Retelling everyday emotional events: Condensation, distancing, and closure

Abstract

Narratives of emotional experiences are widely assumed to reflect how well the speaker has coped with them. Some cross-sectional studies have suggested that well-being and absence of psychopathology correlate with more elaborate and coherent narratives of negative events. Other studies, on the other hand, suggest that retelling and coping render narratives shorter, more cognitive, and explicitly evaluative. To test this latter hypothesis, 30 young women narrated five events eliciting anger, sadness, anxiety, pride and happiness from the past week, and retold the same events three months later. After three months, narratives contained fewer attempts to solve the complication, and evaluations became more global and impersonal. Negative narratives were framed better and re-evaluated positively. Unexpectedly, narrative clauses did not decrease, nor did evaluations shift from past to present. Ways to better differentiate effects of memory and retelling from mere effects of coping are suggested.

Keywords:

• Narrative
• Emotion
• Retelling
• Coping
• Emotional sharing

Acknowledgements

This article is based on data from the diploma theses of Nadine Berger and Michaela Meier. We thank Michaela Meier for sharing data collection, transcription, and coding with the second author.

We also thank Andrea Silberstein for help with additional coding, Monika Sieverding for helpful comments on the manuscript, and Anna Kenney for editorial help.