Public events and the organization of autobiographical memory: An overview of the living‐in‐history project

In this article, we summarize a cross‐national research programme, the Living‐in‐History Project, investigating the impact of war, terrorism and natural disaster on the organization of autobiographical memory. More specifically, the aims of this project were: (a) to develop a method for assessing the impact of public events on autobiographical memory; (b) to determine whether there are systemic group differences in the relationship between these two types of knowledge; and (c) to identify factors that are present when personal memory and historical memory become intertwined. This method was used to collect data from 18 samples located in nine countries. We conclude that wars (e.g. the civil war in Bosnia; World War II) and natural disasters (e.g. the Izmit Earthquake) spawn Historically defined Autobiographic Periods (H‐DAPs), but terrorist attacks (e.g. 9/11, the Second Intifada) and nonviolent political upheaval (the fall of the Soviet Union) do not. We also conclude that autobiographical memory and historical memory are interrelated only when public events dramatically alter the fabric of daily life, for a population, for an extended period.