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Consistency and stability of narrative coherence: An examination of personal narrative as a domain of adult personality
Author(s) -
Waters Theodore E. A.,
Köber Christin,
Raby K. Lee,
Habermas Tilmann,
Fivush Robyn
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/jopy.12377
Subject(s) - narrative , psychology , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , personality , context (archaeology) , situational ethics , consistency (knowledge bases) , social psychology , narrative inquiry , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , linguistics , history , philosophy , physics , geometry , mathematics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
Objective Narrative theories of personality assume that individual differences in coherence reflect consistent and stable differences in narrative style rather than situational and event‐specific differences (e.g., McAdams & McLean, 2013). However, this assumption has received only modest empirical attention. Therefore, we present two studies testing the theoretical assumption of a consistent and stable coherent narrative style. Method Study 1 focused on the two most traumatic and most positive life events of 224 undergraduates. These event‐specific narratives were coded for three coherence dimensions: theme, context, and chronology (NaCCs; Reese et al., 2011). Study 2 focused on two life narratives told 4 years apart by 98 adults, which were coded for thematic, causal, and temporal coherence (Köber, Schmiedek, & Habermas, 2015). Results Confirmatory factor analysis in both studies revealed that individual differences in the coherence ratings were best explained by a model including both narrative style and event‐/narration‐specific latent variables. Conclusions The ways in which we tell autobiographical narratives reflect a stable feature of individual differences. Further, they suggest that this stable element of personality is necessary, but not sufficient, in accounting for specific event and life narrative coherence.