Reflective functioning (RF) is defined as the ability to infer mental states of others and oneself. While RF has been predominantly studied in attachment research, it might also occur in other autobiographical narratives because of its strong connection to self-organization and self-understanding. Therefore, this study took a first step combining research on RF with developmental narrative research. In a longitudinal lifespan study covering up to three measurements across 8 years and six age groups (N = 172), we aimed to detect RF in entire life narratives to explore its development with age and its contribution to causal-motivational coherence of life narratives. Although scores were initially low, RF could be identified in life narratives, and was found to develop throughout adolescence and to predict life narrative coherence above and beyond age. Results confirm RF as significantly contributing to narrative self-organization, indicating promising new paths in research on autobiographical narratives and self.
In this commentary, we suggest that a model explaining the dissociation between the evaluation of personal and public past and future events proposed by Liu and Szpunar (2023) might profit from considering more systematically the cultural-historical context of selecting and evaluating events. This would entail identifying psychological mechanisms which, in combination with contextual variation, predict the proposed dissociation or other evaluative configurations. We suggest combining self-enhancement with independent versus interdependent self-construal and current historical state of affairs to explain the evaluation of events. Second, we argue that taking into account the narrative context of events not only in theory but also methodologically might render the model more powerful. We point to intersections between individual life narratives and collective histories of nations and highlight their differences in scriptedness. These additional considerations may contribute to explaining different appraisals of personal and national events.
ObjectiveRepeated autobiographical narratives have recently received increased attention as measures of the stability of narrative identity. We propose that one way to map change in life narratives is to rate the degree to which the autobiographical meaning of renarrated events changes. We aimed to test the influence of age, traits (openness, extraversion), and event characteristics on how much autobiographical meaning changes.MethodIn waves 3 and 4 of the MainLife study, 123 participants (15–72 years) narrated their lives twice, 4 years apart. Life events that were told both times were rated for change in autobiographical meaning (n = 531). Multilevel models tested individual and event characteristics as predictors.ResultsAutobiographical meaning changed more the more individuals were open to experience, the more recently the events had happened, and the more negative emotions the event narratives contained. It was unrelated to extraversion and to the use of autobiographical arguments. A decrease in change with age was due to older individuals narrating older events.ConclusionOur findings add to understanding how traits and life story are related and underscore the need to further study the role of event characteristics for stability and change in narrative identity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.