Intergenerational narratives are one form of allobiographical memory. Specifically, intergenerational narratives told by parents to children form an integral part of individual identity, perhaps especially during adolescence and early adulthood when individuals are engaged in intense identity exploration. Young people who narrate elaborated stories known about their parents, take the parents’ perspective through integrating parental thoughts and emotions, and make specific connections between parent and self in their narratives, display higher self-esteem, and a higher sense of purpose in life. Allobiographical memories of parental experiences provide a foundation for a sense of belonging and meaning for the individual.

Vicarious memories have been theorized and tested as having various impacts on the self, such as increasing empathy, generating expectations, and enhancing self-esteem when telling parents’ memories. The current talk focuses on interviews of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from the author’s own family. It addresses memories that were rarely shared by the survivors, though some became prominent in family lore. As such, the recounting of these events may be more informative about collective memories and descendants’ own identities than about the events initially experienced and re-told. Divergent narratives of one event are explored from this perspective.

Family memories encompass personal stories shared among family members, but each family is also situated within broader historical contexts. This presentation examines the intergenerational transmission of family anecdotes about major historical events, such as wars and colonial pasts, across three generations. Overall, we find significant loss of information across generations. Furthermore, what is remembered is reinterpreted to fit each individual's own interests and understanding of that past. Additionally, our research highlights how these family historical memories interact with identity, relationships, and social representations, influencing the ways in which they are recalled and understood.

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) play a key role in fostering connections between individuals and groups. This paper discusses research that supports two ways this takes place. First, FBMs allow individuals to serve as witnesses to the precipitating event by claiming “I was there,” even though they weren’t. This attribute grants epistemic authority. Second, FBMs can serve as a marker of one’s social identity, e.g., possession of a FBM of the assassination of JFK as a marker of an individual’s identity as an American. The need for a functional approach to FBMS, as well as other types of memories, is underscored.

Research and theorizing on vicarious and collective memories have tended to develop as separate areas of inquiry. In a recent paper, we have argued for a common understanding of these memory phenomena and introduced allobiographical memory as an umbrella term with the aim to foster theoretical and empirical integration (Thomsen et al., under review). We propose that vicarious and collective memory may sometimes overlap and that they serve similar functions related to identity in various ways.