Abstract
Constructing personal life stories carries benefits for psychological adjustment. We examined whether writing about the life stories of parents (i.e., vicarious life stories) hold similar advantages. In Study 1, we adapted an established experimental paradigm to an online format. Participants wrote either about personal life story chapters or about famous persons (control condition) and completed pre- and post-measures of state self-esteem. We found the predicted interaction as self-esteem increased in the chapter but not in the control condition. In Studies 2 and 3, we added the critical condition of writing about vicarious chapters. Study 2 did not find the predicted interaction. Instead, all three conditions increased in self-esteem. Study 3, which used a new neutral control task (writing about historical events), showed that the two chapter conditions, but not the control condition, increased in self-esteem. This suggests that authoring life stories for both oneself and close others momentarily boosts self-esteem.
Highlights
Constructing personal life stories carries benefits for psychological adjustment
Adopting and modifying an established experimental paradigm that has shown increased state self-esteem after writing about personal life story chapters (Steiner et al, 2019), we examined whether writing about vicarious life story chapters of parents impacted self-esteem
When controlling for mood change3, the interaction remained significant, F(1, 250) = 3.94, p = .048, 2) In Study 1, we explored whether content-coded emotional tone and positive/negative self-event connections were related to effects on self-esteem
Summary
Demographic information for the 254 participants are shown in Table 1 (135 in the per sonal chapter condition; note that we only analyzed data from participants who had four valid chapter/person descriptions and complete self-esteem data, and excluded 70 incom plete responses). In the case of each chapter, participants were invited to include information about people, places and activities; to consider how the chapter related to their entire life story, including causes, consequences, and themes; and to spend at least 10 minutes describing this period in their lives They were provided with text fields to describe the chapter, to note what the chapter said about who they were as a person, and to indicate how it related to other chapters. To match the personal chapter condition, participants were provided with text fields to describe the famous person, to describe why they thought the person had become famous, and to describe whether the famous person reminded them of other famous persons and what possible connections were They answered the following four questions: “To what degree would this person be evaluated positively/negatively?” and “Has the evaluation of this person changed positively/negatively over time?”, all rated on 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (to a very high degree).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
