585068

research-article2015

PSRXXX10.1177/1088868315585068Personality and Social Psychology ReviewAdler et al.

ArticleThe Incremental Validity of
Narrative Identity in Predicting
Well-Being: A Review of the Field
and Recommendations for the Future

Personality and Social Psychology Review
2016, Vol. 20(2) 142­–175© 2015 by the Society for Personality
and Social Psychology, Inc.
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DOI: 10.1177/1088868315585068
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Jonathan M. Adler1, Jennifer Lodi-Smith2, Frederick L. Philippe3, and Iliane Houle3

Abstract
Grounded in four theoretical positions—structural, cognitive, phenomenological, and ethical—the present review
demonstrates the empirical evidence for the incremental validity of narrative identity as a cross-sectional indicator andprospective predictor of well-being, compared with other individual difference and situational variables. In doing so, wedevelop an organizational framework of four categories of narrative variables: (a) motivational themes, (b) affective themes,(c) themes of integrative meaning, and (d) structural elements. Using this framework, we detail empirical evidence supporting
the incremental association between narrative identity and well-being, a case that is strongest for motivational, affective,
and integrative meaning themes. These categories of themes serve as vital complimentary correlates and predictors of wellbeing, alongside commonly assessed variables such as dispositional personality traits. We then use the theoretically grounded
review of the empirical literature to develop concrete areas of future research for the field.
Keywords
narrative identity, well-being, personality structure, incremental validity

The field of research on narrative identity has always profited
from a wealth of theory supporting its central claims. A richarray of perspectives supports the notion that individuals’ stories about their lives ought to be understood as core elementsof personality and should be associated with and predict
important outcomes such as well-being. This review seeks tofurther build the case by making an empirical argument forstudying narrative identity. Without a doubt, the association
between narrative identity and well-being is firmly established. Dozens of studies have examined the relationships
between the thematic and structural content of personal stories
and identified central characteristics that distinguish between
the narratives of people who experience higher levels of wellbeing from those with lower levels. Yet the key empiricalargument for the value of narrative identity is one of incremental validity. The inclusion of narrative variables in research on
the association between individual differences and well-being
explains variance that is both statistically significant and psychologically meaningful that would be missed without them.
In this review, we have collected all of the research that
directly examined the associations between narrative identity
and well-being alongside other variables to demonstrate theways in which narratives do—and do not—add incremental
validity as cross-sectional indicators and prospective predictors of well-being, compared with the effects of other individual difference and situational variables. Our argument is

inductive; it grew, bottom-up, from evidence that exists inthe literature today. It is grounded in the solid foundation oftheory that has already made a strong case for the value ofstudying narrative variables and builds on it to demonstrate
the contemporary empirical status of narrative identity’s
association with well-being.
Incremental validity is a vital component of establishingthe value of an approach, and a commonly overlooked one.
Hunsley and Mash (2007) suggest that demonstrating theincremental validity of an approach, compared with otherexisting approaches, is essential in substantiating its worthfrom both basic and applied research perspectives. However,Haynes and Lensch’s (2003) systematic investigation determined that remarkably few studies specifically consider incremental validity in their design. This is certainly the case whenit comes to the association between narrative identity andwell-being. Although many studies have investigated thatassociation, the majority do not focus on incremental validity.
1Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA, USA
Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA
3
University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada
2

Corresponding Author:
Jonathan M. Adler, Olin College of Engineering, Olin Way, MH 368,
Needham, MA 02492, USA.
Email: jadler@olin.edu

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Adler et al.
Brackett and Mayer (2003) wrote, “Most personality psychologists would agree that for a new construct to be welcomed into the field, it must explain variance that is notaccounted for by well-established constructs” (p. 9).
Narrative identity is hardly a new construct, and it has certainly been welcomed into the field of personality psychology (as well as many related disciplines). Although recent
reviews of the field of narrative psychology highlight theimportance of the incremental validity of narratives (e.g.,
McAdams & Manczak, 2015), the question of incremental
validity has often been implicit, existing within specific studies that were typically designed to answer other questions.
We do not want to suggest that incremental validity is theraison d’être of narrative identity, or that narratives ought tobe studied primarily as a vehicle for explaining well-being.
Yet ascertaining the incremental validity of narrative identity
is vital to the future of the field.
We have selected well-being as the focus of this review
because it is the most commonly assessed correlate and outcome of narrative identity by a wide margin and is a vitally
important life outcome in its own right, having itself a host ofother important correlates and outcomes (e.g., Keyes, 2005;
Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). As a result, establishingnarrative identity as an incrementally valid correlate and predictor of well-being provides one important form of empiricalevidence for the value of the approach. Furthermore, doing so
provides empirical support for the array of theoretical arguments for the centrality of narratives to individual identity.
At its core, this review aims to answer the following question: What does the inclusion of narrative variables in
research on the association between individual differences
and well-being add that might be missed without them? Our
answer to this question is grounded in the solid foundation oftheory that has already made a strong case for the value ofstudying narrative variables. It also builds on this foundation
to demonstrate the contemporary empirical status of narrative identity’s association with well-being alongside otherindividual difference and situational variables.
We approach our answer to this question in five steps.
First, we review the different theoretical perspectives thatconverge on an argument for the incremental validity of narrative identity in its association with well-being. Second, we
briefly discuss the common methodological approaches andfeatures of narrative research that provide an additional perspective on the incremental nature of narrative variables.
Third, we develop an organizational framework for the fieldof research on narrative identity that inductively classifies
the great diversity of empirical work into a system thatmakes sense of the individual differences in narrative identity that researchers have empirically examined. Fourth, we
assemble the literature of empirical evidence that can speak
to incremental associations between narrative variables andwell-being. Fifth, we use this review to make recommendations for the future of the field, based on gaps in the existing
empirical foundation.

Theoretical Arguments for the
Incremental Validity of Narrative
Identity
Many theoretical positions advocate for the importance of
narrative identity as a unique aspect of personality and as acentral modality for understanding the individual, as well as
the incremental validity of narrative identity as a meaningfulindicator of well-being. An exhaustive review of these theories is beyond the scope of the present review, but it is important to ground our investigation in its theoretical basis. We
classify these theoretical arguments into four broad (andoverlapping) categories: structural, cognitive, phenomenological, and ethical approaches.

Structural Arguments
Even before the theory of narrative identity was fully articulated, early theorists saw narrative approaches as structurally
distinct from other approaches to understanding the person.
Bruner (1986) referred to the “narrative mode of thought” asseparate from an alternative approach, the “paradigmaticmode” (p. 11). He suggested that paradigmatic arguments,
those grounded in scientific inquiry, were concerned with systematically identifying generalizable truths and “transcending
the particular” (p. 13). In contrast, Bruner wrote that the narrative mode is concerned with identifying the contours ofindividual intention and action over the course of time.
Narratives are about characters—and especially a main character or protagonist—striving for something, and the ebb andflow of that journey. Narratives are about the specific, the personal, and the contextualized. In establishing these two fundamentally distinct and irreducible modes of thought, Bruner
offered an early structural argument for the unique contributions of narrative approaches to understanding people.
Building on Bruner’s work, as well as that of several otherearly theorists, McAdams’ theory of narrative identity has
always had a structural argument at its core, distinguishingnarrative identity from other domains of personality (e.g.,
McAdams, 1995; McAdams et al., 2004). The theory suggeststhat narrative identity is one of three primary domains of personality, along with dispositional traits and characteristic
adaptations (e.g., McAdams, 1995). Contextualized within theforces of human evolution and the influence of culture, humanvariation can be described with three distinct aspects (e.g.,
McAdams & Pals, 2006). First, dispositional traits represent
the broad, de-contextual, non-conditional aspects of individual
variation. Typically operationalized with the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion,
openness to experience, and neuroticism (a.k.a. emotional stability), they provide a robust, systematic way of quantifying
and characterizing individual differences. Dispositional traits
have been shown to predict important life outcomes such as
well-being, social and occupational success, and physicalhealth (e.g., Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg,

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)2007; Steel, Schmidt, & Schultz, 2008). Second, characteristic
adaptations represent the overarching motivational, socialcognitive, and developmental processes, as well as otheraspects of personality that are important to an individual at agiven moment. They represent the parts of personality that arecontextualized within a given time, place, or social role (e.g.,
McAdams, 1995; McAdams & Pals, 2006).
The third domain of personality is concerned with narrative identity, the individual differences in personality manifest through the stories people tell about their significant life
experiences (e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Hammack,
2008; McAdams, 1995, 2001; McAdams & McLean, 2013;
McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007; Pasupathi, 2001; Singer,
2004). Whether describing a difficult experience or a turning
point, narratives communicate not just the events that are
central to the life of an individual but the meaning these
events hold for the narrator. A hypothetical example makes
this point clearly. Knowing that both a highly conscientious
35-year-old woman and man get a boost in well-being when
they achieve a promotion at work provides important information about individual differences; it suggests that bothtrait conscientiousness and achievement of higher status in
the workplace may be associated with well-being. However,examining individual differences in narrative identity adds
explanatory power: Perhaps the woman narrates this achievement as signifying that a decade of professional struggle
after graduate school has finally paid off, whereas the man
narrates the same accomplishment to convey that this statuswill finally allow him to spend more time with his young
children. For these two hypothetical people, the themes intheir narratives reveal additional information about the connections between their individual differences and their wellbeing that would not be captured if trait, developmental, andsituational factors alone were examined.
Such individualized creation of meaning for personallycontextualized life experiences highlights one of the central
psychological functions of narrative identity, providing a
sense of purpose for the individual (e.g., McAdams, 1995,
2001). Through the representation of specific events in a narrative framework, individuals create aninternalized, evolving, and integrative story of the self . . . about
our struggle to reconcile who we imagine we were, are, andmight be in our heads and bodies with who we were, are, andmight be in the social contexts of family, community, theworkplace, ethnicity, religion, gender, social class, and culture
writ large. (McAdams, 2008b, pp. 242-243)

Meaning is at the heart of these self-stories and is especially concerned with articulating one’s sense of purpose.
A second central psychological function of narrative identity is to provide individuals with a sense of unity over time;they connect the self of the past to the self of the present, andthey anticipate the future self. Narratives therefore provide
coherence to identity, organizing it for the individual (e.g.,Freeman, 2010; Habermas & Bluck, 2000). Development

itself poses a challenge to the continuity of the self. In adolescence, the physical transformation of the body conspires withincreasing cognitive maturation and rising social expectations
to define the self, to cue the emergence of narrative identity(e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000). Throughout adulthood, roletransitions and shifting concerns continue to disrupt the stability of identity. In addition to developmental pressures, variations in expectations for the self across different situations andsocial roles also complicate the notion of an integrated identity. Cultural and historical forces also problematize identity
management. Hammack (2008) explained, “If the historicalcontext of late modernity is one of contested collective meaning, it makes sense that individuals may be motivated to adopt
an identity that preserves a sense of ontological security andminimizes existential anxiety” (p. 225). In the face of thesechallenges, the narrative of one’s life serves a unifying function (e.g., McAdams, 2001, 2006a). A given individual’s narrative serves to bind the self, bringing these diverse threads
together into a cohesive account (e.g., Freeman, 2010), onethat supports well-being (Hammack, 2008).
This general structure of personality has been put forward
by multiple different theoretical models (e.g., McAdams,
2009; McAdams & Pals, 2006; McCrae & Costa, 2008;
Roberts, Harms, Smith, Wood, & Webb, 2006).1 Implicit insuch structural theories is the assertion that each domain of
personality ought to have differential relationships with
important life outcomes. When it comes to well-being, structural arguments suggest that dispositional traits uniquely represent affective signatures, contributing powerful tendencies
to experience different emotional states. In contrast, characteristic adaptions ought to be incrementally associated withwell-being when situational factors are taken into account.
Need satisfaction (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000), goal achievement (e.g., Sheldon & Houser-Marko, 2001), and the resolution of developmental projects (e.g., Ryff, 1989) areassociated with well-being, a relationship best explained by
the characteristic adaptation domain of personality. Structuralarguments add that narrative identity also ought to have distinct associations with well-being, based on narratives’ ability to capture the purpose and unity ascribed to the self. The
subjective meaning attached to one’s life experiences and theways in which these experiences are woven into a unified
self are best understood as a distinct domain of personality,
one with its own unique associations with well-being. Thus,
structural arguments are fundamentally concerned with thematter of incremental validity, suggesting that each domainof personality ought to have statistically independent associations with important life outcomes, such as well-being.

Cognitive Arguments
One of the basic tenants of cognitive psychology is that people heavily rely on schemas to understand the world. These
schemas capture abstract social knowledge (e.g., how toorder in a restaurant; Schank & Abelson, 1977) or abstract

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Adler et al.
self-knowledge (one’s personal traits, self-schemas, and attitudes) derived from the generalization of frequent similar
experiences (Markus, 1977). For example, responding to an
extraversion item on a measure of the Big Five personality
traits that asks whether one is a talkative person does not
require one to screen all relevant memories of social situations. This information is readily available in an abstract
semantic format, which is a generalization of several common situations where one has been talkative and outgoing or
quiet and shy. Although this abstract self-knowledge may
have built over time from repeated episodic memories ofsimilar experiences, self-knowledge and episodic memories
appear to be independent and to be instantiated in distinct
brain systems (e.g., Klein & Loftus, 1993). One good reason
for this separation is that abstract self-knowledge is derived
from the experience of frequent and therefore typically common, similar situations (Conway, 2005), yet not all experiences are repeated over time. Some are highly distinctive andexperienced once in a lifetime (examples might include areligious conversion, the transition to parenthood, or thedeath of a significant other). These significant and uniqueexperiences are not abstract-able or summarize-able.
Nevertheless, they clearly inform who a person is, giving riseto an important and distinct level of self-knowledge. Indeed,
the elements of each narrated identity are significant life
scenes, momentous memories (Pillemer, 1998), or selfdefining memories (Singer & Salovey, 1993), many of which
are highly emotional, one-time experiences, anchored in a
specific episodic autobiographical memory.
Because this level of specific self-knowledge is notderived from the more typical, generalized set of abstract
self-knowledge, this distinct episodic-based knowledge islikely to predict important outcomes in people’s lives in acomplimentary way to other individual differences that havebeen formed based on repeated experiences. Indeed, specific,
significant episodic memories can influence well-being indifferent ways. First, certain key properties of these memories tend to be re-experienced frequently, whenever life
themes or concerns reactivate those significant and specificmemories (Biondolillo & Pillemer, 2015; Demorest &Alexander, 1992; Singer, Blagov, Berry, & Oost, 2013;
Singer & Salovey, 1993). This reactivation typically affects
immediate situational well-being and, over time, such transitory effects accumulate to build stable and enduring impacts
on well-being (Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier,
Lecours, & Lekes, 2012). Second, the richness with whichthese memories are cognitively framed, integrated, and narrated provides the person with the purpose and unity central
to a productively functioning narrative identity (McAdams,
2001), which also promotes greater well-being (e.g., Conway,
Singer, & Tagini, 2004; King & Noelle, 2005; McAdams,
Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, & Bowman, 2001; McLean &Breen, 2009; McLean & Lilgendahl, 2008).
Another cognitive perspective that can explain why individual differences found in narratives relate to important outcomes such as well-being distinctly from other individual

differences is that narratives may reveal unconscious cognitive processes of personality (McClelland, Koestner, &Weinberger, 1989; B. A. Woike, 2008). There are several
dual-process theories that converge on the following postulates: Attitudes and behaviors depend on (a) an implicit andunconscious associative system, which heavily draws fromencoded past affective experiences and (b) a more rational
system that favors coherence, cognitive consistency, andsocial expectancies (e.g., Beaulieu-Pelletier, Bouchard, &Philippe, 2013; Epstein, 1994; Gawronski & Bodenhausen,
2006; Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999; Strack & Deutsch, 2004).
McClelland’s implicit motives theory (McClelland et al.,1989), derived from a dual-process perspective, was particularly concerned with narrative and influenced later narrative
theories. According to this theory, humans have two types ofmotives, explicit and implicit. Whereas explicit motives correspond to people’s well-elaborated self-attributed goals andmotives (abstract self-knowledge of their motives) and arereadily collected by simply asking people to report on theirconscious preferences, implicit motives reflect people’s lessconscious preferences for experiencing certain affective states(B. A. Woike, 2008), and can only be assessed indirectly.
Given their distinct roles and functions, explicit and implicit
motives do not tend to correlate with each other (or are only
weakly associated). Narratives have been found to be a successful outlet to measure implicit motives, as they allow theindividual to spontaneously express his or her motivationaland emotional preferences (McClelland et al., 1989) and typically pertain to strong affective experiences, which tend to
arouse implicit motives (B. A. Woike, 2008). For example,
people with strong achievement motives are more likely todescribe achievement-related memories, whereas people withstrong intimacy motives are more likely to retrieve relationship-related memories (McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield, &Day, 1996; B. Woike, Gershkovich, Piorkowski, & Polo,1999). As such, people’s implicit motives may influence how
they encode and recall past events, which is reflected in theirnarratives of these events (B. A. Woike, 2008). These motives
are likely to orient people toward activities that are likely tosatisfy these motives, which in turn, should fulfill their wellbeing (Prentice, Halusic, & Sheldon, 2014).
Cognitive arguments therefore offer a perspective on theincremental association between narrative identity and wellbeing grounded in research on autobiographical memory processes and the study of implicit cognitive processes. In bothcases, the content of narrative identity is regarded as uniqueand separate from other factors that influence well-being.

Phenomenological Arguments
Since its earliest days as an emergent discipline, personality
psychology has been marked by a tension between its dual
missions of studying key individual differences and studying
individuals as unique, integrated wholes (Berenbaum &Winter, 2008). Although much of contemporary scientificpersonality psychology has focused on the mission of

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)studying individual differences, work on narrative identity
has straddled both sides of this tension (e.g., Adler, 2012b).
Although these two approaches to research on narrative identity have some important divergences (e.g., McAdams,2005), both share certain underlying values pertaining totheir fundamentally shared phenomenological perspective.
The study of narrative identity regards individuals as
deeply contextualized (e.g., Freeman, 1997; Hammack,
2008). Constructing and reconstructing the story of one’s life
is the vehicle by which the individual’s engagement with cultural and historical discourses forms an internalized identity(Hammack, 2008). Hammack’s (2008) application of cultural psychology (e.g., Gjerde, 2004) to the study of narrative
identity emphasizes the dynamic dialectic between the individual person and the broader social context of development.
He writes, “In personality and social psychology and beyond,narrative is increasingly recognized as the gateway to meaning in understanding socially situated individual lives”(p. 232). This phenomenological emphasis on the importance of subjective meaning prioritizes the study of individuals’ own perspectives on their experiences.
Growing out of this theoretical perspective, a methodological approach naturally follows. This approach strives to transcend “the unduly strict methodological demands of much ofcontemporary academic psychology, its tendency to focus onwhat is observable, objectifiable, quantifiable, and so forth”(Freeman, 1997, p. 171). Individuals are to be invited to share
their first-person experiences, even if they are “unobservable”
and fundamentally un-objectifiable, as the optimal route tounderstanding what their lives mean. Although the limits ofself-knowledge have been well-documented (e.g., Vazire &Carlson, 2010), phenomenological approaches assert that themeaning ascribed to one’s experience offers a unique andvaluable perspective in understanding personality.
Although the heart of the phenomenological perspective isa philosophical claim about the route to truth in understanding
a phenomenon as complex as identity, the unavoidable corollary to this perspective is an argument for incremental validity.
Especially within the thread of research on narrative identitythat strives to adopt a phenomenological outlook while seeking to produce generalizable knowledge about the self (andtherefore typically using quantitative methods), the implication is that narrative identity adds unique explanatory power.
Phenomenological perspectives therefore offer an argument
for the incremental validity of narrative identity in predicting
well-being, one intimately tied to the other approaches wehave described, but philosophically distinct.

Ethical Arguments
In addition to the positions described above, theorists havemade an ethical argument for the importance of studying
narrative identity, asserting that the inclusion of research
participants’ first-person accounts of their experiences, especially those from traditionally under-represented groups, as anequally privileged perspective is vital to a principled science(e.g., Josselson & Lieblich, 1993). This position is well-established in neighboring disciplines, such as sociology (e.g.,
Punch, 1994), anthropology (e.g., Linger, 2005), and education (e.g., Casey, 1996), but it has also received attention
within the study of narrative identity (e.g., Josselson, 1996).
For example, using a theatrical metaphor of narrative, Duncan
and Miller (2000) assert that traditional psychotherapy
research has largely ignored the client’s perspective at its own
peril and argue “for not only recasting the client as the star ofthe drama of therapy, but also giving the heroic client directorial control of the action as it unfolds” (p. 169). They suggestthat clients have been disenfranchised in contributing to theunderstanding of psychotherapy and, as a result, the field has
mistreated them, while missing key data. Brendel (2000)
echoes this point, arguing that pluralistic approaches that
include an emphasis on the personal meaning people derivefrom their experiences are the only viable way forward in truly
understanding personality and pathology, for focusing only on
reductionist causal explanations violates the ethical duty ofscience. These and other ethical approaches offer a complimentary meta-perspective to structural, cognitive, and phenomenological approaches that focus more on the content of
the research than the social ramifications of conducting it.
The implication of ethical arguments for the study of narrative identity is that including first-person storied accounts
not only reduces power differentials in the conduct of
research, but also provides a vital explanatory perspectivethat is not tapped by other approaches. Although ethicalarguments are primarily concerned with the appropriate conduct of research, embedded in their central tenets is an assertion that the likelihood of maximizing the explanatory
potential of any given study is enhanced by the inclusion of
narrative data. Thus, these approaches make an implicit
argument for the incremental validity of narrative identity,
integrated with their social and political assertions.

Convergence Across Theoretical Arguments as aFoundation for an Empirical Argument
What structural, cognitive, phenomenological, and ethicalarguments for the incremental validity of narrative identity
share is the fundamental assertion that narrative identity is aunique aspect of personality, one that makes a special contribution to explaining well-being and other important outcomes. Each perspective suggests that studying narrative
identity ought to be just as important to researchers interested in understanding individual differences as the narratives themselves are for individuals in their daily lives.

Conducting Research on Narrative
Identity: Methodological Contributions
to an Empirical Argument
In addition to the theoretical arguments described above,
there are important methodological reasons for examining
narrative identity as an incremental correlate and predictor of

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Adler et al.
well-being. Scholars who appreciate, but do not conduct,
research on narrative identity often wonder why it is worth it,
as the process is often lengthy and labor-intensive. In thissection, we will briefly review common narrative methods
and then discuss several methodological arguments for theirvital incremental contribution to understanding personality
and its association with well-being.

Common Narrative Methods
In the prototypical narrative study, researchers collect either
oral or written narratives from participants using a semistructured task, typically through telling the story of a particular episode or their entire life story in response to
standardized prompts. The widely used Life Story Interview(McAdams, 2008a) serves as the gold standard for eliciting
personal narratives. Indeed, even when studies are not concerned with the entire life story and instead focus on a specific episode, narrative prompts are commonly framed in a
way that parallels the Life Story Interview prompts.
Specifically, the prompts customarily instruct participants toinclude some description of when and where the event took
place, who was there, what the participant was thinking andfeeling during the experience, and what the experiencemeans to the person. Responses to these prompts typically
produce a very large quantity of code-able language, making
even relatively small-sample-size-studies major undertakings. The Life Story Interview was designed to last two to
three hours, generating many thousands of words of text. For
example, in one recent study that used an abbreviated version of the Life Story Interview, coding was done for 84 participants’ narrative transcripts, averaging just fewer than
7,000 words each (Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011), roughly
half the length of this article. Even studies that use written
narratives typically tackle very large amounts of narrative
data. For example, McAdams and colleagues (2006) collected written accounts of 10 key moments in the life stories
of college undergraduates. The narratives averaged 2,000
words in length, and 344 of them were coded. (It is important
to note that the word count of narratives has rarely beenfound to be significantly associated with any of the narrative
variables of interest.)
Once data collection is complete, narrative researchers
carefully blind all data (electronically transcribing any handwriting samples, assigning random identification numbers,etc.). Great attention must be paid to the transcription of oral
narratives, given the propensity for very slight variations inword choice to lead to very different thematic meanings.
Professional transcribers are traditionally used, rather than
paid undergraduates, given the importance of the task and thespecific skill set that leads to quality transcripts.
Blinded narrative data are then transferred to a group ofcoders. Narrative coding that seeks to create scientificallygeneralizable findings is undertaken by more than one coder,typically blind to the hypotheses of the study and trained to ahigh standard of inter-rater reliability using a coding systemthat has been adopted or developed for operationalizing thenarrative variables of interest. Typically, multiple coders
begin by working together with a subset of the data or a separate training data set to learn how the coding system works
and how it will apply to the unique data being examined.
Once they have established a common understanding, they
separately code additional narratives until high inter-rater
reliability is established.2 The process of applying these coding systems is similar in many ways to coding approaches
developed for rating behavioral frequencies in lab-based
research (e.g., Durbin, 2010).
Although researchers have developed approaches for
streamlining the work, conducting narrative research fundamentally involves a deep immersion in participants’ stories,
working to tease out their meaning in a valid and reliableway. It is a process that is unlikely to be automated in thenear future, as the contextual and connotative nature ofmeaning is enormously complex. Alternative approaches,such as Pennebaker, Booth, and Francis’s (2007) Linguistic
Inquiry and Word Count system, have made vital contributions to the understanding of first-person accounts, but
approaches such as these are necessarily linguistic, not narrative. They rely on counting the frequency of different classesof words, such as personal pronouns and causal words; theycannot index the personal meaning of stories in the way thatnarrative coding systems do.

Methodological Features
As the preceding review of theoretical arguments makes
clear, including narrative identity in the study of individual
differences should allow researchers to predict unique variance in important outcomes not explained using other variables. In addition, narrative approaches are typically free ofproblems related to method variance that are common inother approaches to studying the connections between individual differences and well-being, such as those reliant on
self-report questionnaire measures of both personality traits
and well-being. Narrative analyses can also be conducted ona wide variety of sources, from historical texts, to archival
data sets, to contemporary self-disclosure formats such as
blogs and other social media platforms. Not all textual data
are properly considered narrative in nature, but given theubiquity of storytelling in human interaction, there are many
untapped sources of potentially valuable data available toresearchers.
It is also important to note that narrative data are uniquely
generative. Whereas most other types of data, such as questionnaire or physiological measures, provide researcherswith a single point of inquiry, narratives contain multitudes.
There is only so much a researcher can do with scores on ameasure of the Big Five personality traits or readings of daily
cortisol levels, beyond answering their initial set of questions, without collecting more data. In contrast, narrative

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)data sets can be re-examined in posing an incredible varietyof questions as research programs develop and new frontiers
are identified. As a result, even beyond the theoretical arguments for studying narrative identity, the generative potentialof such data makes a strong methodological case for thetime- and labor-intensive process of doing narrative research.
In making the argument for investigating narrative identity, it is important to note that personal narratives should not
be regarded as a vehicle for assessing the veracity of theevents described. Although narratives should be both believable and based in reality (e.g., McAdams, 2006a), the objective facts of a narrative are of less interest to narrative
researchers than the subjective interpretation of one’s life
experience. Theory and data converge to suggest that thissubjective meaning matters for participants’ well-being—
and in some cases matters more than other individual difference variables. In other words, it is the characteristics of how
a story is told, as opposed to the truth of the tale, which are
crucial for the connection between narrative identity andwell-being.

An Organizational Framework ofCommonly Examined Narrative
Variables
The framework we developed to organize the commonly
studied narrative variables was derived inductively. First, wecompiled the articles that met our criteria for inclusion in thepresent review. Second, we made a list of the complete set ofnarrative variables examined in this body of research. Third,
we asked leading narrative researchers to examine the list
and develop their own framework. Each of these steps is
described below.

Inclusion Criteria
Articles were included in the review if they had at least one
variable from each of following three categories:
1.

2.

3.

Coded narrative variable. The article had to include
the systematic and reliable coding of an individual
difference drawn from narratives provided by individuals about episodes that occurred in their lives orfrom their overarching life stories.
Non-narrative individual difference and situationalvariables. Non-narrative variables included demographic and contextual variables, personality measuresof dispositional traits or characteristic adaptations,and, in certain instances, well-being measures used as
predictors.
Index of well-being. Research on the association
between narrative identity and well-being has adopted
an expansive approach to operationalizing well-being,encompassing variables typically ascribed to bothhedonic and eudaimonic categories of well-being(e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2001; Ryff & Keyes, 1995), as
well as psychopathology and variables that speak toflourishing (e.g., Keyes, 2005). Although theoretically and empirically distinct from many well-being
measures, narrative researchers have also often investigated the differential relationships between narrative
variables and psychological maturity or ego development (e.g., Hy & Loevinger, 1996) alongside wellbeing. We will adopt this broad approach in thepresent review. This decision was made purely on
pragmatic grounds: To review as many studies as possible that assessed narrative variables alongside otherindividual difference variables in their associations
with well-being, it was necessary to adopt a broad
operationalization of well-being. We will be precise in
our discussion of the findings in individual studies
and be mindful of the important distinctions in wellbeing measures in drawing overall conclusions fromthe review.
We conducted a literature search by doing keyword
searches using PsychInfo, PubMed, and Google Scholar, by
examining the curriculum vitae of major researchers in thefield, by directly contacting major researchers in the field, byfollowing the reference lists from identified articles, and by
conducting cited reference searches. In the interest of greatest transparency, we chose to only include previously published or in press articles in this review; unpublishedmanuscripts, theses, and dissertations were not included
prior to their acceptance for peer-reviewed publication.3
As noted above, the specific matter of incremental validity was quite often not the researchers’ primary aim in thestudies we include in this review. As a consequence, we scrutinized the results sections of all candidate articles to identify
any relevant findings. Inconsistencies in reporting the differential associations between narrative variables, other individual difference variables, and well-being, both within
individual studies and across studies, are likely due to theresearchers’ prioritization of other research questions.
Indeed, we reiterate that narrative identity is a valuable construct for reasons having nothing to do with its incremental
association with well-being.
In spite of this, we identified 30 studies that could speak
to the important issue of incremental validity, meeting our
inclusion criteria for the present review. These studies aredescribed in Table 1. Because most studies included werecorrelational, partial correlations or standardized beta coefficients were collected from each study and included in Table 1,
when available. Partial correlations represent the shared variance between a narrative measure and a well-being measure
once the shared variance between the non-narrative
variable(s) and both the narrative measure and the well-being
measure have been removed. Standardized beta coefficientsare from a different metric than partial correlations andare not directly comparable. However, simulation studies

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Adler, 2012a

Adler &
Hershfield,
2012

Adler &
Poulin, 2009

1

2

3

Authors, year

Narratives about
psychotherapy andits impact on senseof self, collected at
12 points over thecourse of treatment
Narratives of
exposure to the
9/11 attacks andsense made of those
attacks

Narratives about
psychotherapy andits impact on senseof self, collected at
12 points over thecourse of treatment

Type ofnarrative

Redemption

Contamination

A

Specific
emotions

Agency

Theme
coded

A

A

M

Category

Table 1. Description of Each Study Included in Review.

Mental health

Mental health

Dependent
variable

Ethnicity,
Psychological wellincome, lifetime
being
psychologicaldiagnoses, lifetimestressful events,
emotional tone
Moderator: level of
exposure
Ethnicity,
Psychologicalincome, lifetime
distress
psychologicaldiagnoses, lifetimestressful events,
emotional tone
Moderator: level of
exposure

Neuroticism

Neuroticism, sex,
race, education,
income, andcharacteristics ofpsychotherapy

Controlvariables

—

.16

.21

β = .16β = .21—

Fisher’s Z

NA

NA

r/β

Brief results description(continued)

Agency, but not coherence, wasassociated with increases in mental
health over the course of treatment,
accounting for individual differencesin neuroticism and other variables;
narrative change preceded change inmental health47 Co-occurrence of both positive andnegative emotions was associatedwith increases in mental health evenafter controlling for neuroticism
and direct impacts of happiness andsadness
395 Themes of national redemption,
but not contamination, werepositively associated with well-being,
controlling for age, gender, ethnicity,
education, income level, and pre-9/11
psychological distress. This effect wassignificant only for those with a highlevel of exposure to the attacks
395 Contamination, but not redemption,
was associated with higher levels of
psychological distress, controllingfor demographics and distress level
before the attacks. This effect wassignificant only for those with a highlevel of exposure to the attacks

47

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Adler, Kissel,& McAdams,
2006

Adler,
Wagner, &McAdams,
2007

Adler, Skalina,& McAdams,
2008

4

5

6

Authors, year

Type ofnarrative

Six scenes ofpsychotherapy
story (e.g., a specificsignificant session
or one in which
the impact of thetreatment was clear)
Six scenes ofpsychotherapy
story (e.g., a specificsignificant session
or one in which
the impact of thetreatment was clear)

Life story interview(8 life scenes)

Table 1. (continued)

M

AgencyCoherenceContamination

AS

Contamination

Closure

Theme
coded

A

I

Category

Dependent
variableLife satisfaction

Depression

Sex, age, income,
Subjective welleducation, race,
being
duration of
the treatment,
mood at thetime of writing
the narratives,
satisfaction withtreatment, ratingsof therapist’s
competence, andwillingness toseek treatment
again

Openness,
Ego developmentage, sex, race,
education, income

Neuroticism,
depressogenic
attributional style

Neuroticism,
depressogenic
attributional styleEthnicity,
Psychological wellincome, lifetime
being and distress
psychologicaldiagnoses, lifetimestressful events,
emotional tone

Controlvariables

.20

−.34

β = −.33

β = .20.50

β = .46.60.12 and .17

β = .12and .17

Partialr = .54

Fisher’s Z

r/β

Brief results description(continued)

104 Agency was positively associatedwith subjective well-being, holding
constant all control variables

395 Closure was positively and negatively
associated with well-being andpsychological distress, respectively,
controlling for demographics anddistress level before the attacks andregardless of the level of exposure to
the attacks
70 Contamination sequences werepositively associated with depression
after controlling for neuroticism anddepressogenic attributional style
70 Contamination sequences were
negatively associated with life
satisfaction after controlling forneuroticism and depressogenic
attributional style
76 Narrative coherence showed
incremental validity in its association
with ego development, above
openness and demographics

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Type ofnarrative

A major life transitionin six episodes orsegments

Amir, Stafford, Female victims of aFreshman, &recent sexual assault
Foa, 1998
recounted it in detail
within 2 weeks of theassault
Baerger &Life story interview
McAdams,(8 life scenes)
1999
Bauer &
Two major goals in
McAdams,
life and the plan to2004aachieve them

10 Bauer &McAdams,
2004b

9

8

7

Authors, year

Table 1. (continued)

Integrativeand intrinsic
memories

Intrinsic growth
goals

I

I

Exploratory life
span growth
goals

Coherence

Reading level ofwriting

Coherence

Theme
coded

I

S

S

S

Category

Dependent
variable

Psychological andsubjective wellbeing

Ego development

Depression

Big Five personality Ego development
traits, education,
ethnicity, gender,
marital status,
income

Age

Age

Age

Sex, age, income,Ego development
education, race,
duration of
the treatment,
mood at thetime of writing
the narratives,
satisfaction withtreatment, ratingsof therapist’s
competence, andwillingness toseek treatment
again should theneed arise
Education level
Posttraumatic
symptoms

Controlvariables.29.28 and .34

β = .28
and R2= .03
β = .27
and .33;
R2 = .05
and .08
r = .46

.50

—

NA

−.74 and−.67.47

β = .44r = −.63
and−.59

Fisher’s Z

r/β

Brief results description

67

51

51

50

12

(continued)

Narrative reading level was associatedwith significant decreases in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms
ten weeks later, controlling for
education level
Coherence in midlife adults’ life stories
was associated with depression,accounting for age
Exploratory life span growth goals
predicted ego development aboveand beyond the effects of age, but not
psychological and subjective wellbeing
Intrinsic growth goals predicted
psychological and subjective wellbeing while controlling for age, but
not ego development
Integrative memories—but not
intrinsic memories— were positively
associated with ego development

104 Narrative coherence was positively
associated with ego development,
holding constant all control variables

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A particular event inwhich one made animportant decision,
what the decision
was, and why it wasan important one
Narrative about adecision to makea major life change
in either career or
religion

Narratives of highpoints, low points,
and turning points
in life

12 Bauer,
McAdams,& Sakaeda,
2005a, Study
1

14 Bauer,
McAdams,& Sakaeda,
2005b

13 Bauer et al.,2005a, Study
2

Two major life goals

Type ofnarrative

11 Bauer &McAdams,
2010

Authors, year

Table 1. (continued)

I

M

Integrative
memories

Crystallizationof desire vs.
discontent

Crystallizationof desire vs.
discontent

Communal
growth goals

M

M

Agentic growthgoals

Agency andcommunion

M

M

Integrativeand intrinsic
memories

Theme
coded

I

Category

Satisfaction with life

Subjective wellbeing at Time 2

Ego development at
Time 2

Psychologicalwell-being, life
satisfaction

Psychologicalwell-being, life
satisfaction

Dependent
variable

Neuroticism,
Satisfaction with life
extraversion,
avoidance
strivings, life
impact fromtransition
Big Five personality Ego development
traitsBig Five personality
traits, education,
ethnicity, gender,
marital status,
incomeBig Five personality
traits, education,
ethnicity, gender,
marital status,
incomeGender, Big Five
personality traits,
ego development
at Time 1
Gender, Big Five
personality traits,
and subjective
well-being at
Time 1
Neuroticism,
extraversion,and avoidance
strivings

Controlvariables

.24

.35

.74

β = .34

β = .63

Crystallization of desire (vs.
discontent) was positively associatedwith life satisfaction, independentof neuroticism, extraversion, andgeneral avoidance strivings

Communal growth goals predictedchanges in subjective well-being 3.5
years later

Intrinsic memories—but not
integrative memories—were
positively associated withpsychological well-being and life
satisfaction
Agency and communion werepositively associated withpsychological well-being, but only
communion was associated with life
satisfaction
Agentic growth goals predictedchanges in ego development 3.5 years
later

Brief results description(continued)

Crystallization of desire (vs.
discontent) was positively associatedwith life satisfaction, independent ofneuroticism, extraversion, general
avoidance strivings, and life impact of
the transition
176 Integrative themes in college students’and midlife adults’ life stories werepositively associated with ego
development, but not with life
satisfaction, controlling for the Big
Five personality traits

67

51

87

.33

β = .24

87

67

67

n

.33

.39

β = .37

β = .32
and
R2 =
.083
β = .32
andR2 = .09.50 and .29

Fisher’s Z

r = .46
and .38r/β153

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19 King, Scollon,
Ramsey, &Williams,
2000

Lesbian and gay
participants wrote
about their beststraight and best gay
possible future selves
Participants wrote
about the moment
when they were first
told that their childwould be born with/
had Down syndrome
I

I

Accommodative
processing

Elaboration ofself

Elaboration ofself

I

18 King & Smith,
2004

Elaboration ofself

IIntimacy

Dependent
variable

Ego development

Ego development
and life satisfaction

Stress-related
growth, numberof children in thefamily, the ageof the child with
Down syndrome

Ego development

Age, ego
Ego development
development
Time 2Time 1Moderator: timesince divorce
Income, education, Ego development
age

Age

Gender andeducation

Positive andnegative emotion
regulation
strategies

Big Five personality Satisfaction with life
traitsControlvariables

Positive and
Neuroticism,
negative
extraversion
meaning-making

Intrinsic
memories

Theme
coded

17 King & Raspin, Future self imagined
2004
before divorce (i.e.,
hope and dreamfor marriage) andfuture possible self as
currently imagined

I

I

Category

M

High and low points
in life

Type ofnarrative

16 King & Noelle, Narratives of coming
2005
out as lesbian or gay

15 Cox &McAdams,
2014

Authors, year

Table 1. (continued)

.52

NA

.34

.24

β = .48andtotal
R2 = .23NA

β = .33

β = .24.19

β = .19,
R2 = .07.27 and .20.54

β = .49

rs = .26
and .20

Fisher’s Z

r/β

Brief results description

Elaboration of lost self positively
predicted increases in ego
development the more time had
elapsed since divorce

87(continued)

Accommodation was positively
associated with ego development, but
not with subjective well-being

107 Straight self-elaboration, but not gay
self-elaboration, positively predicted
ego development73

176 Intrinsic themes in college students’and midlife adults’ life stories
were positively associated withlife satisfaction, but not with ego
development, controlling for the Big
Five personality traits
164 Positive meaning-making predicted
positive emotion regulation
strategies, whereas negative meaningmaking predicted negative emotion
regulation strategies
107 Intimacy, but not power, was positively
associated with ego development andlife satisfaction after controlling for
education and gender
73 Elaboration of self in found possible
self, but not in lost possible self,
positively predicted ego development

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Roberts, &Robins, 200921 Lilgendahl &McAdams,
2011

20 Lilgendahl,
Helson, &John, 2013

Authors, year

Type ofnarrative

Narratives of how
one’s personality haschanged since thebeginning of college

Most unstable,
confusing, troubled,or discouraging timein life since college
Abbreviated life
story interview (lifechapters, high point,
low point, important
people)Table 1. (continued)

Exploratory
processing
Affective
processing

A

Positive
processing

A
I

Differentiatedprocessing

Accommodative
processing

M

I

ClosureForeshadowing

S

I

Happy ending

Theme
coded

A

Category

Changes in the Big
Five personality
traitsChanges in the Big
Five personality
traits

SES, neuroticism

Number ofchildren in thefamily, the ageof the child with
Down syndrome
Number ofchildren in thefamily, the ageof the child with
Down syndrome
Number ofchildren in thefamily, the ageof the child with
Down syndrome
Education, verbal
ability, openness
at age 21, 43, 52,
and 61
SES, openness

Controlvariables

Emotional health

Subjective andpsychological wellbeing
Emotional health

Subjective andpsychological wellbeing

Ego development

Subjective wellbeing

Subjective wellbeing

Subjective wellbeing

Dependent
variable.19 and .21

β = .19
to .21

Partialr = .23.23.14.30 and .41

β = .29
to .39Partialr = .14,ns.51

β = .49.23

β = .23.22.35

β = .34

β = .22

Fisher’s Z

r/β

Accommodative processing at age
52 predicted increases in ego
development between age 43 and 61

Closure was positively associated withsubjective well-being, but not withego development

Foreshadowing was positively
associated with subjective well-being,
but not with ego development

Happy endings were positively
associated with subjective well-being,
but not with ego development

Brief results description(continued)

Differentiated processing of negative
events were positively associatedwith subjective and psychologicalwell-being
88 Positive processing was positively
associated with psychological and(marginally with) subjective well-being
170 Exploratory processing did not predictchanges in emotional health after
controlling for self-reported changes
in personality traits
170 Affective processing positively
predicted changes in emotional
health, after controlling for selfreported changes in personality traits

88

62

87

87

87

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Type ofnarrative

Turning point memory(i.e., a significant lifechange)High and low point
memories

A high point, a low
point, a turning point,
and a continuity
experience

24 McLean &Breen, 200925 McLean &Lilgendahl,
2008

26 McLean,
Breen, &Fournier,
2010

23 McAdams,Life story interview
Reynolds,(8 life scenes)
Lewis, Patten,& Bowman,
2001

Authors, year

Table 1. (continued)

S

A

Sophistication

Redemption

Redemption

Contamination

A
A

Redemption

Affective
processing

A

A

Exploratory
processing

Theme
coded

I

Category

Moderator: age

Moderator: age

Age. Moderator:
genderGender and race

Gender and race

Perceived
personalitychanges

Perceived
personalitychanges

Controlvariables

Well-being

Well-being

Self-esteem

Satisfaction with life

Trait maturity(Increases
in emotional
stability andconscientiousness)
Satisfaction with life

Trait maturity(Increases
in emotional
stability andconscientiousness)

Dependent
variable.29

β = .28.31

β = .30
and R2
= .03

—

−.42

r = −.40

ns.39.21 and .23.11 and .16

Fisher’s Z

r = .37

Partialr = .21and .23

Partial r= .11,
ns and.16r/βBrief results description(continued)

Contamination was negatively
associated with hedonic well-being,
controlling for gender and race
171 Redemption sequences in adolescents’narratives of turning points werepositively associated with self-esteem
for boys but not for girls
113 Redemption sequences in low-point(but not in high point) narratives
were associated with eudaimonic
well-being, but only for emerging
adults, not for older adults
146 A higher level of sophistication in the
narratives of early adolescents was
negatively associated with wellbeing, but this negative relationshipdisappeared by late adolescence74

170 Exploratory processing was
positively associated with changes
in conscientiousness, but not withchanges in emotional stability, after
controlling for perceived personalitychanges
170 Affective processing was positively
associated with changes in
conscientiousness and in emotional
stability, after controlling forperceived personality changes
74 Redemption was positively associatedwith hedonic well-being, controllingfor gender and race

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Self-defining memory

Memories about
experiences withother people thatreadily come to mind

Life story interview(5 scenes)

28 Philippe,
Koestner,
BeaulieuPelletier,& Lecours,
2011

29 Thorne &Michaelieu,
1996

30 Wilt, Keith,& McAdams,
2010

Communion

M

Eriksonian
themes:interpersonaland generative

AgencyM

Coping andopenness at age
21

Controlvariables

Hedonic andeudaimonic
well-being andpsychologicaladjustment

Maturity at age 61

Dependent
variable

Age, family income, Psychosocial
gender, Big Five
adaptation
personality traits

Moderator: gender Self-esteem

Moderator: gender Self-esteem

Need satisfaction Age, gender, Big(autonomy,
Five personality
competence,
traits, perceived
andneed satisfaction
relatedness)

Exploratory
processing

Theme
coded

M

M

I

Category

Note. M = motivational; A = affective; I = integrative meaning; S = structural; SES = socioeconomic status.

Most unstable,
confusing, troubled,or discouraging timein life since college

Type ofnarrative

27 Pals, 2006

Authors, year

Table 1. (continued)

.38

.21

β = .21

.37

For
women
only: r= .36

For men
only: r
= .35

.16

.30

β = .29All βs =.16 andall R2 =.021

Fisher’s Z

r/β

Brief results description

Exploratory processing in narratives
told at age 52 mediated therelationship between coping andopenness measured at age 21 andan expert-rated measure of maturity
obtained at age 61
244 Need satisfaction was positively
associated with hedonic andeudaimonic well-being as well aswith psychological adjustment after
controlling for age, gender, Big Five
personality traits, and perceived needsatisfaction
84 Agency in friends-related memories,
but not in parents-related memories,
was positively associated withlongitudinal increases in self-esteem,
but for males only
84 Communion in friends-related
memories, but not in parents-related
memories, was positively associatedwith longitudinal increases in selfesteem, but for females only
128 Eriksonian themes positively predictedsocial adaptation after controlling for
demographics and Big Five personality
traits

83

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157

Adler et al.
suggest that standardized betas are a proper estimation of
zero-order correlations when values range between −.50 and.50, regardless of the sample size and number of covariates
in the model (e.g., Peterson & Brown, 2005). Because betacoefficients are highly similar to semi-partial correlations,which are typically lower than partial correlations, theinterpretation of beta coefficients as roughly equivalent to apartial correlation constitutes a conservative estimate (coefficients of all studies were below .50 or just slightly above).
Each partial r or standardized beta was thus transformed to
Fisher’s Zs for direct comparison. However, Table 1 also
provides the original data, either partial r or standardized
beta, and the R2 is provided when available.

Four Categories of Commonly Examined
Narrative Variables
In compiling the studies for this review, we identified great
diversity in the number of narrative variables that were
examined alongside other individual difference variables fortheir association with well-being. Indeed, there were nearly
as many narrative individual difference measures identified
as the number of studies included. As a result, developing anorganizational framework for the focus of studies that could
speak to the incremental validity of narrative identity in its
association with well-being became an imperative step in
conducting this review. Our approach to developing thisorganizational framework began by asking seven leading
narrative researchers to examine the list of themes derived
from the articles included in the review. The task we posed tothese researchers was similar in many ways to the work they
do with narrative data: We asked them to examine the list of
narrative characteristics coded in the studies and to identify
broad, overarching categories. They were allowed to identify
as many categories of narrative themes as they wished andwere asked to label these categories as they saw fit. They
were also invited to create an “other” or a “do not know”
category if needed. The first three authors of this article also
undertook the task, independently from each other and fromthe seven experts. Once we obtained these 10 sets of classifications, we adapted similar wording of the labels acrossjudges to achieve unified labeling. For example, categories
labeled “motivational themes,” “motivational processes,” or“motives” were considered akin to each other. Although we
did not ask the judges to use a limited number of dimensions,
all of them used between four and seven.
Much to our surprise, the categorization that resulted was
remarkably consistent across the 10 judges. Four primarycategories of narrative characteristics emerged quite clearlyacross all judges, with an additional categories (or categories) nominated by one or two judges that included only one
or two narrative characteristics or labeled “other.” The resulting categories represent the classifications that were the mostfrequently named by the 10 judges. Each narrative measure
was assigned to a specific category if the majority of thejudges had classified it in this way, although there were very
few disagreements. This process resulted in the four overarching narrative categories, detailed in Table 2 and described
below.4
Motivational themes refer to individual differences in narratives that highlight what the protagonist currently seeks,
has sought in the past, or has achieved. These themes haveoften been classified into agentic (e.g., agency, power, autonomy) and communal motives (e.g., communion, intimacy,
relatedness), representing two major domains of life concerns (e.g., Bakan, 1966; McAdams et al., 1996). These twothemes are dominant in personal meaning-making (e.g.,
McAdams et al., 1996), tapping “two fundamental modalities in the existence of living forms” (Bakan, 1966, p. 14-15).
Broadly, the theme of agency is concerned with autonomy
and whether individuals feel they have the ability to influence their circumstances. In contrast, communion is concerned with striving for interpersonal connection. It is
important to note that some motivational themes reflect a
combination of both agency and communion, such as generativity (e.g., Frimer, Walker, Dunlop, Lee, & Riches, 2011;
McAdams, 2010). In addition, although most narrative
researchers only examine experiences related to successful
fulfillment of these themes, some studies have taken into
account the difference between the satisfaction and unfulfilled nature of some of these motives (e.g., Adler, Chin,
Kolisetty, & Oltmanns, 2012; Philippe, Koestner, BeaulieuPelletier, & Lecours, 2011; Thorne & Klohnen, 1993).
Affective themes refer to the emotional quality of a part orwhole of a narrative. The majority of these themes focus on
the positive or negative valence of the narrative’s emotional
tone, and especially on significant shifts in emotional tone.
For example, judges sometimes code valence and tone on a
Likert-type scale, where low scores indicate a very negative
narrative and high scores represent a very positive one (e.g.,
McAdams et al., 2001), or on two Likert-type scales representing absence to presence of a given tone (e.g., King &Noelle, 2005). Other themes address the presence or absenceof specific positive and negative emotions expressed in people’s narratives (e.g., Adler & Hershfield, 2012; King,
Scollon, Ramsey, & Williams, 2000). Finally, just as researchon motivational themes primarily focuses on the signaturethemes of agency and communion, research demonstrating
the incremental validity of affective themes often clusters
around the cardinal themes of redemption and contamination. These affective themes capture shifts in the emotional
tone of narratives. Redemption narratives are those that
describe a scene that begins negatively but is narrated as ending positively (McAdams, 2006b; McAdams et al., 2001). In
contrast, contamination sequences portray a shift from a
positive beginning to a negative conclusion (McAdams
et al., 2001). It is important to note that both themes represent
a particular narrative approach to the temporal and causal
dimensions of the narrator’s experience: Life inevitably
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Motivational
themesNarrative category

Relatedness

Power

Intimacy

Growth goals

Generativity

Crystallization of
discontent
Differentiated processing

Crystallization of desire

The protagonist decides to make a life change for the purpose of wanting tomove toward something desirable in the future.
The protagonist decides to make a life change for the purpose of escaping a badsituation in the past.
The story reflects a variety and a richness of positive growth interpretations,which include distinct forms of self-growth (identity clarity, intimacy, andinsight/wisdom).
The protagonist has a strong concern for and commitment to promoting thewell-being of youth and the next generation, expressed by caring for children
and other family members or conserving or promoting societal traditions.
The protagonist makes intentional efforts to guide his or her self-development ina personally meaningful direction oriented toward personal growth.
The narrative contains discussion of a relationship that produced positive affector reciprocal dialogue in addition to a feeling of closeness, commitment, andconcern for another.
The protagonist aims to have an impact on his or her social environment
through influencing and persuading others and exerting social influence.
Narratives may also report negative emotions associated with lack of power orconcerns about status and prestige.
The protagonist feels connected to and cared for by others and seeks to carefor others. This measure also takes into account non-satisfying relationalsituations (e.g., conflict, relationship dissolution, rejection, loneliness).

The protagonist views the self as unique or different from others, often reflectedby self-assertion, independence, mastery, or being better or worse than others.
Another definition, related to self-determination theory, is the need to feelvolitional and authentic in one’s actions, and to feel as though one is a causal
agent with respect to one’s own actions. This latter measure also takes into
account non-satisfying aspects related to autonomy (e.g., feeling controlled,
limited self-expression, introjections).
The protagonist aims to have a sense of togetherness and harmony with otherpeople or their environment, to dialogue, share, help, connect to, and care forothers.

AutonomyCommunion

The protagonist can initiate changes on his or her own, achieve some degree ofcontrol over the course of his or her experiences, and affect his or her own
life. This is often exemplified by aspects of self-mastery and control, status
striving, achievement, and power.

Definition

AgencyNarrative measure

Table 2. Narrative Categories, Measures, Definitions, and Reviewed Papers.

Philippe et al., 2011*

King & Noelle, 2005*(continued)

Mackinnon, Nosko, Pratt, & Norris,
2011
McAdams et al., 2001*
Bauer & McAdams, 2004a
Bauer & McAdams, 2010*
King & Noelle, 2005*
Mackinnon et al., 2011

Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011*

Bauer et al., 2005a*

Adler et al., 2012
Bauer & McAdams, 2004b*
McAdams et al., 1996*
Thorne & Michaelieu, 1996
Bauer et al., 2005a*

Adler, 2012a*
Adler et al., 2008
Adler, Chin, Kolisetty, & Oltmanns,
2012
Bauer & McAdams, 2004b
McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield, & Day,
1996*
Thorne & Michaelieu, 1996
McLean et al., 2010*
Philippe et al., 2011*

Reviewed papers

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Structural elements

Affective themes

Narrative category

Table 2. (continued)

The overall positivity or negativity of the story told or of the writing style.

The protagonist is able to come to peace with, or let go of, a challenging event.

Emotional tone

Positive resolution/happy
endings
Positive processing
Redemption

Reading level of writing

Foreshadowing

Complexity

The degree of engagement in the narrative processing, as shown by depth ofthought and nuance, such as seeing a variety of perspectives or emotions.
The protagonist sees signs warning of forthcoming tragedy, symbols representing
coming events.
The degree of articulation of the narrative.

Valence, as a function of a culturally shared understanding of what constitutes
a positive and negative life event, the supporting details of the story, and thedescription of the emotional intensity of the event at the time. The valenceof the event told can be differentiated from the valence of the impact of thisevent on the narrator.
The narrator situates the characters of his story and their actions in a specificcontext, the story follows a temporal sequence of goal-oriented actions thatare culturally recognized, emotions are clearly expressed in support of thepoint of the narrative, and narrative is integrated into larger life themes andmeanings.

Valence

CoherenceSpecific discrete emotions such as happiness, surprise, sadness, fear or anxiety,anger, shame, or guilt.

Specific emotions

The valence of the impact of the past event on self-growth.
The protagonist describes an event that moves from a bad, affectively negative
life scene to a subsequent good, affectively positive life scene. The bad isredeemed, salvaged, mitigated, or made better in light of the ensuing good.

The protagonist describes an event that moves from a good, affectively positive
life scene to a bad, affectively negative life scene, in which good things turn intobad outcomes.

Definition

Contamination

Narrative measure

Amir et al., 1998*

King et al., 2000*

Adler, 2012a
Adler et al., 2008
Adler et al., 2007
Baerger & McAdams, 1999*
Habermas & Bluck, 2000
Reese et al., 2011*
Mansfield et al., 2010*(continued)

Adler et al., 2006
Adler & Poulin, 2009
Lodi-Smith et al., 2009
McAdams et al., 2001*
Adler & Poulin, 2009
King & Noelle, 2005
McAdams et al., 2001*
McLean & Breen, 2009*
King et al., 2000
Mansfield, McLean, & Lilgendahl, 2010*
Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011*
Adler & Poulin, 2009
McAdams et al., 2001*
McLean & Breen, 2009
McLean & Lilgendahl, 2008
Adler & Hershfield, 2012*
King et al., 2000
McAdams et al., 1997
Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011*
Lodi-Smith et al., 2009

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Sophistication

Intrinsic memories

Integrative memories

Exploratory processing

Elaboration of self

ClosureAccommodative
processing

Narrative measure

Definition
The protagonist has been forced to change, centrally and qualitatively, his or her
views of the self and world, by actively experiencing a paradigmatic shift that
requires a revision of structures and/or important changes in response to theenvironment.
The protagonist has a lack of unresolved issues and emotions. He or she
describes himself or herself as having achieved closure with respect to aparticular experience, such that his or her story is no longer stuck in theconsequences of the experience.
Elaboration of self is evidenced through the detail, vividness, and emotional
depth of the story, usually about a possible self.
The protagonist makes an active and engaged effort to explore, reflect on,
or analyze a difficult experience with openness to learning from it andincorporating a sense of change into the life story.
The story reflects concerns for the differentiation and integration of new
perspectives on the self and others, which emphasize the importance oflearning, integrating, or coming to a new or deeper understanding of self orothers.
The story includes themes of personal growth and happiness, meaningful
relationships, or contributing to society.
The protagonist is capable of explaining how he or she has learned about hisor her self through reflecting on the past, by connecting the meaning of a past
event with his or her self.

*References marked with an asterisk represent articles from which definitions were directly drawn.

Integrative meaning

Narrative category

Table 2. (continued)

Bauer & McAdams, 2004a
Bauer et al., 2005b*
McLean & Breen, 2009
McLean et al., 2010*

Bauer et al., 2005b*
Bauer & McAdams, 2004a, 2004b

King & Raspin, 2004*
King & Smith, 2004
Lodi-Smith et al., 2009
Pals, 2006*

Adler & Poulin, 2009*
King et al., 2000
Pals, 2006

King et al., 2000*

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Adler et al.
themes reveal the narrator’s decisions about where to parsethe flow of time and draw connections. They capture theaffective thrust of the narrative style, revealing somethingessential about the way the narrator makes meaning from hisor her experiences. As such, these themes also tap something
about narrative structure and its meaning, but they are, attheir core, affective in nature. Redemption and contamination are not the only affective themes researchers have examined, but in research examining the incremental validity ofnarrative themes in their relationships with well-being, they
predominate.
Themes of integrative meaning represent the extent towhich the narrator makes an interpretative evaluation of theevent or life he or she has narrated and seeks to connect someof its content to the narrator’s self (e.g., King et al., 2000;
McLean et al., 2010; Pals, 2006). A wide variety of narrative
themes capture individuals’ attempts to make integrative
meaning from their lives. These themes represent connections between specific experiences and the self, reveal effectsof constructing high-level meaning, and point toward theextent to which the episodes being narrated are psychologically resolved. Such an evaluation usually involves cognitive
differentiation of new perspectives on self and others or the
integration of these perspectives into a new understanding of
the self and of the world (Bauer & McAdams, 2004b; Kinget al., 2000). The integrative meaning dimension may also
include narratives that show attempts at describing andresolving contradictions or include markers of personal
growth.
The structural elements of a narrative refer to how thestory is written or told in terms of the order of the content
narrated, its coherence, and the complexity and details of thestory, as well as the expressive sophistication of the narrator.
Structural elements of narratives are more focused on theconfiguration of stories than their thematic content.
Coherence, one of the signature structural elements, encompasses more than just the smooth flow of the story, also capturing its success in orienting the audience, making a clear
evaluative point supported by affective language, and orienting the specific episode within the context of broader life
themes or meanings (Baerger & McAdams, 1999; Habermas& Bluck, 2000; Kӧber, Schmiedek, & Habermas, 2015;
Reese et al., 2011).
Although the complete set of narrative themes pulledfrom the studies included in this review was classified into
four categories, this framework should not be interpreted to
imply that the narrative themes within one category are necessarily redundant with each other or that the categories are
orthogonal. Our aim in creating this framework is not tohomogenize the richness of the narrative field. Rather, theframework we developed in the service of examining narratives’ incremental validity offers a common language fororganizing future coding, results, and theorizing. Many
themes are, indeed, theoretically distinguishable, and somehave received empirical support for their distinctiveness. For

example, the theme of redemption specifically implies that anarrative begins in a negative way, but ends in a positive
light. This is conceptually and empirically distinct from theoverall emotional tone of the narrative (McAdams et al.,2001) and also different from the narrative characteristic ofhappy endings (King et al., 2000), which does not require a
shift from negative to positive, both of which were also classified in the affective themes category. An empirical approach
to classifying narrative themes, both within and across categories, would provide a more definitive and generalizable
framework.

The Empirical Status of Narrative
Identity’s Incremental Associations
With Well-Being
Having provided an overview of the four categories in theorganizational framework, we now turn our attention toreviewing the literature in each category to examine its incremental validity in correlating with and predicting well-being.

The Incremental Validity of Motivational Themes’
Association With Well-Being
Motivational themes capture one of the primary reasons people develop internalized, evolved stories of the self—theycreate purpose for specific, important life events in the context of the larger lived life. As such, it comes as little surprisethat, of the four categories of narrative variables, the strongest evidence for the incremental validity of narrative identity in its association with well-being was for motivational
themes.
Themes of agency and communion are plainly differentially associated with well-being compared with demographic characteristics (see Table 1). Although this result
may not be surprising, given the relatively weak associations
between demographic variables and well-being (though, see
Haring, Stock, & Okun, 1984), the diversity of approaches tooperationalizing both motivational themes and well-being inthis group of studies suggests clear incremental validity.
There is also solid evidence that motivational themes
have been associated with well-being above and beyond the
explanatory power of dispositional traits. Adler (2012a) followed psychotherapy clients from just before their first session of treatment through the course of several months oftherapy. Participants wrote weekly narratives about theirexperiences during this period of time, as well as completing
the Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC; e.g.,
Pinsof et al., 2009), a self-report measure that taps wellbeing including psychopathological, hedonic, and eudaimonic qualities. Multi-level modeling revealed thatparticipants’ narratives increased in the theme of agency overtime and that these changes in agency preceded associatedincreases in well-being. Speaking to the issue of incremental

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)validity, the models further indicated that the association
between increases in agency and subsequent increases inwell-being remained significant even when controlling forparticipants’ initial levels of trait neuroticism (which wasstrongly associated with well-being) and when accounting
for their change in neuroticism over the course of treatment.
Similar incremental validity was identified for the motivational theme’s association with well-being, compared withsituational variables that are often assessed in psychotherapy
research, such as client demographics and treatment history
and therapist demographics, training, and therapeutic orientation. This longitudinal design allowed for a particularly
strong test of motivational themes’ incremental validity inpredicting well-being.
A different cross-sectional study provides a nice additional perspective, examining the incremental validity ofmotivational themes in their association with well-being
compared with all five dispositional traits. In a set of threestudies, Philippe and colleagues (2011) asked undergraduate
and graduate students to describe key self-defining memories (e.g., Singer & Salovey, 1993) and coded the narratives
for themes of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Eachof these themes was found to correlate with measures ofhedonic and eudaimonic well-being, as well as psychologicaladjustment. They were also found to predict these well-being
markers even after controlling for the Big Five traits, andover and above a measure of satisfaction of these three needsin life more generally. That is, even after controlling for people’s general perceptions of their level of satisfaction ofautonomy, competence, and relatedness in their life, the way
these same needs were revealed to be satisfied or thwarted ina key self-defining memory explained unique variance inpeople’s well-being above and beyond the impact of theirdispositional traits. These findings highlight how significant
and unique experiences found in narratives reflect a distinct
level of self-knowledge.
In a similar vein, Bauer and colleagues (2005b) showedthat “crystallization of desire” (approaching a desired future)
was incrementally associated with life satisfaction beyond theeffects of the Big Five traits in a pair of studies of adults’ stories about life-changing decisions. One of the participants inthis study described a decision to leave a career of 13 years
and pursue becoming a doctor. The narrative unfolds this way:
My realization was that it is possible to have a career that I was
passionate about . . . I had always fantasized about one day
becoming a physician. Watching [them] in action catapulted me
to the decision to go for it—I knew my passion lay in doing
healing work.

The motivational theme captured in this story illustrates
how this participant’s narrative identity provided additional
information about their motivation in this situation thatallowed for complementarity in the prediction of well-being
alongside dispositional trait measures.

A study by Bauer and McAdams (2010) similarly
explored the incremental validity of motivational themes’
association with well-being above and beyond the impact
of dispositional personality traits, using two approaches tooperationalizing well-being. The study asked college students (first years and fourth years) to write narratives
describing their goals for personal growth. The students’
well-being was assessed at the time they wrote these narratives and again three years later, by measuring life satisfaction and positive and negative affect as well as psychologicalmaturity (using Hy & Loevinger’s [1996] Sentence
Completion Test of Ego Development). Different motivational themes in their narratives predicted the trajectories ofthese different measures of well-being. Specifically, agentic growth goals (those concerned with intellectual growth)predicted increases in psychological maturity, whereas
communal growth goals (those concerned with socioemotional growth) predicted increases in life satisfaction andpositive affect and decreases in negative affect. These associations remained statistically significant when controlling
for the impact of the Big Five dispositional traits. Thus, thisstudy demonstrated the unique explanatory power of motivational themes in personal narratives for predictingchanges in two types of well-being, distinct from and complimentary to dispositional traits.
Finally, research on the life stories of a national sample of
midlife adults demonstrated a significant association between
a composite of motivational and growth themes and wellbeing, beyond a host of different individual difference variables (Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011). Specifically, theselife narratives were coded for three themes relating to multiple forms of motivated self-growth: intimacy, identity clarity(“when a person describes a past event’s impact as bringing
about increased clarity regarding self-definition and purposeor meaning in life”; Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011, p. 406),
and wisdom/insight (“when a person describes a past event’s
impact as causing an internal, cognitive shift or transformation in how the person thinks in a generalized sense”;
Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011, p. 406).5 This theoreticallyderived composite of growth-oriented motivational themes
was a significant incremental indicator of optimal well-being(a combination of the Satisfaction With Life Scale and the
Ryff [1989] Psychological Well-Being Scales) above andbeyond the effects of event valence, demographic factors,
and the Big Five dispositional traits.
In sum, there is good evidence that motivational themes inpersonal narratives demonstrate incremental validity in theirassociation with well-being, broadly operationalized, compared with other individual difference variables such as
demographic characteristics and dispositional traits.
Motivational themes reveal the sense of purpose an individual has created in his or her life, and this purposefulness has
distinctive relationships with well-being that does not appear
to be captured by other individual differences.

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Adler et al.

The Incremental Validity of Affective Themes’
Association With Well-Being
It may seem especially straightforward that affective themesin narrative identity ought to be associated with well-being.
Indeed, it is the case that positive emotional tone in narratives is associated with positive well-being (e.g., McAdams
et al., 2001). However, the relationship between affective
themes and well-being—and the incremental relationship,compared with other individual difference variables in particular—is much more nuanced that this simple association.
It is true that people who tell happy stories about theirexperiences also report higher levels of well-being. For
example, McAdams and colleagues (2001) found that theoverall emotional tone of midlife adults’ life stories was
associated with their life satisfaction and with several dimensions of the Ryff (1989) Psychological Well-Being scales.
Likewise, in a longitudinal study of psychotherapy clients’narratives, Adler and Hershfield (2012) found that increases
in the specific emotion of happiness and decreases in the specific emotion of sadness, coded in repeated narratives collected over the course of several months of treatment, were
each uniquely associated with participants’ improvement inwell-being (assessed via the STIC, described above).
Despite these straightforward findings, in each of thesestudies, other affective themes were associated with wellbeing when statistically controlling for the more basic emotional quality of the narratives. In the study by McAdams andcolleagues (2001), the themes of redemption and contamination were significantly associated with participants’ wellbeing even after controlling for the emotional tone of thenarratives. The shifts in these narratives from negative topositive (redemption) or positive to negative (contamination)
were more strongly associated with well-being than the overall positivity or negativity of the stories. Similarly, in the
study by Adler and Hershfield (2012), the presence of mixed
emotions—the simultaneous occurrence of both positive andnegative emotions—in the narratives was significantly associated with participants’ improvements in well-being overtime, even after controlling for the specific, independent
effects of happiness and sadness. Although shifts in happiness and sadness were, unsurprisingly, associated with therapy clients’ well-being, their narrative description of mixed
emotional experiences, ones that conveyed the emotional
complexity of their work in therapy and its impact on theirlife, had incremental explanatory power above and beyond
the straightforward affective associations. In this study, theassociation of mixed emotions and well-being held whencontrolling for the impact of trait neuroticism. Results suchas these suggest that the relationship between affective
themes and well-being cannot just be reduced to overall positivity or negativity.
As the most commonly-assessed affective themes,
redemption and contamination provide an excellent vehicle
for understanding the incremental impact of this category.

These affective themes make narrative identity’s reconstructive nature especially clear. All lives are marked by positive
and negative experiences. The theory of narrative identity
suggests that personal narratives act as a filter for one’s
objective history, reconstructing it into a story. When it
comes to redemption and contamination sequences, the narrative question is largely concerned with how an individual
makes temporal and causal connections between the positive
and negative experiences in his or her life. For example, inrecounting the most challenging experience of her life, a
middle-aged participant described the dissolution of her marriage, saying,
I knew I reached an emotional bottom that year . . . but I began
making a stable life again, as a more stable, independent person. . . It was a period full of pain, experimentation, and growth, but
in retrospect it was necessary for me to become anything like thewoman I am today. (Pals, 2006, p. 1080)

In this redemption sequence, the participant draws a connection between the “emotional bottom” she experienced
and the formative role it played in her current identity. This
was not the only narrative option available to this woman.
She could have resolved the negative chapter without finding
any redeeming value in it, a scene in which negative beginnings have negative endings. She could have described thestability and independence she found, and which characterize her present self, as the start of a new chapter, one thatbegan with this positivity that has endured to today. Instead,she makes temporal and causal connections between thedepth of her pain and her growth into a new, valued self, narratively redeeming the experience in a way that data suggest
was more likely to support her well-being. There is nothing
historically objective about this sequence; it represents a narrative reconstruction, one vital to this woman’s well-being.
This example illustrates how affective themes in narrative
identity capture something essential about the meaning-making process that is not captured by other individual difference
variables in predicting well-being.
Indeed, results across a variety of studies indicate that
redemption and contamination sequences demonstrate incremental validity in their association with well-being, compared with other individual difference variables. For example,
Adler and colleagues (Adler, Kissel, & McAdams, 2006)
examined the impact of different predictors of depression
and other aspects of low well-being, such as low life satisfaction and low self-esteem. The authors used a sample of life
stories collected from a diverse group of 70 midlife adults,
drawn from the community. They examined the relationships
between these outcomes and contamination sequences, highlevels of trait neuroticism, and depressogenic attributional
style, a cognitive variable consisting of stable, global attributions for negative experiences that is frequently evaluated in
the context of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Zero-order correlations established the expected associations between

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)contamination sequences, trait neuroticism, attributional
style, and low well-being. Regression analyses revealed that
contamination sequences were significantly associated withdepression, low life satisfaction, and low self-esteem aboveand beyond the effects of trait neuroticism and attributional
style. This study is emblematic of the trend demonstratingthat affective themes in personal narratives have incremental
validity in explaining well-being not captured by dispositional traits associated with affect or with non-narrative cognitive style also associated with affect. The subjectivity andmeaning captured by affective themes in narratives weremore strongly associated with well-being than dispositional
proclivities for certain affective profiles and than general
cognitive style variables.
Similar results were evident in two longitudinal studies.
In one (Dunlop & Tracy, 2013b), participants enrolled in
Alcoholics Anonymous wrote narratives about the last timethey took a drink. The presence of redemption sequences inthese stories predicted whether or not the participants
reported having maintained their sobriety several months
later, even after statistically controlling for trait-level positive and negative affect, trait-level anxiety, and controllability attributions. The authors suggest that these results may
indicate that the affective theme of redemption in participants’ narratives played a causal role in their maintenance ofsobriety, with explanatory power above and beyond the contributions of other individual differences.
In a second longitudinal study, college students narrated theways in which their personality had changed over their time as
an undergraduate (Lodi-Smith, Geise, Roberts, & Robins,2009). Measures of dispositional traits and a broad conceptualization of well-being (including life satisfaction, self-esteem,
perceived stress, psychological adjustment to college, anddepression) were collected during their first and fourth yearsof college. Themes of affective processing were associatedwith increases in well-being, controlling for changes in Big
Five traits during the four years of college. A quote from one
participant illustrates this key finding. She wrote,
I feel that I have changed a lot since entering college. The four
years at [my college] have really enriched my intellectual,social, and individual life. I view myself as a more optimistic
person in terms of school, work, and life in general. My
personality has not changed much, but my perception of life haschanged. (Lodi-Smith et al., 2009, p. 686)

Although this participant did experience shifts in her dispositional traits, she ascribes her growth and increased optimism to her “perception of life,” which is captured in her
narrative identity.
While there seems to be good evidence for the incremental validity of affective themes’ association with well-being
across several studies, each of these has adopted a largely
hedonic conceptualization of well-being. The evidence issomewhat more equivocal when other approaches tomeasuring well-being are considered. For example, McLean
and Lilgendahl (2008) examined the role of redemption
sequences in the high and low point stories told by emerging
adults (M age: 19 years) and older adults (M age: 71.9 years).
They found that age moderated the association between
redemption and well-being, as assessed using the Ryff (1989)
Psychological Well-Being scales, which tap multiple dimensions of well-being and is typically considered an assessmentof eudaimonic well-being. In this study, participants in theyounger age group who told redemptive low points scoredespecially high on psychological well-being. The authors
argue that narrating one’s life serves different psychological
functions across the life span and demonstrate that the association between affective sequences and well-being may
depend on the developmental concerns faced at different
stages of maturation.
Affective themes seem to be relatively independent frommeasures of psychological maturity in the literature examined in this review (King & Raspin, 2004; King et al., 2000;
Mansfield, McLean, & Lilgendahl, 2010). However, where
significant zero-order patterns were present, the researchrarely offered any statistical controls for potential third variables (King & Smith, 2004), so an examination of incremental validity was not possible.
In sum, there is solid evidence for the incremental association of affective themes in personal narratives and wellbeing, above the impact of individual difference variables
such as dispositional traits, but this association appears to belimited to hedonic conceptions of well-being. As the researchdemonstrates, despite the seemingly straightforward interpretation of this finding, the relationship between affective
themes and hedonic well-being is not simply reducible to ashared emphasis on positive and negative affect. This relationship is especially notable given the lack of method variance shared in studies that have assessed both affective
themes and hedonic well-being. Indeed, affective themes
such as redemption and contamination contain both positive
and negative affective components and contribute to the
explanation of hedonic well-being above and beyond thecontributions of the positive and negative elements taken
separately; it is the narrative sequencing of affective patterns
that matters in this association.
Affective themes have also demonstrated incremental
validity in their association with well-being when statistically controlling for other individual differences associatedwith affect, such as dispositional traits and cognitive style.
The parsing of one’s experiences into demarcated episodes intime and into causally connected elements adds vital explanatory power to understanding hedonic well-being. That being
said, the association between affective themes and other conceptualizations of well-being is somewhat less clear. There ismixed evidence that affective themes may be differentiallyassociated with eudaimonic well-being across the life span,
and there is little research that speaks to the association
between affective themes and psychological maturity.

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Adler et al.

The Incremental Validity of Themes of Integrative
Meaning in Association With Well-Being
Themes of integrative meaning support both central psychological functions of narrative identity, they build a sense of
purpose and facilitate a sense of unity. In this category of
themes, individuals’ narration encompasses more than just a
recounting of an episode or series of episodes, and also contains some discussion of the meaning the narrator has foundin the events being described. Often, but not always, thisinvolves stepping out of the flow of narration to comment on
it, revealing the underlying significance of the episode being
recounted, or making connections between the specific episode and the broader self. This process is psychologicallyintegrative, weaving the event into a broader web of meaning, and in doing so, it supports a sense of purpose and fosters a sense of unity. If, as theory suggests, purpose and unity
are associated with greater well-being, then individuals
whose stories include themes of integrative meaning should
show a high degree of well-being. Indeed, a number of studies suggest that integrative meaning is indicative of greater
well-being. However, our review of studies that have specifically examined the incremental association between themesof integrative meaning and well-being suggests that the relationship of integrative meaning to well-being seems to vary
somewhat, depending on the type of integrative meaning andthe way in which well-being is operationalized in the study.
One of the earliest narrative studies to point to this variation is a study by King and colleagues (2000) in which parents of children with Down syndrome wrote of the experienceof finding out their child’s diagnosis. When writing their narrative, parents also completed measures of subjective wellbeing, stress-related growth, and ego development. They thencompleted these measures of well-being again two years later.
In this study, integrative meaning was examined in two forms,
derived with factor analysis. One form, labeled “closure,”
was a composite of narrative characteristics including a highdegree of denial, resolution, and positive affect, alongside
low levels of trauma, negative affect, and suddenness. This
theme conveyed a sense that their child’s diagnosis was nolonger psychologically distressing to them. For example, one
parent wrote, “I knew everything would be all right. He was
first and foremost our baby boy and DS was one characteristicof Jamie. He is as much or more of a blessing to our family as
any child could be” (King et al., 2000, p. 523). This resolved
narrative style was associated with greater subjective wellbeing, both concurrently and longitudinally, even when controlling for family-level factors such as the number of children
in the family and the age of the child with Down syndrome(and, hence, the time since learning of the diagnosis).
However, such closure did not relate to stress-related growth
or to ego development at either time point in the parents.
What did relate to these factors of growth and maturation
for these parents was a different form of integrative meaning, termed “accommodative processing” in this study.

Accommodative processing was computed as a compositeof the narrative characteristics of exploring the meaning of
the event, having a sense of change (termed “paradigmatic
shift”), and a description of the protagonist taking an activerole in the story. Thus, as the name “accommodation” suggests, these individuals describe having actively pursued achange in their worldview as a result of learning their child
had Down syndrome. For example, one parent wrote,
I was surprised how much I totally suppressed the information.
Total denial for 3 weeks. . . . I was shocked at my own inability
to deal with such an unexpected event. I cried a lot. The pain was
so deep. I felt cheated—I could hardly function. I was so
absorbed with my own fears. But I did regroup. I did grow. And
I did learn to accept the situation. That opened the door for me
to bond and love my child. But it took time. (King et al., 2000,
p. 521)

Such exploration, growth, and meaning-making in thesestories of finding out one’s child had Down syndrome wereconcurrently related to ego development and both concurrently and longitudinally related to stress-related growth,
controlling for the number of children in the family and theage of the child with Down syndrome, but was unrelated tosubjective well-being (King et al., 2000). The findings fromthis relatively early study suggest that integrative meaning
may differentially relate to different operationalizations ofwell-being, depending on the way in which meaning is presented by the narrator. A sense that the experience is important but somewhat resolved for the narrator was associatedwith more hedonic well-being, whereas a continued active
engagement with the experience was associated with greater
maturity and growth, regardless of the time that had passed
for the narrator.
Subsequent studies converge on a similar pattern. For
example, in a study by Bauer and colleagues (2005b), distinct types of integrative themes in stories of high points, lowpoints, and turning points differentially predicted well-being.
In two samples, these three types of stories, told by undergraduate students (average age 19.8) and adults (average age51.7), were coded for two different integrative meaning
themes: (a) intrinsic themes, wherein the author described“personal growth, meaningful relationships, and contributions to society” and (b) integrative themes, which “emphasized the importance of learning, integrating, or otherwise
coming to a new or deeper understanding about the self andothers” (Bauer et al., 2005b, p. 207). Each of these themes
represents types of integrative meaning, and each was differentially related to well-being outcomes. Specifically,
intrinsic themes were correlated with life satisfaction above
the effects of trait neuroticism. Integrative themes, on theother hand, correlated with ego development, controlling for
openness to experience. These patterns were consistent inboth samples and across the types of memories, and theyechoed similar findings in stories of goals when controlling

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)for personal strivings (Bauer & McAdams, 2004a) and lifetransitions, controlling for individual demographic factors(Bauer & McAdams, 2004b).
Studies such as these suggest there may be two different
types of connections between themes of integrative meaning
and beneficial psychological outcomes. First, there is anassimilative type (which is often positively valenced), depicting integration and connection to individual identity that
may facilitate purpose and unity of the existing self-schema
and thus hedonic well-being, such as subjective well-being.
Second, there is an accommodative type of processing integrative meaning, where the individual has not just createdpurpose and unity from the event but actively explored themeaning of the event to create a more mature and deep purpose and unity for the self, which is associated with eudaimonic outcomes such as stress-related growth and ego
development. This pairing is consistent with Block’s (1982)
distinction between assimilation and accommodation (alsosee King, 2001), with meaning-making coding protocols thatdifferentiate between learning lessons and gaining insight(e.g., McLean & Thorne, 2001), with Pals’ (2006) concept of
positive self-transformation, and with work on autobiographical reasoning wherein integrative meaning happens inmany different ways at many different levels to create asense of unity and purpose for the individual (Habermas &Köber, 2014).
This supposition appears to be further supported by otherresearch on integrative meaning that examined only one typeof integrative meaning and/or used only one operationalization of well-being. The conclusion that emerges from this setof studies is that themes of integrative meaning that are
assimilative in nature are more strongly associated withhedonic conceptions of well-being, whereas themes of integrative meaning that are accommodative in nature are morestrongly associated with eudaimonic outcomes such as psychological maturity.
Two brief examples illustrate the incremental association
between assimilative integrative meaning and hedonic conceptions of well-being. First, in stories of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks written by a nationally representative sample ofadults, having a sense of personal closure regarding theattacks significantly predicted greater subsequent well-being(affective and life satisfaction measures) and lower psychological distress (frequency of anxiety, depression, and somatization symptoms), even while controlling for demographic
variables and variables such as psychological distress before
the attacks, exposure to the attacks, and lifetime stressful
events (Adler & Poulin, 2009). This study therefore supports
the incremental association between an assimilative form ofintegrative meaning and hedonic well-being. Another recent
study comes to a similar conclusion, using different operationalizations of assimilative integrative meaning themes
and hedonic well-being. Cox and McAdams (2014) foundthat adults who narrate the high point and low point of theirlives with positive meaning report greater positive emotion

regulation, whereas those who narrate their low points withnegative meaning-making report greater negative emotion
regulation two years after they told their life stories, evenafter controlling for the traits of extraversion and neuroticism. These two forms of meaning-making are assimilativein nature, simply emphasizing the valence of the meaning
captured in the narratives, and were associated with emotion
regulation strategies indicative of hedonic well-being.
A number of studies also suggest that accommodative
integrative meaning is associated with greater psychologicalmaturity across a number of conceptions of developmental
maturity. For example, in a pair of studies that asked participants to narrate future possible selves as if conditions of theirlife been different, elaborating on that possible self, wasrelated to ego development beyond demographic factors.
Specifically, in the coming out narratives of gay and lesbian
adults, elaboration of straight possible selves was significantly related to ego development both concurrently, controlling for income, education, and age, and prospectively,
controlling for income, education, age, and age of comingout (King & Smith, 2004). Such elaboration in divorce narratives (King & Raspin, 2004) also prospectively predicted ego
development even controlling for concurrent ego development (although in divorce narratives this effect was only
present when accounting for time since divorce).
This prediction of maturation while controlling for otherlikely indicators is also consistent with findings from a studyof college student personality change, looking at how narratives written in the fourth year of college correspond to individual differences in trait change during the college period.
In that study, exploratory processing corresponded to normative increases in trait conscientiousness, above the effects ofperceived changes in trait conscientiousness, although thesame patterns were not found for trait emotional stability(Lodi-Smith et al., 2009). Such increases in trait conscientiousness are part of a normative pattern of trait maturation
for this age group (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006).
Thus, this finding lends further support to the association ofaccommodative integrative meaning with developmental
maturity.
Longitudinal research from the Mills Longitudinal Studyalso demonstrates that accommodative integrative meaning
in narratives of difficult life experiences told in midlife predicts greater psychological maturity across several maturity
indices. First, exploratory processing predicted expert-rated
maturity in early older adulthood, even when controlling for
openness in young adulthood (Pals, 2006). Similarly, recent
work on this same sample demonstrates that accommodative
processing, a combination of exploratory processing andcoherent positive resolution, predicts normative increases in
ego development through midlife, controlling for trait openness at 4 time points in the study, as well as verbal SAT
scores and educational attainment (Lilgendahl, Helson, &John, 2013). Thus, accommodative integrative meaning
seems to be an important aspect of maturation, across a

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Adler et al.
number of different operationalizations of maturity. The link
between this accommodative processing and maturity outcomes is quite consistent with identity development theory,
given that exploration is a central component of healthy
identity development from an Eriksonian perspective(Erikson, 1968).
There is one finding concerning themes of integrative
meaning that stands as unique, compared with all of the otherresults in this review. There is emerging evidence that themesof integrative meaning may, in fact, be incrementally associated with worse well-being in certain instances. This body ofresearch is still quite new, but there is an indication that an
active search for meaning may not always yield positive consequences, or may only show its contribution to well-being
many years later. For instance, McLean and colleagues(2010) showed that meaning-making in early- and middleadolescent boys was negatively associated with well-being(measured as depressive symptomatology and self-esteem)
and that it was only by late adolescence that this relationshipturned into a positive one. Thus, age significantly affected
the association between meaning-making and well-being.
The authors concluded that meaning-making might not beappropriate before certain cognitive capacities develop (alsosee McLean & Mansfield, 2011). This conclusion is echoedin a recent study by Waters and Fivush (2015). They foundthat young adults (18 to 28 years old) with narratives characterized by both low coherence and high identity content were
those scoring the lowest on purpose and meaning components of the Ryff (1989) Well-Being Scales. However, young
adults with narratives containing both high coherence andhigh identity content were those scoring the highest on thosecomponents. Taken together, these findings seem to imply
that autobiographical reasoning that elaborates on the connections between past events and a current self-view may
create distress when the person does not have the cognitive
resources to coherently organize and integrate the emerging
self-knowledge.
However, other studies show that such meaning-making
may only be beneficial over time. For instance, King andRaspin (2004) revealed that the level of elaboration of a lost
self after a divorce was positively associated with ego development and predicted increases in ego development overtime, but this positive relationship only emerged many years
after the divorce had occurred. Similarly, the salutary effects
described earlier of accommodative processing for ego
development in the Mills Longitudinal Study were only present when the narrator was narrating a difficult life experiencethat occurred during midlife (Lilgendahl et al., 2013). It is
still unknown whether meaning-making per se can be illadvised in certain circumstances or whether its negative relationship with well-being only highlights the beginning of an
adaptive process that will pay off many years later. Anotherexplanation is that people with low well-being may feel theurge to reorganize their life and identity by engaging in autobiographical reasoning, and that when this process isobserved at its early stages, a negative relationship between
meaning-making and well-being appears. Future research isneeded to better understand when meaning-making is beneficial and when it is not and why.
In sum, the category of themes concerned with integrative
meaning seems to include two approaches, one more concerned with psychological assimilation and the other moreconcerned with accommodative processing. It seems that
assimilative meaning-making is associated with hedonic
conceptions of well-being, such as affective outcomes, aboveand beyond the impact of dispositional personality traits andobjective aspects of the narrator’s life history and personal
characteristics. Accommodative meaning-making, on theother hand, is associated with outcomes such as psychological maturity, above and beyond the impact of dispositional
personality traits, demographic variables, and other salient
aspects of the narrator’s circumstances. Our distinction inthis section between assimilation and accommodation is
inductive, derived from the research we have reviewed in theservice of most straightforwardly conveying the patterns we
identified. Without a doubt, the distinction we have made isrough and ought to be subjected to empirical evaluation.
Nevertheless, the variation in the incremental associations
between themes of integrative meaning and different outcomes is notably different from the overarching patterns
identified for other categories of narrative variables. Despite
the variability in integrative meaning and well-being outcomes described in this section, there does appear to be goodevidence generally supporting the incremental validity ofthis category of narrative variables in its association withwell-being.

The Incremental Validity of Structural Elements’
Association With Well-Being
As described above, the theory of narrative identity posits
two primary reasons for the development of internalized,
evolving stories of the self. Motivational themes in these stories—and, to a certain extent, affective themes and themes ofintegrative meaning—capture one of these reasons; they
convey an individual’s sense of purpose in life. The structural elements of narrative identity stand alongside the thematic integrative meaning content to fulfill the other major
reason for narrating the life: providing the self with a senseof unity. Without a doubt, complexities and contradictions
abound in narrative identity, but those stories that support
well-being share an underlying structural coherence. Indeed,although a variety of structural elements of narratives havebeen investigated in relation to well-being, coherence
emerges as the principal structural element.
A collection of empirical studies reinforce this theoreticalclaim. Surveying a very broad swath of the literature on narrative coherence and its development, Reese and colleagues(2011) concluded that core aspects of coherence are associated with a wide variety of well-being outcomes, including

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)physical and psychological health and closer family relationships. For example, in clinical samples, narrative coherence
has been identified as one of the key deficits in schizophrenia(e.g., Lysaker, Wickett, Campbell, & Buck, 2003) and
Borderline Personality Disorder (e.g., Adler et al., 2012), andthat coherence increases with successful treatment (e.g.,
Lysaker, Davis, Hunter, Nees, & Wickett, 2005).
Narrative scholars widely assert that the success withwhich an individual is able to integrate the aspects of his or
her life into a coherent story should offer a unique perspective on well-being, not captured by dispositional personality
traits or other individual differences (e.g., Freeman, 2010;
Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Lysaker et al., 2003; McAdams,
2006a). Despite the general agreement that structural elements of narratives ought to add explanatory power to thestudy of well-being, in addition to other individual difference
variables, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence thatspeaks directly to this point. It is not that the existing literature provides conflicting evidence on this claim; instead, theliterature is relatively silent on this topic. A study by Baerger
and McAdams (1999) is the most straightforward test of theincremental validity of narrative coherence in explaining
well-being. Their sample consisted of adults ranging fromage 35 to 65. The authors identified a significant positive
correlation between age and well-being, such that older participants reported higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction and lower levels of depressive symptoms. As a result,they ran regressions to examine the incremental association
between life story coherence and well-being, accounting forage. They found that the association between coherence anddepressive symptoms remained significant when controllingfor age, whereas the associations with happiness and life satisfaction were no longer significant when accounting for age.
Thus, narrative coherence seemed to have a unique relationship with depression that was evident regardless of the age ofparticipants, whereas the association between coherence andhappiness and life satisfaction was explained differently
across midlife. This study provided an initial indication that
there may be some incremental explanatory power of coherence in its association with well-being.
Another study directly examined the topic, but this one
assessed the relationship between narrative coherence andpsychological maturity, accounting for the impact of dispositional personality traits (Adler, Wagner, & McAdams, 2007).
In this study, former psychotherapy clients recounted thestory of their experiences in treatment. Both trait openness toexperience and psychological maturity were found to be
associated with narrative coherence (trait openness to experience and psychological maturity were also significantly positively correlated with each other). Regressions revealed thatthe association between psychological maturity and narrative
coherence remained significant when controlling for the
impact of trait openness to experience. The authors concluded that the basic dispositional tendency to seek a variety
of experiences and entertain diverse cognitive perspectives

did not fully capture the relationship between narratives highin coherence and psychological maturity. Examining the
integrative stories former psychotherapy clients told about
their treatment added incremental validity in explaining their
psychological maturity.
These are the only two studies to directly examine theincremental validity of narrative coherence in predicting
well-being. A small number of additional studies have investigated the incremental validity of other structural aspects ofnarrative identity. For example, in the study of parents ofchildren with Down syndrome described in detail earlier,King and colleagues (2000) examined the structural aspect offoreshadowing in the telling of the moment in which theylearned their child had Down syndrome. Foreshadowing inthese narratives had incremental validity in predicting subjective well-being, even after accounting for the impact offamily size and time since the child’s diagnosis. This sensethat narrators were somehow prepared for the revelation of
their child’s condition may have provided an implicit senseof coherence, connecting the imagined future self before thediscovery to the lived experience after the child was born,which significantly affected the narrator’s well-being,
regardless of how many other healthy children they had andtime since learning of their child’s diagnosis.
Clearly, the empirical status of structural elements’incremental validity as correlates and predictors of wellbeing is not as firmly established as the theory of narrative
identity posits. Although there is a sense that the unifying
aspects of narrative structure ought to be distinctly associated with well-being from dispositional traits or other individual difference variables, there is little empirical evidence
that directly speaks to this assertion. Thus, at the present
moment, the incremental association between structuralelements of narrative identity and well-being remains relatively unexplored.

General Conclusion
As this review makes clear, there is immense diversity in theways in which research on narrative identity has examined
incremental validity in correlating with and predicting wellbeing. There is strong evidence that motivational aspects ofnarrative identity as well as themes related to integrative
meaning are incrementally associated with a variety of conceptualizations of well-being when compared with dispositional traits and other individual difference and situationalvariables. There is also strong evidence for the incremental
validity of affective themes, mostly with respect to hedonic
conceptions of well-being. The empirical evidence for theincremental validity of structural aspects of narrative identity
is largely absent; despite substantial theory in support of thisassertion, very few studies have directly examined it.
The incremental validity of motivational and integrative
meaning themes may be due to their role in facilitating a
sense of purpose for the narrator. Purpose in life, as assessed

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Adler et al.
via questionnaire, is associated with a range of positive outcomes, including well-being, across cultures (e.g., Soneet al., 2008) and has recently been identified as a predictor ofmortality across adulthood (Hill & Turiano, 2014). The studyof motivational themes and themes of integrative meaning in
narrative identity adds to this body of research, demonstrating the connections between personal narratives and wellbeing in a way that authentically captures people’s
first-person description of their sense of purpose and does
not suffer from method variance issues. Given the incremental validity shown for these two narrative themes in predicting well-being, narratives seem to provide a unique way toaccess this sense of purpose in the individual.
Furthermore, a number of studies reviewed provide evidence to suggest that there may be some temporal precedence in the benefits of crafting purpose in such a way. For
example, increases in the motivational theme of agency inpsychotherapy narratives preceded increases in well-being ina clinical sample (Adler, 2012a). In addition, in the Mills
Longitudinal Study, accommodative processing at age 52
was associated with ego development only at age 61, not at
age 43 (Lilgendahl et al., 2013). Thus, the development of
purpose through motivational themes and integrative meaning appears to provide a fulcrum for the subsequent development of well-being across a variety of conceptualizations.
Although the sense of unity that comes with integrative
meaning does appear to be beneficial for multiple conceptualizations of well-being, the unity that is theoretically thought
to come with structural processing needs more research todetermine whether this is the case.

Recommendations for the Future
Having outlined several theoretical and methodological positions that regard narrative identity as a distinct and incrementally important domain of personality and its association
with well-being, as well as having developed an organizational framework for research on this topic and reviewed therelevant empirical findings on the topic, this article would beincomplete without laying out some specific recommendations for future work in this area. Our hope is that the current
review will catalyze future research weighing in on the ways
in which narrative identity adds to the study of individual
differences. Toward this end, we outline a number of concrete directions for such research that explicitly map on to
key points from our review of the extant literature.
First, our hope is that the organizational framework wedeveloped will be useful to researchers studying the relationships between narrative identity and well-being. In the service of enhancing the comparability of findings related tothese relationships, we encourage scholars to explicitly identify the category of narrative variables they are examining
and to adopt a common language for framing their work.
That being said, although we derived this set of categories
based on the conceptual rationale of narrative experts, itremains unknown whether these dimensions are empiricallydistinct from each other. It is also unknown whether narrative measures within the same category can be empiricallydistinguished from one another. There is therefore a need forextensive factor analyses of several narrative measures (e.g.,
King et al., 2000; Lodi-Smith et al., 2009; Pals, 2006) and forstudies examining the incremental validity of narrative measures compared with others (e.g., Philippe et al., 2011). The
framework proposed in this article is not meant to be definitive, but it will hopefully provide a productive starting point
for organizing future work on narrative identity.
Second, the particular results from this review point to theneed for more work on specific topics in the study of narrative and well-being. Perhaps most striking is the wealth oftheory and the relative paucity of empirical research speaking to the incremental associations between structural elements of narratives, such as coherence, and well-being.
Determining whether the theoretical contribution of structurally unifying aspects of narratives, compared to their thematic content, adds to the explanation of well-being above
the contributions of other individual difference variables—
and other narrative variables—remains a vital unanswered
empirical question. In addition, the association between
affective themes in personal narratives and conceptions ofwell-being that extend beyond hedonic measures remains
relatively unexplored. From a theoretical perspective, there
are solid arguments to suggest that themes such as redemption and contamination ought to primarily predict hedonic
well-being outcomes such as life satisfaction and low levelsof psychopathology, but it is also possible that these themes
might reasonably be associated with broader conceptions of
psychological well-being. Furthermore, our initial theorizing
about the existence of two pathways connecting themes ofintegrative meaning to well-being would benefit from direct
empirical scrutiny. Whether, in fact, assimilative integrative
meaning has a unique association with hedonic well-being
whereas accommodative integrative meaning has a uniqueassociation with eudaimonic well-being remains to be
directly examined.
Third, it is vital to remember that, although incremental
validity is not the only pressing issue facing the field of
research on narrative identity, it is an essential one in theservice of establishing the empirical status of narrative
variables in the suite of individual differences examined bypersonality psychologists. Many of the studies we culled in
conducting this review had the data available to address theincremental validity of their claims but did not do so. Thus,
we encourage future researchers to systematically incorporate tests of the incremental validity of narratives as
cross-sectional indicators and longitudinal predictors ofwell-being. In doing so, we recommend that researchers
clearly and accurately report these analyses so that future
reviews can move beyond a qualitative summary of these
relationships to quantitative approaches such as meta-analysis. In addition, we encourage researchers to expand on

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Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(2)the relatively small number of studies that explicitly examined narratives alongside measures of dispositional traits
and other personality constructs, and to develop other areasof examination, such as more research on characteristic
adaptations, behavioral and cognitive variables, aspects ofthe experiences being narrated themselves, individual differences in the linguistic patterns in narration as they relate
to narrative themes, and the situated and dynamic context
of narration.
Fourth, we want to note that this review is circumscribedin its scope by focusing solely on the incremental validityof narrative identity in relation to well-being. Well-being iscertainly an important outcome in its own right and leads toa variety of other important outcomes (e.g., Keyes, 2005;
Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). However,
it is not the only important life outcome for which narrative
identity has incremental predictive validity. A handful ofstudies examining other outcomes already exist. For example, in a study of the life stories of highly religious Christians
at midlife, themes of self-exploration, in contrast to themesof self-regulation (both motivational themes), in life stories
predicted their political orientation (liberalism vs. conservatism), even after controlling for demographics such asage, race, socioeconomic status, and all of the Big Five
traits (McAdams, Dadabo, & Hanek, 2013). Although someprevious research had focused on the narratives of politically engaged people (e.g., Hanek, Olson, & McAdams,
2011; McAdams et al., 2008), this was the first study toshow that narrative measures predict political attitudes over
and above traits and relevant demographics. There is a needfor more research examining how narrative identity and life
stories affect other significant life outcomes as well, suchas interpersonal relationship outcomes (Alea & Bluck,
2007; Alea & Vick, 2010), performance and motivationalvariables (Beike, Adams, & Naufel, 2010; Kuwabara &Pillemer, 2010), and physical health (Dunlop & Tracy,
2013b; Pals, 2006) as well as cognitive health, which
remains, to date, largely unstudied from the perspective of
narrative identity.
Finally, increasing methodological sophistication andvariety in the study of narrative identity with an eye towarddrawing causal inferences is vital. Most studies included inthis review relied on cross-sectional correlational designs,
which make it difficult to determine the direction of theeffects. Few studies have used longitudinal designs and, of
those, few have risen to the challenge of concomitantly controlling for other predictors or including more than two
assessment points (though see Adler, 2012a; Adler et al.,2015; Bauer & McAdams, 2010; McAdams et al., 2006).
Specifically, longitudinal studies that assess the stability andchange of narratives themselves are needed, as well as thosethat evaluate the dynamic unfolding associations between
narratives and important life outcomes alongside other predictor variables. Furthermore, quasi-experimental or experimental designs within narrative approaches (i.e., Alea &Bluck, 2007) are also central to determining the empiricalstatus of narrative identity’s incremental validity.

SummaryThis review is grounded in the wealth of theory proposing thatnarrative identity ought to have incremental validity in explaining well-being, compared with other individual difference variables. Building on this foundation, we have now added anempirical argument for the centrality of narrative identity in
explaining individual differences in well-being. Broadly, thisreview makes clear that individual differences in narrative
identity demonstrate incremental validity as cross-sectional
indicators and prospective predictors of well-being when compared with other individual difference variables. The relationship of these individual differences to well-being varies by thetype of narrative variables and the type of well-being.
Specifically, our review indicates that motivational themes andthemes of integrative meaning demonstrate incremental validity in their association with broad conceptualizations of wellbeing, above and beyond and complimentary to the impact ofother individual difference variables, such as dispositional personality traits. Affective themes also demonstrate incremental
validity, but mainly with regard to hedonic conceptualizationsof well-being. However, despite the wealth of theory indicatingthat structural elements of narratives ought to be uniquely associated with well-being, there is a lack of research that can speak
to this matter from an empirical perspective.
The field of research on narrative identity is somewhat
newer than fields examining other personality variables.
Despite this, it is a theory-rich and methodologically generative approach to the study of individual differences, and onethat has accumulated a body of findings establishing theincremental validity of narrative identity in relation to important life outcomes, such as well-being. Our hope is that thisreview will catalyze future research that will further weigh inon the utility of narrative identity within the study of individual differences.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the role of many colleagues in therealization of this article, particularly those who contributed to our callfor assistance in the development of the organizational frameworkpresented here: Jack J. Bauer, Laura A. King, Jennifer P. Lilgendahl,
Dan P. McAdams, Kate C. McLean, Monisha Pasupathi, and Jefferson
A. Singer. The authors also wish to acknowledge Will L. Dunlop,
Philip L. Hammack, Moin Syed, Ilana Walder-Biesanz, and Deborah
Prentice for their feedback on this project along the way. Finally, wewish to thank the medical providers and spouses who supported thebirth of two children to each of the first three authors during the yearsof work on this article, as well as those children themselves.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Adler et al.
Funding

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The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

It is important to note that there is some disagreement aboutcertain aspects of the structure of personality, such as thenature of characteristic adaptations (e.g., McCrae & Costa,
2008).
Different approaches to measuring inter-rater reliability havebeen developed for different types of coding systems. For
example, the intra-class correlation (ICC; Type 2) is mostoften used with dimensional coding systems (e.g., Adler,
2012a), whereas Cohen’s kappa (e.g., Dunlop & Tracy,
2013b), Category Agreement (e.g., Winter, 1973), or delta(Syed & Azmita, 2008) are most often used with categoricalcoding systems. Whatever the statistic of inter-rater reliability
used, a very high standard is expected, such as an ICC of 0.80
or above (see Cicchetti, 1994, for a discussion).
We excluded research conducted with stories collected using
the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), because it is unclear
whether these types of narrative can be considered stories about
the self or not. Although the field of narrative research can trace
some of its roots to the study of the TAT (e.g., McAdams &Powers, 1981) and some evidence suggests that memory narratives and projective TAT stories are correlated when implicit
motives are examined (e.g., McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield,& Day, 1996; B. Woike, Gershkovich, Piorkowski, & Polo,1999), there is no evidence that this would be the case for more
explicit or conscious meaning-making narrative measuresof the type primarily reviewed here. We also excluded studies whose sole narratives were short reports of strivings (e.g.,
Emmons, 1991), because several typical narrative measures
cannot be coded from these short descriptions. We instead considered strivings as individual differences tapping the characteristic adaptations domain of personality. Finally, we excluded
the expansive body of research that has adopted a linguistic,
as opposed to a narrative, approach to coding. Research inthis domain, especially work grounded in the expressive writing paradigm (Pennebaker, 1997), has produced an impressivearray of results using open-ended data, but linguistic coding isfundamentally different from narrative coding and, therefore,
does not fall into the scope of this review.
It is important to note that the framework grew out of the bodyof research reviewed in this article. Although we believe it
may be a useful classification system for narrative researchmore generally, its structure is inseparable from the set of studies from which it was drawn. Like any framework, it may gloss
over some complexities that would be relevant for approaching other questions and should not be interpreted as a definitive structure for the field.
Although wisdom/insight is somewhat more similar to coding
systems categorized in the integrative meaning category discussed later, the authors state that identity clarity and intimacy
are “similar to the agency/communion distinction” (Lilgendahl& McAdams, 2011, p. 399). As a result, we have classified thecomposite that included these two variables as primarily motivational in nature, as the individual coding systems were notanalyzed separately.

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