A team of researchers from the University of Zurich wanted to examine how young people perceive the most important moments of their lives. The researchers were interested in whether they more often pointed to good experiences. Alternatively, they wanted to know if young people pointed rather to difficult moments from childhood and adolescence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They involved more than 1,400 young people in the experiment and followed them over the years. Participants answered questions at the ages of 15, 17, 20, and 24. The task was simple: they were asked to describe the most significant moments of their lives. After a detailed analysis using natural language processing methods, or NLP, psychologists found that as many as 83 percent of respondents\u2019 answers had a positive, constructive character<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These good memories among young people rarely involved grand events<\/strong>. Far more often, they concerned everyday matters: passing an exam, a new friendship, a successful trip, or an improvement in well-being. Psychological research suggests that, in the eyes of teenagers and young adults, growing up consists mainly of small but important steps forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, among all the important experiences from childhood and adolescence, young people chose to describe those that had positively influenced their lives<\/strong>. As we read<\/a> in the article published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry<\/em>, they most often talked about education and vocational training<\/strong>. This theme appeared especially frequently and concerned almost half of all the memories described by young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFormative memories are often ordinary days<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
School, friendship, and the first step into adulthood<\/h2>\n\n\n\n