ABSTRACT

Autobiographical memories play important roles in the development of the self and identity by grounding the self in rich, meaningful experiences. In the present study, we explored whether there is a specific type of autobiographical memories tied to religious belief; namely, belief-related memories. We compared belief-related memories with important and word-cued memories across five religions. We found belief-related memories were characterised as important, positive, intense, vivid, and frequently retrieved. The characteristics of belief-related memories were markedly different from word-cued memories, and they also differed from important memories on several variables. Compared with important memories, belief-related memories were rated as less prevalent, less important, less scripted, and showed a different distribution across the life span. The temporal distributions of belief-related memories varied across religions and showed no reminiscence bump as opposed to important memories and word-cued memories. Our findings suggest belief-related memories form a distinct category of autobiographical memories, consistent with the self being multidimensional and with different types of memories supporting distinct aspects of the self.

摘要

自传体记忆通过将自我置于丰富、有意义的经历中，在自我和身份的发展中发挥着重要作用。在本研究中，我们探讨了是否存在与宗教信仰相关的特定类型的自传体记忆；即与信念相关的记忆。我们将与信仰相关的记忆与五种宗教中的重要和文字提示的记忆进行了比较。我们发现与信念相关的记忆被描述为重要、积极、强烈、生动且经常被检索。信念相关记忆的特征与词线索记忆有显着差异，在几个变量上也与重要记忆不同。与重要记忆相比，与信念相关的记忆被评为不那么普遍、不那么重要、不那么脚本化，并且在整个生命周期中表现出不同的分布。与信仰相关的记忆的时间分布因宗教而异，与重要记忆和单词提示记忆相反，没有显示出回忆碰撞。我们的研究结果表明，与信念相关的记忆形成了一个独特的自传体记忆类别，与多维的自我以及支持自我不同方面的不同类型的记忆相一致。