11: Narrative Identity I Flashcards
What are the two modes of thinking with regard to narrative identity?
Paradigmatic Mode: tightly reasoned analysis, logical proofs, empirical observation to determine cause-effect relationships in the world.
Narrative Mode: events are explained in terms of human actors striving to do things over time. Using believable, consistent stories to explain human action.
A person’s internalized life story is a person’s _____.
Narrative identity.
According to Pennebaker, why does sharing traumatic events improve health? List three reasons.
Process of actively inhibiting feelings increases physiological arousal, discussing events narratively reduces arousal, has downstream effects on physical health.
Creating a coherent, meaningful story means information is stored in a more efficient (and biased) way.
Can be used to help people move beyond traumatic events, and experience eudaimonic well-being.
What are the five principles of narrative therapy?
- There is no truth, only different interpretations of reality. Meaning, therefore, becomes what is most important and is constructed in social, cultural, political contexts.
- All people create meaning through narratives (stories). We live our lives according to stories we tell ourselves and stories that others tell about us.
- Culture is peoples’ collected stories. Culture, therefore, is the most influential determinant in peoples’ lives.
- There is no one knowable self, but there are many selves.
- The person is never the problem. The problem is the problem – a problem story.
A study examining the effectiveness of narrative therapy found what?
Improvements in depression in randomized controlled trial, compared with cognitive-behavioural and interpersonal therapies.
Tomkins came to psychology with a history of _____, which influences his theory.
Playwriting.
Tomkins’ Script Theory emphasizes what over what Murray and Freud emphasize? What is the purpose of what Tomkins proposes?
Affects (i.e., emotions) rather than needs (Murray) or drives (Freud) as underlying force driving motivation.
Affects amplify drives by giving them motivational power.
Within Tomkins’ 9 affects, culture imposes _____ on each.
Display rules.
Because we have evolved with an affect system with some affects that feel good and some that feel bad, each human is motivated to what four rules?
- Maximize positive affect
- Minimize negative affect.
- Both these actions work best when all affect expressed.
- Anything that helps with the performance of these three rules is good for human life; anything that interferes is bad for us.
Per Tomkins’ theory, define a “scene” and why it is important.
Memory of a specific happening or event in one’s life that contains at least one affect and one object of that affect.
An “organized whole that includes persons, place, time, actions, and feelings.”
Per Tomkins’ theory, define “scripts” and why they are important.
Set of rules for interpreting, creating, enhancing, or defending against a family of related scenes.
It is the way we organize our many life scenes.
The long-term significance of scenes in our life depend on what?
Psychological magnification: cognitive-affective processes in which scenes become interconnected, and then expanded upon by thought, action, feeling, memory.
What two elements are involved in the process of psychological magnification? Provide an example for each.
Analogs: emphasize similarity between scenes; negative-affect scenes tend to be magnified through analogs (e.g., re-living same basic conflicts in different relationships).
Variants: emphasize differences/uniqueness between scenes; positive-affect scenes magnified through variants (e.g., focusing on specific, uniquely positive events with friend).
There are two particularly important scripts. What are they?
Commitment Script: person binds themselves to life program or goal that promises reward of intense positive affect. Scenes organized around the goal.
Nuclear Script: include ambivalence and confusion about life goals. Organized around a nuclear scene – a positive childhood event that turned bad.
Oprah Winfrey’s story is compelling because it is coherent. What are the four kinds of coherence related to narrative identities?
Temporal coherence: sequence told chronologically, unfolds over time.
Biographical coherence: consistent with cultural expectations regarding nature and timing of life episodes/events.
Causal coherence: links multiple life episodes into meaningful sequence that provides causal explanation.
Thematic coherence: deriving an integrative theme or principle about the self from narrated sequence of episodes.
