Consistency and stability of narrative coherence: An examination of personal narrative as a domain of adult personality

• Published in: Journal of personality Vol. 87; no. 2; pp. 151 - 162
• Main Authors: Waters, Theodore E. A., Köber, Christin, Raby, K. Lee, Habermas, Tilmann, Fivush, Robyn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-04-2019
• Subjects: autobiographical memory; Coherence; Confirmatory factor analysis; Individual differences; life story; Narration; narrative; Narratives; Personality; Positive life events; Undergraduate students; life story; autobiographical memory; coherence; personality; narrative
• ISSN: 0022-3506; 1467-6494
• DOI: 10.1111/jopy.12377

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.