Remembering public, political events: a cross-cultural and -sectional examination of australian and japanese public memories

Stone, Charles Beason [UCL] Luminet, Olivier [UCL] Takahashi, Masanobu [University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo, Japan]

We examined and compared the initiating conditions of flashbulb memory (FBM) confidence and event memory accuracy across two different, yet similar public, political events occurring in two different countries: Australia and Japan. To do so, we seized upon the occurrence of two politically important events: the resignation of the Japanese and Australian Prime Ministers in June 2010. In a series of mean and correlation analyses, we concluded that different factors may determine event memory accuracy and FBM confidence across cultures. In particular, the way different cultures emotionally appraise and rehearse the event, their attitude toward the political parties/their political involvement and self-construal may have important implications for how individuals accurately remember the event and the confidence they hold for their memories of the context when learning of the event. We discuss avenues of future research to better understand the extent to which cultural differences drove these results.