Thirty-six urban and 36 rural older adults participated in Experiment 1. A 3 (Reference Condition: Self, Friend vs. Lu Xun) × 2 (Living Area: City vs. Countryside) mixed design was used. A repeated measure ANOVA for the rate of free recall revealed that both urban and rural older adults showed a friend-reference effect and a self-reference effect, F(2, 140) = 13.46, p< 0.001, η² = 0.16. In order to investigate the difference between the friend-reference effect and the SRE, we computed the reference effect index (the friend-reference effect index = free recall rate of friend-related items – free recall rate of other-related items; the SRE index = free recall rate of self-related items – free recall rate of other-related items). Then a 2 (Reference Effect Index: Self vs. Friend) × 2 (Living Area: City vs. Countryside) mixed design was used. A significant interaction between Reference Effect Index and Living Area was significant, F(1, 70) = 8.03, p = 0.006, η² = 0.10. Simple effects analysis revealed that compared to rural elderly people, the friend-reference effect index was much bigger than the SRE index in urban elderly people, p = 0.042.

Thirty-six older urban adults with low-levels of education and well-educated rural elderly adults volunteered to participate in Experiment 2. A 3 (Reference Condition: Self, Friend vs. Lu Xun) × 2 (Level of education: High vs. Low) mixed design was used. A repeated measure ANOVA on the free recall rate revealed that both older urban adults with low-levels of education and well-educated rural elderly showed the friend-reference effect and the SRE, F(2, 140) = 10.65, p< 0.001, η² = 0.13. A 2 (Reference Effect Index: Self vs. Friend) × 2 (Level of education: High vs. Low) mixed design was used. A significant interaction between Reference Effect Index and Level of education was significant, F(1, 70) = 7.72, p = 0.007, η² = 0.10. Simple effects analysis revealed that compared to urban elderly people with low-levels of education, the friend- reference effect index was much bigger than the SRE index in well-educated urban elderly.