Generativity and moral development as predictors of value-socialization narratives for young persons across the adult life span: From lessons learned to stories shared.

Abstract

Little research so far has examined storytelling as a channel of value socialization. In the present study, 129 adults from 3 age groups (18-26, 28-50, 60-75) were asked to tell stories for adolescents about 2 of their past value-learning experiences. Generative concern (D. P. McAdams & E. de St. Aubin, 1992) and moral reasoning stage level were also assessed. Stronger generative concern was predictive of a greater sense of having learned important lessons from these past events, of stronger adult value socialization investment, and of more engaging narratives for adolescents as judged by a panel of uninstructed raters. Higher levels of moral reasoning were positively related to generative concern and to a stronger sense of past lessons learned. Generativity appears important to the project of value socialization across the adult life span.

Life's little (and big) lessons: Identity statuses and meaning-making in the turning point narratives of emerging adults.

“…3 Achievements are an important part of who one is, evidenced by their being reported as self-defining and turning point memories, but these events do not appear to demand much personal meaning-making. In terms of emotion, this study converges with others, showing that the redemptive story sequence is associated with meaning (see Pratt et al, 1999), although we note that our correlations were quite modest. The management of difficult life events by using meaning-making processes to find the good within the bad is important to the development of a healthy narrative identity (McAdams, 2004;Pals & McAdams, 2004).…”

“…Thus, McLean and Thorne's (2001) system was adapted to a linear system (0 -3), with increasing scores reflecting increased complexity in autobiographical reasoning. This adaptation converges with other systems for coding the increased complexity of meaning, which have often examined meaning in relation to age, finding that complexity of meaning tends to increase with age (e.g., Habermas & Paha, 2001;McCabe et al, 1991;McLean, 2005;Pratt et al, 1999), and also converges with McLean and original conceptualization of lessons as a less sophisticated form of meaning than insights.…”

“…Other researchers have also found that meaningtype processes increase in sophistication with age (e.g., Habermas & Paha, 2001;McCabe, Capron, & Peterson, 1991;Pratt, Norris, Arnold, & Filyer, 1999). Since identity statuses also show development across adolescence and emerging adulthood (Meilman, 1979), the sophistication of identity development advances with age in both approaches, following Erikson's (1968) original formulations.…”

Late Adolescent Identity Development: Narrative Meaning Making and Memory Telling.

“…McLean and Thorne (2003) defined two specific kinds of meaning in late adolescent's self-defining memory narratives, lesson learning and gaining insight, which will also be examined in the present study (see also Blagov & Singer, 2004;McCabe, Capron, & Peterson, 1991;Pratt, Norris, Arnold, & Filyer, 1999;Thorne et al, 2004). Lesson learning refers to learning a specific lesson from an event that could direct future behavior in similar situations (e.g., "I should not talk back to my mother").…”

Remythologizing culture: Narrativity, justification, and the politics of personalization

“…After nearly two decades of sustained interest in personal narratives on the part of personality and developmental psychologists (e.g., Brown, Debold, Tappan, & Gilligan, 1991;Hermans, 1992;McAdams, de St Aubin, & Logan, 1993;Nouri & Helterline, 1998;Pratt, Norris, Arnold, & Filyer, 1999;Quackenbush & Barnett, 2001;Singer & Salovey, 1993;Tappan, 1989), the thesis that the self is best understood as a story has become a well-worn cliché. Some (e.g., Gerrig, 1994) even express doubts that a substantive distinction can be made between narrative thought and the analytic mindset that has historically guided the work of academic psychologists.…”