William L. Dunlop, Tara P. McCoy, and Grace E. Hanley
Psychology Department, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA
I'm in a chain of memories
It's my will
John Frusicante (2001)
The life story is somewhat of a curious construct. Most everyone has some idea what a life story is, yet few in the field of health psychology actively study it. “Why should they?” the reader may reasonably ask. “There already exist countless more tractable psychological constructs that have proven themselves to be robust indicators – as well as determinants – of physical and psychological health.” Fair point. To this we would respond that a consideration of life stories is only necessary if researchers wish to attain a deeper, more thorough, and psychologically rich understanding of the persons they aim to study (Dunlop, 2015). It is also worth noting that there exists a growing literature recognizing the unique predictive ability of aspects of life stories, exhibited in relation to health behaviors and outcomes (e.g., Adler et al., 2015; Dunlop & Tracy, 2013; Dunlop, Walker, & Wiens, 2013).
Before offering a summary of previous research examining life stories in relation to physical and psychological health, it is necessary to provide a more thorough discussion of what exactly a life story is and what it is not. Following this summary, we will provide an overview of previous research that has considered aspects of life stories in relation to health‐related outcomes. Although we do not anticipate that this entry will convert each and every reader into a life story “believer,” we do hope that it increases the level of interest among health psychologists in the life story.
Lives are complicated things. Just when people feel as though they finally have a handle on all of their various tasks, responsibilities, roles, and requirements, something changes. Something always changes. Indeed, this fact, the fact that lives are constantly in flux, gets to the very heart of the matter: In large part, lives are complicated because they are always morphing. Can people ever claim to be living the same life they were living 5 years or even 5 months ago? The nature of modern circumstances, as well as common sense, would seem to dictate otherwise.
Yet, despite all the rampant change, people continually lay claim to the fact that they are, numerically speaking, the same person they were in 2005, 1995, and so on (age permitting). This claim of “personal persistence” (Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, Hallett, & Marcia, 2003) is larger than any one life that falls under its purview. Indeed, the very moral, social, and economic bedrocks of civilization are predicated on the notion that people take ownership of their past and have some invested interest in the manner in which their lives play out in the future (Chandler et al., 2003). In the absence of such a temporal thread, “contracts and debts and promises would all fly out the same window, all prospects for a just and moral world would evaporate, and judgment day would simply go out of business” (Chandler et al., 2003, pp. 7–8).
The life story represents an important psychological resource because it can be used to justify, to the self and others, a connection between the many different temporal “versions” of the self as well as the varied experiences of which it has been a part—that is, it can be used to create a sense of personal persistence or temporal continuity (Chandler et al., 2003; Dunlop & Walker, 2014). The “active ingredient” in this process is autobiographical reasoning (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).
Readers looking for some reprieve from the nebulous nature of the life story via autobiographical reasoning will be disappointed. Autobiographical reasoning is just as, if not more, complex than the life stories in which it manifests: this form of reasoning actually is not one thing, but four (at least; Habermas & Bluck, 2000). First, a given life story must make “sense” within a particular social and cultural context; it must accord to the cultural concept of biography (Habermas, 2007). This concept includes tacit assumptions regarding the events that are “worthy” of one's life story (e.g., graduating from college, having a child; Habermas, 2007) as well as the manner in which these specific events, and the life story as a whole, should be told.
Second, one may consider the temporal coherence of the life story in question. Some stories contain sufficient detail regarding when a particular experience occurred, as well as a logical (most frequently temporal) progression between the various events that the narrator deems self‐defining. When these features are present, the story is said to have a high level of temporal coherence. Third, the thematic coherence of life stories is noteworthy. As Habermas and Bluck (2000) observed, narratives have a tendency to espouse certain themes or maxims in the stories they construct. Individuals differ in the degree to which the themes in their stories are consistent and coherent. Finally, life stories vary in their degree of causal coherence. Narrators differ with respect to the degree to which they associate changes in the self with accumulations of experience (e.g., “summer school made me more studious”) as well as the accumulation of experiences with properties of the self (e.g., “I was quite shy at the time, so I decided to study by myself in the library”).
How do researchers assess life stories? Before answering this question, it is important to recognize the distinction between the life story as a psychological construct and the life story as a measurable psychological construct. One intriguing feature of autobiographical stories is that they are, invariably, “created within a specific situation, by particular individuals, for particular audiences, and to fulfill particular goals” (McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007, p. 262). In this sense, the elements of life stories that are produced in research contexts do not represent a pure “assessment of internal representations but rather…an emergent product of representations and features in which narratives are told” (p. 264; see also McCoy & Dunlop, 2016).
When researchers set their sights on measuring life stories, they most commonly ask participants to provide a series of key autobiographical scenes from their participants' lives, such as “high points,” “low points,” and “turning points” (see McCoy & Dunlop, 2016). An example prompt is as follows (McAdams, 2008):
Please describe a scene, episode, or moment in your life story that stands out as an especially positive experience. This might be the high point scene of your entire life, or else an especially happy, joyous, exciting, or wonderful moment in the story. Please describe this high point scene in detail. What happened, when and where, who was involved, and what were you thinking and feeling? Also, please say a word or two about why you think this particular moment was so good and what the scene may say about who you are as a person and your life.
Several aspects of this prompt are worth noting. First, individuals are pushed for a single, definitive event rather than a general period in their lives (see also Baranski, Morse, & Dunlop, 2016). Second, as much detail as possible is requested. Together, these two elements of prompts (specificity and detail) have proven to offer the most psychologically meaningful narratives.
From our experience, we believe that autobiographical narratives represent some of the most interesting and illustrative data that can be extracted from participants. Consider, for example, the following narrative, which was produced by an undergraduate at our institution (University of California, Riverside) during a recent study conducted in our lab:
On [date], I got a tattoo – a compass on my chest. This was obviously a big deal for me, and it remains my pride and joy. My girlfriend and her mother were there with me when I got it, but my parents, who I'm generally close to, still don't know about it. I got the tattoo because I felt something missing from my body, like the flesh on my chest where the tattoo was supposed to be was just missing. I could feel the loss and see a lighter part of my skin where there should have been ink. When I got the tattoo, it felt right. My body was complete again. With such a positive change of who I am as a person (and I do think that my tattoo helps to define me), it feels weird not to tell my parents. I'm not afraid they'll be mad at me (which they will) but that they'll be mad at themselves. They don't understand that tattoos aren't just for sailors, gangsters, and convicts and they'll blame themselves for not raising me properly. I can hear my mom saying, “What would your grandfather say?” I know that they'll find out about it someday, and I am prepared to take care of them when they do. I don't want to hurt them with what I have to hide.
Perhaps we could have gotten much of the same information about this particular participant if we had administered questionnaires pertaining to adult attachment, relations with his or her parents, and family environment. Perhaps not. In any case, we contend that considering participants' narratives serves as a stark reminder that we are studying people—real, living, and breathing people—rather than the cold variables that, as academic psychologists, we tend to focus on.
Researchers have collected autobiographical narratives in a variety of ways. Some, for example, have collected participants' oral narratives via semi‐structured interviews (e.g., Dunlop & Walker, 2014; McAdams, 2008), whereas others have collected participants' written responses via paper‐and‐pencil assessment packages or computer‐mediated programs (e.g., Dunlop et al., 2013; McAdams et al., 2006). Despite the current focus on the contextualized, or situated, nature of stories (e.g., McLean et al., 2007), until recently researchers have generally assumed that the narrative material gathered via these various assessment procedures was comparable. Our research group (McCoy & Dunlop, 2016) has just completed a study that challenges this assumption.
In our study, approximately 400 participants were asked to provide 3 autobiographical key scenes from within 1 of 4 assessment contexts, constituting a 2(interviewer present, interviewer absent) × 2(written responses, spoken responses) study design. The resulting narratives were quantified in terms of 15 linguistic (i.e., word based) categories and 6 more conceptual themes (the specific categories and themes are irrelevant at this time, though they will be explored in detail later in this entry). Of the 15 linguistic categories considered, 14 exhibited a significant main effect for, or interaction with, assessment context. A similar pattern was observed when we considered the conceptual content of participants' narratives. Here, five of the six categories differed significantly across assessment contexts. The take‐home message from this research is that assessment contexts substantially influence the content of autobiographical narratives.
Unlike other personality characteristics, notably personality traits, there exists no single framework or conceptual paradigm that the majority of narrative researchers endorse. In contrast, it is not uncommon for researchers to create coding systems for various constructs embedded within narratives on the basis of research questions or the nature of the data in question (e.g., Dunlop et al., 2013). Despite this idiosyncrasy, the following three coding systems have developed considerable traction within the field.
Agency, represented by themes such as independence and self‐assertion, and communion, represented by themes such as togetherness and social unity. What this really means is that the understanding of many topics, including autobiographical narratives, has been aided through the consideration of the fundamental modality represented by conflicting desires to “get ahead” (agency) and “get along” (communion; Hogan, 1982).
Earlier we noted that life stories and autobiographical narratives need be considered in relation to the social and cultural contexts in which they manifest. A related point is that certain forms of narratives are generally supported by certain cultures, relative to others. Within American contexts, the redemptive story represents one such supported, or master, narrative (McAdams, 2006). A redemptive story manifests when a bad beginning (e.g., getting dumped by a girlfriend) leads to a positive ending (e.g., finding a more compatible match). The inverse of redemption is contamination, which manifests when promising beginnings give way to spoiled endings.
Autobiographical narratives have also been noted to differ in terms of affective tone (e.g., positive valence, negative valence) and complexity (e.g., the degree to which the narrator recognizes, and integrates, multiple perspectives in his or her story; see McAdams et al., 2004). Together, these variables constitute the transformational processing framework.
Life stories represent more than mere conceptions of the past. Some theorists, such as Sarbin (2004), have argued that, once formed, there exists a push to keep the particular story going. This reasoning is suggestive of the possibility that adopting the “right” type of story may actually be associated with certain health trajectories. Recognizing the gravity of this theorizing, our research group (Dunlop & Tracy, 2013) sought to examine differing autobiographical narratives in relation to subsequent health trajectories. We did this by studying recently sober alcoholics (i.e., those sober 6 months or less) enrolled in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). AA represents a particularly interesting group for narrative psychologists, as stories are central to this recovery program (O'Reilly, 1997). Indeed, as sociological researchers have noted, in AA there exists the expectation that recovery is aided through the adoption of an appropriate narrative, in this case a redemptive narrative.
In our study, we prompted recovering alcoholics for stories of their most recent drink and then distinguished those narratives that contained redemptive imagery from those narratives that did not. Of note, participants who produced redemptive narratives were initially otherwise demographically, psychologically, and health‐wise indistinguishable from non‐redemptive participants. Over time, however, the redemptive group was much more likely to maintain their sobriety relative to the non‐redemptive group. In addition, redemptive participants increased in their self‐reported health over time. The sum total of these results remained significant after controlling for the “usual suspects” in addictions research, such as attribution style, optimism, and depression. Far from being merely reflective, the elements of our life stories exhibit heavy bearing on the lives we come to lead (Sarbin, 2004).
The research summarized above represents but the tip of the iceberg. A sizable literature notes a strong relationship between the various conceptual elements of key autobiographical scenes and various markers of physical and psychological health (e.g., Adler, 2012; Dunlop et al., 2013). Among these various research pursuits, the work of Adler (2012; Adler, Turner, et al., 2015; Adler, Lodi‐Smith, Philippe, & Houle, 2015) is particular noteworthy. For example, he has shown that changes in the agency of participants' narratives predict subsequent changes in self‐reported health over the course of psychotherapy (Adler, 2012). More recently, Adler, Turner, et al. (2015) have also shown that various aspects of narratives (e.g., redemption) predict subsequent health trajectories over a span of 4 years.
In addition to his empirical contributions in this area, Adler, Lodi‐Smith, et al. (2015) has recently published a thorough literature review documenting both the typical themes or aspect narratives researchers consider (the three conceptual systems noted earlier are present on this list) and the numerous studies that have shown that the relationship between aspects of key autobiographical scenes remains significant predictors of psychological health and well‐being even after controlling for certain demographic and personological variables. To take one study from this review, Adler, Kissel, and McAdams (2006) noted that the tendency to construct contaminated key autobiographical scenes corresponded negatively with well‐being. This relationship remained significant after controlling for participants' degree of neuroticism. The conclusion to be taken from this illustrative review is that life stories and key scenes hold considerable incremental validity within the realm of psychological adjustment, health, and well‐being.
Collectively, the work of our research group (e.g., Dunlop et al., 2013; Dunlop & Tracy, 2013), Adler's research group (Adler, 2012; Adler, Turner, et al., 2015; Adler, Lodi‐Smith, et al., 2015), and others (McAdams, 2006) leads to the following conclusions: (a) aspects of life stories often correspond with participants' current levels of physical and psychological health (e.g., McAdams, 2006), (b) changes in the elements of life stories predict changes in psychological health (e.g., Adler, 2012), (c) life stories serve as powerful predictors of subsequent health trajectories (e.g., Adler, Turner, et al., 2015; Dunlop & Tracy, 2013), and (d) both concurrently and longitudinally, life stories have proved themselves to be independent predictors of the aforementioned outcomes, even after controlling for a host of non‐narrative psychological and health‐based variables (e.g., Adler, Lodi‐Smith, et al., 2015; Dunlop & Tracy, 2013).
Life stories matter. For health psychologists, life stories should matter more. These stories have proven themselves to be significant predictors of a host of health‐related outcomes and processes. These stories have also been recognized as determinants of subsequent development trajectories and our own “character and personality style” (Sarbin, 2004, p. 7). The implications this construct holds for health psychology, thus, are self‐evident.
William L. Dunlop is an assistant professor of social/personality psychology at the University of California, Riverside. He uses idiographic, nomothetic, and idiographic–nomothetic approaches to examine psychological differences between people, as well as to understand the nature and development of individual lives.
Tara P. McCoy is a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside. She studies the relation between self‐defining autobiographical narratives and social contexts. Here most recent work has explored the influence assessment contexts yield on individuals' narratives.
Grace E. Hanley is a doctoral graduate student of social/personality psychology at the University of California, Riverside. Her broad interests include life narratives and self‐continuity. She is currently studying the domain specificity on life narratives in relation to certain life outcomes.