Narrative identity does not predict well-being when controlling for emotional valence

ABSTRACT

Narrative identity refers to a person’s internalized and evolving life story. It is a rapidly growing research field, motivated by studies showing a unique association with well-being. Here we show that this association disappears when controlling for the emotional valence of the stories told and individuals’ general experience of autobiographical memory. Participants (N = 235) wrote their life story and completed questionnaires on their general experience of autobiographical memory and several dimensions of well-being and affect. Participants’ life stories were coded for standard narrative identity variables, including agency and communion. When controlling for emotional valence of the life story, the general experience of autobiographical memory was a significant predictor of most well-being measures, whereas agency was a predictor of one variable only and communion of none. These findings contradict the claim of an incremental association between narrative identity and well-being, and have important theoretical and practical implications for narrative identity as an outcome measure in interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative identity
• autobiographical memory
• individual differences
• well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: D. Berntsen, T. B. Gehrt, N. P. Nielsen, D. C. Rubin, and R. H. Hoyle; Methodology: D. Berntsen, T. B. Gehrt, and N. P. Nielsen; Formal analysis: T. B. Gehrt; Investigation: T. B. Gehrt and N. P. Nielsen; Writing – original draft: T. B. Gehrt, D. Berntsen, and N. P. Nielsen; Writing – review and editing: D. Berntsen, T. B. Gehrt, N. P. Nielsen, D. C. Rubin, and R. H. Hoyle; Supervision: D. Berntsen; Project administration: T. B. Gehrt; Funding acquisition: D. Berntsen, D. C. Rubin, and R. H. Hoyle.

Author note

The data has not been made available on a permanent third-party archive given the nature of the data (i.e., participants’ life stories) and General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). However, access to the data (in anonymized form) will be granted from the corresponding author upon request, but may require the completion of a formal data sharing agreement, in compliance with GDPR and Aarhus University rules. The employed materials and prompts have not been altered for the present study and are available via the references provided in the Methods section.

Notes

1 Using narrative identity as a keyword in a search in PsycInfo.

2 https://www.apa.org/research/responsible

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark [9037-00015B9]. The funding source had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.