Premium
To reason or not to reason: Is autobiographical reasoning always beneficial?
Author(s) -
McLean Kate C.,
Mansfield Cade D.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
new directions for child and adolescent development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.628
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1534-8687
pISSN - 1520-3247
DOI - 10.1002/cd.291
Subject(s) - psychology , autobiographical memory , cognitive psychology , cognition , developmental psychology , cognitive science , epistemology , recall , philosophy , neuroscience
Autobiographical reasoning has been found to be a critical process in identity development; however, the authors suggest that existing research shows that such reasoning may not always be critical to another important outcome: well‐being. The authors describe characteristics of people such as personality and age, contexts such as conversations, and experiences such as transgressions, which may hinder adaptive reasoning. They also propose alternatives to autobiographical reasoning for managing challenging events and constructing the life story, which include different kinds of meaning‐making than those primarily focused on in the current literature. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.