A sample of 1,241 respondents between 20 and 93 years old were asked their age in their happiest, saddest, most traumatic, most important memory, and most recent involuntary memory. For older respondents, there was a clear bump in the 20s for the most important and happiest memories. In contrast, saddest and most traumatic memories showed a monotonically decreasing retention function. Happy involuntary memories were over twice as common as unhappy ones, and only happy involuntary memories showed a bump in the 20s. Life scripts favoring positive events in young adulthood can account for the findings. Standard accounts of the bump need to be modified, for example, by repression or reduced rehearsal of negative events due to life change or social censure.

Many studies have examined the distribution of autobiographical memories across the life span. No studies have examined whether this distribution is different for different classes of emotional memories. Here, we compare the event ages of people's most important, happiest, saddest, and most traumatic memories and most recent involuntary memory to explore whether different kinds of emotional memories follow similar patterns of retention. For example, some clinicians have observed that trauma memories often form an exception to the normal pattern of forgetting. To examine this question, the recall of traumatic memories is compared with memories of other highly important and emotionally charged events. A related question is whether memories for the saddest and happiest events in a person's life stay equally accessible. In spite of an accumulating amount of work...