Lack of bump in public events when recent events prevail

Abstract

Reminiscence bump refers to the increased recall of events from adolescence and early adulthood. It is a robust phenomenon for personal events, while the evidence for the bump has been inconsistent for public events. The present study addressed lifespan distributions of public events in a nationally representative sample of adults (N = 1200) in Turkey. We demonstrated a robust recency effect in the temporal distribution of public event memories. When we examined the bump in the most frequently reported events, the recency effect persisted. The only exception was the bump for the military coup in 1980, a relatively more distant event among the most frequent events. Findings suggested that high-impact events in Turkey’s recent past may overshadow the past events. Inline, we discuss the role of the context and age distribution of the sample to explain the inconsistency in the evidence for the reminiscence bump in public events.