An integrative model of narrative identity builds on a dual memory system that draws on episodic memory and a long‐term self to generate autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memories related ...to critical goals in a lifetime period lead to life‐story memories, which in turn become self‐defining memories when linked to an individual's enduring concerns. Self‐defining memories that share repetitive emotion‐outcome sequences yield narrative scripts, ed templates that filter cognitive‐affective processing. The life story is the individual's overarching narrative that provides unity and purpose over the life course. Healthy narrative identity combines memory specificity with adaptive meaning‐making to achieve insight and well‐being, as demonstrated through a literature review of personality and clinical research, as well as new findings from our own research program. A clinical case study drawing on this narrative identity model is also presented with implications for treatment and research.
Self-defining memories (SDMs) are touchstones in individuals' narrative identity. This is the first SDM study to compare college students from the mainland People's Republic of China (PRC) to ...American college students. It examined SDMs, Big Five personality traits, and memory function in 60 students from each country (
= 120). Participants rated their memories for affect, recall frequency, and importance. Chinese students recalled their most positively rated memories more frequently and with greater importance, while American students did not show this pattern. American students who scored higher in Openness were more likely to recall negative memories. Memory content coding revealed that Chinese students recalled significantly more guilt/shame events than American students. Further analysis indicated that these memories were particularly focused on academic performance and parental expectations. The discussion suggests that follow-up studies look at differing emotion regulation strategies in the two countries, as well as at how the two different educational systems are affecting late adolescent identity formation processes.
This Special Issue of Journal of Personality, focused on psychobiographies of social change agents, aims to make contributions to the field in terms of content, method, and process. The content of ...the issue is focused on understanding people who powerfully impact their world, from eminent global leaders to everyday change agents. The contributions to the Special Issue are unified by their adoption of psychobiographical methods, though as a set they offer both excellent representations of common psychobiographical approaches as well as vital innovations in this tradition. The process of curating this Special Issue sought to make several interventions in typical practices, including the cultivation of an intentional community of scholars representing both experienced and fledgling psychobiographers, the pursuit of a relational approach to publishing, and the adoption of open science practices. Psychobiography has an important role to play in contemporary personality psychology and we hope this Special Issue will itself serve as a foundation for continued innovation in the field.
Objective
Self‐defining memories (SDMs) are units of life‐story analysis, whose features resemble elements from narrative identity’s factorial structure. To bridge narrative‐identity and ...personality‐trait domains, we conducted a replication and extension of prior research.
Method
We linked four SDM features – affect, specificity, meaning making, and content – to the Big Three trait domains of personality and psychopathology in a small sample that was well‐powered for multilevel modeling (133 participants, 1330 SDMs).
Results
Affect
SDM affect correlated with indices of Positive Emotionality and Negative Emotionality, and narrative themes of contamination were associated with Negative Emotionality.
Specificity
SDM specificity vs. overgenerality related to Constraint and Negative Emotionality indices, lending support to the executive dysfunction and emotional disorder theories of overgeneral autobiographical memory. (Tests of the avoidance thesis of overgeneral memory were inconclusive.)
Meaning making
Explicit meaning making in SDMs reflected adaptive personality. It moderated (or buffered) the link between SDMs’ affect and chronic emotional distress.
Content
The links between SDM content and traits suggest that SDMs reflect personal goals, whose fulfillment or frustration relate to psychological health.
Conclusions
This research serves replication purposes as well as the purpose of connecting two major domains of personality: narrative identity and adaptive and maladaptive traits.
The current study replicated Wang and Singer's (2021. A cross-cultural study of self-defining memories in Chinese and American college students. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.
...https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.622527
) finding that Chinese college students from the People's Republic of China (PRC) recalled more self-defining memories (SDMs) focused on high school academic stress than their American counterparts. Seventy-eight American students from a private 4-year liberal arts college and 96 Chinese students from 13 different Chinese universities recalled two SDMs and rated them for affect, recall frequency, and importance. Once again, Chinese college students were more likely than American students to recall academic stress SDMs, but also expressed more redemptive themes in these memories. Overall, Chinese students rated their SDMs as more positive than the Americans, while the American sample tended to recall their negative memories more frequently. Contrasting the SDMs, American students self-reported higher levels of stress about their high school workload and less academic self-confidence. Regressions linked more negative affect in American SDMs to these work load and self-confidence concerns. Chinese students' SDM negative affect was most strongly predicted by perceived academic stress linked to parental and teachers' expectations. The discussion highlights the potential influence of Confucian values in the Chinese students' responses to past academic stress and their internalisation of academic stress memories in their narrative identity.
Breast cancer (BC) in younger age is a critical and potentially traumatic experience that can interrupt the continuity of self-narrative during a crucial phase. In the Narrative Identity framework ...the translation of memories into autobiographical narratives is an internal and external process that plays a key role in meaning-making, social relationships and self-coherence. The aim of this study is to examine the role and function that autobiographical memory narratives (AMN) play in the process of adaptation to BC medical treatment. Seventeen BC women below 50 years received prompts to provide autobiographical memory narratives at four phases during their treatment (pre-hospitalization-T1-post-surgery-T2-chemo-radio therapy-T3-follow-up-T4). The Emotional Processing Scale (EPS) was also administered. In all, 68 AMN were collected. A three step procedure of data analysis was conducted. The first one, an empirically-derived memory coding manual to analyze key dimensions of AMN was developed: Agency; Emotional Regulation and Interpersonal Relations. Findings show a particular vulnerability in narrative identity faced by BC women during the shift from T1-T3. In the second one, an emotional coping profile for each woman focusing on the shift from T1-T3 was created. For the third step, these profiles were compared with the EPS scores. The final results suggest the capacity of the AMNs to differentiate the women's emotional adaptation over the course of the BC treatment. Despite the study's limitations, it supports the use of AMN as clinical device to construct a deeper knowledge and profiling trajectory of how women have internalized and elaborated past encounters with illness and help providers, as well as their prior experience of bodily/psychological health and integrity. This information adds to an understanding of their current efforts at recovery and adaptation. In this way we believe that the recollection of narrative memories, not only at the end of the cancer treatment but also during its process, could help the women to mend the broken continuity of their narrative self, as they seek to maintain a healthy balance of internal resources across their past, present, and projected future.
As part of a special section on stability and continuity in personality, this analysis explores the role of repetition in life story interviews of a middle-aged White male named Dennis over a 5-year ...period. Using a framework of narrative identity, repetition is identified and analyzed through three units of study-his life story narrative, self-defining memories, and narrative scripts. These components of narrative identity converge to provide the portrait of an individual who struggles with his sense of agency and control in his life, often feeling he lives under a cloud of "bad karma." Despite this adversity, he presents a recurring script of his redemptive triumph over the "negative fates" he perceives. Although this repetitive formulation provides a stable sense of identity, it also imposes a rigidity in outlook. The last section of this case study examines how clinical treatment might address this rigidity.
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