The killing of doubt: Brown & Kulik

The Brown and Kulik study of 1977, was the first modern psychological study of Flashbulb Memory. In their theory, these memories are kept through continued rehearsal in the form of discussion, or "re-living" the event. The theory was that these memories are more emotional, and therefor more vivid, last longer and more accurate. The aim of their study was then to investigate whether dramatic, or personally significant events cause flashbulb memories. The study was conducted using a questionnaire, asking 80 American participants to asses the memories of when they learned a shocking personal and social events, and how often they used to recall them. Nine of the events, for example, were assassinations of well known American personalities. The findings of this study showed that flashbulb memories were more likely to occur in unexpected and personally relevant shocking events. The assassination of J.F. Kennedy in 1963 led to the highest results, with more then 90% of the participants recalling the event in vivid detail. What we can infer from this study is that dramatic events can cause memories to form a memory of the event; which was clearly consistent with Brown and Kulik's theories. Some limitations on this study is the fact that the data was collected through questionnaires, so it would be very difficult to verify the accuracy of the memories, or responses given by the participants.