Stability and Change in Narrative Processing
Creators: name: McLean, Kate
name: Lilgendahl, Jennifer
name: Le, Benjamin
name: Dunlap, David
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Personality and Social Contexts
subject: Developmental Psychology
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: Pre-registration Stability and Change in Narrative Processing: A Four-Year Longitudinal Study of Narrative Identity Development November 25 (2020) Proposed Author Order: Kate C. McLean David Dunlop Sara C Jennings Nicole S. Litvitskiy Jennifer P. Lilgendahl Background. This paper utilizes a longitudinal dataset, with which we have a great deal of familiarity. We have analyzed portions of the dataset, and have engaged in extensive coding of the narratives. Thus, we detail here what we have done, and what we expect, but this is not a fully pre-registered paper, given our prior knowledge of the dataset. We also refer the reader to the overall OSF page for the project, and the grant proposal, which includes many of our hypotheses prior to data collection. The question for the current manuscript is stability and change in narrative processing. We examine this question in four types of narratives (academic high and low points, and romantic high and low points), collected at four time points, one year apart. We examine two types of narrative processing – self-event connections (positive and negative) and exploratory processing. We examine both rank-order and mean-level change in these three variables. We have analyzed rank and mean-level change on these variables for the first cohort of this project (comprising half of the sample) for a conference presentation (Haraldsson, Jennings, Litvitskiy, Lilgendahl, &amp; McLean, 2019 – Association for Research in Personality). At the time of those analyses, the second cohort had not yet completed the study and their data had not yet been fully coded, nor had any stability and change analyses been conducted on this cohort. Thus, the present analyses utilize the full sample, and we base our hypotheses on our analyses done with the first cohort. We recognize that this is not a typical pre-registration, but our aim here is to be transparent about exactly what we have done, and what our intentions are before conducting further analyses with the second cohort. Though not pre-registered, our hypotheses and questions for the conference presentation were as follows: ● Hypothesis #1 - Rank-order stability: We expect moderate stability in both exploratory processing and self-event connections (i.e., statistically significant, but less than traits) ● Hypothesis #1 - Mean-level change: We expect increases in both exploratory processing and positive self-event connections across time. ● Exploratory question #1 – Narrative Domain: How does domain (academic vs. romantic) moderate mean-level change? Current Hypotheses/Exploratory Questions: Rank-order. Our results, based only on the first cohort, confirmed Hypothesis 1, though we saw more stability for exploratory processing than self-event connections, and we saw that rank-order stability increased across time. We expect to replicate each of these findings in with the full sample. In an exploratory question we examine rank-order stability within domain (i.e., academic or romantic). Mean-level. We found no support for Hypothesis #2. Based on that, we now expect no mean-level changes in exploratory processing and positive self-event connections. We make no hypothesis about negative reasoning. In terms of the exploratory question in the analyses with our first cohort, autobiographical processes generally varied by domain, with a) exploratory processing decreasing in academic narratives and increasing in romantic narratives, and b) Positive SECs were more prevalent in academic than romantic narratives. We make no hypotheses here, and continue these analyses as exploratory. Primary Variables include: 1) Exploratory Processing at Waves 3, 6, 9, 12 (coded on a 5-point scale). We will use a composite variable per wave (mean across 4 prompts), as well as the mean across domains (e.g., academic high point and low point). 2) Positive Self-event Connections at Waves 3, 6, 9, 12 (coded as a frequency). We will use a composite variable per wave (mean across 4 prompts), as well as the mean across domains (e.g., academic high point and low point). 3) Negative Self-event Connections at Waves 3, 6, 9, 12 (coded as a frequency). We will use a composite variable per wave (mean across 4 prompts), as well as the mean across domains (e.g., academic high point and low point). 4) We include no control variables. Analyses: 1) Rank-order. We will run a correlation matrix separately for exploratory processing, positive self-event connections, and negative self-event connections, examining the correlations between consecutive years (i.e., W3 with W6, W6 with W9 and W9 with W12) and non-consecutive years (i.e., W3-W12, etc.), and using statistical significance and effect size to guide our interpretations. a. To examine the exploratory question we compute the same correlation matrices separately for academic narratives and romantic narratives. 2) Mean-level. We will run three repeated measures ANOVAs with time as a 4-level within person factor, one for exploratory processing, one for positive connections, and one for negative connections. a. To examine domain, we will run three repeated measures MANOVAs one for exploratory processing, one for positive connections, and one for negative connections. In these, time (4 levels) and domain (two levels) are specified as three repeated factors. 3) Power. The n will change based on the analysis above (e.g., when done by domain fewer people have romantic narratives than academic), and is defined by the constraints of a longitudinal study (i.e., we cannot add more participants at this point). We will conduct a post-hoc power analysis once analyses are complete to aid interpretation. Attrition: The n will vary for our analyses because participants dropped out, missed some waves, or did not report all narratives (e.g., if they were not in a romantic relationship they did not respond to this prompt). 1) For rank-order analyses, we will include all participants who have relevant data at adjacent waves. 2) For mean-level analyses, we will only include those participants who have four waves of data. 3) For overall attrition analyses in the sample, we will not conduct analyses about those who have completed the exact Waves we are examining, because it is arbitrary whether they completed Wave 3 or 4, etc. Thus, to get a sense who dropped initially and persistence in the study in terms of the representativeness of the sample, we examine 1) who participated in only Wave 1 v. at least one other Wave, 2) how many Waves participants completed, 3) and having at least one Wave in the last year (Wave 10, 11, or 12) on the following variables: o Gender, ethnicity/race (white v. non-white), SES, campus, conscientiousness