Adolescents' meaningful memories reflect a trajectory of self-development from family over school to friends
The relationship between autobiographical memories and self is important in many theories. Promising recent approaches from cross-cultural psychology use a concept of "self-construal", in which reference to others can be as important as indicators of autonomy. However, these studies typica...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Nordic psychology 2011-10, Vol.63 (3), p.4-24 |
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Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | The relationship between autobiographical memories and self is important in many
theories. Promising recent approaches from cross-cultural psychology use a
concept of "self-construal", in which reference to others
can be as important as indicators of autonomy. However, these studies typically
ask for earliest memories only, whereas we would expect the roles of others to
change over the course of development. Taking as a premise that
adolescents' life unfolds in three concurrent settings -
family, school, and friendship - we asked 66 adolescents (22
Norwegians in Study 1, and 40 Slovaks in Study 2) for a meaningful memory from
each of these settings. The memories they selected from the family setting were
oldest, school memories intermediate and friend memories most recent, suggesting
a developmental trajectory in which the three settings have changed in
importance. Memories from the friendship setting were also most frequently on
their mind. Furthermore, family memories referred most to other people, friend
memories marginally less and school memories least, suggesting different
contributions of these settings to self-construal. We conclude that
characteristics of adolescents' meaningful memories reflect shifting
settings' dominance during development and complementary roles of
family, school and friends for adolescents' current
self-construal. |
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ISSN: | 1901-2276 1904-0016 |
DOI: | 10.1027/1901-2276/a000036 |