Storied across time: Construction, validation, and relationships of the cinematic self scale

ABSTRACT

Five studies provide evidence of cinematic self, a novel individual difference about how strongly people experience narrative identity. Study 1 constructs the cinematic self scale and demonstrates its strong psychometric properties. Study 2 shows relationships between cinematic self and self, emotion, individual differences, development, and well-being variables. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate relationships between cinematic self and narrative attitudes, behaviors, and performance on a narrative task. Cinematic self predicts stronger narrative performance and extent personal memories are valued, communicated to others, and preserved.  Study 5 suggests cinematic self is stable trait. Cinematic self reflects how storied people experience themselves, interact with and make sense of their personal memories, and has implications for self, narrative identity, social behavior, and well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative identity
• self
• identity
• narrative
• self-continuity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All other study samples had racial and educational breakdowns similar to this sample and are omitted for brevity, but available upon request from the corresponding author.

2. Sample 4 was utilized in a prior manuscript on the relations between abuse, well-being, and self-variables.