Rubin David C, Berntsen Dorthe, Deffler Samantha A, Brodar Kaitlyn
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Box 90086, Durham, NC, 27708-0086, USA.
Center on Autobiographical Memory Research, Aarhus University, 8000C, Aarhus, Denmark.
Mem Cognit. 2019 Jan;47(1):63-75. doi: 10.3758/s13421-018-0850-4.
Individuals may take a self-narrative focus on the meaning of personal events in their life story, rather than viewing the events in isolation. Using the Centrality of Event Scale (CES; Berntsen & Rubin in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44, 219-231, 2006) as our measure, we investigated self-narrative focus as an individual differences variable in addition to its established role as a measure of individual events. Three studies, with 169, 182, and 190 participants had 11, 10, and 11 different events varied across the dimensions of remembered past versus imagined future, distance from the present, and valence. Imagined future events, events more distant from the present, and positive events all had increased self-narrative focus, in agreement with published theories and findings. Nonetheless, CES ratings for individual events correlated positively with each other within individuals (r ~ .30) and supported a single factor solution. These results are consistent with a stable individual differences tendency toward self-narrative focus that transcends single events. Thus, self-narrative focus is both a response whereby people relate individual events to their life story and identity and an individual differences variable that is stable over a range of events. The findings are discussed in relation to narrative measures of autobiographical reasoning.
个体可能会从自我叙事的角度关注其人生故事中个人事件的意义，而不是孤立地看待这些事件。我们使用事件中心性量表（CES；伯恩特森和鲁宾，《行为研究与治疗》，第44卷，第219 - 231页，2006年）作为我们的测量工具，除了将自我叙事焦点作为衡量个体事件的既定角色外，我们还将其作为一个个体差异变量进行了研究。三项研究分别有169名、182名和190名参与者，涉及11个、10个和11个不同的事件，这些事件在记忆中的过去与想象中的未来、与当下的距离以及效价等维度上有所不同。想象中的未来事件、与当下距离更远的事件以及积极事件都有更高的自我叙事焦点，这与已发表的理论和研究结果一致。尽管如此，个体内部单个事件的CES评分彼此之间呈正相关（r约为0.30），并支持单因素解决方案。这些结果与一种超越单个事件的稳定的个体差异倾向——自我叙事焦点相一致。因此，自我叙事焦点既是一种人们将个体事件与他们的人生故事和身份联系起来的反应，也是一个在一系列事件中保持稳定的个体差异变量。我们结合自传推理的叙事测量方法对这些发现进行了讨论。
