Telling the Tale and Living Well: Adolescent Narrative Identity, Personality Traits, and Well‐Being Across Cultures

Abstract

This study explored links between narrative identity, personality traits, and well-being for 263 adolescents (age 12-21) from three New Zealand cultures: Māori, Chinese, and European. Turning-point narratives were assessed for autobiographical reasoning (causal coherence), local thematic coherence, emotional expressivity, and topic. Across cultures, older adolescents with higher causal coherence reported better well-being. Younger adolescents with higher causal coherence instead reported poorer well-being. Personal development topics were positively linked to well-being for New Zealand European adolescents only, and thematic coherence was positively linked to well-being for Māori adolescents only. Negative expressivity, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness were also linked to well-being. Implications of these cultural similarities and differences are considered for theories of narrative identity, personality, and adolescent well-being.

Getting a Life Takes Time: The Development of the Life Story in Adolescence, Its Precursors and Consequences

“…Across all three groups, as noted above, older adolescents and emerging adults with higher autobiographical reasoning (developmental consequentiality) reported greater well-being, and younger adolescents with higher autobiographical reasoning reported lower well-being. Notably, the Māori and Chinese adolescents in our sample were of similar socioeconomic status to the European adolescents [Reese et al, 2015]. This finding of cultural similarity in links to well-being was somewhat surprising, given the cultural differences we found in overall levels of autobiographical reasoning.…”

“…Critically, only the New Zealand European adolescents displayed the expected age-related increases in autobiographical reasoning as measured by the rating of developmental consequentiality . For turning point narratives, the Māori and Chinese adolescents were also lower in their autobiographical reasoning (again, via developmental consequentiality) but not significantly lower in their local narrative co-herence (single event thematic coherence) compared to European adolescents [Reese et al, 2015]. To our knowledge, this study is the only cross-cultural study of autobiographical reasoning in adolescence in the literature to date.…”

“…Across these studies, the evidence is now becoming strong that a positive connection exists between autobiographical reasoning and well-being only for older adolescents and emerging adults but not for younger adolescents. In our study of over 260 adolescents from ages 12 to 21, we measured autobiographical arguments in turning point narratives [Reese et al, 2015]. Age moderated the link between developmental consequentiality of narrated events and well-being, specifically for life satisfaction.…”

“…We collected life story chapters and critical event narratives from adolescents aged 12-21 from three cultural subgroups in New Zealand: indigenous Māori, Chinese, and European [Reese et al, , 2015. Māori adolescents possess dual orientations in that they are more interdependent than adolescents from the dominant European culture but simultaneously possess a strong independent self [Jose & Schurer, 2010].…”

He Says, She Says: Mothers and Children Remembering the Same Events

“…Consequently, memories of past experiences contain not only objective , event‐specific details of when, where, who, and what, but also subjective elements about the idiosyncratic thoughts, emotions, and evaluations of the rememberer. Related to the subjectivity of memory, there is also a structural component in personal remembering, in which people, based on their interpretation of what happened, draw causal connections between event elements, add elaborations to enhance the richness of event details (e.g., “The hot air balloon ride was sooooo cool!”), and integrate semantic knowledge and other general details to provide background information (Habermas & de Silveira, ; Reese et al., ; Wang, Capous, Koh, & Hou, ). Although the objective component of past events supplies the substance to the memories, the subjective and structural components render the memories with coherence and personal meaning (Bauer, ; Wang, , in press).…”