Narrative identity across multiple autobiographical episodes: Considering means and variability with well-being

ABSTRACT

This project tested the ways mean expressions of narrative identity and variability in expressions of narrative identity informed young adults’ well-being. We collected three narratives about past life challenges and coded narratives for themes of growth, agency, communion, and coherence. We tested whether a) mean scores and b) a variability index that avoids conflation with means were uniquely associated with well-being. Mean scores of growth, agency, and coherence were positively associated with domains of well-being, accounting for demographics and Big Five trait endorsements, replicating existing research. Variability was not directly associated with endorsements of well-being. However, moderations by gender suggested that women who displayed variability endorsed higher well-being than women expressing lower variability and men expressing higher variability.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• communion
• growth
• coherence
• well-Being
• gender

Authors’ Note

This study was not externally funded. The authors report no conflicts of interest.

JAB designed this study with feedback from KB, JMS, and RF. JAB contributed to statistical analyses and writing this manuscript. KB contributed to writing and editing this manuscript. JMS contributed to writing and editing this manuscript. RF contributed to writing and editing this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This project was not pre-registered.

2. For example, this approach is more common with manual or computerized counts of positive and negative affect in narratives (e.g., Booker, 2019; Dunlop et al., 2013a). Each mention of positive emotions or turns-of-phrase regarding positive feelings would be counted over the course of a narrative. There is no expected ceiling for how high a score someone may have for this rating.

3. This approach is reflected in certain narrating rating schemes, including earlier approaches for rating agency and communion by McAdams and colleagues (McAdams, 1985; McAdams et al., 1996). Within a narrative, one would rate for four possible themes of, say, agency by considering explicit mentions of self-mastery; status or victory; achievement or responsibility; and/or empowerment. These separate themes could then be tallied for a composite score. There is a max possible score for these ratings, but the approach for designating scores differs from the single, global rating approach used in this study.