The Life Story, Domains of Identity, and Personality Development in Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

This book is about the life story and its integration into the wider personality in development, as depicted in Erikson’s theory of personality stages. The authors focus on how this personal identity narrative develops in emerging adulthood, the transition period from adolescence to young adulthood. They utilize a framework proposed by McAdams, which treats personality development as composed of three levels acquired across the life course: behavioral traits; personal values and motives; and finally, the life story, which provides some sense of a coherent personal identity. The life story and identity development are examined through the lens of different identity domains, including ideological domains such as religion, morality, and vocation, and various relational domains, including family, close peer and romantic relationships, and wider civic concerns. In a series of chapters the authors review personality development in each of these domains following McAdams’s three-part model, and describe the growth of the life story in each. All these chapters review the empirical personality research literature and then discuss findings from the authors’ ongoing longitudinal, mixed methods study following a sample of young Canadians across emerging adulthood, drawing on the individual narrative voices of the sample to illustrate this life story development. The authors also present case studies of the emerging adulthood of well-known public figures at the end of each chapter. The final chapter ties together these various lines of evidence around some general issues concerning the role of the life story in the study of the emerging adult personality.