Department of Psychology, Western Washington University.
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2020 Oct;119(4):920-944. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000247. Epub 2019 Apr 18.
A robust empirical literature suggests that individual differences in the thematic and structural aspects of life narratives are associated with and predictive of psychological well-being. However, 1 limitation of the current field is the multitude of ways of capturing these narrative features, with little attention to overarching dimensions or latent factors of narrative that are responsible for these associations with well-being. In the present study we uncovered a reliable structure that accommodates commonly studied features of life narratives in a large-scale, multi-university collaborative effort. Across 3 large samples of emerging and midlife adults responding to various narrative prompts (N = 855 participants, N = 2,565 narratives), we found support for 3 factors of life narratives: motivational and affective themes, autobiographical reasoning, and structural aspects. We also identified a "functional" model of these 3 factors that reveals a reduced set of narrative features that adequately captures each factor. Additionally, motivational and affective themes was the factor most reliably related to well-being. Finally, associations with personality traits were variable by narrative prompt. Overall, the present findings provide a comprehensive and robust model for understanding the empirical structure of narrative identity as it relates to well-being, which offers meaningful theoretical contributions to the literature, and facilitates practical decision making for researchers endeavoring to capture and quantify life narratives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
大量实证文献表明，生活叙事的主题和结构方面的个体差异与心理健康有关，并可预测心理健康。然而，目前这一领域的一个局限是，有多种方法可以捕捉这些叙事特征，但很少关注负责这些与幸福感关联的叙事的总体维度或潜在因素。在本研究中，我们在一项大规模的多大学合作研究中发现了一种可靠的结构，该结构可以容纳生活叙事中常见的特征。在对各种叙事提示做出反应的 3 个大型新兴和中年成年人样本中（N = 855 名参与者，N = 2565 个叙事），我们发现生活叙事有 3 个因素：动机和情感主题、自传推理和结构方面。我们还确定了这些 3 个因素的“功能”模型，揭示了一组可充分捕获每个因素的简化叙事特征。此外，动机和情感主题是与幸福感最相关的因素。最后，与人格特质的关联因叙事提示而异。总的来说，这些发现为理解与幸福感相关的叙事身份的实证结构提供了一个全面而稳健的模型，为文献提供了有意义的理论贡献，并为努力捕捉和量化生活叙事的研究人员提供了实际决策的便利。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。
