Narrative identity Flashcards
Some psychologists view trait approaches as incomplete explanations of personality. They use which theory to support this claim?
McAdams (1996) three level theory of personality.
Eysenck’s PEN Model
Gray’s RST Model
Costa & McCrae’s (1992) Five Factor Model
: these trait models are trying to understand the core features/ building blocks of personality, but these only give us a mean level score of how characteristic they are compared to others.
What is an alternative view?
The Narrative Identity
(social construction of personality, how we change and evolve our personality over time)
What is a Narrative Identity?
A level of personality that captures how individuals define themselves through the SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION of a coherent and purposeful LIFE STORY.
3rd and the broadest level of personality outlined by McAdams (1996).
More of a social approach to personality (personality changes, more of a focus on identity/ understanding who they were, are, and want to be)
What is the role of narrative identity theorists?
They ask people to describe significant experiences from their lives, then try and deduce what their identity is, meaning they attach through how they tell their story leading to how they interpret the world.
What would McAdams, (1996) say about Trait Theories such as
Costa & McCrae’s (1992) Five Factor Model?
“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.”
Trait theories were only created to capture people’s general stability. This is based on the social consumption of personality and build on this narrative identity throughout life (developmental aspect due to learning/ observing).
Mcadams argues that people construct their identity based on how they react with the world (ie- job interview question of why you want this job would be a more specific response as they shape their answer)
The Life Story Interview:
The life story interview is a labour-intensive method. (2-3Hours)
Researchers sometimes collect written narratives of key life scenes using similar instructions to the interviews. What is this called?
Written (Abbreviated) Life Story:
-Write down Core scenes
-Importance on why/ how participant sees it as salient/ interpretation
-Narratives do not assess the truth of event(s), just individual differences in the interpretation of event(s) that are important.
-There is often not a constraint on the retrospective time frame for narrative recall, rather a focus on subjectively meaningful scenes.
-this event will often shape their identity and how they see themselves
Which 3 assumptions is McAdams’ theory based on?
Selfhood is not given, it is made.
The self develops over time.
People seek temporal coherence in their self.
What are the 3 levels of McAdams’s Integrative Theory of Personality as he 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.
McAdams’ Narrative Identity suggests that:
Traits are how adults explain their ………….
Traits are grounded in a ……….. or ………. context
Individuality.
Cultural or sociohistorical context.
Environment can also influence the meaning we attach for the world.
Level 1 of McAdams’s Integrative Theory of Personality is?
FFM: “OCEAN”.
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neurotic
Dispositional signatures of personality.
Decontextualised – (fairly) stable across lifespan and situations.
But not much insight into uniqueness
Level 2 of McAdams’s Integrative Theory of Personality is?
Personal Concerns
He identifies motivational values/ self-development as being
Explains the individual differences between people highlighting their motivation, self-development, and strategies or skills.
These are all contextualised within a specific time, place and/or role.
McAdams created the Integrative Theory of Personality even though there are trait/ motivational theories was because?
Those theories still do not represent the unified identity of a person over time (they are contextualised time and place)
So the Level 3 Narrative Identity ties together all the changes in one lifespan, how they interpret the changes to form who they are today
McAdams & McLean (2013):
The life story that is constructed from which type of memory?
An autobiographical memory:
An evolving, integrative account, which provides temporal coherence and meaning.
Answer to ‘Who Am I now from the past to who they want to be in the future’ question.
Basically tells us more insight to how they got to be who they are, the struggles they went through (more specific)
Evidence is drawn from other areas in psychology (e.g., Erikson’s model, 1968) showed usage of level 2 of McAdams’s Integrative Theory of Personality
His model asks participants about the different life phases they go through as you age and societal changes.
eg. adolescence (role identity vs role confusion)
Name a criticism towards trait theorists:
They explain how people respond to stresses and coping styles but it does not tell us what subjective experience means to the person:
whether they have learned from it
reflected on it
has it affected their identity or not
The Structure of Narrative Identity:
McLean et al. (2020) then conducted an empirical investigation into the underlying domains and structural organisation of narrative identity constructs.
What narrative big 3 dimensions did he find to be linked during coding of themes in the Life Story Interviews?
ABR- reflection of events and the attachment of significant events to their memory
S- can people tell a coherent narrative start/middle/end/context
-E+M- how we interpret different events/ how we emotionally behave
Narrative Identity & Mental Health:
This is viewed as more salient for people who are going through particular types of events (health challenges)
Alder et al. (2015) looked at whether is there a foundation over time for a set group of people and used a longitudinal study design.
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).
What were the 4 life scenes that were selected?
high point,
low point,
personal health challenge,
and turning point.
Narrative Identity & Mental Health 4:
Alder et al. (2015) Study 2:
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 the illness group compared to the control group.
They controlled for physical health over time when they were looking at the impact of individual differences in narrative identity
No significant changes in physical or mental health over the 2-year period apart from… Contamination (feeling that your very ill)
Narrative Identity & Mental Health 2
Alder et al. (2015) Study 1:
Do individual differences in narrative identity predict change in mental and physical health over 4 years?
When averaging across all 4 life scenes what were the findings?
(predictor findings)
Higher mental well-being was associated with Agency (being in control) and Redemption (dealing with challenges)
Lower mental well-being was associated with Contamination (good things turning bad)
But none had an impact on physical health during that 4 year period
This 2015 study codes particular narrative themes to correlate with the idea that individual differences set boundaries of how people feel over a 4 year period.
