In three studies employing over 350 community adults and college students, participants wrote or told narratives of personally important scenes in their lives. The autobiographical accounts were coded for themes of agency and communion, the two general content dimensions in lives and life stories that have been identified by many theorists and researchers. The four agentic themes of self-mastery, status, achievement/responsibility, and empowerment were positively associated with Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) measures of achievement and power motivation, self-report scales of dominance and achievement, and personal strivings conceming being successStudy 1 employs data collected by Barry J. Hoffman for a Ph.D. dissertation in clinical psychology at Loyola University of Chicago.

In this study, the authors analyzed the internalized life stories of 40 highly generative and 30 less generative adults with similar demographic profiles to discern the extent to which the 2 groups constructed different identities. The highly generative adults were more likely to reconstruct the past and anticipate the future as variations on a prototypical commitment story in which the protagonist (a) enjoys an early family blessing or advantage, (b) is sensitized to others' suffering at an early age, (c) is guided by a clear and compelling personal ideology that remains stable over time, (d) transforms or redeems bad scenes into good outcomes, and (e) sets goals for the future to benefit society. Commitment stories sustain and reinforce the modern adult's efforts to contribute in positive ways to the next generation. The findings connect to a growing interdisciplinary literature on narrative and human lives and suggest a new research agenda that draws on nomothetic conventions to interpret storied psychosocial constructions that people fashion to make sense of their lives in time and in culture.A number of theorists in psychology and sociology have recently observed that contemporary American adults make sense of their sometimes scattered lives by fashioning and internalizing stories that integrate their reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future (e.g.

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The workplace is a key setting where gender issues and organizational structures may influence occupational health and safety practices. The enactment of dominant norms of masculinity in high risk occupations can be particularly problematic, as it exposes men to significant risks for injuries and fatalities. To encourage multi-disciplinary collaborations and advance knowledge in the intersecting areas of gender studies, men's health, work and workplace health and safety, a national network of thirteen researchers and health and safety stakeholders completed a critical literature review examining the intersection between masculinities and men's workplace health and safety in order to: (i) account for research previously undertaken in this area; (ii) identify themes that may inform our understanding of masculinity and workplace health and safety and; (iii) identify research and practice gaps in relation to men's workplace health and safety. In this paper we present key themes from this review. Recommendations are made regarding: (i) how to define gender; (ii) how to attend to and identify how masculinities may influence workers' identities, perceptions of occupational risks and how institutionalized practices can reinforce norms of masculinity; (iii) the importance of considering how masculinities may intersect with

Theorists have suggested that generativity combines tendencies toward both agency and communion in adult lives. The highly generative adult is able to generate products that extend the self in a powerful way (agency) and to offer those products to others with the purpose of assisting the next generation (communion). This study examined differences between two groups of subjects, more and less generative adults, in their autobiographical expressions of agency and communion. Employing a new coding system for analyzing themes of agency and communion in significant life-story scenes, the study revealed that highly generative adults express greater levels of communion in their autobiographical scenes than do less generative adults, especially with respect to the communal themes of dialogue and care/help. Highly generative adults also show greater levels of agency/communion integration. However; in the agency themes alone, no significant differences between the two groups emerged.