Narrative Identity

Question 1

What are the 3 trait approaches to personality?

Answer 1

• Eysenck’s PEN Model
• Gray’s RST Model
• Costa & McCrae’s (1992) Five Factor Model

Question 2

what is narrative personality? McAdams (1996)

Answer 2

• Narrative identity is the third and the broadest level of personality outlined by McAdams
• Narrative identity is a level of personality that captures how an individual defines themselves through the social construction of a coherent and purposeful life story

Question 3

How does McAdams critique Trait Theories?

Answer 3

“But as an integrative framework for studying persons, the Big Five may not be comprehensive enough, for it makes the whole of personality to be synonymous with traits.” (McAdams, 1996, p.296).
- Traits don’t explain their individuality
- Traits aren’t grounded in a cultural or sociohistorical context

Question 4

what 3 assumptiosn is McAdams’s theory based on?

Answer 4

• Selfhood is not given, it is made.
• The self develops over time.
• People seek temporal coherence in their self.

Question 5

What is McAdams integrative theory of personality?

Answer 5

Draws on evidence from trait theories and social-cognitive theories in personality to propose:

• Level 1 – Traits (e.g., FFM).
• Level 2 – Personal Concerns.
• Level 3 – Narrative Identity.

Question 6

what Level 1 of McAdams theory of personality?

Answer 6

• trait
• based on five factor model, acronym OCEAN
• Dispositional signatures of personality.
• Decontextualised – (fairly) stable across lifespan and situations.

Question 7

what Level 2 of McAdams theory of personality?

Answer 7

• personal concerns
• Motives, values, goals, beliefs, skills, coping styles, defense mechanims, attachment styles…etc
• It draws upon many areas of psychology where there are individual differences between people.
• Involves focus on motivation, self-development, and strategies or skills.
• Contextualised within a specific time, place and/or role.

Question 7

why are personal concerns not the whole picture?

Answer 7

• They do not present a unified identity of the person across time, place, and role.
• They do not provide us with a sense of what the life experiences mean to the person.

Question 7

what Level 3 of McAdams theory of personality?

Answer 7

• Narrative Identity
• The life story that is constructed from autobiographical memory.
• An evolving, integrative account, which provides temporal coherence and meaning.
• Answer to ‘Who Am I?’ question

Question 8

what is a Life Story Interview (LSI)?

Answer 8

A method used to collect data on narrative identity. It positions the participants as a storyteller:

• In-depth qualitative interview, normally 2-3 hours.
• Person divides their life story into distinct chapters.
• Person describes key scenes, characters and plots, and significance of the event(s) in each chapter.

Question 8

what are some common codes developed from LSI?

Answer 8

• Agency - to what extent the person feels in control of their life
• Communion - quality of relationships
• Redemption - event specific of making positive resolution for challenging events
• Contamination - things we anticipate to go well but go wrong
• Meaning making - how we connect events to ourselves

Each life story is unique, but researchers can code for common dimensions and examine how these narrative dimensions relate to variables of interest (McAdams & McLean, 2013).

Question 9

How do we measure Narrative Identity?

Answer 9

• To capture (stable) individual differences in narrative style, researchers will average a construct (e.g., redemption) across all life scenes.
• This is viewed as a relatively de-contextualised approach averaging across different life domains (Dunlop, 2015).

Question 10

what is the contextualised approach to narrative identity?

Answer 10

• A contextualised approach involves averaging constructs across specific life domains (e.g., love or work).
• The processes involved in identity formation may vary in different life domains (Dunlop, 2015).
• This approach only collects narratives from relevant life domains for the context under study (Lilgendahl & McLean, 2020).

Question 11

Inter-rater reliability of narrative identity

Answer 11

Agreement and consistency in the interpretation of the narrative data is important:

• Defined coding schemes.
• Training with example narratives.
• Multiple coders, often blind to study hypotheses.
• Inter-rater reliability statistics to examine the consistency and agreement across coders

Question 12

what is structure of Narrative Identity

Answer 12

McLean et al. (2020) conducted an empirical investigation into the underlying domains and structural organisation of narrative identity constructs.

Question 13

why is narrative identity important?

Answer 13

• Narrative identity is not just a bunch of random stories.
• For narrative identity to be a level of personality, then it should predict important life outcomes.
• Researchers have often focused on health and well-being outcomes.

Question 14

Redemption in Narrative Identity McAdams et al. (2001)

Answer 14

• 2 samples in different life stages:
• 74 mid-life adults - completed Life Story Interview (LSI)
• 125 UG students – written LSI for 10 life scenes.
• Researchers coded for redemption and contamination in life scenes.
• Participants also answered questionnaires on their current well-being.

Question 14

Narrative Identity and Mental Health study 1 Alder et al. (2015)

Answer 14

• longitudinal study
• They asked: is narrative identity style of health challenges associated with well-being over time?
• 89 late-mid-life participants were sampled from a study that included the Life Story Interview.
  Participants were selected if they had narrated a “personal health challenge”
• Mental and physical health were assessed 5 times (once a year for 4 years post-baseline).
• 4 life scenes were selected: high point, low point, personal health challenge, and turning point
• Each life scene was coded for by: agency, redemption, communion, contamination
• looked at ‘Do individual differences in narrative identity predict change in mental and physical health over 4 years?’
• isn’t able to predict physical health
• but robustly predicted in mental health

Question 15

Narrative Identity and Mental Health study 2, Alder et al. (2015)

Answer 15

• Do the findings still hold in a prospective investigation after a negative health experience?
• 54 participants drawn from an existing longitudinal study:
• 27 people – major illness diagnosis between baseline and wave 2.
• 27 ‘matched’ people – remained healthy for the study duration.
• Participants completed the abbreviated life story interview.
• The same 4 themes were coded as in Study 1.
• Results for the illness group: Poorer trajectories of physical (but not mental) health over 2 years in illness group compared to control group.

Question 16

Narrative identity and behaviour, Dunlop & Tracy (2013)

Answer 16

• Does a redemptive narrative precede behavioural change in recovering alcoholics (sober ≤ 6 months)?
• 44 participants who were recovering from alcoholism.
  In wave 1, a narrative about their last drink and questionnaires on health, personality, months of sobriety were collected.
• In wave 2 at 4-months after wave 1 – participants were re-administered the same questionnaires.
• Participants divided into redemption narrative (n=12) and non-redemption narrative (n=32) groups.
• Redemption significantly predicted sobriety (83% vs. 44%)
• The health of participants in the redemption group also significantly improved from wave 1 to wave 2.
• These results held when controlling for personality, mental health, AA involvement and some specific narrative features (emotionality).

Question 17

Agency in Narrative Identity, Adler (2012)

Answer 17

• Adler (2012) examined changes in narrative identity in 47 individuals across 12-weeks of psychotherapy.
• Narrative account of the therapeutic process – before and after each of the 12 sessions.
• Agency and coherence were coded.
• Mental health questionnaires assessed before and after 12 sessions.
  found evidence for changes in narrative identity over 12-weeks of psychotherapy:
• Agency increased over 12-weeks.
• No evidence of changes in narrative coherence
• The increases in narrative agency were significantly and positively associated with increases in mental health over subsequent sessions.
• Trait neuroticism decreased over sessions and was associated with increases in mental health over time, but narrative agency remained a significant predictor.

Question 18

Incremental Validity in Narrative Identity, Adler et al. (2016)

Answer 18

Do individual differences in narrative identity predict outcomes when we account for dispositional traits and other individual differences?

• Adler et al. (2016) reviewed the research on narrative identity predicting well-being
• reviewed 30 papers from literature review that had data on this question
• selected studies that examined this question while controlling for other individual differences

concluded that when controlling for other individual differences (including personality traits) there was:
- Strong evidence that affective or motivational constructs predicted well-being.
- Strong evidence that integrative meaning constructs (e.g., autobiographical reasoning) predicted well-being.
- Little data available to assess the relationship between structural constructs and well-being.