Abstract
An individualized and coherent life story has been described as the form of identity that is required by highly mobile individualistic Western societies, whereas more family-oriented, traditional societies require more role-based, synchronic identities. Therefore in individualistic cultures entire life narratives can be expected to be more coherent and to contain more autobiographical arguments that contribute to life narrative coherence. This cultural group difference is expected to be mediated by individuals’ conformity to their respective cultural normative concept of biography, such that more conformity leads to less life narrative coherence and fewer autobiographical arguments. We tested these expectations by eliciting entire life narratives and cultural life scripts from four different cultural groups of students of technical universities: from provincial Karabük and from metropolitan Istanbul in Turkey, as well as from students with a Turkish migrant and with a native German background from urban Frankfurt am Main, Germany (N = 96). Expectations were confirmed for global life narrative coherence and autobiographical arguments with self-event connections. Conformity with a normative concept of biography indeed partially mediated cultural influences on life narrative coherence. Life narratives from Turkey also contained more family-related events and, unexpectedly, were more negative. Thus creating a coherent life narrative is more typical for cultures that require autonomous, individualized selves rather than for cultures requiring more related selves, reflecting the life story’s suitability for expressing individualized identities and its lesser suitability for expressing interdependent identities.
Highlights
The life story is a form of identity which binds together heterogeneous life events to define the self and establish self-continuity and purpose in life (Erikson, 1968; McAdams, 2001)
Before we develop our argument by relating the life story to individualistic versus interrelated cultures, we need to introduce some qualities of life stories and the corresponding theoretical concepts and technical terms
We introduce four aspects of life story coherence as well as autobiographical arguments which are instrumental in creating coherence
Summary
The life story is a form of identity which binds together heterogeneous life events to define the self and establish self-continuity and purpose in life (Erikson, 1968; McAdams, 2001). The integrative potential of a coherent life story makes it a form of identity adapted to modern societies with highly mobile and individualized life courses and independent selves. It is of interest to explore whether the use of the integrative potential of the life story varies between cultures and subcultures depending on how independent versus interdependent individuals are expected to be. The individual life story ties together past, present, and future by providing unity and purpose. Thereby it helps to maintain a sense of identity across situations and over time (McAdams, 1988)
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