This study explores how middle-aged Black Americans talk about race, without prompting, while telling their life stories.
Drawing upon a dataset of lengthy Life Story Interviews (N = 70), we first ...employed a keyword search to identify race-relevant interview scenes for each participant. Next, we conducted a thematic analysis of these scenes to identify salient racial narrative themes. Finally, we coded race-relevant scenes to examine the psychological correlates of racial narrative themes.
We identified 460 total racially themed Life Story Interview scenes, with the number of racially themed scenes ranging from 1 to 17 across participants' interviews. Racial narrative themes included Community of Care, Black Cultural Identity, Multiculturalism, Activism, Encounter with Racism, Systemic Racism, and Racial Reckoning. Quantitative analyses highlight a relationship between racial narrative themes and psychological measures of wisdom and generativity.
This study offers insight into the ways that race manifests in the life stories of Black Americans and highlights the importance of considering race in the study of narrative identity, and personality, more broadly.
Research Methods for Studying Narrative Identity Adler, Jonathan M.; Dunlop, William L.; Fivush, Robyn ...
Social psychological & personality science,
07/2017, Volume:
8, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article provides a primer for researchers seeking an introduction to quantitative narrative research methods. It represents a consensus document of most common practices used by the coauthors. ...Key elements of conducting narrative research (e.g., asking narrative questions, designing narrative prompts, collecting narratives, coding narratives) are discussed along with limitations to this approach and future directions.
In this commentary, I provide an historical perspective on the methodological and conceptual issues that are raised by the papers in this volume, with a focus on the idea of narrative identity as it ...relates to autobiographical memory. Referring back to the emergence of the concept of narrative identity in the 1980s, I consider old and new ideas regarding the form and function of narrative identity and methodological challenges that arise in efforts to measure and code psychologically important features of life-narrative accounts.
Individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders face profound challenges as they attempt to maintain identity through the course of illness. Narrative identity—the study of internalized, evolving ...life stories—provides a rich theoretical and empirical perspective on these challenges. Based on evidence from a systematic review of narrative identity in the psychosis spectrum (30 studies, combined N = 3859), we argue that the narrative identities of individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are distinguished by three features: disjointed structure, a focus on suffering, and detached narration. Psychotic disorders typically begin to emerge during adolescence and emerging adulthood, which are formative developmental stages for narrative identity, so it is particularly informative to understand identity disturbances from a developmental perspective. We propose a developmental model in which a focus on suffering emerges in childhood; disjointed structure emerges in middle and late adolescence; and detached narration emerges before or around the time of a first psychotic episode. Further research with imminent risk and early course psychosis populations would be needed to test these predictions. The disrupted life stories of individuals on the psychosis spectrum provide multiple rich avenues for further research to understand narrative self-disturbances.
•Individuals in the psychosis spectrum experience lifelong challenges with identity.•These challenges manifest, in part, as disjointed, painful, detached life stories.•Difficult life stories can be understood as disturbances in narrative identity.•Narrative identity disturbances likely appear in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Grounded in four theoretical positions—structural, cognitive, phenomenological, and ethical—the present review demonstrates the empirical evidence for the incremental validity of narrative identity ...as a cross-sectional indicator and prospective predictor of well-being, compared with other individual difference and situational variables. In doing so, we develop an organizational framework of four categories of narrative variables: (a) motivational themes, (b) affective themes, (c) themes of integrative meaning, and (d) structural elements. Using this framework, we detail empirical evidence supporting the incremental association between narrative identity and well-being, a case that is strongest for motivational, affective, and integrative meaning themes. These categories of themes serve as vital complimentary correlates and predictors of well-being, alongside commonly assessed variables such as dispositional personality traits. We then use the theoretically grounded review of the empirical literature to develop concrete areas of future research for the field.
•In life stories, Black Americans narrate more scenes of danger than White Americans.•White Americans emphasize a greater degree of personal development in their stories.•Black Americans, instead, ...focus more on perseverance in their stories.
This paper explores how Black and White Americans narrate the “highs” (emotionally positive) and “lows” (emotionally negative) of their life story. Study 1 was conducted on the life stories of 75 Black and White Americans in 1996 as a pilot study of race differences in narrative themes. In Study 2, we performed a large-scale empirical examination of thematic differences in the personal narratives of 160 Black and White Americans. As predicted, both studies found that Black participants were more likely than their White counterparts to describe a dangerous world in their experiences while White participants placed more emphasis on personal development. In Study 2, moreover, Black participants prioritized the theme of perseverance to a greater extent than did Whites.
This study explores teacher identity work in the context of a one-year programme, Pedagogical Studies for Adult Educators. The data consist of weekly learning diaries written by Anna, a university ...teacher, during one academic year. The diaries are analysed by means of dialogically oriented narrative analysis leaning on Bakhtinian notions of voicing and ventriloquation. The results show how Anna positions her storytelling and narrated self in relation to relevant characters by voicing and evaluating these characters. The construct of positioning provides tools for understanding the relationship between the self and others in teacher identity.
•The study explores teacher identity negotiation in the context of pedagogical studies.•Teacher identity is narratively constructed through the process of positioning.•Bakhtinian notions of voicing and ventriloquation are relevant in positioning.•Explores the relationship between the self and others in teacher identity.
A robust empirical literature suggests that individual differences in the thematic and structural aspects of life narratives are associated with and predictive of psychological well-being. However, 1 ...limitation of the current field is the multitude of ways of capturing these narrative features, with little attention to overarching dimensions or latent factors of narrative that are responsible for these associations with well-being. In the present study we uncovered a reliable structure that accommodates commonly studied features of life narratives in a large-scale, multi-university collaborative effort. Across 3 large samples of emerging and midlife adults responding to various narrative prompts (N = 855 participants, N = 2,565 narratives), we found support for 3 factors of life narratives: motivational and affective themes, autobiographical reasoning, and structural aspects. We also identified a "functional" model of these 3 factors that reveals a reduced set of narrative features that adequately captures each factor. Additionally, motivational and affective themes was the factor most reliably related to well-being. Finally, associations with personality traits were variable by narrative prompt. Overall, the present findings provide a comprehensive and robust model for understanding the empirical structure of narrative identity as it relates to well-being, which offers meaningful theoretical contributions to the literature, and facilitates practical decision making for researchers endeavoring to capture and quantify life narratives.
•Intraindividual variability is not a property of the individual, but depends on narrative feature.•Intraindividual variability is most evident in resolution, and least in aspects of coherence and ...emotion.•Intraindividual variability is related to well-being for markers of coherence, and in self-defining memories.•Recognition of other’s narratives is possible, but not clearly related to the features of variability or to well-being.
Building on calls to examine intra-individual variability in personality, we examined such variability in narrative. In Study 1, participants (n=553) provided three narratives (either self-defining, turning point, transgression, low point, or trauma memories; n=1659 narratives). Narratives were coded for coherence, autobiographical reasoning, resolution, and emotional expression. Variability was highest for resolution, lowest for coherence, and was related to well-being, depending on narrative feature and event type. In Study 2, participants (n=103) engaged in a ‘narrative recognition’ task to see if they could identify which narratives came from the same individual. Recognizability was substantial, but not related to variability or well-being. Results showcase the importance of addressing intra-individual variability by narrative feature and event type.
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