Cross-Cultural Differences in Memory, Beliefs, and Mental Schemas

People's memories are influenced by a collection of personal beliefs, social pressures, biases and heuristics, and cultural assumptions.

A non-native American citizen visiting a new country may tip a Japanese waiter in violation of the Japanese waiter's cultural schema, and justify their behavior by referring to their own memories of tipping in American restaurants.

Both individuals mentioned in the previous paragraph may have differing accounts of how the exchange transpired. This is because the American would remember the Japanese waiter to be rude, and the waiter would probably have a negative experience with the American.

For better or worse, people remember stories in ways that make sense from an evolutionary perspective. This is called confirmation bias, and it is a cognitive heuristic that we use to confirm our current beliefs.

Frederic Bartlett was the first psychologist to investigate the reconstructive nature of memory. He used a Native American legend and after that two weeks, most participants had forgotten important details of the story and altered it.

People will unconsciously project their cultural schema onto a story when asked to recall it. '''In the case of stories, culture plays an important factor in determining how they should be told, what elements should be included, and how they should be formatted.'''

The current research expands Bartlett’s model and further understands the reliability of memory, the effect of individual and cultural schemas, and the pervasiveness of these factors.

The participants for this study consisted of 20 Albright College students from the US. The average age was 20.4 years old, and the participants had different ethnic backgrounds and different language proficiency.

Two stories were used in this experiment: an Incan myth, and a short summary of Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse-Five. The participants were asked to memorize the important concepts of both stories.

The experiment used a 2 X 2 within-subjects design. The observed variables were story elements recalled and added false memories.

Participants were asked to memorize and summarize a story, and then to recall the major elements of the story one week later.

The study found that the initial recall of the 20 elements (ten per story) was significantly more accurate than the recall one week later.

Recollection of the Name of the Main Character was significantly affected by story type. Recollection of the Origin of the Story was significantly affected by time.

In both stories, recollection of the conclusion of each story was recalled more easily during the immediate recall. In addition, participants recalled the side character’s name more easily in the American Story and were also significantly remembered more during the immediate recall than in the Incan story.

We analyzed false memories added to participant responses and found that the number of false memories added increased with time.

Participants remembered less accurately when recalled one week later compared to the initial recall, a finding that demonstrates how memories become more unreliable as more time passes.

If only a third of the story elements were recalled correctly after just one week, we can assume that memory recall is extremely inaccurate, and we are more likely to remember things that we believe were important, meaningful, and deemed important.

The memory of most story elements was only affected by time, and some elements were remembered more than others. This difference in memory could be due to cultural expectations of names, but other factors such as the name of the character were also possible.

Potential schema projection was demonstrated when the main character's description of an Incan myth was remembered more easily than the main character's description of an American story because of the positive nature of the description.

The reason why Cavalace's background was remembered more frequently than Billy's is that pregnant women are more often associated with pregnancy, and therefore this may have aided in the recall of the objects surrounding Cavalace's pregnancy.

In our analysis of participant responses, we observed that the number of false memories added to stories increased significantly during the secondary recall and that many of these false memories contained common themes shared between participants.

The current research was conducted to measure the accuracy of human memory, to evaluate why certain information is memorized more easily than others, and to evaluate the possible influence of evolutionary shortcomings on the quality of memory.

Researchers found that people have mental errors and cognitive biases which influence their autobiographical memories and, therefore, self-schemas. One of the most consistent features of those afflicted by mental suffering is their skewed interpretations of past experiences, which negatively influence their perception of current life events.