The single greatest life challenge: How late-midlife adults construct narratives of significant personal challenges

Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Research in Personality journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrp

Full Length Article

The single greatest life challenge: How late-midlife adults construct narratives of significant personal challenges Henry R. Cowan a,⇑, Xiaodi Chen b, Brady K. Jones c, Dan P. McAdams d a

Psychology, Northwestern University, United States The Family Institute, Northwestern University, United States c Psychology, University of St. Francis, United States d Psychology, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, United States b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 12 June 2019 Revised 29 August 2019 Accepted 6 September 2019 Available online 7 September 2019 Keywords: Stress Coping Agency Emotion Autobiographical reasoning Specific autobiographical content Well-being Narrative identity Personality traits

a b s t r a c t This study introduces the concept of the single greatest life challenge—the most subjectively-significant challenge a person has ever faced—and explores its implications for narrative identity. Through content coding of 157 late-midlife community adults’ life challenge narratives, we catalogued the distribution of 18 life challenge topics. Through exploratory factor analysis of narrative features, we found a four-factor structure (identity processing, agency/emotion, verbosity/specificity, and scope) largely consistent with the ‘‘big three” narrative identity metastructure. The agency/emotion factor was most closely tied to traits and functioning: it correlated negatively with neuroticism and depression, correlated positively with psychological well-being and life satisfaction, and provided incremental validity in predicting depression. The stories adults tell of their greatest challenges are informative about personality and psychological functioning. Ó 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Challenging life events have been central to psychological autobiography since the genre’s literary inception in St. Augustine’s Confessions, written in c. 397 CE (Augustine, 397/2014; Augustine and Hammond, 2014; Freccero, 1986). Modern researchers have similarly gleaned important insights into narrative identity, or the individual’s ‘‘internalized and evolving life story, integrating the reconstructed past and imagined future to provide life with some degree of unity and purpose”, by studying difficult or stressful life events (McAdams & McLean, 2013, p. 233). These studies find that various narrative features including agency, narrative identity processing, accommodative processing, and coherent positive resolution are associated with positive psychological functioning (Adler, Skalina, & McAdams, 2008; Adler et al., 2015; Graci, Watts, & Fivush, 2018; Lilgendahl, Helson, & John, 2013; Pals, 2006). The ways in which people narrate difficult or stressful

⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208, United States. E-mail address: [email protected] (H.R. Cowan). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103867 0092-6566/Ó 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

events reveal important aspects of their personality traits, motivations, and present-day functioning. Studies in this area have thus far defined relevant life events in terms of stress, difficulty, or trauma. For instance, Pals (2006) analyzed narratives of ‘‘the most unstable, confusing, troubled, or discouraging time in your life” (p. 1088) while Graci et al. (2018) prompted participants to ‘‘write about your most traumatic experience” (p. 1223). However, great life challenges are not necessarily defined by these characteristics. Consider the following example, in which a research participant—a middle-aged American woman—has been asked to describe the single greatest challenge she has ever faced: I think my [greatest challenge] is that I am a liberated woman in a conservative woman’s body. I mean, I think that I basically toed the line for years for the sake of harmony and I am basically not happy. And I am just figuring that out [over the last five years]. But I came to the conclusion that I am not ready for a divorce, that I can live my life and have the financial security of being married and live more for myself and less as someone’s helpmate.

2

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Her account implies some amount of difficulty—renegotiating a decades-old marriage is not an easy task—but there is no objective stressor in this scenario and, aside from a brief mention of unhappiness, difficult emotions are not prominent. Rather, we would argue that the most relevant characteristic of this challenge is that the participant subjectively defines it as significant. Several lines of research suggest that it may be fruitful to define challenging life events by subjective significance. Since the 1960s, it has been well-established in the stress and coping literature that a given event’s stressfulness is determined by interactions between a situation’s objective characteristics and a person’s subjective appraisals of relevance, difficulty, and available coping resources (Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus & Folkman, 1987). Similarly, cognitive theories of psychopathology argue that characteristic patterns of appraisals are codified over time as core beliefs—an individual’s evolving internal models of oneself, the world, and the future— which influence present and future behaviour (Beck, 1979, 2011). In fact, cognitive theory predicts that the most relevant life events are those which had the largest impact on a person’s core beliefs. When evaluating past experiences, a cognitive therapist asks, ‘‘what meaning did the patient glean from these experiences, and which beliefs originated from, or became strengthened by, these experiences?” (Beck, 2011, p. 30). A person who lived through a traumatic experience as an adult may be more bothered by a core belief of unlovability related to experiences of social rejection in high school and college; in this case, the social rejection would be more relevant than the trauma. Research on self-defining memories also emphasizes subjective significance. Self-defining memories are vivid, emotionally intense, frequently-recalled memories which relate to a person’s enduring concerns, goals, or conflicts (Blagov & Singer, 2004; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Singer & Salovey, 1993). These memories tend to be recalled when a person searches for autobiographical content matching a relevant semantic theme, and they retain their vividness and emotional intensity because they are frequently recollected. A memory is not imprinted as ‘‘self-defining”, but rather achieves this status through repeated, motivated searches of autobiographical memory. Thus, these types of memories reflect which semantic themes are most subjectively significant to the individual (Blagov & Singer, 2004). This is shown vividly in research on trauma survivors, which finds that survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are more likely than survivors without PTSD to report both trauma-related personal goals and trauma-related self-defining memories (Sutherland & Bryant, 2005). Based on stress, coping, cognitive therapy, and self-defining memory research, it seems that life events inform us about a person’s enduring motivations and present-day functioning to the extent that they are subjectively significant. From this perspective, the greatest challenges we face in life are not those which cause the most stress or difficulty, but rather those which play the largest role in informing our beliefs, characteristic adaptations, and narrative identities. Indeed, research on Sehnsucht, or ‘‘life longings”, finds that many people are motivated by a feeling that life is missing something which could make it perfect (Kotter-Grühn, Wiest, Zurek, & Scheibe, 2009; Scheibe, Freund, & Baltes, 2007). Significant life challenges may be as much about striving toward valued personal goals as about coping with stress. These wide-ranging lines of research suggest that we may learn more about life challenges through an open-ended prompt focused on subjective significance rather than stress or difficulty. In the current exploratory, cross-sectional study, we asked participants to subjectively define and narrate the single greatest challenge they had ever faced. We investigated three research questions: first, what was the specific content of life challenges, i.e., what were the stories about; second, what were the narrative features of life challenges, i.e., how were the stories told; and third, how did

narrative features relate to personality traits and psychological functioning? 1.1. Specific content Specific content has received increased research attention in recent years. Research on self-defining memories shows that specific content impacts the way a narrative is told. For instance, McLean and Fournier (2008) showed that cognitive effort and evaluation (narrative features) were affected by the type of connection a participant made between the past and present self (specific content). More recently, several authors have highlighted the effects of different narrative prompts—which presumably elicit different specific content—on narrative features (Adler et al., 2017; McLean, Pasupathi, Greenhoot, & Fivush, 2017; McLean et al., 2019). Common recommendations for narrative studies are to use open-ended prompts and to include multiple prompts per participant (McLean et al., 2019). The current study used a single, very open-ended prompt. What types of stories did participants tell in response to this prompt? We measured specific content directly by inductively coding the topics that appeared in each narrative. This allowed us to describe specific content and investigate its connections to narrative features. 1.2. Narrative features Because this study was exploratory, we aimed for relatively broad coverage of narrative features. A range of narrative features have been studied (for summaries, see Adler et al., 2017; Adler, Lodi-Smith, Philippe, & Houle, 2016; McAdams & McLean, 2013; McLean et al., 2019). Traditionally, these have been classified as motivational, affective, integrative, or structural (Adler et al., 2017). In the current study, we tailored a set of narrative features to the life challenge prompt, while aiming for at least some coverage of all four traditional narrative categories. See Section 2.2 below for more details. However, the field has recently made significant advances in the empirical structure of narrative features. Notably, McLean et al. (2019) combined data across multiple datasets and many raters (total N = 2565 narratives told by 855 participants in various labs in response to various narrative prompts) to analyze the latent structure of sixteen commonly studied narrative features (e.g., agency, communion, meaning-making, temporal coherence). Through exploratory and confirmatory structural equation modeling, the authors consistently found three higher-order factors: motivational/affective themes, autobiographical reasoning, and structure. These three dimensions seem to form the foundation for narrative identity. Supporting these findings, two recent datadriven studies which examined narrative coherence and meaning-making through principal components analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling, have also found factors that fit within the ‘‘big three” framework (Adler, Waters, Poh, & Seitz, 2018; Graci et al., 2018). In the ‘‘big three” taxonomy, motivational and affective themes interpret the protagonist’s role in events, motivations, and affective experience and relate to mental health and well-being outcomes (Adler et al., 2016; Bauer, McAdams, & Pals, 2008; McLean et al., 2019). Autobiographical reasoning entails an active narrator situating events within a lifetime of experience, thematically interpreting events, drawing connections between various life events, and inferring morals and lessons. Autobiographical reasoning relates to wisdom, ego integrity, and well-being (Bauer et al., 2008; Pals, 2006). Finally, structural features provide a narrative with its framework and scaffolding. These are not so much interpretations of life events but rather facts, context, conversational style, and temporal sequencing (Adler et al., 2017; McLean et al., 2019).

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

The current study was conceived and designed under the older, four-category classification. Our goal was to explore unique facets of the life challenges prompt while achieving at least some coverage of each of the four traditional categories. However, our analysis plan mirrored McLean et al.’s (2019) on a much smaller scale. We took a fine-grained approach, coding a total of fourteen low-level variables and analyzing them through exploratory factor analysis. This provides an opportunity to further validate the ‘‘big three” model within the more focused context of life challenge narratives. It would be notable if our study, which was exploratory and not designed as a test of the ‘‘big three”—in fact, not designed with reference to the ‘‘big three” at all—nevertheless found a factor structure resembling agency/emotion, autobiographical reasoning, and structure. 1.3. Individual differences and psychological functioning Although narrative features are typically considered a separate level of personality, layered on top of dispositional traits (McAdams, 2013), personality traits do influence narrative features to some extent. Largely working in the Big Five trait framework (Costa & McCrae, 1992), narrative researchers have shown some specific relationships between traits and narrative features in difficulty or stress narratives. One study of undergraduates’ narratives of their most traumatic experiences reported that neuroticism predicted positive motivational/affective processing, while agreeableness predicted autobiographical reasoning (Graci et al., 2018). Similarly, a study of life story interviews, which included a low point scene, found neuroticism to be related to positive processing and openness to be related to differentiated processing (Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011). Two more studies support the role of openness. A study of low-point narratives found that agreeableness and openness both predicted autobiographical reasoning (McLean et al., 2019). Likewise, a study of difficult life experiences found that coping openness, a trait which reflects tolerance of ambiguity and absence of repression, was related to autobiographical reasoning (Pals, 2006). Finally, neuroticism and extraversion are both strongly implicated in the life stress literature. Neuroticism predicts more stressful life events, threat appraisals, and negative affect in stressful situations, while extraversion predicts the opposite (Carver & Connor-Smith, 2010; Ebstrup, Eplov, Pisinger, & Jørgensen, 2011; Gallagher, 1990; Schneider, 2004; Schneider, Rench, Lyons, & Riffle, 2012). Although the current study was exploratory and not confirmatory, the available evidence suggested that that neuroticism would likely inversely relate to motivational and affective features, that extraversion might relate to motivational and affective features, and that agreeableness and openness might relate to autobiographical reasoning features. How do narrative features in life challenge narratives relate to psychological functioning? There is evidence that motivational, affective, and autobiographical reasoning features are all associated with better mental health and well-being. Reviewing the literature on narrative features and eudaimonic well-being, Bauer et al. (2008) reported that agentic personal growth and positive resolution were both correlated with well-being. Similarly, positive processing and differentiated processing have both been shown to correlate with life satisfaction (Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011). However, modeling the narrative ‘‘big three” in a large dataset, McLean et al. (2019) reported consistent effects for motivational/affective themes but not for autobiographical reasoning in predicting life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, and depression. Similarly, Graci et al. (2018) found that anxiety and depression scores were associated with motivational/affective processes but not autobiographical reasoning processes. In the current study, the available evidence suggested that motivational, affective, and

3

autobiographical reasoning features might all relate to psychological functioning, and that effects might be larger for motivational and affective features. There is some debate about the distinctiveness of various wellbeing measures, and whether well-being is best modeled as a bipolar construct with mental illness or ill-being (e.g., languishing, depression) as its negative pole (Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King, 2008; Keyes, 2002, 2005; Ryff et al., 2006). Because of this ambiguity, we included indices of positive well-being (psychological wellbeing and life satisfaction) and negative ill-being (depression) in the category of ‘‘psychological functioning”. 1.4. The current study In summary, this exploratory study analyzed subjectively defined greatest life challenges narrated in open-ended interviews by 157 late-midlife Americans. This study examined specific content (i.e., what happened in the story) and narrative features (i.e., how the story was told), investigating their latent structure and relationships to each other, to personality traits, and to psychological functioning. 2. Method The current study reports a secondary analysis of narrative and self-report data collected as part of the Foley Longitudinal Study of Adulthood (FLSA), an intensive, multi-year study on narrative identity and longitudinal personality development in a sample of Chicago-area midlife adults. In Year 1 of the project, participants completed a semi-structured life story interview, as well as selfreport scales of personality traits and psychological functioning. 2.1. Participants A total of 157 late-midlife community participants were recruited from the greater Chicago area. Interviews were conducted from May 2008 to September 2010. Participants’ ages ranged from 54 to 59, with a mean age of 56 and a standard deviation of 1.1 years. Slightly more than half of participants (n = 87; 56%) identified as White, slightly less than half (n = 67; 42%) as African-American, and a small minority (n = 3; 2%) as interracial or other. The sample was roughly two thirds female (n = 101; 64%). Most participants (n = 106; 67%) were married or cohabiting; 40 (25%) were widowed, divorced, or separated; and 12 (8%) were single or never married. Education ranged from some high school to post-graduate study, with 105 participants (66%) having completed college, of whom 66 (42% of the total sample) had also completed some post-graduate education. Participants’ median annual family income was $75,000 to $100,000, with 39 participants (25%) reporting a family income less than $50,000, and 63 participants (40%) reporting a family income greater than $100,000. Twentythree participants (15%) were retired and 13 (8%) were unemployed. 2.2. Interviews and interview analysis Participants completed a 2-hour semi-structured Life Story Interview (McAdams, 2008) in which they divided their lives into chapters, described key scenes from their lives and a script for the future, discussed significant challenges they had faced, and defined a personal ideology and an overall life theme (see McAdams & Guo, 2015, for a more extended description). As part of the interview, participants were asked to describe their single greatest life challenge:

4

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Looking back over your entire life, please identify and describe what you now consider to be the single greatest challenge you have faced in your life. What is or was the challenge or problem? How did the challenge or problem develop? How did you address or deal with this challenge or problem? What is the significance of the challenge or problem in your own life story? Interviewers were faculty members, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students trained to administer the Life Story Interview. Interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed by a professional transcription service. Responses ranged from 3 to 2573 words in length (mean = 512, SD = 358). Nine narratives (6% of the sample) were overly brief, truncated, or incoherent, and could be coded for specific content but not for narrative features.1 The 148 narratives which were coded for narrative features ranged from 77 to 2573 words in length (mean = 527, SD = 353). 2.2.1. Specific content Two independent raters read the interview transcripts and noted topics that recurred in multiple participants’ responses (e.g., parenting, loss, finances). The list of topics was finalized by consensus. Then, both raters independently coded all narratives for the presence or absence of each topic, with disagreements resolved by consensus. Topics were not mutually exclusive. Raters agreed on 18 specific topics, which were grouped thematically into six broad content domains to minimize issues of multiple comparisons. The content domains were: Family, Personal, Professional, Social, Health and Wellness, and Loss or Trauma. At the level of domains, narratives were coded for the presence or absence of any topic within the domain. Fig. 1 shows the percentages of narratives which included each topic and domain. Domains were used for statistical testing; we therefore report reliability ratings for the content domains rather than topics (Hallgren, 2012). Interrater reliability of the content domains was good to excellent: Family j = 0.94; Personal j = 0.78; Professional j = 0.95; Social j = 0.92; Health and Wellness j = 0.97; Loss or Trauma j = 0.95. 2.2.2. Narrative features Pairs of independent raters coded each interview transcript for a total of fourteen narrative variables. Raters coded the entire set of transcripts, with final scores averaged between raters. Motivational and affective features tended to be bipolar (e.g., negative emotional tone—positive emotional tone) and were coded on a 5point scale with a neutral midpoint (1–5). Identity processing features tended to be unipolar (e.g., absence of positive self-transfor mation—presence of strong self-transformation) and were coded on a 4-point scale with zero indicating absence (0–3). See Table 1 for a summary of all narrative variables. Interrater reliabilities are reported as intraclass correlations. In developing a set of narrative codes for this study, our first inclination was to focus on agency and degree of difficulty. What was facing the motivated protagonist in great life challenges? Did they have the resources to tackle it, the freedom to do so, and the emotional wherewithal to survive and flourish? Capturing these constructs, freedom vs. constraint refers to the protagonist’s ability to act in a situation; in other words, whether the protagonist was trapped by circumstances beyond their control, or whether they had the opportunity for decisive action (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.81). Perceived solution refers to the extent to which a challenge was solved or unsolved/unsolvable (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.76). Duration similarly refers to the participant’s subjective 1 Even in the briefest or most truncated narratives, the specific content raters were able to reach consensus on content domain(s). For example, the briefest narrative in the dataset read, ‘‘My disease. . .yeah” (3 words). Although this response is bereft of narrative features, it includes the specific content topic of ‘‘health”.

Fig. 1. Percentage of participants whose greatest life challenge narratives contained various topics. Topics are grouped into life domains by color (from top to bottom): Family (red), Personal (blue), Health and wellness (orange), Professional (green), Social (purple), and Loss or trauma (yellow). Data were analyzed at the level of content domains. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

experience of the challenge’s length, ranging from short-lived episodes to lifelong struggles (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.85). Finally, location refers to whether the challenge was experienced as internal or external to the protagonist (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.65). Note that, theoretically, the same objective events can be interpreted internally or externally depending on how the individual frames them. For example, a narrative of an acrimonious divorce could focus on the protagonist’s inner emotional struggle or the spouse’s objectionable behaviour. Two codes addressed the degree of difficulty and emotional challenge. Difficulty refers to the subjective difficulty experienced by the protagonist (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.70). Emotional tone refers to the overall emotional tenor of the narrative (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.78). Following the traditional four-category narrative structure (Adler et al., 2017), we then expanded the scope of the inquiry to include identity processing and structural codes. Four codes were adapted from Pals (2006) study of narrative identity processing of difficult life experiences. Narrative elaboration refers to willingness and interest in telling the story; amplifying its significance; elaborating on causes and consequences; and engaging with difficult, complex, or challenging aspects of the narrative and the protagonist’s role (unipolar scale; ICC = 0.62). Open exploration captures the extent to which the narrator delved into the experience’s personal impact and allowed him- or herself to change as a result (unipolar scale; ICC = 0.58). Emotional resolution captures the extent to which the protagonist has achieved emotional closure, so that he or she is no longer ‘‘stuck” in the grip of negative emotions associated with the experience (unipolar scale; ICC = 0.65). Finally, positive self-transformation signifies the extent to which the narrator reports positive change within him- or herself due to the experience (unipolar scale; ICC = 0.63).

5

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867 Table 1 Summary of narrative variables. Category

Variable

Low Anchor

High Anchor

Range

Mean

SD

Motivational/ affective themes

Difficulty

Easy, manageable

Difficult, insurmountable

1–5

3.16

0.98

Emotional tone Freedom vs. constraint Perceived solution

Completely negative, distressing, hopeless Actions are constrained by the situation

Completely positive, enthusiastic, hopeful Protagonist is free to act in the situation

1–5 1–5

2.95 3.02

0.90 1.05

Challenge is unsolved, unsolvable, or getting worse Challenge is brief, short-lived Challenge is internal, protagonist focuses on private experience

Challenge is solved, solvable, or getting better

1–5

3.21

1.05

Challenge is lengthy, interminable Challenge is external, protagonist focuses on outside events

1–5 1–5

3.71 2.97

1.00 1.28

Absence of richness, complexity, challenging aspects of narrative Does not engage with personal meaning, minimizes impact on self No emotional closure; unresolved emotions

Engages with richness, complexity, challenging aspects of narrative Explores personal meaning and opens the self to change Strong emotional closure

0–3

1.55

0.76

0–3

1.38

0.83

0–3

1.68

0.90

No positive self-transformation

Strong positive self-transformation

0–3

1.27

0.92

Word count

n/a

n/a

527

353

Event-specific detail Beginning life stage End life stage

No event-specific detail

Event-specific detail

77– 2573 0–1

0.18

0.37

Childhood Childhood

Recent adulthood Ongoing

1–4 1–5

2.68 4.35

0.82 0.86

Duration Location Autobiogr-aphical reasoning

Narrative elaboration Open exploration Emotional resolution Positive selftransformation

Structural

We also included several simple structural variables: verbosity, specificity, and temporal context. Verbosity was operationalized as a word count. Specificity was operationalized as the presence or absence of event-specific detail (kappa = 0.84), the most specific level of autobiographical memory in the self-memory system which captures scene-specific episodic details (e.g., direct quotes, sensory details; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Temporal context was operationalized by categorizing the life stage at which the challenge began (ICC = 0.66) and ended (ICC = 0.77). These codes were entered on an ordinal scale where 1 = childhood; 2 = adolescence; 3 = adulthood; 4 = recent adulthood (i.e., within the past 5 years); and 5 = ongoing. Reliability statistics for some codes—particularly the identity processing codes—were somewhat lower than is typically seen in narrative coding. It is worth noting that these reliabilities were similar to those reported by Pals (2006) for the same set of codes. Moreover, the current study does not analyze specific codes, but rather their latent structure as revealed through exploratory factor analysis. In this design, each latent variable is defined based on the common, reliable variance across multiple codes. Therefore, the reliability of individual codes is not as essential as in a typical content-coding study. 2.3. Self-report measures Several weeks prior to the interview, participants completed four self-report questionnaires. These included the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992), a 60-item measure of five-factor model personality traits. The NEO-FFI captures 75–85% of the variance accounted for by the full 240-item NEO-Personality Instrument-Revised (NEO-PI-R) and has demonstrated strong convergent and test-retest validity (McCrae & Costa, 2008). Each item is rated from 1 (‘‘strongly disagree”) to 5 (‘‘strongly agree”). Participants also completed measures of life satisfaction, psychological well-being, and depression. Life satisfaction was measured by the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), a brief 5-item self-report scale that measures contentment with one’s life circumstances (e.g., ‘‘if I could live my life over again, I would do nothing differently”). Psychological well-being was measured by Ryff’s Scales of Psychological

Well-Being (PWB; Ryff, 1989). The PWB are composed of 42 items, grouped into six scales: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, purpose in life, and selfacceptance. To assess depression, participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996), a 21item self-report measure of depression symptom severity within the past two weeks. 2.4. Data analysis All analyses were carried out in the psych package, version 1.6.8 (Revelle, 2018) in the R statistical programming language, version 3.3.2 (R Core Team, 2018). All statistical tests corrected for the false discovery rate (FDR) using Benjamini and Hochberg’s method (1995). For specific content, we examined content domains’ polychoric intercorrelations. This allowed us to compare the effect sizes of relationships between various pairs of specific content domains. To investigate the latent structure of the fourteen narrative variables, we entered them into an exploratory factor analysis, using minimum residual factor extraction and oblimin rotation. Number of factors was determined by parallel analysis (Horn, 1965) and comparing Bayesian Information Criteria (Schwarz, 1978) for various numbers of factors. For the final factor model, we examined relationships between factor scores and specific content domains through two-tailed t-tests. We examined Pearson correlations between factor scores, personality traits, and psychological functioning. Finally, we computed supplemental simultaneous regression models to investigate: (a) the total effect of specific content domains on narrative factors; and (b) the incremental validity of narrative factors in predicting functioning beyond the strong effects of traits. A full correlation table of all study variables is provided in the supplemental materials. Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103867. This study reports a secondary analysis of extant data, so it was not possible to compute an a priori power analysis. We computed sensitivity analyses to determine the sample’s statistical power. The full sample size of n = 157 was powered at 0.80 to detect a correlation of r = |0.158| or greater. Excluding the nine narratives that could not be coded for narrative features (see Section 2.2 above),

6

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Table 2 Item loadings, factor statistics, and factor correlations from an exploratory factor analysis of narrative features in adults’ life challenge narratives. Identity Processing

Agency/Emotion

Verbosity/Specificity

Scope

Com.

Positive self-transformation Emotional resolution Open exploration Difficulty Freedom vs. constraint Emotional tone Perceived solution Word count Narrative elaboration Event-specific detail Duration Beginning life stage Location End life stage SS Loadings Proportion Variance Cumulative Variance

0.83 0.81 0.65 0.15 0.08 0.11 0.34
0.09 0.36
0.11 0.01
0.06
0.17
0.35 2.28 0.16 0.16

0.06 0.14
0.19
0.83 0.74 0.69 0.58 0.06
0.15
0.03 0.03 0.02 0.00 0.02 2.22 0.16 0.32

0.02
0.13 0.19 0.05 0.09
0.08 0.09 0.92 0.67 0.63 0.01 0.05 0.20 0.07 1.85 0.13 0.45

0.10
0.16 0.19
0.10
0.08 0.08
0.21
0.01 0.12
0.16 0.87
0.62
0.46 0.45 1.77 0.13 0.58

0.72 0.75 0.58 0.67 0.58 0.53 0.61 0.80 0.74 0.41 0.75 0.39 0.27 0.32

Factor correlations Identity processing Agency/emotion Verbosity/specificity Scope

1 0.16 0.15 0.02

1
0.27
0.27

1 0.05

1

Note: Com. = Item communality; SS Loadings = sum of squared loadings for each factor. Item loadings greater than 0.35 shown in bold.

the sample size of n = 148 was powered at 0.80 to detect a correlation of r = |0.161|. Studies in this research area typically interpret correlations of roughly r = |0.20| or larger (see, e.g., Graci et al., 2018; Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011), so we concluded that the sample size was adequate.

3. Results 3.1. Specific content Independent raters reached consensus on 18 specific content topics, grouped into 6 life domains (see Fig. 1). Life challenge topics were heterogeneous, combining life events (e.g., trauma), behavioural and psychological processes (e.g., addictive behaviours), interpersonal functioning (e.g., peer relationships), lifespan development (e.g., parenting), and external circumstances (e.g., society/culture). Moreover, life challenges were complex; any given challenge included a mean of 2.6 topics (SD = 1.2), spread across a mean of 1.7 domains (SD = 0.67). In some cases, this was because events or circumstances impacted several areas of life. For instance, David’s challenge2 began when his daughter started behaving erratically and hearing voices, and continued through his daughter’s diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, institutionalization, and recovery (topics: parenting, caregiving, mental illness). In other cases, participants’ psychological processes and developmental context modified events. For instance, Gabrielle was left to raise her grandson after her son was murdered; she defines her challenge as a search for forgiveness to raise her grandson without hate (topics: parenting, loss, trauma, existential). Finally, some participants downplayed life events altogether and focused on psychological or developmental challenges. For instance, Louise has struggled throughout her life to build mastery and overcome shyness and low self-esteem after an unhappy childhood with an ‘‘overbearing, opinionated, domineering” mother (topics: family of origin, personality processes, existential). Family was the most common domain, present in all three of these examples and more than half of the life challenges overall. A significant positive relationship emerged between the domains of Family and Loss or Trauma, polychoric r = 0.33, FDR-corr. p = <0.01, 2

All names and identifying information have been changed.

reflecting the fact that many family challenges involved loss of family members through death or divorce. Significant negative relationships emerged between the domains of Social and Health/Wellness, polychoric r =
0.30, FDR-corr. p < .001, Professional and Health/Wellness, polychoric r =
0.30, FDR-corr. p = .001, Personal and Health/Wellness, polychoric r =
0.26, FDR-corr. p = .001, Family and Professional, polychoric r =
0.25, FDR-corr. p = .005, and Family and Personal, polychoric r =
0.21, FDR-corr. p = .018. Overall, Health/Wellness was the domain most likely to appear alone (mean polychoric r with other domains =
0.25). 3.2. Narrative features Examination of Bayesian Information Criteria (Schwarz, 1978) and parallel analysis plots (Horn, 1965) determined that 4 factors were appropriate. Factors, factor correlations, and item loadings for the oblique four-factor model are shown in Table 2. Representative sample quotes for each factor are shown in Table 3. The four factors together accounted for 58% of the observed variance. Fig. 2 is a path diagram illustrating item loadings and factor intercorrelations. The first factor captured identity processing. Three of the four variables adapted from Pals (2006) loaded on this factor, and the fourth variable (narrative elaboration) had a substantial crossloading on this factor. This latent variable reflected the extent to which participants reflected on their life challenges within the context of their self-concept and narrative identity. The second factor, agency/emotion, was identified with some but not all motivational and affective variables. This latent variable reflected the way in which participants discussed the protagonist’s role in the life challenge and the emotional experience of living through it. The identity processing and agency/emotion factors were uncorrelated and had low item cross-loadings, suggesting that they were relatively distinct from one another. Two other factors captured structural or extraneous aspects of the narratives. A verbosity/specificity factor captured the extent to which participants used more words, recalled more specific autobiographical detail, and engaged in more narrative elaboration. Finally, a scope factor represented challenges that began early in life, were ongoing or recently resolved, and were experienced as being lengthy and internal to the participant.

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

7

Table 3 Example quotes. Factor

Example quote

Identity processing

I’m working for a man who up until recently used to think it was okay to scream at people including me. . .and I happen to know he’s an adult child of an alcoholic just like I am. . ..But what I realized was he became my mother. And I let him become my mother. And I let him treat me the way, you know, she treated me as a child. . ..So I think the lesson learned for me about that is there are authority figures, I still have issues with that. . .not surprisingly, while all this was going on I started having more thoughts about my mother than I have had for many, many years. And I realized that I needed to go to the next level of forgiveness. People who were in positions of power intimidated me. . . ‘cause I had never been around white people except to have them as teachers. . ...I, I just have to be this little humble person, and, you know, I can’t ask this question cause it’s going to be wrong. . ..The way I got over it was to put myself in those situations where I got to know those people better or I got to see that they were just like me, and just coming up to my fear and dealing with it. . ..And travel did that for me. . .leaving my hometown did first. Going to New York City on my own. . .. Traveling abroad. I was like, shit, I’m afraid? Of what? You know, it’s one or the other, either Amanda or it’s me. I mean, I don’t see where I can put anything above my own cancer, but. . .in a way Amanda was harder because. . .I can’t fix her. Maybe that is harder, and it was the first time I had any indication that my parenting wasn’t perfect. So maybe that was it, and then it’ll be something different for me to talk about I guess. . ..She was, you know, she was a skinny kid, and she, you know, got to high school, stopped growing, put on a few pounds. . ..And at this point, well, she was getting more into maybe – well, she’s 50 5 1/200 , getting more into the 135 area. I mean it’s not a disaster. Yeah, but her friends were still 115. Maybe she was 130, 35, yeah, she was not heavy at all. . . [Continues at length about her daughter’s struggle with an eating disorder] I’m a very shy person. . .And that’s been a lifelong, lifelong problem for me. And I really work at overcoming it and I really believe that I can, you know, even in my older years can keep working [at it]. It’s hard for me to build relationships because of it and it’s hard for me to feel comfortable in group settings. . .. I think I’m working on it and overcoming that little by little even in my old age.

Agency/ Emotion

Verbosity/ Specificity

Scope

Note: all names and identifying information have been changed.

Fig. 2. Path diagram illustrating an exploratory factor analysis of autobiographical reasoning processes in adults’ life challenge narratives. All item loadings, crossloadings, and factor intercorrelations were modeled. Only those >0.35 are shown here.

14.4% of the variance in agency/emotion could be accounted for by content domains, multiple R2 = 0.144, F(6, 141) = 3.91, p = .001. 3.4. Demographic variables and narrative features ANOVAs examined the possible effects of demographic variables (race, sex, education, and income) on narrative features. No effects were significant after FDR-correction. 3.5. Personality traits and narrative features

3.3. Specific content and narrative features Two-tailed t-tests with FDR-corrected p-values indicated some associations between specific content domains and narrative factors. As shown in Fig. 3, the scope factor tended to appear more (i.e., with a broader scope) in personal challenges, t(78) = 3.63, FDR-corr. p = .012, d =
0.63, and less in professional challenges, t (93) =
3.01, FDR-corr. p = .021, d = 0.48. The agency/emotion factor tended to appear more in personal challenges, t(75) = 3.01, FDRcorr. p = .021, d =
0.54, and possibly professional challenges, t (70) = 2.55, FDR-corr. p = .052, d =
0.46, and less in health and wellness challenges, t(69) =
3.42, FDR-corr. p = .013, d =
0.63. The verbosity/specificity factor tended to appear less in personal challenges, t(99) =
2.68, FDR-corr. p = .041, d =
0.43. What was the total magnitude of these effects? In other words, to what extent did the specific content in an interview transcript determine its narrative features? To obtain a rough estimate, we examined the coefficients of determination (R2) in post-hoc simultaneous linear regression models with the scope and agency/emotion factors entered as dependent variables and all six content domains entered as independent variables. These models found that 17.9% of the variance in scope could be accounted for by content domains, multiple R2 = 0.179, F(6, 141) = 5.12, p < .001, while

Correlations between traits and narrative features are shown in Table 4. After FDR correction, only one correlation remained significant, between neuroticism and agency/emotion, r =
0.33 [95% CI
0.18,
0.47], FDR-corr. p < .001, while trends suggested that extraversion may have related to agency/emotion, r = 0.18 [95% CI = 0.01, 0.33], FDR-corr. p = .09, and that neuroticism may have related to scope, r = 0.18 [95% CI = 0.02, 0.33], FDR-corr. p = .09. 3.6. Narrative features and psychological functioning Correlations between narrative features and psychological functioning variables (psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and depression) are shown in Table 5. After FDR correction, correlations remained significant between agency/emotion and depression, r =
0.35 [95% CI
0.20,
0.49], FDR-corr. p < .001, agency/emotion and psychological well-being, r = 0.29 [95% CI 0.13, 0.43], FDR-corr. p = .001, and agency/emotion and life satisfaction, r = 0.24 [95% CI 0.08, 0.39], FDR-corr. p = .008. Did personality traits account for these effects? Agency/emotion correlated with neuroticism and possibly extraversion (see Table 4), both of which correlated with all three psychological functioning variables (absolute rs ranging from 0.28 to 0.73, see Supplemental Material). This raises the question of whether

8

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Fig. 3. Mean scores for narratives factors in the presence or absence of specific content domains. Agency/emotion and scope were most connected to specific content. Error lines indicate the standard error of the mean. *FDR-corrected p < .05; yFDR-corrected p = .052.

Table 4 Correlations between narrative factors and personality traits.

Identity processing Agency/emotion Verbosity/specificity Scope

Neuroticism

Extraversion

Openness

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

r

[95% CI]

r

[95% CI]

r

[95% CI]

r

[95% CI]

r

[95% CI]


0.06
0.33 0.15 0.18

[
0.21, 0.11] [
0.47,
0.18]*** [
0.01, 0.30] [02, 0.33]y

0.16 0.18 0.00
0.04

[0.00, 0.32] [0.01, 0.33]y [
0.15, 0.17] [
0.21, 0.12]

0.02 0.06 0.00 0.14

[
0.14, [
0.10, [
0.16, [
0.03,

0.16 0.00
0.05 0.00

[0.00, 0.32] [
0.16, 0.16] [
0.21, 0.11] [
0.16, 0.16]


0.03 0.14
0.03
0.06

[
0.19, [
0.02, [
0.19, [
0.22,

0.18] 0.22] 0.17] 0.29]

0.13] 0.30] 0.14] 0.10]

Note: Personality traits assessed by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory. ***FDR-corrected p < .001, **FDR-corrected p < .01, *FDR-corrected p < .05, yFDR-corrected p < .10.

agency/emotion adds incremental validity in predicting psychological functioning, beyond the strong effects of neuroticism and extraversion. As a supplemental analysis, we entered agency/emotion, neuroticism, and extraversion as the independent variables in simultaneous linear regression models predicting depression, psychological well-being, and life satisfaction. Standardized regression coefficients and fit statistics from these models are shown in Table 6. Effects for agency/emotion were attenuated in all models and remained significant only in the model predicting depression, B =
0.052, SE = 0.021, std. beta =
0.15, p = .016. Similarly, effects for extraversion were attenuated and remained significant only in the model predicting psychological well-being, B =
0.273, SE = 0.080, std. beta = 0.22, p < .001. 4. Discussion Life’s challenges have been central to psychological autobiography since at least the time of St. Augustine. Modern narrative researchers have built a strong foundation in narratives of challenging events including difficult life periods (Pals, 2006), traumatic events (Graci et al., 2018), and outpatient psychotherapy

(Adler, 2012). The current study broadens this framework to investigate participants’ single greatest life challenge. In an integrative exploratory study, we knitted together specific content (the stories participants selected as their greatest life challenges) with narrative features (how those stories were told) and covariates (traits and psychological functioning) to examine this unique narrative prompt and test recent advances in the meta-structure of narrative identity (McLean et al., 2019). 4.1. Life challenges The specific content of life challenges was complex. Participants described a rich breadth of human experience which freely combined life events, behaviours, psychological processes, interpersonal functioning, developmental concerns, and external circumstances. The topics did not predominantly reflect stress, difficulty, and trauma. Rather, the distribution of life challenge topics was similar to the distribution of topics in sehsnuchts, or life longings, reported by Kotter-Grühn et al. (2009) in an inductive coding study of 1316 participants. Most narratives also included content from multiple domains. Family was the most common, and the modal challenge would be one which combined Family with one

9

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867 Table 5 Correlations between narrative factors and psychological functioning. BDI

Identity processing Agency/emotion Verbosity/specificity Scope

PWB

SWLS

r

[95% CI]

r

[95% CI]

r

[95% CI]


0.07
0.35
0.02 0.11

[
0.22, 0.10] [
0.49,
0.20]*** [
0.18, 0.14] [
0.05, 0.27]

0.08 0.29
0.00
0.12

[
0.09, 0.23] [0.13, 0.29]** [
0.17, 0.16] [
0.28, 0.04]

0.12 0.24
0.02
0.01

[
0.04, 0.28] [0.08, 0.39]** [
0.18, 0.14] [
0.17, 0.15]

Note: BDI = Beck Depression Inventory-II; PWB = Scales of Psychological Well-Being; SWLS = Satisfaction with Life Scale. ***FDR-corrected p < .001, **FDR-corrected p < .01, *FDR-corrected p < .05, yFDR-corrected p < .10.

Table 6 Regression models predicting psychological functioning—standardized coefficients and fit statistics. Variable

BDI

PWB

SWLS

Neuroticism b Extraversion b Agency/emotion b R2 F

0.55*** 0.00
0.15* 0.44 37.2***


0.57*** 0.22*** 0.06 0.53 53.0***


0.44*** 0.06 0.10 0.26 16.27***

Note: BDI = Beck Depression Inventory-II; PWB = Scales of Psychological Well-Being; SWLS = Satisfaction with Life Scale. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05.

other content domain. At least among late-midlife urban Midwestern adults, life challenges do not tend to be solitary concerns, but are likely to include one’s parents, siblings, spouse, or children. Again, this mirrors the content of life longings. For example, partnership and family are two of the three most common life longing topics (Kotter-Grühn et al., 2009), both of which would fit within the current study’s Family domain. There seems to be individual variation in which kinds of experience are most salient, and this variation is apparent when participants are reflecting on past challenges or longing for future completeness. 4.2. Narrative features in life challenges We found four latent factors underlying fourteen narrative variables. Overall, the factor structure fit within the ‘‘big three” narrative structure recently proposed by McLean et al. (2019). Identity processing and agency/emotion were cleanly separated from one another and uncorrelated. These factors are exemplars of two broad factors in the ‘‘big three” taxonomy: respectively, ‘‘autobiographical reasoning” and ‘‘motivational/affective themes” (McLean et al., 2019). They also resemble the factors of ‘‘integrative meaning” and ‘‘positive/negative processing” which Graci and colleagues reported in a narrative study of traumatic experiences in undergraduates (2018). Notably, the agentic and emotional items loaded together cleanly on one factor, consistent with the ‘‘big three” model. In other words, there was no separation between narratives about a capable, agentic protagonist and narratives told with a positive emotional tone. Although the verbosity/specificity and scope factors resemble ‘‘structural” features in the ‘‘big three” taxonomy, they had no cross-loadings and did not correlate with one another. Examining the items in each factor, verbosity/specificity matches the structural feature of ‘‘facts” reported by McLean et al. (2019) and the ‘‘structure” factor reported by Graci et al. (2018). Participants who scored high on verbosity/specificity used more words in their narratives, and these extra words were not bloviation; rather, they added specific detail to the story. Verbosity/specificity, therefore, appears to be a structural factor analogous to ‘‘facts” in the ‘‘big three”. Scope does not obviously correspond to any of the ‘‘big three” features. Scope was the narrative factor most associated with specific content, with 17.9% of its variance attributable to specific content domains (see Fig. 3). Although it has a temporal aspect,

this factor captures duration and recency rather than more traditionally ‘‘structural” features such as coherence and continuity (c. f., Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019). Similarly, while the location of a challenge (internal vs. external) intuitively seems to be a meaningful narrative feature, it also touches on objective characteristics of a memory. External challenges prioritize the person’s context and environment, which change during the life course, whereas internal challenges prioritize the self, which is continuous throughout the life course. Scope included some amount of objective detail about a memory and seemed somewhat orthogonal to the ‘‘big three” narrative factors; perhaps it is best considered as a hybrid construct with elements of narrative identity and specific content. To a lesser extent, agency/emotion also related to specific content, with 14.4% of its variance attributable to specific content domains. Previous research has found agency to be more consistent—in its relationships to other narrative features and to wellbeing variables—in low point, turning point, and health challenge narratives than in high point narratives (Adler et al., 2015; McLean et al., 2019). One study also found agency to be more prevalent in undergraduates’ narratives about their careers than about their relationships (Dunlop, Walker, & Wiens, 2014). The current study reinforces the idea that a narrative’s specific content sets certain limits on a protagonist’s ability to influence the course of events. Specifically, narratives about existential struggles, identity development, work, and education, and narratives which avoided physical or mental illness, were particularly fertile ground for expressions of motivated agency and positive emotion. These findings support two theoretical conclusions. First, the ‘‘big three” taxonomy appears to be a reliable, replicable, and practical taxonomy for narrative features. The current study was designed under the traditional four-category classification system, examined a novel prompt, examined one open-ended prompt rather than a range of prompts, and used a restricted set of codes. Yet it still largely replicated the ‘‘big three” factor structure. This provides additional evidence for the ‘‘big three”, and particularly supports its utility for smaller-scale studies with specific prompts. Based on the current results, it is an open question whether the structure identified here would apply only to this life challenge prompt; to all prompts on stress, difficulty, or challenge; or to all narrative prompts. Given that the ‘‘big three” were identified at the level of ‘‘all narrative prompts”, we would argue that the structure is best understood as adding nuance to the ‘‘big three” in the context of challenging memories, analogous to findings that specific lower-order facets of five-factor model traits are particularly relevant for certain contexts or behaviours (Paunonen & Ashton, 2001; Paunonen, Haddock, Forsterling, & Keinonen, 2003; Ziegler et al., 2014). An important direction for future research would be to apply the same coding scheme to the same prompt at multiple time points. Second, the field of narrative identity research is currently tackling dependencies between specific content and narrative processes (Adler et al., 2017; Adler et al., 2015; Dunlop et al., 2014; McAdams & McLean, 2013; McLean et al., 2017). While the

10

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

typical approach is to vary narrative prompts to obtain various kinds of specific content, another viable approach is to administer open-ended prompts and analyze relationships between specific content and narrative features, as was done in the current study. 4.3. Narrative features and personality traits Traits and narrative identity are typically thought to represent different levels or layers of the psychological self (McAdams, 2013), and narrative identity researchers do not necessarily expect strong associations between narrative features and personality traits. In the current study, we found few associations between traits, demographics, and narrative features. For the most part, participants told similar stories regardless of their trait or demographic profiles. Only one association survived correction for multiple comparisons, that between neuroticism and agency/emotion. Although previous research has reported associations between openness, agreeableness, and autobiographical reasoning (Lilgendahl et al., 2013; McLean et al., 2019; Pals, 2006), we observed no significant relationships between these variables. The greatest life challenge prompt, which highlights—in part—the action a protagonist took to address or resolve a challenge, may have maximized trait associations for motivational and affective themes and minimized trait associations for autobiographical reasoning. 4.4. Narrative features and psychological functioning Narrative features are commonly found to correlate with psychological functioning variables such as psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and depression (Adler, 2012; Adler et al., 2016, 2008, 2015; Bauer et al., 2008; Graci et al., 2018; Pals, 2006). Previous research has found that affective and motivational themes tend to be the most closely tied to functioning (Adler, 2012; Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019), and that these relationships are most evident using narrative prompts of difficult experiences, such as low points and traumatic experiences (Adler et al., 2015; Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019). Consistent with this body of research, in the current study we found the narrative factor of agency/emotion to be associated with lower depression and higher life satisfaction and psychological well-being (see Table 5). To a certain extent, low agency/emotion reflected an interpretive style which neurotic individuals use to make sense of their challenging experiences. These individuals: (a) are predisposed to high levels of hostility, impulsivity, self-consciousness, and negative emotion (Costa & McCrae, 1992); (b) constructed narratives in which a constrained protagonist is helpless in the face of a difficult, painful, intractable challenge; and (c) reported more depression and poorer well-being. However, agency/emotion did not only reflect neuroticism. Its correlation with neuroticism was moderate (r =
0.33), and regression models holding neuroticism and extraversion constant (see Table 6) showed agency/emotion to be uniquely associated with lower depression scores. This supports previous findings that motivational and affective themes are closely tied to psychological functioning, especially in narratives of difficult or stressful experiences (Adler, 2012; Adler et al., 2015; Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019). Agency/emotion reconstructs the life story as the continued efforts of a potent, motivated, optimistic protagonist. This style is more common among less neurotic individuals. And, even when holding neuroticism constant, it is a style associated with better psychological functioning in the form of lower depression scores.

preted as a taxonomy of ‘‘narrative identity” writ large (for such a taxonomy, see McLean et al., 2019). Second, some of the narrative codes in the current study (particularly the identity processing codes) achieved less-than-ideal interrater reliability. Mitigating this issue, reliability scores were similar to those for the same codes in previous research (Pals, 2006), and reliability scores are less essential in a factor analytic study because factor scores are derived based on multiple codes’ common variance (aka. shared or reliable variance). Nevertheless, this could have suppressed true associations between identity processing and other variables of interest. Third, the Foley Longitudinal Study of Adulthood is a cohort study of adults in a specific life stage in a specific time and place. Although the method and materials (i.e., an interviewer asking about a significant life challenge) is likely to generalize to other samples, the specific results may be constrained by cultural, developmental, or cohort effects. Results are likely to generalize to urban North Americans in this age range and cohort; however, it is unclear how these results would generalize to less similar participants. Cross-cultural research on challenging narratives would be particularly valuable here. Furthermore, while FLSA includes multiple time points, the current study was cross-sectional and only focused on one time point. There are currently many interesting unresolved questions about stability and change in life narratives (see, e.g., McLean et al., 2019), and future research examining temporal aspects of specific content and narrative features in life challenge narratives would be particularly valuable. Fourth, in the narrative identity paradigm, the data are the stories people tell about their lives rather than the objective details of their life histories. Nevertheless, this study’s design collapsed two sources of variance together: objective events in participants’ lives and subjective selections of which events to discuss. Future research could address this by adding an objective assessment of life stress such as the UCLA Life Stress Interview (Hammen Lab, 2007). Fifth, this study’s analyses were exploratory, which limits their evidentiary value somewhat. Future research using confirmatory designs would add evidentiary weight to the findings reported here. 4.6. Conclusion In this study, we presented an integrative analysis of the unique ways in which late midlife adults narrated their single greatest life challenges. A single greatest life challenge is the most subjectively-significant challenge a person has ever faced, with an emphasis on how it developed, how the person addressed it, and what significance it holds for their overall life story. This study of life challenges replicated the ‘‘big three” narrative taxonomy of motivational/affective themes, autobiographical reasoning, and structure on a smaller scale. Moreover, it showed the importance of agency/emotion in narratives of difficult, stressful, or challenging life events. This factor was more prevalent in some types of narratives than others, was linked to neuroticism, and was relevant for psychological functioning (particularly depression). This study expands our understanding of challenging life events beyond the confines of stress and difficulty, and builds a foundation for integrative narrative identity research focused on specific prompts, informed by recent advances in the underlying structure of narrative features, and modeling the complex interplay between specific content, narrative features, traits, and psychological functioning.

4.5. Limitations and future directions

Acknowledgements

This study had several limitations. First, this set of codes was not exhaustive, and the factors presented here should not be inter-

Thanks to Dan Mroczek and Rick Zinbarg for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. HRC, BKJ, and DPM con-

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

tributed to the study conceptualization and design. All authors contributed to the content-coding of narrative transcripts. HRC, DPM, and XC contributed to data analysis. HRC wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all other authors contributed substantive revisions. All authors have approved the final version of the manuscript. No authors have any relevant disclosures that could affect this work’s objectivity. This work was a secondary analysis of an extant longitudinal dataset which recently completed data collection and is not yet publicly available. In the meantime, interested readers are welcome to contact the first author at [email protected] for the data and R code used in this study. This study was also not preregistered, although all analyses are clearly reported as being exploratory, and this is noted as a study limitation in the Discussion section. Funding sources This work was supported in part by grants from the Foley Family Foundation (to DPM) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research DFS-152268 (to HRC). References Adler, J. M. (2012). Living into the story: Agency and coherence in a longitudinal study of narrative identity development and mental health over the course of psychotherapy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(2). https://doi. org/10.1037/a0025289. Adler, J. M., Dunlop, W. L., Fivush, R., Lilgendahl, J. P., Lodi-Smith, J., McAdams, D. P., ... Syed, M. (2017). Research methods for studying narrative identity: A primer. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(5), 519–527. Adler, J. M., Lodi-Smith, J., Philippe, F. L., & Houle, I. (2016). The incremental validity of narrative identity in predicting well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(2), 142–175. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315585068. Adler, J. M., Skalina, L. M., & McAdams, D. P. (2008). The narrative reconstruction of psychotherapy and psychological health. Psychotherapy Research, 18(6), 719–734. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503300802326020. Adler, J. M., Turner, A. F., Brookshier, K. M., Monahan, C., Walder-Biesanz, I., Harmeling, L. H., ... Oltmanns, T. F. (2015). Variation in narrative identity is associated with trajectories of mental health over several years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(3), 476–496. https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0038601. Adler, J. M., Waters, T. E. A., Poh, J., & Seitz, S. (2018). The nature of narrative coherence: An empirical approach. Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 30–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2018.01.001. Augustine. (2014). Confessions (C. J.-B. Hammond, Ed. and Trans.). Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 397 CE). Augustine, & Hammond, C. J.- B. (2014). Confessions. Confessions. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Confessions&btnG=&hl=en&num=20&as_ sdt=0%2C22. Bauer, J. J., McAdams, D. P., & Pals, J. L. (2008). Narrative identity and eudaimonic well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9(1), 81–104. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10902-006-9021-6. Beck, A. T. (1979). Cognitive therapy of depression. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Beck, A., Steer, R., & Brown, G. (1996). Beck depression inventory. Retrieved from www.nctsnet.org. Beck, J. S. (2011). Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and beyond. New York, NY: The Guidford Press. Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), 57(1), 289–300. Retrieved from JSTOR. Blagov, P. S., & Singer, J. A. (2004). Four dimensions of self-defining memories (specificity, meaning, content, and affect) and their relationships to selfrestraint, distress, and repressive defensiveness. Journal of Personality, 72(3), 481–511. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00270.x. Carver, C. S., & Connor-Smith, J. (2010). Personality and coping. Personality and Coping, 61(1), 679–704. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100352. Conway, M., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107(2), 261–288. Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO personality inventory-revised (NEO-PI-R) and NEO five-factor inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Odesa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources. Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction With Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1). https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15327752jpa4901_13. Dunlop, W. L., Walker, L. J., & Wiens, T. K. (2014). The nature of professional and relational self-aspects at the goal and narrative levels of personality. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53(3), 595–604. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12072.

11

Ebstrup, J. F., Eplov, L. F., Pisinger, C., & Jørgensen, T. (2011). Association between the Five Factor personality traits and perceived stress: Is the effect mediated by general self-efficacy? Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 24(4), 407–419. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10615806.2010.540012. Freccero, J. (1986). Autobiography and Narrative. In T. C. Heller & C. Brooke-Rose (Eds.), Reconstructing individualism: Autonomy, individuality, and the self in Western thought (pp. 16–29). Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Gallagher, D. J. (1990). Extraversion, neuroticism and appraisal of stressful academic events. Personality and Individual Differences, 11(10), 1053–1057. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(90)90133-C. Graci, M. E., Watts, A. L., & Fivush, R. (2018). Examining the factor structure of narrative meaning-making for stressful events and relations with psychological distress. Memory, 26(9), 1220–1232. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2018. 1441422. Hallgren, K. A. (2012). Computing inter-rater reliability for observational data: An overview and tutorial. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 8(1), 23–34. Hammen Lab (2007). UCLA life stress interview: Episodic stress assessment. UCLA life stress interview: Episodic stress assessment. Retrieved from http:// hammenlab.psych.ucla.edu/episodic.html. Horn, J. L. (1965). A rationale and test for the number of factors in factor analysis. A Rationale and Test for the Number of Factors in Factor Analysis, 30(2), 179–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02289447. Kashdan, T. B., Biswas-Diener, R., & King, L. A. (2008). Reconsidering happiness: The costs of distinguishing between hedonics and eudaimonia. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 3(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760802303044. Keyes, C. L. M. (2002). The mental health continuum: From languishing to flourishing in life. The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life., 43(2), 207–222. https://doi.org/10.2307/3090197. Keyes, C. L. M. (2005). Mental illness and/or mental health? Investigating axioms of the complete state model of health. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(3), 539–548. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.73.3.539. Kotter-Grühn, D., Wiest, M., Zurek, P. P., & Scheibe, S. (2009). What is it we are longing for? Psychological and demographic factors influencing the contents of Sehnsucht (life longings). Journal of Research in Personality, 43(3), 428–437. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.01.012. Lazarus, R. S. (1966). Psychological stress and the coping process. New York: McGrawHill. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1987). Transactional theory and research on emotions and coping. Transactional Theory and Research on Emotions and Coping, 1(3), 141–169. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2410010304. Lilgendahl, J. P., Helson, R., & John, O. P. (2013). Does Ego development increase during midlife? The effects of openness and accommodative processing of difficult events. Journal of Personality, 81(4), 403–416. https://doi.org/10.1111/ jopy.12009. Lilgendahl, J. P., & McAdams, D. P. (2011). Constructing stories of self-growth: How individual differences in patterns of autobiographical reasoning relate to wellbeing in midlife. Journal of Personality, 79(2), 391–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1467-6494.2010.00688.x. McAdams, D. P. (2008). The Life Story Interview. Retrieved from https://www.sesp. northwestern.edu/foley/instruments/interview/. McAdams, D. P. (2013). The psychological self as actor, agent, and author. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 272–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1745691612464657. McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative Identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0963721413475622. McAdams, D. P., & Guo, J. (2015). Narrating the Generative Life. Psychological Science, 26(4), 475–483. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614568318. McCrae, R.R., and Costa, P.T. (2008). Empirical and Theoretical Status of the FiveFactor Model of Personality Traits. In The SAGE Handbook of Personality Theory and Assessment: Volume 1—Personality Theories and Models (pp. 273–294). https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849200462.n13. McLean, K. C., & Fournier, M. A. (2008). The content and processes of autobiographical reasoning in narrative identity. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(3), 527–545. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.08.003. McLean, K. C., Pasupathi, M., Greenhoot, A. F., & Fivush, R. (2017). Does intraindividual variability in narration matter and for what? Journal of Research in Personality, 69, 55–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.04.003. McLean, K. C., Syed, M., Pasupathi, M., Adler, J. M., Dunlop, W. L., Drustrup, D., ... McCoy, T. P. (2019). The empirical structure of narrative identity: The initial big three. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/ pspp0000247. Pals, J. L. (2006). Narrative identity processing of difficult life experiences: Pathways of personality development and positive self-transformation in adulthood. Journal of Personality, 74(4), 1079–1110. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14676494.2006.00403.x. Paunonen, S. V., & Ashton, M. C. (2001). Big Five factors and facets and the prediction of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(3), 524–539. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.3.524. Paunonen, S. V., Haddock, G., Forsterling, F., & Keinonen, M. (2003). Broad versus narrow personality measures and the prediction of behaviour across cultures. European Journal of Personality, 17(6), 413–433. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.496. R Core Team. (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from https:// www.R-project.org/.

12

H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Revelle, W. (2018). psych: Procedures for Psychological, Psychometric, and Personality Research. Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package= psych. Ryff, C. D., Love, G. D., Urry, H. L., Muller, D., Rosenkranz, M. A., Friedman, E. M., ... Singer, B. (2006). Psychological well-being and ill-being: Do they have distinct or mirrored biological correlates? Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 75(2), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1159/000090892. Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069. Retrieved from READCUBE. Scheibe, S., Freund, A. M., & Baltes, P. B. (2007). Toward a developmental psychology of Sehnsucht (life longings): The optimal (utopian) life. Developmental Psychology, 43(3), 778–795. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.3.778. Schneider, T. R. (2004). The role of neuroticism on psychological and physiological stress responses. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(6), 795–804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2004.04.005.

Schneider, T. R., Rench, T. A., Lyons, J. B., & Riffle, R. R. (2012). The influence of neuroticism, extraversion and openness on stress responses. Stress and Health, 28(2), 102–110. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.1409. Singer, J. A., & Salovey, P. (1993). The remembered self: Emotion and memory in personality. New York, NY, US: Free Press. Sutherland, K., & Bryant, R. A. (2005). Self-defining memories in post-traumatic stress disorder. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44(4), 591–598. https://doi. org/10.1348/014466505X64081. Ziegler, M., Bensch, D., Maaß, U., Schult, V., Vogel, M., & Bühner, M. (2014). Big Five facets as predictor of job training performance: The role of specific job demands. Learning and Individual Differences, 29, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.lindif.2013.10.008.