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This article explores the widespread use of the 'lessons' of the era of the Second World War in Europe since 1945. This usage proved to be a resilient element of European cultural values, especially in Western Europe during the era of the Cold War. However, with the emergence of a more diverse and pluralist Europe since 1989, so this form of civic morality has been replaced by new narratives of the war years, and of the twentieth century as a whole. These indicate changes not only in historical perspectives but also in the structures of civic morality.

A plethora of studies have shown that people persistently remember public and personal events experienced during adolescence and early adulthood, particularly with a positive valence. In five studies, we investigate the reminiscence bump (RB) for positive and negative memories of public events (Studies 1 and 2), private events (Study 3), music-related events (Study 4), and cross-cultural memory differences (i.e., China and US) (Study 5). Participants retrieved either one positive or one negative memory, indicated their Age of Encoding, and provided secondary measures, i.e., memory vividness and rehearsal (Studies 1 and 3) and emotional intensity (Studies 2 and 4). About 10,000 memories were collected and positive memories appeared generally older than negative recollections, but the RB emerged for both positive and negative memories. Furthermore, the peak was earlier for positive memories of public events (<15 years old) than for negative memories (20–40 years), while no differences were found for private events or music-related experiences (15–25 years). Chinese had their RB later than US respondents. Finally, autobiographical recollections have moderate to low associations with secondary measures of phenomenological features of memory. These findings are consistent with the identity-formation theory, providing additional and important information on the development of the Self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]