ABSTRACT
By attending to Dick Neisser’s principal methodological admonition in an unexpected domain, religious ritual, and his experimental findings in a more familiar domain, flashbulb memory, our understanding of both domains may improve. To consider how nonliterate societies, in which some religious rituals may be repeated only once in a generation, transmit religious systems may snap into focus how research on flashbulb memory may illuminate these topics. Conversely, to consider the persistence and continuity of some nonliterate, traditional religions for hundreds-perhaps even thousands-of years (at least until they faced such destabilizing forces as missionaries, colonialism, world wars, and industrialization) should begin to clarify why a broadly ecological study of such religious systems might prove suggestive for research on flashbulb memory and on memory in general.
