Once Upon a Time? Reminiscence Bumps for Music, Movies, Athletes, and Private Events, but not for Politicians and Public Events

The reminiscence bump represents a peak in the lifespan curve during adolescence and early adulthood. Despite representing a robust phenomenon in research on autobiographical memory, the peak of the reminiscence bump temporally shifts depending on the type of autobiographical memory (e.g., public and private events). To differentiate the bumps for different types of autobiographical memories, the current study investigated free recall and time of encoding for autobiographical memory of different categories (public events, private events, politicians, athletes, movies, music). 54.530 Memories were collected from 768 participants, equally distributed across four generations (Baby Boomer, Generation X, Generation Y and Generation Z). For all categories, a reminiscence bump occurred when data from all generations were collapsed. However, when data was analyzed separately for each generation, a reminiscence bump was found only for private events, athletes, movies, and music. For private events, the reminiscence bump peaked during participants' twenties, and for athletes and music, it peaked during their teenage years. Notably, a reminiscence bump for movies during the teenage years was present in all generations except Baby Boomers. A reminiscence bump was absent for public events and politicians. These findings challenge the notion of a reminiscence bump for public events and highlight the importance to differentiate between stimulus categories and generations.