Biculturals' Flexible Identity Affects The Retrieval Of Autobiographical Memories: An Online Replication Of Wang (2008) Using A Pretest-Posttest Group Design

The current study is a conceptual replication of Wang (2008) using a pretest-posttest design and an online sample through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Seventy-one Asian-Americans recalled a recent memory before and after being primed as either Asian or American. On pre-prime memories, conditions did not significantly differ. However, on post-prime memories, participants primed as American recalled more self-focused memories than relationally focused memories and those primed as Asian recalled more relationally focused memories than self-focused memories. In addition, memories of Asian-Americans primed as American consisted of a smaller proportion of social interaction instances than those primed as Asian. In total, 6 of the 8 effects found in Wang (2008) were replicated. We discuss the implications that the current results and past studies have on our understanding of how culture influences memory encoding and retrieval.