Christin Köber

Autobiographical reasoning in life narratives buffers the effect of biographical disruptions on the sense of self-continuity

Personal identity depends on synchronic coherence and diachronic continuity of the self. Autobiographical remembering and autobiographical knowledge as well as the stability of bodily integrity, of social roles, of significant others and of physical and sociocultural environment have been suggested as supporting a pre-reflective sense of self-continuity. Stark biographical discontinuities or disruptions in these areas may destabilise the sense of self-continuity. To test the hypothesis that autobiographical reasoning in life narratives helps to compensate the effects of biographical discontinuities on the sense of self-continuity, life narratives of a lifespan sample with the ages of 16, 20, 24, 28, 44 and 69 (N = 150, 78 female) were investigated. Results confirm that if, and only if there have been biographical disruptions in the past four years, then autobiographical reasoning correlates positively with a sense of self-continuity. The findings contradict the thesis that mere remembering of past episodes is sufficient to maintain a sense of self-continuity under conditions of biographical change.

Impaired coherence of life narratives of patients with schizophrenia.

Self-narratives of patients have received increasing interest in schizophrenia since they offer unique material to study patients’ subjective experience related to their illness, in particular the alteration of self that accompanies schizophrenia. In this study, we investigated the life narratives and the ability to integrate and bind memories of personal events into a coherent narrative in 27 patients with schizophrenia and 26 controls. Four aspects of life narratives were analyzed: coherence with cultural concept of biography, temporal coherence, causal-motivational coherence and thematic coherence. Results showed that in patients cultural biographical knowledge is preserved, whereas temporal coherence is partially impaired. Furthermore, causal-motivational and thematic coherence are significantly impaired: patients have difficulties explaining how events have modeled their identity, and integrating different events along thematic lines. Impairment of global causal-motivational and thematic coherence was significantly correlated with patients’ executive dysfunction, suggesting that cognitive impairment observed in patients could affect their ability to construct a coherent narrative of their life by binding important events to their self. This study provides new understanding of the cognitive deficits underlying self-disorders in patients with schizophrenia. Our findings suggest the potential usefulness of developing new therapeutic interventions to improve autobiographical reasoning skills.

How Stable Is the Personal Past? Stability of Most Important Autobiographical Memories and Life Narratives Across Eight Years in a Life Span Sample.

Considering life stories as the most individual layer of personality (McAdams, 2013) implies that life stories, similar to personality traits, exhibit some stability throughout life. Although stability of personality traits has been extensively investigated, only little is known about the stability of life stories. We therefore tested the influence of age, of the proportion of normative age-graded life events, and of global text coherence on the stability of the most important memories and of brief entire life narratives as 2 representations of the life story. We also explored whether normative age-graded life events form more stable parts of life narratives. In a longitudinal life span study covering up to 3 measurements across 8 years and 6 age groups (N = 164) the stability of important memories and of entire life narratives was measured as the percentage of events and narrative segments which were repeated in later tellings. Stability increased between ages 8 and 24, leveling off in middle adulthood. Beyond age, stability of life narratives was also predicted by proportion of normative age-graded life events and by causal-motivational text coherence in younger participants. Memories of normative developmental and social transitional life events were more stable than other memories. Stability of segments of life narratives exceeded the stability of single most important memories. Findings are discussed in terms of cognitive, personality, and narrative psychology and point to research questions in each of these fields.

Development of Temporal Macrostructure in Life Narratives Across the Lifespan

In Western cultures, life narratives are typically expected to recount the narrators life from birth to the present. Disparate autobiographical memories need to be integrated into a more or less coherent story, which is facilitated by an overarching temporal macrostructure. The temporal macrostructure consists of elaborated beginnings that contextualize the self in pre-existent family and society, a linear temporal order, and elaborated endings. The present study longitudinally examines the development of temporal macrostructure in life narratives across the lifespan. In this cohort-sequential study, 172 German participants ages 8 to 69 years narrated their lives over the course of 8 years, resulting in up to four life narratives per person. The evidence substantially supports the hypothesis that temporal macrostructure in life narratives emerges in adolescence, with some continuing developmental change throughout adulthood. The evidence also strongly indicates that story structure and life story structure differ in their development.

Consistency and stability of narrative coherence: An examination of personal narrative as a domain of adult personality

OBJECTIVE Narrative theories of personality assume that individual differences in coherence reflect consistent and stable differences in narrative style rather than situational and event-specific differences (e.g., McAdams & McLean, 2013). However, this assumption has received only modest empirical attention. Therefore, we present two studies testing the theoretical assumption of a consistent and stable coherent narrative style. METHOD Study 1 focused on the two most traumatic and most positive life events of 224 undergraduates. These event-specific narratives were coded for three coherence dimensions: theme, context, and chronology (NaCCs; Reese et al., 2011). Study 2 focused on two life narratives told 4 years apart by 98 adults, which were coded for thematic, causal, and temporal coherence (Köber, Schmiedek, & Habermas, 2015). RESULTS Confirmatory factor analysis in both studies revealed that individual differences in the coherence ratings were best explained by a model including both narrative style and event-/narration-specific latent variables. CONCLUSIONS The ways in which we tell autobiographical narratives reflect a stable feature of individual differences. Further, they suggest that this stable element of personality is necessary, but not sufficient, in accounting for specific event and life narrative coherence.

Parents' traces in life: When and how parents are presented in spontaneous life narratives

OBJECTIVE Although parents are acknowledged to be a part of their childrens personality and narrative identity and to remain important across the life span, narrative personality research has not yet explored the spontaneous presentation of parents in life stories. Therefore, this study examined longitudinally the place given to parents when crafting ones life narrative and how this changes with age. Furthermore, in contrast to prior studies, we focused on spontaneous mentions of parents. METHOD We investigated how often parents are mentioned in life narratives of six age groups spanning from age 8 to 69, how the parental relationship is evaluated, whether narrators express understanding of their parents, and whether they respond to parental values. RESULTS People of all ages dedicated a substantial part of their life narratives to their parents and evaluated their relationship with them in an increasingly differentiated manner. Parents were increasingly perceived as individuals beyond their parental nurturing role. Until late in life, individuals reflect on values and opinions that were transferred to them by their parents. CONCLUSIONS Parents hold a consistent place in life narratives, emphasizing their importance for narrative identity. Results are discussed in terms of lifelong child-parent relationships. Directions for future research are outlined.

Mentalizing oneself: detecting reflective functioning in life narratives

ABSTRACT Reflective functioning (RF) is defined as the ability to infer mental states of others and oneself. While RF has been predominantly studied in attachment research, it might also occur in other autobiographical narratives because of its strong connection to self-organization and self-understanding. Therefore, this study took a first step combining research on RF with developmental narrative research. In a longitudinal lifespan study covering up to three measurements across 8 years and six age groups (N = 172), we aimed to detect RF in entire life narratives to explore its development with age and its contribution to causal-motivational coherence of life narratives. Although scores were initially low, RF could be identified in life narratives, and was found to develop throughout adolescence and to predict life narrative coherence above and beyond age. Results confirm RF as significantly contributing to narrative self-organization, indicating promising new paths in research on autobiographical narratives and self.

Echoes of the Past: Meaning Making in Congolese Narratives Relates to Their Social Distance Attitudes Toward Europeans

Narrative identity is not only based on the personal past but also informed by one’s historical and political past. Beside the fact that this has been shown mostly in Western samples, it is unknown how placing personal narratives within the context of an ethnic and political heritage relates to other cognitive processes, such as social attitudes. Therefore, this study explores narratives about encounters with Europeans in a Congolese sample to study the impact of their meaning on their social distance attitudes toward Europeans. Separate hierarchical regression models revealed that social distance is predicted by closure and redemption, and by the perceived heterogeneity of whiteness, but not by contamination. Yet, narratives with both low levels of closure and contamination predict greater social distance. Surprisingly, commitment to own ethnic identity was not found to be a significant predictor. Results are discussed in terms of narrative identity, historical memories, and social cognition.