Narrative Identity: the construction of the life story, autobiographical reasoning and psychological functioning in young adulthood

The current study investigated whether young adults' tendency to engage in autobiographical reasoning that described the self in positive and negative ways moderated: (1) the relationship between the amount and complexity of autobiographical reasoning in narratives of high and low points and psychological functioning, (2) the relationship between beliefs about the centrality of negative life events (low points) and psychological functioning. Narratives of life story high and low points, collected from 98 young adults, were coded for two types of autobiographical reasoning: self–event connections and sophistication of meaning. Participants also completed a measure of psychopathology and a measure of psychological well-being, and rated the centrality of each narrated event. Results showed that making more self–event connections and gaining more complex insights into the self was associated with higher levels of psychopathology for young adults who tended to reason about the self in negative ways. Further, endorsing low points as central to identity was associated with psychopathology and poor psychological well-being, but not for young adults who were more likely to reason about the self in positive ways in narratives of these difficult experiences. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for the relationship between psychological functioning and life story development.

Narrative identity is defined as a personal life story that integrates an understanding of the past and an envisioned future to provide life with a sense of meaning, unity and purpose. The key process through the construction of narrative identity is autobiographical reasoning, which can be understood from the perspective of three indicators: exploratory narrative processing, meaning-making, and self-event connections. The relationship between narrative identity and personality disorders has been examined extensively over the last decade. According to the latest literature, autobiographical reasoning could be a crucial narrative indicator of the severity of personality dysfunction. However, there was no research to verify this hypothesis. The main goal of the presented research was to examine relationships between autobiographical reasoning and the severity of personality dysfunction. The analysis includes data collected from 11 volunteers using a questionnaire (Self and Interpersonal Functioning Scale [SIFS]) and Life Story Interview (Critical Events). Each statement was treated separately (N = 88) in order to enable statistical analysis. The preliminary results show that the indicators of autobiographical reasoning are negatively correlated with some of the aspects of the severity of personality dysfunction. The results support the reasonability of the approach followed in this research, and contribute to academic discussion about relationships between narrative identity and personality disorders.

Disturbances of the narrative self and personal identity accompany the onset of psychotic disorders in late adolescence and early adulthood (a formative developmental stage for self-concept and personal narratives). However, these issues have primarily been studied retrospectively after illness onset, limiting any inferences about their developmental course. Youth at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) (n = 49) and matched healthy comparison youth (n = 52) completed a life story interview (including self-defining memory, turning point, life challenge, and psychotic-like experience) and questionnaires assessing self-esteem, self-beliefs, self-concept clarity, and ruminative/reflective self-focus. Trained raters coded interviews for narrative identity themes of emotional tone, agency, temporal coherence, context coherence, self-event connections, and meaning-making (intraclass correlations >0.75). Statistical analyses tested group differences and relationships between self-concept, narrative identity, symptoms, and functioning. CHR participants reported more negative self-esteem and self-beliefs, poorer self-concept clarity, and more ruminative self-focus, all of which related to negative symptoms. CHR participants narrated their life stories with themes of negative emotion and passivity (ie, lack of personal agency), which related to positive and negative symptoms. Reflective self-focus and autobiographical reasoning were unaffected and correlated. Autobiographical reasoning was uniquely associated with preserved role functioning. This group of youth at CHR exhibited some, but not all, changes to self-concept and narrative identity seen in psychotic disorders. A core theme of negativity, uncertainty, and passivity ran through their semantic and narrative self-representations. Preserved self-reflection and autobiographical reasoning suggest sources of resilience and potential footholds for cognitive-behavioral and metacognitive interventions.

Abstract: The way people connect their life stories and sense of self is important for identity and functioning. U.S. emerging adults' expressions of self-event connections within a story may reflect societal narrative conventions and indicate the narrative work required to integrate redemption into one's identity. We recruited 336 college and community adults ( M age = 20.53 years; 57.7% women), who provided a challenging event narrative and reported well-being. Instances of self-event connections were coded for valence (i.e., negative, neutral, positive) and category (i.e., disposition, value, growth). We expected individuals' expressions of connections to follow a redemptive arc and transition from dispositional/value to growth connections as narratives resolved. We expected individuals who expressed more (a) positive and (b) growth-focused connections to report greater well-being. Findings supported most expectations. Connections shifted toward positive valence but moved through growth toward dispositions and values. Greater uses of positive and growth-focused connections were robustly associated with greater well-being endorsements.

Constructing a coherent life story through the formation of self-event connections may help maintain unity in the self. We examined how positive and negative self-event connections were related to symptoms of psychopathology when controlling for two other measures of self-unity: self-concept clarity and dissociation. While most studies of life stories use content coding, we used a self-report method and hence provide a rationale for this method. One hundred five young adults identified life story chapters and rated them on self-event connections, including questions of positive or negative self-change and self-stability connections. They also completed scales measuring self-concept clarity, dissociation, and symptoms. Higher ratings of positive and lower ratings of negative self-event connections in life stories were related to fewer symptoms of psychopathology. Positive self-change was related to fewer symptoms when controlling for self-concept clarity and dissociation. The results suggest that positive and negative self-event connections are differentially related to symptoms of psychopathology. In addition, the results indicate that self-report measures of life stories may be a useful supplement to coding of narratives.

The content and processes of autobiographical reasoning in narrative identity

This longitudinal follow-up studied continued effects of parental influences on narrative identity in young adulthood. Decades of research have shown the importance of parental shared reminiscing and positive parenting for the development of children's and youths' autobiographical memory and narrative identity. Yet, research on long-term influences of parenting on narrative indices in adulthood is scarce, even though parents' traces remain a part of narrative identity throughout the life span (Köber & Habermas, 2018). Therefore, in this study, 118 individuals (at time 1: Mage = 17.3 years, SD = .77, 73% female, 82% White) reported at age 17 on their perceived positive parenting. As emerging and young adults, as part of follow-ups at ages 26 and again at 32, participants provided life story interviews. First, it was tested whether earlier positive parenting longitudinally predicted parents' traces in later life stories. Second, we studied the joint long-term prediction of parenting and parents' traces to several narrative features of these young adults' life stories, including emotional tone, coherent positive resolution, and narrative complexity. Results replicated prior research on parents' traces and showed moreover that perceived parenting shape offspring's narrative identity well into young adulthood. These long-term findings are consistent with the notion that narrative identity in adulthood is rooted in the family, and continuously shaped by experiences with parents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Identity research focuses on multiple processes capturing how adolescents form and maintain a sense of self. However, identity content (the “what” of identity) might impact associations between identity and the association with well-being. We examined this potential role of content (i.e., valence and life domain) in two studies, focusing on autobiographical reasoning in written narratives (i.e., self-event connections), educational identity commitment and exploration processes, and measures of general and domain-specific functioning. Study 1 ( N = 180, Mage = 14.7) and Study 2 ( N = 160, Mage = 13.1) provided little evidence for the hypothesized role of identity content, but moderation analyses in Study 1 showed that self-event connections were more strongly related to life satisfaction in narratives about relational events than other events. These findings suggest a more fine-grained approach is needed to capture the role of identity content.

ADHD Boys in Young Adulthood: Psychosocial Adjustment

Research on personality development has traditionally focused on rank-order stability and mean-level change in the context of personality traits. The present study expands this approach to the examination of change and stability at another level of personality-narrative identity-by focusing on autobiographical reasoning. Drawing from theory in personality and developmental science, we examine stability and change in exploratory processing and positive and negative self-event connections. We take advantage of a longitudinal study of emerging adult personality and identity development, which includes four waves of data across 4years, examining reasoning in two domains of identity, academics, and romance (n=1520 narratives; n=176-638 participants, depending on the analysis). We found moderate rank-order stability in autobiographical reasoning, but more so for exploratory processing than self-event connections. We found mean-level increases for exploratory processing in the context of romance and stability in the context of academics. For self-event connections, we saw a decrease for positive connections, and for negative connections about romance, with stability for negative connections about academics. Implications include developmental differences in types of reasoning as well as the sensitivity of narrative identity to revealing the contextual nature of personality development.

ABSTRACTSelf-event connections in autobiographical narratives help integrate specific episodes from memory into the life story, which has implications for identity and well-being. Previous research has distinguished differential relations between positive and negative self-event connections to psychological well-being but less research has examined identity. In this study, examining self-event connections in emerging adults’ narratives, 225 participants narrated a traumatic and an intensely positive experience and completed questionnaires assessing identity development and well-being. Participants who described more negative connections to self overall had higher psychological distress and identity distress, compared to those who described fewer negative connections. Participants who described positive connections to the self in traumatic events were more likely to have lower psychological distress, higher post-traumatic growth, and higher identity commitment, whereas positive connections in positive events was related to higher identity exploration and marginally higher post-traumatic growth. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature that suggests linking autobiographical memories to self can have differential effects on identity and well-being depending on the valence of the event and the connections made.

ABSTRACTThe present study examined narrative identity and subjective well-being in outpatients with remitted bipolar disorder (BD) and a healthy control group. Fifteen female outpatients with remitted BD and 15 healthy control participants identified past and future chapters in their life stories, gave their age for the beginning and end of each chapter, rated emotional tone as well as positive and negative self-event connections associated with the chapters, and for future chapters rated the probability of the chapter. The BD patients reported less positive emotional tone and self-event connections for past chapters, but not for future chapters. However, the patients did describe fewer future chapters with shorter temporal projection into the future, and reported lower probability of future chapters. These characteristics of chapters were related to lower subjective well-being. The study suggests that a more negative narrative identity with a foreshortened future perspective may contribute to lower subjective well-being in patients with BD.

Two independent mixed method studies are aimed at exploration of the major process of negotiation with an internalization of the master narrative, which assists as the cultural framework for narrative identity development. It analysed and compared the data obtained from same-sex desire individuals, ex-convicts and ordinary Georgian citizens, and traced the process of autobiographical reasoning and negotiation with autobiographical master narrative as the mean for development alternative master narrative, which, in turn, serves as the avenue for overcoming stigma, achieving resocialization and generativity, and coming in accord to one’s own identity. The comparative analysis addressed the following questions: How do research participants construct biographical alternative master narrative? Does this narrative lead to generativity? Does autobiographical reasoning mediate development of alternative master narrative? Altogether 30 life stories (16 same-sex desired persons and 14 ex-convicts) or 840 narratives were coded for narrative autobiographical reasoning, generativity, as well as for narrative structure (redemption and contamination). Besides, thematic comparative analysis was carried out. Qualitative analysis revealed the main thematic lines of the life stories, such as stigmatization and victimization, family relations, hard childhood experiences, urge for generativity, resocialization and identity formation. Research participants from both samples constructed their life stories or narrative identities through bringing on the surface the implicit master narrative and creating their own alternative one via either shifting and replacing the events or modifying sequences of the events included in the normative life story or autobiographical master narrative.

This paper considers the importance of material objects for looked after and adopted children integrated as part of life story work practices. Conducting life story work is believed to be good practice within direct work with looked after children in England and there are a range of diverse practices, including life story books, later life letters and memory boxes. Through a creative design project developing a playful memory product for looked after children, we have had the opportunity to capture sector perspectives on life story work approaches and these are interspersed throughout this commentary. Combining multi-disciplinary theoretical perspectives and these sector insights, we explore how special material objects are important for children’s identity and continuity of sense of self. The paper highlights the importance of children telling their own stories of these objects, giving them agency and control over their life story narratives. In a context of austerity, life story work may not be prioritised by social workers who have many other competing demands and limited resources. We emphasise the need for professionals to recognise the value children give to objects and to provide them with opportunities to both keep these safe during placement moves and to tell their own story through their objects alongside more traditional, formal life story work. The recommendations have implications for children in out of home care in many country contexts, not just England where the research has been conducted.

depression is associated with worse executive function, but underlying mechanisms might differ by age. to investigate whether vascular disease burden affects the association between depression and executive dysfunction differentially by age. among 83,613 participants of Lifelines (population-based cohort study), linear regression analyses were applied to examine the association between executive function (Ruff Figural Fluency test, dependent variable) and depression according to DSM-IV criteria (Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, independent variable). adjusted for demographic characteristics, major depressive disorder was associated with a lower level of executive function in both younger and older adults. Minor depressive disorder was only associated with worse executive function in younger adults. Adding vascular disease burden to the final model with major depressive disorder, reduced this strength of this association by 5.9% in younger and 5.0% in older adults. major depression was associated with worse executive function across the lifespan, but minor depression only in younger adults. The impact of vascular burden on the association did not differ between younger and older adults. Therefore, vascular risk reduction is important in both age groups.