Individual differences in revising the life story-Personality and event characteristics influence change in the autobiographical meaning of life events

OBJECTIVE

Repeated autobiographical narratives have recently received increased attention as measures of the stability of narrative identity. We propose that one way to map change in life narratives is to rate the degree to which the autobiographical meaning of renarrated events changes. We aimed to test the influence of age, traits (openness, extraversion), and event characteristics on how much autobiographical meaning changes.

METHOD

In waves 3 and 4 of the MainLife study, 123 participants (15-72 years) narrated their lives twice, 4 years apart. Life events that were told both times were rated for change in autobiographical meaning (n = 531). Multilevel models tested individual and event characteristics as predictors.

RESULTS

Autobiographical meaning changed more the more individuals were open to experience, the more recently the events had happened, and the more negative emotions the event narratives contained. It was unrelated to extraversion and to the use of autobiographical arguments. A decrease in change with age was due to older individuals narrating older events.

CONCLUSION

Our findings add to understanding how traits and life story are related and underscore the need to further study the role of event characteristics for stability and change in narrative identity.

Parents' traces in life: When and how parents are presented in spontaneous life narratives

OBJECTIVE

Although parents are acknowledged to be a part of their children's personality and narrative identity and to remain important across the life span, narrative personality research has not yet explored the spontaneous presentation of parents in life stories. Therefore, this study examined longitudinally the place given to parents when crafting one's life narrative and how this changes with age. Furthermore, in contrast to prior studies, we focused on spontaneous mentions of parents.

METHOD

We investigated how often parents are mentioned in life narratives of six age groups spanning from age 8 to 69, how the parental relationship is evaluated, whether narrators express understanding of their parents, and whether they respond to parental values.

RESULTS

People of all ages dedicated a substantial part of their life narratives to their parents and evaluated their relationship with them in an increasingly differentiated manner. Parents were increasingly perceived as individuals beyond their parental nurturing role. Until late in life, individuals reflect on values and opinions that were transferred to them by their parents.

CONCLUSIONS

Parents hold a consistent place in life narratives, emphasizing their importance for narrative identity. Results are discussed in terms of lifelong child-parent relationships. Directions for future research are outlined.

Exploratory Study of Depressed Adolescents' Life Narratives

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the life stories of depressive adolescents and compare them with non-clinical adolescents' life stories. Methods: For this purpose, we compared 20 life stories of hospitalized adolescents suffering from major depressive episode with 40 life stories of adolescents attending school divided into two groups: 20 non-depressed and 20 depressed adolescents. Results: Results showed that life stories differed as a function of psychopathology. Depressed hospitalized adolescents spoke about their disease and defined themselves by their depression. The depressed adolescents in school concentrated on schooling and school achievements, while the non-depressed group defined themselves by their family, friends and inclusion in a peer group. Conclusion: These analyses allowed us to highlight specific themes mentioned by each of the three groups of adolescents. Although life stories are personal and unique, analysis of such stories allows us to better understand the daily reality of depressive adolescents and the relationships between the life events they experience, daily stressors, depression and how they construct their personal history.