An investigation of autobiographical memories through the lens of an honor culture

Abstract

Culture influences autobiographical remembering. However, no previous study examined autobiographical memory narratives through the lens of an honor culture. The present set of studies investigated the effects of implicit and explicit activation of honor-related schemas, honor endorsement, and gender on autobiographical memories of Turkish participants. In Study 1, we primed honor by using honor-related words in honor condition (vs. neutral words in control condition) in a scrambled sentences task, then asked participants to report one gender-defining memory. Results revealed that men in the honor condition gave more memories that include honor-enhancing and honor-attacking themes, compared to men in the control condition. In addition, women in the honor condition were less likely to provide familial narratives, but more likely to report memories from an observer perspective as their honor endorsement scores increase, compared to men in the honor condition. In Study 2, we randomly assigned participants to honor-enhancing, honor-attacking, and important memory conditions, and investigated how honor-related memories differ from personally important memories. Honor-related memories were more likely to include a relationship with social members and contain references to an audience. Honor-enhancing memories were more likely to contain honor-related themes, and more likely to be rated higher on phenomenological properties, compared to other memories. Also, men tended to rate their memories higher on phenomenological properties compared to women. Taken together, our results suggest a form of “positivity bias” in terms of the link between autobiographical memory and culture of honor.