Cultural life scripts are societally-shared expectations about landmark life events (e.g., graduation, marriage). Such events accumulate within late adolescence and young adulthood, contributing to the “reminiscence bump,” whereby lifetime distributions of memories cluster in this period. Research has consistently shown reminiscence bumps only for positive life scripts. This study examined expectations for events where the person had “agency” (i.e., did something to cause the event), and revealed reminiscence bumps for negative life scripts as well.
