The Redemptive Self: Generativity and the Stories Americans Live By

McAdams, Dan P.

doi:10.1207/s15427617rhd0302&3_2

Cited by 462 publications

(784 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

749

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Individuals, as a result, draw on prototypical life stories embedded in larger cultural stories (or myths) when developing their own. For instance, North Americans tend to model their life stories after the prototypical 18 narrative of the "redemptive self," which involves a specific narrative sequence of overcoming hardship by adherence to a strong value system (McAdams, 2006). Narrative identity theory, along with other approaches to meaning frameworks (Martela & Steger, 2016), constitutes a rich body of theory and findings about the psychological basis of worldviews, and a set of methods for operationalizing their content and structure.…”

Section: Meaning In Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion.

Taves¹,

Asprem²,

Ihm³

2018

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:To get beyond the solely negative identities signaled by atheism and agnosticism, we have to conceptualize an object of study that includes religions and non-religions. We advocate a shift from "religions" to "worldviews" and define worldviews in terms of the human ability to ask and reflect on "big questions" ([BQs], e.g., what exists? how should we live?). From a worldviews perspective, atheism, agnosticism, and theism are competing claims about one feature of reality and can be combined with various answers to the BQs to generate a wide range of worldviews. To lay a foundation for the multidisciplinary study of worldviews that includes psychology and other sciences, we ground them in humans' evolved world-making capacities. Conceptualizing worldviews in this way allows us to identify, refine, and connect concepts that are appropriate to different levels of analysis. We argue that the language of enacted and articulated worldviews (for humans) and worldmaking and ways of life (for humans and other animals) is appropriate at the level of persons or organisms and the language of sense making, schemas, and meaning frameworks is appropriate at the cognitive level (for humans and other animals). Viewing the meaning making processes that enable humans to generate worldviews from an evolutionary perspective allows us to raise news questions for psychology with particular relevance for the study of nonreligious worldviews.

show abstract

Section: Meaning In Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion.

Taves¹,

Asprem²,

Ihm³

2018

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Narratives exist at all the levels of social reality: micro, meso and macro. At the individual level they are an essential element of self-structure, telling an agent what is his or her identity, what are his or her relations and obligations to others, what are the expected actions of others, what is the meaning of an object action or event, and what actions should be performed [34,44,52]. They also inform the achievement of goals and the consequences of actions.…”

Section: Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Auto-narrative schemas determine the behaviour of individuals' social as well as economic actions, and influence the contents of narrative identity [33,44,52]. Special types of autonarratives are simulations of the future, rich in scenarios for possible and desirable events.…”

Section: Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These narrative schemas provide the basic plot to specific narrations, inter alia, concerning work, economic injustice, wealth etc. In the USA, for example, the most common narrative story is 'an actor achieved his or her goals despite great obstacles' [33]. This narrative schema shapes personal stories, is embodied in the plots of books and movies which in addition to telling a specific story also strengthen the narrative schema.…”

Section: Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It also influences behaviour, telling the actors that difficulties are to be expected, that they can be overcome by persistence, and that the goals can be achieved. Another US narrative schema is redemption [31][32][33][35][36][37][38]. In this schema an actor, who initially has negative characteristics, is radically transformed by a person or an experience and achieves very positive characteristics.…”

Section: Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Social Psychology and the Narrative Economy

Nowak

Kacprzyk-Murawska

Serwotka

2017

Understanding Complex Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Economics can benefit through adopting various ideas from social psychology. Social and economic processes can be analysed at different levels: the microlevel (individuals), mesolevel (system structures), and macrolevel (whole socioeconomic system). Contrary to classic economic models, when making decisions, people do not consider all available information at the microlevelthis is not possible. Decisions may have many competing dimensions and there may be no single optimum. Whereas in traditional economy the main difference between the levels is the degree of aggregation, social constructionism studies how individuals cooperatively create, change and maintain their understanding of the world. Meanings arise as a result of coordinated action of humans who interpret their world by building models of it and how it functions. A natural way of acquiring meanings and conveying them to others is through narratives-stories that have a beginning, a body, and an end. Narratives exist at all levels of social reality. They provide the structure by which an individual can understand the world, with their roles in narratives individuals suggesting how to behave. Interacting individuals socially construct narratives bottom-up. Group narratives emerge from integration of stories describing individual experiences of actors. Shared narratives allow actors to find commonality in their experiences, find coherence in the flow of events and allow them to coordinate in common actions. At the macrolevel narratives define the system and its common culture. Sometimes narration may have more impact on an economy than hard data. Even the choice of which facts we refer to and those we do not may determine the leading narrative and hence the behaviour of people. Socio-economic processes can and should be analysed in line with narratives linking individuals, organisations and societies to better understand what is happening in the whole economic system.

show abstract

Self and Identity across the Life Span

McAdams

Cox

2010

The Handbook of Life‐Span Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Redemptive Self: Generativity and the Stories Americans Live By

Cited by 462 publications

References 28 publications

Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion.

Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion.

Social Psychology and the Narrative Economy

Self and Identity across the Life Span

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About