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.

Keywords

autobiographical memory collective memory life span retrieval public events reminiscence bump

Reminiscence bump refers to the distinctively higher number of personal memories reported from ages 10–30 (Rubin et al., 1986). Studies have shown consistent evidence for the bump when adults above 40 years old recalled their memories for the important or emotional, mostly positive events. The same pattern emerged when researchers used various retrieval cues such as movies, newspaper clips, and words (Conway et al., 2005; Demiray et al., 2009; Glück and Bluck, 2007; Holmes and Conway, 1999; Janssen and Murre, 2008; Janssen et al., 2005; Thomsen et al., 2011). The reminiscence bump was also present in the distribution of memories for public events. However, the evidence has been less consistent; either there was no bump or the ages for the bump were different than the one for personal events (see Munawar et al., 2018, for a review). Variability in findings could be explained by the cueing methodology (Koppel and Berntsen, 2015), the characteristics of the sample (Schuman et al., 1998), or whether the events were national or international (Schuman and Corning, 2012).

Accounts that explain reminiscence bump

Various accounts have explained reminiscence bump for personal events. The biological account argues for enhanced cognitive abilities that peak around age 20, which leads to a better encoding of the events experienced at these ages (Janssen and Murre, 2008; Rubin et al., 1998). The cognitive account focuses more on the novelty of the events and suggests that these events are highly distinctive and first-time experiences for the individual, leading to encoding advantages. The identity formation account holds a developmental perspective for the bump (Conway and Haque, 1999; Habermas and Bluck, 2000). Individuals tend to explore who they are through the transition from adolescence to adulthood. These years involve events that contribute to identity formation, linking who they are with their long-term goals for the future. These important events for the self are thus uniquely encoded, highly rehearsed, and marked as turning points of a lifetime (Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Pillemer, 2001; Rathbone et al., 2008). Another account, the cultural life-script account (Berntsen and Rubin, 2002), suggests that typical events expected to occur in a typical lifetime form the life script. When people try to retrieve personal events from their past, they use this script as a template and life-script events as cues that aid retrieval (e.g. Berntsen and Rubin, 2002; Bohn, 2010; Ece and Gülgöz, 2014). Finally, the life-story account (e.g. Glück and Bluck, 2007) focuses on the age-normative nature of the bump events and their contribution to identity development. In this period, individuals encounter age-normative situations in which they take charge of their lives by making highly profound career choices, childbearing decisions, and relational commitments. In that sense, the life-story account explains the bump as a function of the transitional but positive events whereby they exert self-control in bump years (Demiray et al., 2009). There is evidence supporting each of these views, but often, the presence of a bump is accountable by several approaches at once.

Although there is consistency in observing a bump, some studies showed that its temporal location is variable (Koppel and Berntsen, 2015). For example, studies with immigrants showed a peak around the years of relocation irrespective of the age when they experienced these events (e.g. Schrauf and Rubin, 2001). The transitional nature of immigration may be guiding the organization of events in autobiographical memory, leading to the formation of the bump due to better encoding around the time of transition (e.g. Brown, 2016). According to this view, the impact of transition spreads to other events in those years. Therefore, it is not only personal transitions that can form a peak in the age distribution of past events but also collective transitions (Shi and Brown, 2016). Also, transition-related bump involves conflictual events that are negative (Svob et al., 2016), showing that such events can form a peak at any other age period than the bump years. In addition to variation due to the sample, the cueing methodology influenced the bump’s temporal location. When individuals were word-cued in retrieval, the bump appeared earlier than when they reported important events (Koppel and Berntsen, 2015). Such variation in the bump’s temporal location raises the possibility that it is not the encoding but the retrieval mechanisms that account for the reminiscence bump. If the bump were a function of encoding, the temporal location would be similar irrespective of the memory eliciting cues. More specifically, the presence of a bump is probably independent of the characteristics of the events themselves (e.g. distinctiveness) or the strength of encoding (e.g. cognitive abilities). Instead, the conditions of retrieval (e.g. script or current context) shape the temporal distribution of past events.

Reminiscence bump for public events

Memory for public events has also indicated a reminiscence bump in some studies (Holmes and Conway, 1999; Schuman and Corning, 2012; Schuman and Scott, 1989), but the evidence is inconsistent. In many studies, the bump was salient for the most important events (Rubin et al., 1998; Schuman and Corning, 2012; Schuman et al., 2003), while in some studies, the bump ages differed. For example, when individuals listed important public events in the past, a bump emerged around ages 15–30 (Schuman and Scott, 1989). However, when they conducted the analyses on single events, a bump appeared only for the most important events (Rubin et al., 1998). Similarly, in a sample of Turkish adults, Tekcan et al. (2017) found increased recall of public events only for the two most frequently reported events. Sample characteristics like event relevance are also influential (Schuman et al., 1998). For example, Koppel and Berntsen (2015) did not find a bump for World War II in a sample of Danish adults as the event had relatively less influence in Denmark. When the Japanese and Germans were asked about important events, on the contrary, World War II dominated the reports. Age distribution of responses showed a peak in young adulthood years, showing that World War II was disproportionately reported by individuals who experienced the event in their early adulthoods. However, there were differences in the content mentioned in World War II between countries. For Germans, the Holocaust theme was mentioned for World War II, especially by individuals aged between 10 and 20 at the time of the war, but such a pattern did not emerge for the Japanese (Schuman et al., 1998).

The accounts used to explain the bump for personal events could also serve to understand the age distribution of public events (Koppel and Berntsen, 2014; Munawar et al., 2018). The life-script and life-story accounts may be less relevant to public events. Yet, some aspects of the other accounts may be helpful to explain a bump in the recall of public events. For example, the novelty of events would enhance encoding, important public events may be influential in the formation of the self, and the peak cognitive abilities may facilitate the encoding of events at those ages. First, however, it is essential to understand the distinction between personal and public events. Other factors may be at play when shaping the retrieval of public events. For example, the age that collective identity forms may be earlier or later (Conway and Haque, 1999) if a highly transitional event is present in that society. Alternatively, if high-impact events are frequent, they may be indistinguishable, integrated, or confused with each other. Even for the same event, how the individual or the social group conceives the event may alter the initial representation over time.

Public events experienced in some countries are more intense and frequent. For example, there have been many transitional events at the individual and societal levels in Turkey, such as coups and coup attempts, bombing attacks, political conflicts, and natural disasters (Adaman et al., 2017). These events escalated in frequency after 2012, beginning with the Gezi Park protests and the government’s reaction to these protests, resulting in a few years of unrest (for events of the decade, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2010s_in_Turkey). These public events may not affect all the members of a nation equally, but at a collective level, frequent experiences of adverse events may shape the script in a society (Kuzmanic, 2008; Wang, 2008).

Present study

In the present study, our goal was to examine whether the bump for public events persisted in Turkey, given the plethora of recent major events, and test whether event qualities and the phenomenological characteristics of remembering these events manifested any distinct pattern. In a recent study, Tekcan et al. (2017) asked for the most important and the most emotional (e.g. the saddest, the happiest, the proudest) public events and tested the reminiscence bump for public events in a Turkish sample. Although memory for emotionally most salient events did not show any bump, examination of the most important events revealed a bump for the two most frequently reported events. Their findings were consistent with previous evidence suggesting that bumps for public events may be exclusive to highly important events. In a later study, Öner and Gülgöz (2020) asked for important events from Turkey’s past and demonstrated a recency effect in a large sample of Turkish adults. However, the data were from a sample recruited through social media, over-represented by highly educated, urban participants. Considering that such a sample may bias importance in favor of events recently experienced in areas of participant residence, in the current study, we focused on the most important events in a nationally representative sample.

We asked individuals to list five important public events that occurred in their lifetimes. After dating the events, individuals rated the event characteristics (e.g. valence, importance), rehearsal frequencies (e.g. media exposure), and the phenomenological characteristics of recall (e.g. reliving). The current study complements Tekcan et al.’s (2017) study in several ways. First, while they asked for the collective memory of events experienced in the past 70 years, we asked for events during the respondents’ lifetime to elicit memories of events experienced personally. This distinction is important because the period set a cue that constitutes a frame for individuals guiding their retrieval. When the participants can report an event from a time before they were born, the memory can be a product of semantic knowledge and collective memory. However, when they recall events since their birth, participants would scan the events throughout their lives and select the ones that are more likely to be remembered and relevant to their lives. In other words, we addressed the public events that are important not only for the nation but also for the individual’s own life. Thus, an event goes beyond being abstract learning of the past and becomes autobiographical.

Another difference from the Tekcan et al. (2017) study was that they requested two important events and then used emotions as retrieval cues for public events. When they collapsed all reported events, analyses based on the most frequent events demonstrated a peak in bump years. In line with the previous observation by Tekcan et al. that only those events that dominated the Turkish collective memory produce a bump, in the current study, we focused only on important events and aimed to have a larger pool by asking for the five most important events.

Finally, there have been several tumultuous events¹ since 2013, when Tekcan et al. (2017) collected data, such as terror attacks, public upheavals, coup attempts, and economic crises. In that sense, current research addressed whether a bump would persist despite the overshadowing effect of recent events.

The current study complements both the Öner and Gülgöz (2020) and Tekcan et al. (2017) studies by assuring that the sample is representative of the population of Turkey by using a stratified, multistage cluster sampling. This strategy has a disadvantage because it cannot ensure an equal number of participants in each age group. However, the results reported here are part of a larger project, and this type of sampling served the general purposes of the project more adequately.

Overall, we had two principal goals. First, we were interested in the age distribution of public events to see whether a bump would emerge or it would be interfered with by important recent events. Second, we focused on the characteristics of frequently remembered events and events experienced at different ages. We expected a recency effect rather than a reminiscence bump because severe public events in Turkey were highly frequent in the recent past, hindering flexible mental time travel and leading to considerable retroactive interference. We also tested whether the bump was present for single events and implemented the bump analyses to the most frequently reported events. In case of a bump for particular events, we expected higher ratings of importance, emotional intensity, and a sense of reliving, demonstrating the distinctive memory characteristics for bump events.

Method

Participants

We conducted the study with a large nationally representative sample of the Turkish population between April and June 2019. The sample included 1215 individuals (610 female). We selected individuals from 26 cities located in the European Union’s geographical classification system based on the socioeconomic statistics (EUROSTAT NUTS; Eurostat, 2008) using a stratified, multistage cluster sampling scheme designed to represent the population at the national, urban–rural, and regional level. The participants’ age ranged between 18 and 86, with a mean age of 38.92 (SD = 13.54). In the whole sample, 58.2% of the individuals were at least high school graduates, with 50% working in a full-time job, 23.1% homemakers, and 8.3% retired.

Bump-related analyses have typically focused on data from adults 40 years or older; thus, we selected the participants aged 40 and above (n = 625). This group corresponds to 41.1% of the sample (50.9% female, M_age = 51.38, SD = 8.66). Demographic information showed slight variation from the whole sample; only the work status differed significantly, with more retired individuals.

Individuals participated in the study voluntarily. We excluded reports with no specific events, including general categories (e.g. femicides, sexual abuse cases) that did not refer to a particular event, time, and context. This exclusion left us with 2362 events out of a potential 3125. Table 1 presents a detailed overview of the demographics of the participants reporting the included events.

Table 1.

Demographic characteristics of the sample.

	Primary school	Secondary school	High School	College/university
Age (%)
41–45	33.8	13.9	39.1	13.2
46–50	29.8	22.6	38.1	9.5
51–55	42.6	22.8	27.7	6.9
56–60	50.9	7.5	28.3	13.2
61–65	57.5	17.5	25.0	-
66–70	68.4	5.3	15.8	10.5
71+	66.7	11.1	0.0	22.2
Gender (%)
Male	34.2	19.7	35.5	10.5
Female	48.0	13.5	28.8	9.6
Total (%)	41.1	16.6	32.2	10.1

Measures

Participants completed a survey package including sections of demographic and personal information and public event memories. The demographics section included questions of age, gender, education level, and socioeconomic status. There were also personal questions where individuals indicated their political orientations and their collective and ethnic identities. In the public events section, individuals listed five public events and rated the phenomenological characteristics of each memory.

Public events sections

Individuals reported what they thought to be the five most important public events in Turkey since they were born. Then, the researcher repeated these events, and the participants indicated the date for each. After dating the events, participants rated the recollective properties (i.e. reliving, emotional intensity), event characteristics (i.e. valence, importance), and how much media exposure they had related to this event. The participants rated each item on a 5-point scale. There were two additional meta-memory-related questions. One of these questions was the psychological distance of the event (How long ago do you feel the event has occurred?). The other was an estimation of this event being part of the collective script (What ratio of the individuals your age do you think included this event in Turkey’s important events list?). The participants rated these two items on a 10-point scale, with higher scores indicating that the event is perceived to have occurred a long time ago and is more likely to be a part of the collective script.

Procedure

The survey was administered in face-to-face interviews by a research company, Infakto Research Workshop. We discussed the sampling and data collection procedures with the researchers to ensure the implementation was as planned and easy to follow. In the initial step, interviewers received training to administer the survey, and they conducted pilot surveys in İstanbul. Based on the feedback from pilot surveys, we made minor revisions in the survey structure and simplified the instructions to facilitate its administration in the field.

The survey was introduced as a study focusing on what individuals think of Turkey’s past and future. One male and one female researcher made home visits, and they administered the public events survey to one individual per household. The interviewees first asked about their age and gender. Then, they asked the interviewees for five public events that occurred after they were born and the dates of these events. Next, they repeated each event to the participants and asked them to rate the phenomenological qualities, event characteristics, and meta-memory ratings for each event. Finally, the participants responded to social-political attitude, income, education, and work status questions. The administration of the survey took 20–40 minutes.

Results

We followed three steps in data analysis. First, we explored the events that were reported more frequently. Second, we examined the age distribution of all public events rated as important to test for the presence of the reminiscence bump for important public events. Last, we repeated the analyses using single events focusing on the most frequently reported ones. We plotted age distributions using 10-year bins. Since we had few individuals in the 70+ bin, we collapsed the oldest bins representing 60 years and above. We used seven 10-year bins for the analyses on the bump and the phenomenology ratings, and we adjusted the alpha level using Bonferroni correction.

Important public events in Turkey

Of the whole sample, while 88% provided three events, only 46.4% generated four or more important events, indicating difficulties for more than half of the sample to come up with five important events in Turkey’s past. We first coded all 5936 events listed in the important event list based on their content. There emerged more than 150 distinct events. Even when we clustered thematically relevant, low-frequency events together, we had 92 events reported at least by five individuals. We categorized the events referring to the same public event with different wordings as the same (e.g. we classified “the brutal July 15 coup attempt” and “fight for our victory on July 15” as the 2016 coup attempt). In addition to events with specific times and dates, there were some general situational descriptions (e.g. injustice, refugee problem). We excluded those generic categories from further analyses, but we included them in the table reporting the events. Table 2 presents the list of the events that at least 1% of the sample reported and their qualities.

Table 2.

Public events reported by at least 1% of the individuals in the sample and mean ratings for the event characteristics.

	Year	Frequency (%)	Age at event	Reliving	Intensity	Media	Public importance
15 July Coup Attempt	2016	27.3	48.17 (8.54)	4.15 (1.19)	4.12 (1.18)	4.25 (1.03)	4.13 (1.15)
12 September Military Coup	1980	9.7	17.40 (5.68)	3.92 (1.27)	3.97 (1.22)	3.49 (1.41)	4.17 (1.05)
Gezi Park Protests	2013	9.6	44.43 (8.24)	3.68 (1.32)	3.67 (1.33)	4.24 (1.01)	3.58 (1.40)
Marmara Earthquake	1999	9.4	32.12 (8.70)	4.09 (1.11)	4.27 (1.05)	3.93 (1.15)	3.53 (1.32)
2018 Economic Crisis	2018	3.5	49.28 (8.31)	4.52 (0.92)	4.25 (0.99)	3.95 (1.27)	4.07 (1.42)
Soma Disaster	2014	2.6	43.85 (5.69)	4.35 (0.91)	4.68 (0.63)	4.35 (0.73)	3.91 (1.11)
Syrian War-Refugees		2.6		4.00 (1.32)	3.91 (1.50)	3.88 (1.38)	3.39 (1.47)
23 June Istanbul Elections	2019	2.6	48.94 (7.38)	4.58 (0.79)	3.91 (1.10)	3.79 (1.19)	4.03 (1.26)
February 1997 Military Memorandum	1997	2.3	32.00 (9.13)	3.62 (1.42)	4.00 (1.25)	3.93 (1.22)	3.90 (1.34)
Sivas Massacre	1993	2.0	26.23 (9.92)	3.76 (1.09)	4.16 (0.80)	4.44 (0.76)	3.76 (1.05)
Presidency Referendum	2017	1.8	46.29 (7.62)	4.00 (1.27)	3.78 (1.34)	4.48 (0.89)	4.30 (0.87)
Cancelation of the Istanbul Elections	2019	1.7	52.86 (9.53)	4.70 (0.47)	4.60 (0.50)	4.40 (0.75)	4.40 (1.18)
2002 Elections—AKP Ruling	2002	1.6	35.29 (9.02)	4.45 (0.82)	4.10 (1.11)	4.25 (1.07)	4.30 (1.21)
2001 Economic Crisis	2001	1.4	6.06 (10.40)	4.29 (0.92)	4.06 (1.02)	3.82 (1.07)	3.94 (1.08)
1960 Military Coup	1960	1.3	35.50 (2.97)	3.94 (1.28)	3.88 (1.14)	3.25 (1.39)	3.81 (1.22)
Death of Turgut Ozal	1993	1.2	24.50 (7.20)	3.86 (1.02)	3.93 (0.73)	3.86 (1.35)	4.07 (0.61)
Ankara Bombing	2015	1.1	46.27 (9.82)	4.53 (0.65)	4.20 (1.26)	4.67 (0.48)	3.94 (1.33)
Cyprus Operation	1974	1.1	18.29 (9.16)	3.83 (1.40)	4.08 (1.08)	3.58 (1.37)	4.08 (1.16)
Sur Attacks	2015	1.1	46.50 (6.84)	4.50 (1.01)	4.57 (0.85)	4.00 (1.24)	4.14 (1.09)
		Public valence		Personal valence		Distance	Script
15 July Coup Attempt		1.74 (1.17)		1.69 (1.07)		2.83 (3.16)	4.09 (0.99)
12 September Military Coup		1.89 (1.25)		1.76 (1.14)		5.01 (3.72)	3.66 (1.19)
Gezi Park Protests		2.03 (1.29)		2.02 (1.30)		3.79 (3.46)	3.81 (1.08)
Marmara Earthquake		1.29 (0.64)		1.34 (0.68)		3.30 (3.17)	4.13 (0.92)
2018 Economic Crisis		1.43 (1.10)		1.45 (1.06)		1.89 (2.50)	4.30 (0.93)
Soma Disaster		1.32 (0.58)		1.26 (0.48)		1.65 (1.20)	3.76 (1.23)
Syrian War-Refugees		1.15 (0.56)		1.24 (0.61)		3.21 (3.42)	3.88 (1.13)
23 June Istanbul Elections		3.33 (1.49)		3.61 (1.29)		2.48 (2.84)	4.00 (1.22)
February 1997 Military Memorandum		2.17 (1.39)		2.10 (1.20)		4.10 (4.08)	3.31 (1.07)
Sivas Massacre		1.68 (0.95)		1.40 (0.50)		2.60 (3.35)	4.08 (1.03)
Presidency Referendum		2.52 (1.59)		2.35 (1.43)		2.65 (2.36)	3.61 (1.11)
Cancelation of the Istanbul Elections		1.90 (1.61)		1.85 (1.53)		1.85 (2.62)	3.90 (0.71)
2002 Elections—AKP Ruling		3.30 (1.86)		3.20 (1.90)		2.65 (2.79)	3.95 (1.09)
2001 Economic Crisis		1.24 (0.56)		1.24 (0.56)		3.41 (3.00)	3.12 (1.16)
1960 Military Coup		1.88 (1.20)		2.00 (1.26)		3.94 (2.90)	2.88 (1.25)
Death of Turgut Ozal		1.50 (0.76)		1.50 (0.65)		3.93 (3.79)	3.36 (0.92)
Ankara Bombing		2.20 (1.52)		2.07 (1.48)		3.40 (3.29)	3.67 (1.11)
Cyprus Operation		3.08 (1.88)		3.08 (1.88)		3.50 (3.28)	3.00 (1.20)
Sur Attacks		2.14 (1.09)		2.50 (1.74)		2.29 (3.26)	2.79 (0.97)

AKP: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi.

Year: actual date of event; freq: percentage of event reported in the sample; age at event: individual’s age at the time of the event; reliving: degree of re-experiencing event; intensity: emotional intensity of the event; media: the extent event is followed on media; public importance: the extent the event is viewed as turning point; public and personal valence: negativity–positivity of the event for the public and the individual; distance: subjective time passed after the event; script: the extent own cohort reported the event.

Recent events appeared more frequently in that 46.6% of the reported events came from the last 5 years. The most frequently reported events were 15 July 2016 coup attempt (27.3%), 1980 military coup (9.7%), and 2013 Gezi Park events (9.6%), which were followed by the 1999 Marmara Earthquake (9.4%) and 2018 economic crisis (3.7%). Table 4 in Appendix 1 presents information about the 10 most frequently reported events.

Reminiscence bump in the retrieval distribution of public events

Age distributions of all event memories are in Figure 1. To examine temporal distributions, we grouped events into 10-year age bins. Bins corresponding to 20–30 years of age represented the expected reminiscence bump (Berntsen and Rubin, 2004). We found increased recall of events around 40–49 years of age.² Of all the events reported, 24.5% came from the 30–39 years bin, and 31.90% came from the 40–49 years bin, forming a large bump in the later years than the expected bump years. The differences between 20–29 and 30–39, χ²(1) = 59.04, p < .001, and 40–49 and 50–59, χ²(1) = 78.84, p < .001, were also significant, providing support for the boundaries for large bump in later ages. However, there also appears to be a significant difference between the age bins of this peak, showing more events from the 40–49 bin than the 30–39 bin, χ²(1) = 11.98, p = .001.

Figure 1.

Age distribution for the events reported in the whole sample.

We did not have a comparable number of individuals in each age group, and more importantly, younger individuals had relatively fewer years for mental time travel. More specifically, an individual who was 40 years old could report only from the past 40 years, while older individuals could report both earlier and later ages, leading to differences in the number of events recalled in each age bin. Thus, we had further adjustments to normalize the distribution. First, we calculated the number of individuals in the sample who lived each age and could report a memory from that age. Then, we divided the number of events for each age by the number of people who could have a memory for that age. For example, 2337 participants could have reported events from age 40, but only 44 did, leading to a ratio of 0.0188 (44 / 2337 = 0.0188). On the contrary, none of the 40-year-olds could have reported an event for age 41; therefore, we excluded the number of 40-year-old individuals (n = 214) and included those aged 41 and older (n = 2123) for the ratio of events for age 41 (39 / 2123 = 0.0183). Then, we computed the average ratios for 10-year bins and plotted the distribution (see Figure 1, dotted line). With the ratios, we eliminated the effect of different numbers of potential respondents in age bins. The adjusted distribution pointed out a more apparent recency effect, showing that the bump we observed resulted from unequal numbers of participants. We need to remember that the ratios are also influenced by the number of potential respondents in each bin, especially the low number of potential respondents who could have had memories from the 60+ bin.

We also plotted the age at event distributions based on different age groups because it may be misleading to fuse the ages at events for all ages as the sample consisted of individuals between the ages of 40 and 86. As it can be observed in Figure 2, as participants get older, the peak of retrieval tends to shift to later ages, and the number of events tends to peak in the 10-year bin prior to the age of the participants. One can argue that the recency effect results from the ease of retrieval from recent and vivid events, and going from more recent to earlier events as a retrieval strategy may have produced this picture. This reasoning presumes that the events first reported by the participants would tend to be from more recent years, and as they move backward in time, there would be fewer opportunities to include earlier events among the five most important. The fact that many of the participants did not report more than four events opposes this argument. On the contrary, because we asked for the important events since the birth year, it was possible that the respondents took this as an anchor and started reporting events from that time. Therefore, we examined whether individuals reported events in the order they experienced or gave precedence to the recent events. Figure 3 shows that individuals started reporting events from earlier ages and gradually moved toward more recent events. The correlation between age at event and reporting order was r(1332) = .17, p < .01.

Figure 2.

Age at event distributions for different age groups.

Figure 3.

Age at event as a function of reporting order.

To examine the ample number of recent memories from another angle, we plotted the number of events according to the number of years since the event’s occurrence. As Figure 4 shows, there is a steep decline in the number of events reported after the most recent 10 years. The relatively more minor bumps in the distribution indicate the years with the most frequently reported events, the former being the 1999 Marmara Earthquake and the latter being 12 September military coup.

Figure 4.

Time since event distribution for all reported events.

Bump for important public events

In the current study, a reminiscence bump was not evident for public events. However, previous research has shown bumps for the most important public events; therefore, we conducted bump analyses for the most important events in two ways. First, we used reporting order as an indicator of importance. Since we requested the most important events, individuals could have reported the events in decreasing order of importance, and the first event reported could be the most important one. Second, we included all the events with average ratings of four or above on the importance ratings, indicating how much of a turning point the event represented. While a bump was more salient for the first-reported events, the bump’s location was the same in the age-at-event distributions of the first event reported and the others (see Figure 5(a) for the distributions). Thirty-five percent of the first events and 31.7% of the remaining events were from the 40–49 years age bin, showing a disproportionately higher recall of events from other bins—χ²s(1) > 26.77, ps < .001, for the first-reported events, χ²s(1) > 31.05, ps < .001, for the other events. Similarly, when we distinguished events based on importance ratings, the distributions were comparable. They all indicated a tendency for recency, showing 33.1% of the events with higher importance and 28.9% of the events with lower importance came from the 40–49 years age bin—χ²s(1) > 52.41, ps < .001, for the high importance events, χ²s(1) > 6.88, ps < .009, for the low importance events, see Figure 5(b) for the distributions.

Figure 5.

(a) Age at event distributions for first-reported and other events. (b) Age at event distributions for higher and lower importance events.

Bump across the most frequently reported events

Considering the most frequently reported events as the major significant events, we repeated the bump analysis with the age distributions of single events. We focused on five events: the 15 July coup attempt, the Gezi Park protests, the 12 September military coup, the Marmara Earthquake, and the 2018 economic crisis. We first plotted the age distribution of all five events. Although these events are comparable in their importance, they occurred at different time points and may have unique distribution patterns. For that reason, next, we plotted the age distributions for each event (see Figure 6).

Figure 6.

Temporal distribution of most frequently reported events.

Distribution of most frequent events showed increased recall of events from the recent years, with 32.9% of the events coming from the 40–49 years age bin, pointing out that the recency effect persisted even when we included only the most frequent events (ps > .05). When we examined events separately, slightly different patterns emerged. As shown in Figure 7, the distribution of the 15 July coup attempt, Gezi park protests, and the 2018 economic crisis revealed peaks later in adulthood, around the ages of 40–49. The Marmara Earthquake, a relatively distant event, peaked around 20–39 years of age. A comparable number of events were in the bins of 20–29 and 30–39 years of age. The percentage of recall was not significantly different in the distribution, χ²(1) = .05, p = .89, showing that although there is a large peak in the distribution, it was not particular to the expected bump years. The 12 September military coup that took place in 1980 had a different retrieval distribution, showing a significant bump around the 10–19 years, χ²s(1) = 7.51, ps < .006, .001.

Figure 7.

Number of individuals in each age group (Sample), number of individuals reporting each event (Report) and percentage of individuals reporting each event in age groups (%). (a) 1980—12 September Military Coup. (b) 1999 Marmara Earthquake. (c) Gezi Park Protests. (d) 15 July coup attempt. (e) 2018 economic crisis.

It is important to note that event-based analyses are sensitive to the sample’s age characteristics because the likelihood to include individuals at older ages at the time of the event would not be comparable for events at different times. In the current data, we could include individuals 50 and above for relatively recent events (i.e. 15 July coup attempt, Gezi Park protests, or the 2018 economic crisis). However, for events that occurred decades ago, such as the 12 September military coup, it is unlikely to include individuals experiencing the event at later ages because a person witnessing the 1980 coup at the age of 50 would be at least in their 90s. For that reason, we also plotted the percent of individuals who recalled each event for each age group. In this sample, individuals born in 1980 are currently in their 40s, and a bump would emerge if those between the ages of 55 and 70 remember an event. Figure 7 shows the trendlines for each event. For example, everyone above the age of 40 experienced the 12 September military coup (see Figure 7(a)), albeit some at very young ages. There is a linear increase in reporting the coup with age, culminating at more than 50% of participants above 65. It is difficult to determine whether this is a reminiscence bump because we cannot compare these reporting rates with those of people who experienced this event after the age of 35. For the 1999 Marmara Earthquake (Figure 7(b)), the reporting rate was lower than the coup but similar across all age groups, varying between 20% and 30%. There is no indication that those participants who experienced this event between the ages of 15 and 30 were more likely to report it. The remaining three events were too recent to be analyzed for reminiscence bump. However, a good proportion of the participants selected to report these recent events over those that corresponded to their youth.

Phenomenological features of events according to age-at-event

Temporal distribution of events revealed a recency effect except for the 12 September military coup, where we observed a high recall around the expected bump years. In the next step, we examined whether age at the time of the event was related to the ratings of memory characteristics for all the reported events. There was a significant effect of age at event on reliving, F(6, 1276) = 4.29, MSE = 5.96, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .05, and the extent the event was followed on the media, F(6, 1276) = 12.50, MSE = 15.49, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .07. As shown in Table 3, reliving ratings were higher for recent events. Events experienced after age 60 had a higher sense of reliving than earlier events. Inline events experienced after the age of 40 were followed more closely in the media than in earlier ages. Means and standard deviations representing each age bin are presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Means and standard deviations for the phenomenology of the most frequently reported five events and the whole sample of events.

		Age at event
		0–9	10–19	20–29	30–39	40–49	50–59	60+
2018 Economic Crises	n				5	19	15	5
	Reliving				4.60 (0.54)	4.21 (1.22)	4.80 (0.56)	4.80 (0.45)
	Intensity				4.00 (1.00)	3.95 (1.17)	4.60 (0.74)	4.60 (0.55)
	Media				4.40 (0.89)	3.63 (1.42)	4.07 (1.28)	4.40 (0.89)
	Importance				4.40 (0.89)	3.89 (1.52)	3.87 (1.60)	5.00 (0.02)
	Valence				1.40 (0.55)	1.26 (0.93)	1.60 (1.40)	1.60 (1.34)
Gezi Park Events	n			6	41	56	19	6
	Reliving			3.00 (0.01)	3.61 (1.30)	3.66 (1.36)	3.74 (1.20)	4.00 (1.67)
	Intensity			3.00 (0.03)	3.49 (1.32)	3.68 (1.35)	3.89 (1.20)	4.17 (1.33)
	Media			4.00 (1.41)	4.20 (1.05)	4.14 (1.03)	4.47 (0.91)	4.50 (0.84)
	Importance			3.00 (1.41)	3.37 (1.22)	3.73 (1.42)	3.47 (1.57)	4.50 (1.23)
	Valence			1.50 (0.71)	1.95 (1.16)	2.12 (1.34)	2.21 (1.51)	1.50 (1.22)
12 September Coup	n	22	54	29	10	3
	Reliving	2.91 (1.34)	3.89 (1.26)	4.59 (0.87)	3.60 (1.57)	4.00 (0.00)
	Intensity	3.41 (1.43)	3.91 (1.27)	4.41 (0.95)	3.7 (1.34)	4 (0.01)
	Media	2.59 (1.29)	3.46 (1.35)	3.90 (1.45)	3.2 (1.75)	3.5 (0.71)
	Importance	4.05 (1.21)	3.96 (1.14)	4.41 (1.12)	4.3 (0.67)	4 (0.01)
	Valence	2.18 (1.22)	1.76 (1.15)	2.03 (1.47)	1.2 (0.42)	2.5 (2.12)
1999 Marmara Earthquake	n		14	43	41	18	3
	Reliving		3.86 (1.10)	4.05 (1.17)	4.1 (1.13)	4.17 (0.92)	5.00 (0.00)
	Intensity		4.21 (0.69)	4.26 (1.09)	4.22 (1.23)	4.17 (1.04)	5.00 (0.00)
	Media		4.07 (0.99)	4.12 (1.09)	3.80 (1.26)	3.67 (1.13)	5.00 (0.00)
	Importance		3.86 (0.86)	3.44 (1.43)	3.54 (1.30)	3.33 (1.41)	3.33 (0.52)
	Valence		1.50 (1.16)	1.19 (0.50)	1.39 (0.62)	1.11 (0.32)	1.33 (0.57)
15 July Coup Attempt	n		4	6	80	160	71	38
	Reliving		5.00 (0.00)	5.00 (0.00)	4.14 (1.11)	4.18 (1.21)	4.06 (1.25)	4.08 (1.17)
	Intensity		5.00 (0.00)	5.00 (0.00)	4.13 (1.04)	4.13 (1.25)	4.07 (1.23)	4.03 (1.17)
	Media		5.00 (0.00)	5.00 (0.00)	4.18 (1.07)	4.32 (0.98)	4.18 (1.11)	4.03 (1.10)
	Importance		5.00 (0.02)	5.00 (0.00)	3.96 (1.09)	4.24 (1.13)	3.97 (1.38)	3.97 (0.15)
	Valence		1.03 (0.02)	1.00 (0.00)	1.81 (1.18)	1.81 (1.22)	1.54 (0.97)	1.74 (1.27)
Whole sample	n	35	111	142	320	421	188	66
	Reliving	3.26 (1.31)	3.84 (1.26)	4.04 (1.19)	4.07 (1.17)	4.14 (1.18)	4.23 (1.13)	4.20 (1.08)
	Intensity	3.77 (1.29)	3.95 (1.15)	4.18 (1.04)	4.05 (1.17)	4.11 (1.17)	4.08 (1.19)	4.17 (1.04)
	Media	3.09 (1.36)	3.68 (1.25)	4.11 (1.20)	4.08 (1.16)	4.19 (1.03)	4.17 (1.11)	4.09 (0.98)
	Importance	4.03 (1.15)	3.86 (1.14)	3.90 (1.29)	3.88 (1.18)	3.99 (1.27)	3.87 (1.40)	4.05 (1.17)
	Valence	2.20 (1.34)	1.75 (1.16)	1.81 (1.31)	1.72 (1.09)	1.91 (1.34)	1.90 (1.31)	1.76 (1.25)

The vividness of memories declines over time. The current results showed consistent evidence that individuals reported lower reliving as more time passed since the event, r(1224) = .12, p < .001, although this relationship was very weak, possibly due to the variability of the event characteristics. When we included time since the event as a covariate, the pattern of results remained the same, supporting the influence of recency on the phenomenological features.

Considering the differences in the distribution pattern when most frequently reported events were examined, in the next step, we repeated the analyses using five important events separately. We found significant effect of age at event for the 12 September military coup for the features of reliving, F(4, 112) = 4.86, MSE = 7.46, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .19; emotional intensity, F(4, 112) = 2.49, MSE = 3.76, p = .047, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .09; and following on the media, F(4, 112) = 3.29, MSE = 6.36, p = .014, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .12. Individuals who experienced the coup when they were 10–19, 20–29, and 30–39 reported a higher sense of reliving than those who experienced it at earlier and later ages. Also, individuals who experienced the 12 September military coup in the first 10 years of their life were distinguished from the others and reported significantly less media exposure for the coup (see Table 3 for means and standard deviations of the phenomenological properties for each event). We also found an effect of age-at-event on media exposure for the Marmara Earthquake, F(3, 112) = 2.91, MSE = 3.70, p = .037, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .12, showing that individuals who experienced the earthquake in their later ages reported more media exposure for the earthquake than the younger individuals.

Last, we examined whether the most frequently reported events are distinguished from the whole sample of events in terms of their phenomenological ratings. We employed one-sample t-tests to compare the phenomenological ratings of each most frequently reported events with the ratings for the whole events. We found that the 2018 economic crisis was perceived as more negative, t(45) = –2.66, p = .011, and had a higher sense of reliving, t(45) = 3.52, p = .001, than the whole group of events. The 15 July coup attempt was perceived as more important, t(357) = 2.68, p = .008, and had more media exposure, t(360) = 2.47, p = .014. Marmara Earthquake and Gezi Park protests were distinguished from the whole sample in terms of other phenomenological features as well. Gezi Park protests, t(126) = –2.81, p = .006, and the Marmara Earthquake, t(118) = –3.51, p = .001, were perceived as less important than the complete group of events. While the Marmara Earthquake was also perceived as less negative, t(123) = –10.23, p < .001, Gezi Park protests were recalled with lower emotional intensity, t(126) = –3.79, p < .001, and reliving, t(126) = –3.77, p < .001, compared to the whole sample of events. The most distant event, 12 September military coup, had less media exposure, t(123) = –5.84, p < .001, and was reported with a lower sense of reliving, t(124) = –2.05, p = .042.

Discussion

In the present study, we examined the recall of public events in a nationally representative sample. We aimed first to explore the reminiscence bump in the sample with respondents at the age of 40 and above. Because many important and intense public events have occurred in Turkey in the past 7–8 years preceding the data collection, we examined the patterns of memory in this volatile context and across events experienced at different ages.

Individuals reported five important public events that have happened in Turkey since they were born. When we examined all the reported events, variations from the previous evidence (Öner and Gülgöz, 2020; Tekcan et al., 2017) were that several recent events, economic crisis (2018), elections (2019), and the Syrian war (2017), found precedence over earlier events. The 15 July coup attempt (2016) and Gezi Park protests (2013) were two of the most frequently reported events. With the 2018 economic crisis, these events in the past 5 years constituted almost half of the important events. In addition to these, the military coup in 1980 and the Marmara Earthquake in 1999 were events reported as important, suggesting consistency with Turkey’s collective past observed in other studies.

We did not find any evidence of a bump for public events. In contrast, individuals reported more events from 35 to 45 years of age, suggesting a recency effect. However, when we conducted event-based analyses, mainly focusing on the most frequently reported five events, we found variations in the temporal distribution of events. A reminiscence bump was revealed only for the 12 September military coup of 1980, showing an increased recall for those experiencing the event at ages 10–30. However, this was, in a way, a side effect of the age distribution of the sample. The majority of the respondents in this study were at the age that coincided with the bump years during the coup, which is one of the most frequently reported events of Turkish history in different studies, regardless of whether these studies requested events experienced during one’s lifetime or not (e.g. Öner and Gülgöz, 2020; Tekcan et al., 2017).

The age distribution during events is also a function of the sample’s age distribution. Undoubtedly, there would be differences between the way age-at-event would be distributed across all events compared to specific individual events. It is also pertinent to note that when all events are pooled in the analyses, they will certainly have different levels of importance and various time lapses since the event, especially across the large sample.

However, when we conducted the analyses focusing on single events, there was no time-related variation anymore, and differences in the importance attributed to the event may have guided the recall. Thus, the events among the most frequent ones were outstanding not because they came from the bump years but because of their importance. When the most important public events are asked, the centrality of events, rather than the age of experiencing them, shapes the temporal distribution of events (Brown et al., 2016). In a similar vein, Danish adults reported events from both bump and non-bump years for public events, whereas, for personal events, the reminiscence bump was more robust (Koppel and Berntsen, 2015). Moreover, the public events were not necessarily those that happened in Denmark but rather global events such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall and September 11.

The current results supported the findings of Öner and Gülgöz (2020), this time with a nationally representative sample, showing no bump in the expected bump years, both when the analyses included all the events and only individual events. The only exception was the 12 September military coup (1980), showing a peak in the bump years. However, this bump was likely biased by sample characteristics because we asked for events after individuals were born. The 12 September military coup occurred in 1980. Thus, the oldest age group in our sample were not much older than those designated as the bump years at the time of the event, and participants in these old age groups were too few for a reliable comparison with the age groups who experienced the events during the bump years. To infer an actual bump, we need a sample with an extensive age range that captures a comparable number of individuals who experienced the event in their younger and older ages. For that reason, focusing on single events may prove to be problematic as well. Similarly, when Schuman and Scott (1989) asked about important events, they found a bump for events experienced at 15–30 years of age. However, when they examined the bump using single events, it was observed only for three events (World War II, the Vietnam War, and the JFK assassination) that happened relatively in the distant past (Rubin et al., 1998). However, in these studies, the reported events were dominated by distant events, leading to a distribution characterized by the chronology of events (e.g. Fall of Berlin Wall, Koppel and Berntsen, 2014; World War II and Vietnam War, Schuman and Scott, 1989).

Tekcan et al. (2017) reported a similar pattern in the context of Turkey. They asked for both the most important and the most emotional events for various emotions. No bump emerged when they included all the data or focused only on important and emotional events. However, when they isolated the two most frequently reported important events, they observed a peak in young adulthood and a smaller peak at middle adulthood. This finding suggested that reminiscence bump for public events emerges only for high-impact events firmly embedded in the collective memory. It is possible that the current findings, which are in line with Öner and Gülgöz (2020), showing no public bump in a large sample of events that occurred in Turkey, diverted from the findings of Tekcan et al. (2017) because the current study differs in several ways. These differences were that we collected data from a nationally representative sample who reported five important public events during their lifetime, and data collection was after a tumultuous time in Turkey. In the current study, event-based analyses demonstrated that participants report events experienced around 45–55 years most frequently. Like Tekcan et al. (2017), the 1999 Marmara Earthquake and 12 September military coup were two of the five most important events. However, increased recall of events later in adulthood was more salient in the distribution of events even when we used a corrective strategy to eliminate the recency pattern in the distribution (Janssen et al., 2011). From the perspective of the current study, the findings of Tekcan et al. (2017) may be resulting from the fact that only a small portion of respondents could have been experiencing the 12 September 1980 coup at the age of 35. To experience the coup at that age, they must have been older than 70 or 75 years at the time of data collection, and only a minor group was. Therefore, the two events representing the most important events displayed a bump because the sample included a larger group of people who experienced these events during the bump ages. Thus, when we examine the findings of Öner and Gülgöz (2020), Tekcan et al. (2017), and the current study, it is very difficult to argue for the presence of a bump.

These sample characteristics are also important because, if the listed events are mostly recent events, it is difficult to capture the individuals who experienced the event in their younger ages as the canonical bump analyses involve individuals aging 40 years and older. Likewise, our sample included individuals 40 years and older; therefore, they could report 40-year-old events. Also, when we consider the older age groups in our sample, they could go back to 70 years before and report events since then. Inline, this group of individuals frequently reported the 40-year-old event, 12 September military coup, and then eliminated other potentially important events and focused on the recent ones in their memory reports, supporting the role of the current agenda in guiding the retrieval of past events. Overall, here, we argue that in countries like Turkey, where the recent history is turbulent and chaotic, it is likely that individuals will mainly report the recent events in their important events list. The presence of intense recent events prevents older individuals from engaging in active mental time travel through their past, hindering more distant events from their reports. As we did when we focused on single events, it is possible to detect disproportionately high recall of events from bump years, especially when the event is distant enough that the sample experienced it when they were young.

The way we requested memories of events that occurred after the participants were born may have limited the temporal horizons of retrieval; however, our goal was to restrict the reported events to events they actually remembered. Still, individuals may have reported the events they just learned or the events that occurred when they were younger than 5 years old. However, it is more likely for events after their birth to have consequences for their lives than any other event in Turkish history. Even if individuals did not participate in the events directly, they might have had episodic-like recollections from their in-group (Svob et al., 2016) or media (Tinti et al., 2009). The restriction of events to the participants’ lifetime may have been one factor that explains the differences in the pattern of current findings with previous literature.

Also, in the current study, we asked for five important events. Asking for several events is essential mainly because the first events could be the most salient recent events or the earlier events that have been highly rehearsed and already become abstracted. Thus, allowing individuals to be more flexible in their retrieval could allow for the inclusion of other events giving us a larger pool of remarkable events from Turkey’s past.

Another critical issue that distinguishes current research from earlier ones is related to the sample characteristics. We had a large nationally representative sample in the present study, including individuals from various regions and socioeconomic statuses. When we consider previous research showing within-country variation in collective event representations (Brown et al., 2016), current findings benefit from the representativeness of the sample.

It is worth noting that in Öner and Gülgöz’s study (2020) conducted 4 years after Tekcan et al. (2017), the sample was also highly educated and showed recency in line with the current data. Many emotionally intense events with social, political, and economic significance have occurred in Turkish history. Some of these events were thematically related, which may have either enhanced or hindered the salience of the preceding ones. For example, Van Earthquake (2011) may remind the Marmara Earthquake (1999), or 15 July coup attempt may make the 12 September military coup more salient. Exposure to the event in the media facilitates the formation of more permanent event representations. But more importantly, especially for distant events, the more recent events are elaborated in the light of recent ones; the earlier event eventually gains a directive function and becomes more accessible. However, it is also possible that the availability of significant, intense public events in the recent past may interrupt flexible mental time travel and bias the retrieval toward recent events. This idea is coherent with the self memory system model (SMS, Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), which argued that events tend to be more accessible when related to the current concerns and active goals in the working self. When important recent events are highly significant and intense, individuals may be stuck in the present and tend to retrieve the events that are relevant to the economic and political context of Turkey’s status at that time. In that sense, current findings showed that in addition to the age the event is experienced, the relative impact of events and contextual stability emerge as important factors shaping the collective memory.

Phenomenology

Almost all the events reported from Turkey’s past were negative and involved repeated themes of terror attacks, natural disasters, and political upheavals (e.g. coup). The most frequently reported events were perceived as equally important and recalled with a comparable sense of reliving. When we examined whether events experienced at the bump period had exceptional phenomenological properties, we found that only events experienced around 45–60 years were associated with a higher sense of reliving. The recency of those events and high levels of emotional intensity would make them less susceptible to interference or forgetting (Janssen et al., 2011).

When we examined the most frequently reported single events, we found consistent evidence with the literature showing that events experienced around the bump years tend to be more positive, more important, and reported with greater recollection (Berntsen and Rubin, 2002; Janssen et al., 2011). Although this was not the pattern we observed in analyses with all events, single event analyses showed distinctive phenomenological properties for the reports coming from the bump years. More specifically, for the 12 September military coup, where we observed a bump in the expected years, individuals around 10–30 years at the time of the coup reported the event with a greater sense of reliving and emotional intensity. The participants who experienced the event within the bump years perceived the coup as nationally more important and transitional. Accordingly, the event may have remained vivid for these individuals both because the event is significant for Turkey and because such transitional events gain crucial roles in the organization of autobiographical memories. Such transitional events enhance the recollection of personal events in these years (Brown, 2016). The coup had political consequences for people in any political orientation and widespread economic and social impacts. Hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned, the forces declared a curfew, and press releases were banned. These made up a high tension–high uncertainty period for Turkey, which may be marked distinctively in individuals’ lives. However, it is also important to note that individuals aged 35 and above at the time of the event would have recalled the event more frequently and richer in phenomenology if we had more of these individuals in those ages in our sample. Thus, although current findings indicated that the memory of the coup was more vivid when experienced within the bump years, this pattern could have been different if the sample had more individuals with an age of 75 and above.

What is surprising in the analyses of the phenomenological ratings is the lack of a relationship between reporting frequency and the phenomenological characteristics of the events, including the importance. The only somewhat related rating is the respondents’ estimate about the probability of others to report that event as an important event, just as in Öner and Gülgöz (2020). This finding indicates that although other event characteristics do not capture what makes a public event memorable, respondents are quite in tune with the collective memory of the population.

Another surprising observation is the lower importance and lower negativity associated with the 1999 Marmara Earthquake. A major disaster that killed tens of thousands of people was no longer perceived as important from the window of 20 years past the event. We need to interpret this result based on the highly politicized environment. In that context, only the politically relevant events are rated as highly negative and important. The three events rated as most important are the referendum for the presidency, the 2002 elections, and the cancelation of the municipal elections in Istanbul, which were extremely relevant to the current political atmosphere and the issues at the time the data were collected. It is highly likely that the influence of media exposure enhanced the perceived significance of these events as we can see that those three events are also among the highest in media exposure.

Conclusion

We tested the reminiscence bump for public events in a nationally representative sample of Turkey. We demonstrated a robust recency effect in the temporal distribution of public event memories. Although a cascade of important events has occurred in Turkey’s history, several high-impact events have occurred in the recent past, which overshadowed past events. Regardless of the age of experiencing, important recent events tend to be more accessible as they are more relevant to current goals and concerns (Conway, 2005). We demonstrated a public bump for a 12 September military coup and that the coup was perceived more transitional when experienced during late adolescence and young adulthood. However, individuals who experienced the event at later ages are around 80 years and older, making it difficult to argue for an actual bump. For that reason, especially when conducting event-based analysis, researchers need to consider time since the event and sample a comparable number of individuals who experienced the events at different ages in their lives.

We believe data from Turkey, a country with ongoing instability, contributed significantly to the evidence on reminiscence bump, emphasizing the roles of context and sampling. Future studies need to investigate age distributions for single events to characterize the factors underlying differences in the event-based distributions.

Footnotes

Appendix 1

Table 4.

Events and descriptions.

Events	Descriptions
15 July, Coup Attempt	On 15 July 2016, a coup attempt took place against the Erdogan government, which accused the Gulen movement for the attempt. Over 300 people were killed, while more than 1400 people were injured.
12 September, Military Coup	On 12 September 1980, the military overthrew the civilian government. More than 500 people were sentenced to death; 50 were executed; 650,000 people were under arrest
Gezi Park Protests^a	On 28 May 2013, civil unrest began in Istanbul, Turkey, initially to protest an urban development plan for Gezi Park in Istanbul. Protests developed into broader anti-government demonstrations.
Marmara Earthquake^a	On 17 August 1999, a devastating earthquake (magnitude 7.4) struck Turkey’s northwestern industrial region; 17,127 people died; 43,953 were injured, and more than 250,000 were displaced.
2018 Economic Crisis	As one of Turkey’s biggest economic crisis, the Turkish Lira lost 40% of its value over weeks in February 2001.
Soma Disaster	On 13 May 2014, an explosion caused an underground mine fire, killing more than 300 miners. This disaster is the worst mine disaster in the history of Turkey.
23 June Istanbul Elections	The June 2019 Istanbul mayoral election was held on 23 June 2019. It was a re-run of the March 2019 mayoral election, which was annulled by the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) on 6 May 2019.
February 1997 Military Memorandum	The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP), which is a conservative political party, came to power in Turkey in the general elections of 2002 and has won the general elections in 2002, 2007, 2011, 2015.
Sivas Massacre^a	On 2 July 1993, a group of Islamic fundamentalists gathered in front of the Madımak Hotel in the city of Sivas to protest a meeting of intellectuals, set the hotel on fire. Thirty-three intellectuals, two members of the hotel, and two protesters died.
Presidency Referendum	A constitutional referendum was held throughout Turkey under a state of emergency following a 15 July coup attempt. With its approval, the prime minister’s office was abolished, and the existing parliamentary system of government was replaced with an executive presidency and a presidential system.

Descriptions for the events listed as the same were taken from Tekcan et al. (2017: 1111).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Current research was financially supported by the Kadir Has University Internal Research Fund through Grant 2019-BAP-03.

ORCID iDs

Sezin Öner

Sami Gülgöz

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Notes

Author biographies

Sezin Öner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Kadir Has University. Her research focuses on the individual differences in remembering in personal and collective events. She is interested in which events are remembered, and adopting a functional perspective, she examines these memory representations with identity and behavior.

Sami Gülgöz is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Koç University. He is also a member of the Science Academy. His recent work has been mainly on autobiographical memory.

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