User:Narrativeidentity/sandbox



Narrative Identity is a field of psychology that individuals form their identity by integrating their disparate roles, talents, and social involvements into an internalized, evolving story of the self  that provides the individual with a greater sense of unity and purpose in life. This life narrative consists of one’s reconstructed past (influenced by the biological properties of present), perceived present (influenced by current identity/mental state), and imagined future. Furthermore, this narrative is a story - it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots, themes, and, when told, often follows the traditional model of a story - having a beginning (initiating event), middle (an attempt and a consequence), and an end (denouement).

Narrative Identity in the Context of Personality In psychology, a person’s narrative identity is a layer of personality related to, but distinct from the broad dispositional traits and contextualized characteristic adaptations.

The first level used to describe a person, dispositional traits, is based on The Big Five (Costa & McCrae) and the Five-Factor Models (Goldberg) of personality. Dispositional traits are decontextualized, allow for comparison, and have the quality of being relatively stable across the lifespan. However, dispositional traits are limited by their inability to predict how a person will behave in a given situation.

The second level of personality within McAdams’ (2001) three-level framework is characteristic adaptations. This level encompasses a person’s motivations, developmental concerns, and life strategies. Unlike the dispositional traits, it is contextualized within time, place, and social roles.

McAdams (1995, 2001) suggests that narrative identity is best thought of as a distinct level of personality, existing alongside two other levels. Finally, narrative identity, the third level, encompasses the internalized, evolving story of the self. It is argued that assessing all three levels simultaneously gives you a personological description of the whole person.

Development of Narrative Identity The ability to narrate one’s life and form an identity emerges in adolescence and plays a role in building generativity in adulthood, and helps foster meaning making at the end of life.

Exploring Psychological Well-Being Because of the close linkage between Narrative Identity and psychological well-being (Adler, Kissel, & McAdams, 2006; Baerger & McAdams, 1999; Bauer et al., 2005; Fivush & Sales, 2006; Gruber & Kring, 2008; Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011; Lysaker & Lysaker, 2006; McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, & Bowman, 2001; McLeod, 1997; Roe, 2001; J. A. Singer, 2004), a common research focus in narrative identity is in exploring the relationship between changes and characteristics of narratives, and how they relate to psychological well-being.

Hermeneutic vs. Paradigmatic Narrative can be approached through one of two epistemological paradigms: hermeneutic, or paradigmatic The hermeneutic approach seeks to capture the specific, personal, and highly-contextualized elements of an individual’s story, and often, the listener is accepted as being irrevocably involved and a part of the story being told. The paradigmatic approach, on the other hand, tries to classify narratives, draw cause-and-effect relationships, and test and validate hypotheses - to transcend the particulars that the hermeneutic approach is so enamored with, and to create scientific findings.

Content
Turning to content, research on narrative identity has focused especially on the thematic elements of personal narratives. There are a number of common, well-established themes that life narratives can display. Four common ones are redemption, contamination, agency, and communion:

‘’’Redemption and Contamination''' To be continued...