prescriptions of one's culture as to the order and timing of important transitional events: a cultural life script. An individual's knowledge of their culture's standard life script does not arise from compiled individual life events, but is learned detached from particular personal experiences. When probed, many people's most important personal life events do not match the cultural life script exactly. We note that even some commonly experienced life story events do not match the life script and that their qualitative differences have not been systematically investigated. Why are some common life story events in the cultural life script whereas others are not? To begin exploring these differences, we examined what distinguishes two main types of commonly nominated events within people's personal life stories: events that do overlap with what they conceive of as their culture's life script and events that do not. We offer a secondary data analysis of the Rubin, Berntsen, and Hutson's (2009) life story data, exploring American life story data using the proposed categories of events, the various ratings the authors previously collected, and unused demographic information of interest. Given that this is simply a first step in characterizing the nature of common important life story events, we also provide some speculation for future avenues of investigation and the broader relevance of this work.

Research has shown that identity in adolescence takes the shape of a coherent life story that integrates the past with the present self and provides meaning and purpose in the person's life. One stable feature of narrative identity identified in adults is emotional tone. Here, the development of emotional tone in life stories was investigated across childhood and adolescence. A total of 142 adolescents aged 10 to 14years wrote about their past weekend, their past and future life stories and generated a cultural life script. Across age groups, adolescents told past life stories that were overall mixed (both positive and negative) or moderately positive in emotional tone, and future life stories that were positive or highly positive. In relation to life story development, we replicated findings on age-related development of life story coherence in both past and future life stories in 10-14-year-olds. Lastly, the study highlights the link between life story coherence and cultural life script abilities. Cultural life script typicality was linked to life story coherence for both past and future life stories and across all age groups, and a majority of events mentioned in future life stories overlapped with cultural life script events.

Groups of younger and older participants produced cultural life scripts by listing the seven most important life events and the expected timing of these events for a hypothetical person. They also produced the seven most important life story memories from their own lives. Cultural life scripts and life story memories were rated on valence. Scales on depression, satisfaction with life, and the centrality of an event for identity and the life story were administered. A stable cultural life script was found across the two generations, with a clear bump for positive events in adolescence and early adulthood. However, older adults produced a more realistic, less idealized life script than younger adults. The overlap between life script events and life story memories increased with age. Having a negative event central to one's life story and identity was related to less life satisfaction and, in the young group, higher depression scores. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Life Script Events and Autobiographical Memories of Important Life Story Events in Mexico, Greenland, China, and Denmark

When do children develop the ability to imagine their future lives in terms of a coherent prospective life story? We investigated whether this ability develops in parallel with the ability to construct a life story for the past and narratives about single autobiographical events in the past and future. Four groups of school children aged 9 to 15 years imagined their future lives and produced past life stories, as well as a cultural life script (i.e., culturally shared assumptions as to the order and timing of important life events). They also produced narratives about single autobiographical events to take place in the near future or recent past. Past and prospective life story coherences developed in parallel across ages, that is, older children told more coherent life stories than younger children, irrespective of temporal direction. However, children produced more coherent stories about single events in the past than in the future. Across age groups, prospective life stories were shorter, contained more life script events and were more positive than past life stories. Life script normativity increased with age and predicted the coherence of prospective, but not of past, life stories. The findings indicate that the ability to tell coherent life stories for the past and future develops in parallel and relies on similar processes. Life script abilities might be a major factor in the development of past and prospective life story coherences but not for the development of single event story coherences.

This study examines predictions from two theories on the organisation of autobiographical memory: Cultural Life Script Theory which conceptualises the organisation of autobiographical memory by cultural schemata, and Transition Theory which proposes that people organise their memories in relation to personal events that changed the fabric of their daily lives, or in relation to negative collective public transitions, called the Living-in-History effect. Predictions from both theories were tested in forty-eight-old Germans from Berlin and Northern Germany. We tested whether the Living-in-History effect exists for both negative (the Second World War) and positive (Fall of Berlin Wall) collectively experienced events, and whether cultural life script events serve as a prominent strategy to date personal memories. Results showed a powerful, long-lasting Living-in History effect for the negative, but not the positive event. Berlin participants dated 26% of their memories in relation to the Second World War. Supporting cultural life script theory, life script events were frequently used to date personal memories. This provides evidence that people use a combination of culturally transmitted knowledge and knowledge based on personal experience to navigate through their autobiographical memories, and that experiencing war has a lasting impact on the organisation of autobiographical memories across the life span.

The authors investigated the relationship between the acquisition of cultural life scripts and the degree of coherence in children's and adolescents' life stories. Three groups of Danish school children aged 9 to 15 years participated. In 3 sessions, they wrote down a recently experienced single autobiographical event, their life story, and their cultural life script. Single-event and life stories were scored for coherence; life scripts were scored for normativity compared to an adult norm. Single-event stories and life stories were longer and more coherent in the older participants. Younger participants wrote significantly more coherent single-event stories than life stories. When controlling for age, single-event story coherence and global life story coherence did not correlate significantly, suggesting different developmental pathways. Life script normativity increased steadily across childhood and adolescence. Further, a significant relationship between the normativity of life scripts and the coherence of life stories, but not the coherence of single-event stories, was found.

ABSTRACTCultural life scripts influence the recall of important personal events. Testing this well‐established finding in an understudied culture that underwent rapid cultural change, this study compared life story memories of a younger and an older Emirati generation to Newborn and Elderly life scripts provided by both age groups. Results replicated that most memories were scripted in content, formed a reminiscence bump, and were predominantly positive. Yet, due to the historical change, the younger participants composed an Elderly life script that did not match the lives of their contemporary seniors. Moreover, neither age group evaluated the Emirati life scripts more positively than their life stories. Instead, the valences of life script events and life story memories indicate increasing realism with age and experience. Overall, results imply that cultural life scripts do not easily adjust to societal change and do not always represent an idealized life.

This study explores the relationship between cultural life scripts and actual life stories of Czechs and Slovaks, building on prior research by Štěpánková et al. (2020. Czech and Slovak life scripts: The rare case of two countries that used to be one. Memory, 28(10), 1204–1218) that examined the semantic knowledge of an ideal life within the Czech and Slovak cultures (cultural life scripts). The current study investigates the extent to which individual life stories align with or diverge from these cultural life scripts. A clear reminiscence bump – a concentration of positive memories between the ages of 15 and 30 – was observed in participants' life stories. The impact of most important life events was analysed using the Transitional Impact Scale (TIS). Results showed that positive cultural script-consistent events yielded the highest TIS scores, while unique, script-divergent negative events had greater impact on psychological dimension of the TIS than their positive counterparts. These findings are discussed in the context of existing literature, highlighting their theoretical implications and alignment with prior research.

This study, involving 34 Malaysian adults, investigated if the memory of cultural life script congruent and incongruent events was better than life script neutral events. We created a 1500-word hypothetical life story of a Malaysian girl comprising six life script congruent, six life script incongruent, and six life script neutral events. Half of those events were high-frequent, and half were low-frequent life script events. Participants first read the story on a computer screen and then completed a free recall test ten minutes later and again one week later. They recalled as many details as they could from the 18 events presented in the story. The results revealed that participants retrieved more information from the life script incongruent events than from life script congruent events at both recall points. The memory for high-frequent life script events was better than for low-frequent and life script-neutral events. Overall, the recall rate was higher in the immediate than in the late phase. The results confirm the isolation effects or Von Restorff effect, which predicts that unusual and distinctive events are more memorable than typical, commonly expected events.

ABSTRACTCultural life scripts are shared knowledge about the timing of important life events. In the present study, we examined whether cultural life scripts are transmitted through traditions and whether there are additional ways through which they can be attained by asking Australian and Malaysian participants which information sources they had used to generate the life script of their culture. Participants hardly reported that they had used cultural and religious traditions. They more often reported that they had used their own experiences and experiences of relatives and friends. They also reported the use of comments of relatives and friends and the use of newspapers, books, movies and television programmes. Furthermore, we examined the stability of life scripts and similarities and differences across cultures. We found that life scripts are stable cognitive structures and that there are, besides cross-cultural differences in the content, small cross-cultural differences in the valence and distribution of life script events, with the Australian life script containing more positive events and more events expected to occur before the age of 16.

Autobiographical reasoning is closely related to the development of normative ideas about life as measured by the cultural life script. The acquisition of a life script is an important prerequisite for autobiographical reasoning because children learn through the life script which events are expected to go into their life story, and when to expect certain events in life. Thus, the cultural life script not only helps organize autobiographical memories, but it also guides expectations for our future life stories. Therefore, the cultural life script should be considered the overarching principle of organizing autobiographical memories across the lifespan.

Young adults typically believe that life gets increasingly satisfying over time. We examined the cultural life script as a source of these beliefs. In Study 1 (N = 1244), tabulation of previously published studies indicated that life script events are perceived as becoming increasingly positive over time between the ages of 10 and 30. Further, a specific series of 16 key life script events during this life stage was identified. These results were replicated in Study 2 (N = 100, Mage = 21.14, 51% female) based on young adults‘ perceptions concerning life script events in their personal life stories. Further, the perception that life script events in one's personal life story were becoming increasingly positive over time was linked with more steeply inclining subjective life satisfaction trajectories (i.e. recollected past < current < anticipated future life satisfaction). In Study 3 (N = 261, Mage = 18.5, 93.7% female), manipulating life script event information (number and positivity of events over time) within a personal life story had an additive impact on young adults‘ subjective life satisfaction trajectories. These findings reveal a robust connection between information contained with the cultural life script and the belief that life gets more and more satisfying over time. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology