Individual differences in revising the life story-Personality and event characteristics influence change in the autobiographical meaning of life events.

Abstract

Repeated autobiographical narratives have recently received increased attention as measures of the stability of narrative identity. We propose that one way to map change in life narratives is to rate the degree to which the autobiographical meaning of renarrated events changes. We aimed to test the influence of age, traits (openness, extraversion), and event characteristics on how much autobiographical meaning changes. In waves 3 and 4 of the MainLife study, 123 participants (15-72 years) narrated their lives twice, 4 years apart. Life events that were told both times were rated for change in autobiographical meaning (n=531). Multilevel models tested individual and event characteristics as predictors. Autobiographical meaning changed more the more individuals were open to experience, the more recently the events had happened, and the more negative emotions the event narratives contained. It was unrelated to extraversion and to the use of autobiographical arguments. A decrease in change with age was due to older individuals narrating older events. Our findings add to understanding how traits and life story are related and underscore the need to further study the role of event characteristics for stability and change in narrative identity.