Intergenerational Storytelling and Positive Psychosocial Development: Stories as Developmental Resources for Marginalized Groups.

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT: We articulate an intergenerational model of positive psychosocial development that centers storytelling in an ecological framework and is motivated by an orientation toward social justice. We bring together diverse literature (e.g., racial-ethnic socialization, family storytelling, narrative psychology) to argue that the intergenerational transmission of stories about one's group is equally important for elders and youth, and especially important for groups who are marginalized, because stories provide a developmental resource for resistance and resilience in the face of injustice. We describe how storytelling activities can support positive psychosocial development in culturally dynamic contexts and illustrate our model with a case study involving LGBTQ+ communities, arguing that intergenerational storytelling is uniquely important for this group given issues of access to stories. We argue that harnessing the power of intergenerational storytelling could provide a culturally safe and sustaining practice for fostering psychosocial development among LGBTQ+ people and other equity-seeking populations. PUBLIC ABSTRACT: Understanding one's identity as part of a group with shared history and culture that has existed through time is important for positive psychological functioning. This is especially true for marginalized communities for whom identity-relevant knowledge is often erased, silenced, or distorted in mainstream public discourses (e.g., school curricula, news media, television, and film). To compensate for these limitations around access, one channel for the transmission of this knowledge is through oral storytelling between generations of elders and youth. Contemporary psychological science has often assumed that such storytelling occurs within families, but when families cannot or would not share such knowledge, youth suffer. We present a model of intergenerational storytelling that expands our ideas around who counts as "family" and how knowledge can be transmitted through alternative channels, using LGBTQ+ communities as a case example.

"You gotta give them hope": A structural psychobiography of Harvey Milk (1930-1978).

OBJECTIVE: In this psychobiographical study, we examined the life and times of social change agent Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay public officials in the United States. Milk is remembered as a gay hero who fought for the rights of marginalized people, often by invoking the importance of hope. Milk was assassinated less than 1 year after his election. METHOD: We adopt a structural psychobiographical approach, foregrounding social, cultural, political, and historical forces that intersect with personal factors to explain Milk's ascension to the status of social change agent. RESULTS: This psychobiography tells the story of a man not destined to become a social change agent but who became one anyway because of shifting tides in the political climate of San Francisco in the 1970s, because of a series of catalytic events that started him down this path, because of a history of persecution as a gay Jew, and because of his enduring need for a stage upon which he could express his generative concern. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis raises questions about the story that "belongs" to the agent of social change, and the story that "belongs" to the rest of us, as we remember him.

Creating something new from past experiences-The meaning of change in repeated narratives.

OBJECTIVE: Narrative identity is an essential level of personality, and to develop, the life narrative should entail both stability and change. In this study, we examine the meaning of change in repeated narratives about occupational experiences. METHOD: Fifty-nine individuals were interviewed at age 25, 29, and 33. In these interviews 544 narratives and 142 sets of repeated narratives were identified, of these 39 sets of repeated narratives had changed between interviews. A thematic narrative analysis was conducted focusing on the meaning of change in repeated narratives. RESULTS: The analysis resulted in five narrative themes: Gaining insights about one's identity, transforming views of past challenges, increasing agency, increasing motivation for occupational commitments, and accentuating competence and importance. In the context of occupational experiences, the results from the narrative themes illuminate how narrators repeatedly engage with the same narrative to elaborate their narrative identity. CONCLUSION: This study presents a novel method for capturing identity development, which show that changes in repeated narratives can entail important information about identity growth as well as the way narrators create new stories of their previous experiences in order to continue to make sense of their lives.

Master narrative methodology: A primer for conducting structural-psychological research.

OBJECTIVE: The emphasis placed on individual-level analysis throughout psychological science in general, and diversity science in particular, has left the role of structural factors undertheorized. Moreover, the field suffers from a lack of research methods that fully investigate structural-individual relations. This article outlines one structural-psychological approach, the master narrative framework, and details various methods for taking social structures into account while still maintaining the focus on the individual. CONCLUSION: These methods, including event narratives, in-depth interviews, life-script analysis, focus groups, experiments, and conversation analysis, allow for an understanding of both the nature and substance of the structures and how individuals interact with them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Early Impacts of College, Interrupted: Considering First-Year Students' Narratives About COVID and Reports of Adjustment During College Shutdowns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened lives and livelihoods, imperiled families and communities, and disrupted developmental milestones globally. Among the critical developmental disruptions experienced is the transition to college, which is common and foundational for personal and social exploration. During college shutdowns (spring 2020), we recruited 633 first-year U.S. students (mean age = 18.83 years, 71.3% cisgender women) to provide narratives about the impacts of the pandemic. We tested the ways narrative features were associated with concurrent and longitudinal COVID stressors, psychosocial adjustment, and identity development. Narrative growth expressed in spring 2020 was positively associated with psychosocial adjustment and global identity development and was negatively associated with mental health concerns. Associations were supported concurrently and at 1-year follow-up. Growth partly explained associations between COVID stressors and students' adjustment. Our findings reinforce the importance of growth for resilience and underscore the importance of connective reasoning as people navigate a chronic stress.

Stability and change in autobiographical reasoning: A 4-year longitudinal study of narrative identity development.

OBJECTIVE: Research on personality development has traditionally focused on rank-order stability and mean-level change in the context of personality traits. The present study expands this approach to the examination of change and stability at another level of personality-narrative identity-by focusing on autobiographical reasoning. Drawing from theory in personality and developmental science, we examine stability and change in exploratory processing and positive and negative self-event connections. METHOD: We take advantage of a longitudinal study of emerging adult personality and identity development, which includes four waves of data across 4 years, examining reasoning in two domains of identity, academics, and romance (n = 1520 narratives; n = 176-638 participants, depending on the analysis). RESULTS: We found moderate rank-order stability in autobiographical reasoning, but more so for exploratory processing than self-event connections. We found mean-level increases for exploratory processing in the context of romance and stability in the context of academics. For self-event connections, we saw a decrease for positive connections, and for negative connections about romance, with stability for negative connections about academics. CONCLUSIONS: Implications include developmental differences in types of reasoning as well as the sensitivity of narrative identity to revealing the contextual nature of personality development.

Disentangling paradigm and method can help bring qualitative research to post-positivist psychology and address the generalizability crisis.

For decades, psychological research has heavily favored quantitative over qualitative methods. One reason for this imbalance is the perception that quantitative methods follow from a post-positivist paradigm, which guides mainstream psychology, whereas qualitative methods follow from a constructivist paradigm. However, methods and paradigms are independent, and embracing qualitative methods within mainstream psychology is one way of addressing the generalizability crisis.

Post-traumatic growth as positive personality change: Challenges, opportunities, and recommendations.

OBJECTIVE: Post-traumatic growth typically refers to enduring positive psychological change experienced as a result of adversity, trauma, or highly challenging life circumstances. Critics have challenged insights from much of the prior research on this topic, pinpointing its significant methodological limitations. In response to these critiques, we propose that post-traumatic growth can be more accurately captured in terms of personality change-an approach that affords a more rigorous examination of the phenomenon. METHOD: We outline a set of conceptual and methodological questions and considerations for future work on the topic of post-traumatic growth. RESULTS: We provide a series of recommendations for researchers from across the disciplines of clinical/counseling, developmental, health, personality, and social psychology and beyond, who are interested in improving the quality of research examining resilience and growth in the context of adversity. CONCLUSION: We are hopeful that these recommendations will pave the way for a more accurate understanding of the ubiquity, durability, and causal processes underlying post-traumatic growth.

Adolescents' Identity Formation: Linking the Narrative and the Dual-Cycle Approach.

The narrative and dual-cycle approach conceptualize and operationalize adolescents' identity formation in different ways. While the narrative approach focuses on the construction of an autobiographical life story, the dual-cycle approach focuses on the formation of identity commitments. Although these approaches have different emphases, they are conceptually complementary. Yet, their empirical links and distinctions have only scarcely been investigated. Empirical knowledge on these links in adolescence and across time has been especially lacking. In the present research, it was therefore examined whether key characteristics of adolescents' narration (autobiographical reasoning and agency) were concurrently and prospectively related to engagement in the dual-cycle processes of commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth, exploration in depth, and ruminative exploration. The findings from a cross-sectional sample of 1,580 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 14.7 years, 56% female) demonstrated that autobiographical reasoning was significantly positively associated with the commitment and more adaptive exploration processes (i.e., in breadth and in depth). In addition, agency was significantly positively associated with the commitment processes and exploration in depth. Yet, these associations between the narrative characteristics and dual-cycle processes were only weak. Subsequently, the findings from a two-year longitudinal subsample (n = 242, Mage = 14.7 years, 62% female) indicated that on average commitment strength remained stable but exploration increased across middle adolescence. A stronger increase in identification with commitment and adaptive exploration (i.e., in breadth and in depth) was predicted by a higher degree of agency in adolescents' narratives. Overall, these findings indicate that both approaches to identity formation are associated, but the small size of these associations suggests that they predominantly capture unique aspects of identity formation. Both approaches could thus complement and inform each other.

Giving Voice to Silence: Empowerment and Disempowerment in the Developmental Shift from Trauma 'Victim' to 'Survivor-Advocate'.

In the past several years, a public conversation in the United States about interpersonal violence has flourished, sustained by the work of advocates who are themselves survivors. This surge in public sharing of trauma stories is a rhetorical form of resistance to ideologies in mainstream American culture that impose silence on survivors (e.g., the "just world" belief). However, the developmental progression from trauma 'victim' to empowered public 'survivor/advocate' accommodates to dominant American cultural preferences that stories of adversity have a redemptive story line. In a redemptive story, negative experiences are followed by something positive (e.g., personal growth, lessons learned, strength gained). In this paper, we draw from theory and the sparse relevant literature across multiple disciplines to conceptualize when and for whom the redemptive storying of trauma (or, redemptive master narrative) is available, advantageous, and systemically encouraged. Among the proposed advantages of redemptive storying are its psychological health benefits; potential to empower self and others; promotion of meaning-making, mission, and communal solidarity; and the larger social/political changes that can emerge from giving voice to silenced experiences. Proposed challenges to redemptive storying include layers of societal oppression and marginalization that shape the redemption stories of many survivor-advocates; ongoing connection to or dependence on relationships and communities that enable abuse; and the reality of historical trauma and other forms of intergenerational trauma, which complicate the linear, individualistic story of redemption. With this theory-driven framework, we wish to promote compassion for survivors, along with interdisciplinary, inclusive, and intersectional research in this understudied area.

Identity development in cultural context: The role of deviating from master narratives.

OBJECTIVE: The great majority of research on identity and personality development has focused on individual processes of development, to the relative neglect of the cultural context of development. We employ a recently articulated framework for the examination of identity development in context, centered on the construct of master narratives, or culturally shared stories. METHOD: Across four studies, we asked emerging and midlife adults (N = 512) to narrate personal experiences of deviations from these master narratives. RESULTS: Across three quantitative studies, we show that (a) those who elaborated their deviation experiences were more likely to be in structurally marginalized positions in society (e.g., ethnic or sexual minorities); (b) those who elaborated an empowering alternative to the master narrative were more likely to be engaged in identity processes; and (c) master narratives maintain their rigidity by the frequency of their use. In study 4, using qualitative analyses, we illustrate the rigidity of master narratives, as well as the degree to which they take shape in social and group experiences. CONCLUSIONS: These studies emphasize the importance of cultural context in considering personality and identity development.

Understanding identity integration: Theoretical, methodological, and applied issues.

Identity integration is one of the foundational theoretical concepts in Erikson's (1968) theory of lifespan development. However, the topic is understudied relative to its theoretical and practical importance. The extant research is limited in quantity and scope, and there is considerable heterogeneity in how identity integration is conceptualized and measured. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to 1) provide a conceptual discussion of different forms of identity integration 2) highlight the different methodological approaches represented in the literature, and 3) detail the implications of integration for psychological functioning. In particular, we provide a conceptual and methodological discussion of four forms of integration: two that are widely recognized, contextual integration and temporal integration, and two that have received less attention, ego integration and person-society integration. We see this paper as filling a need in the literature for those interested in how complex identity processes are related to psychological functioning.

Shift-and-Persist Strategies: Associations With Socioeconomic Status and the Regulation of Inflammation Among Adolescents and Their Parents.

OBJECTIVE: Shift-and-persist is a resilience construct hypothesized to be beneficial to physical health among individuals with low socioeconomic status (SES). This shift-and-persist construct entails a combination of reframing stressors more positively while also enduring adversity through finding purpose in life. In this study, we investigated how shift-and-persist relates to key inflammatory processes that are implicated in cardiovascular and other diseases. We also obtained validation information on a new shift-and-persist measure. METHOD: A sample of 122 adolescents and 122 parents from a diverse range of SES backgrounds completed our shift-and-persist measure, a battery of other psychosocial questionnaires and interviews, and provided blood samples. Parents also provided SES information. RESULTS: Reliability and validity of the shift-and-persist measure were demonstrated across both adolescents and adults. Shift-and-persist moderated the association between SES and indicators of inflammatory regulation. Specifically, as SES declined, shift-and-persist was associated with greater sensitivity to glucocorticoids' anti-inflammatory properties (interaction in adolescents: [beta] = .21, p = .033; interaction in adults: [beta] = .25, p = .011), and also with less low-grade, chronic inflammation (interaction in adolescents: [beta] = .18, p = .044). Conversely, as SES increased, the opposite pattern was evident. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that adaptive psychosocial characteristics have the potential to regulate inflammatory processes in ways that may mitigate risk for a number of chronic diseases, particularly among disadvantaged groups.

Physiological Reactivity During Parent-Adolescent Discussions: Associations with Scaffolding Behaviors and Relationship Quality.

BACKGROUND: Parents and adolescents commonly discuss stressful experiences. However, little is known about the features of these conversations that may have implications for health. METHODS: One hundred five adolescents and their parents engaged in conversations about two challenging events, with parental contributions to the discussions coded for four scaffolding behaviors (reiterations, negations, move alongs, and new interpretations). Systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate were measured in both participants at baseline and throughout the conversation. Parent-reported relationship quality was also assessed. RESULTS: For both parents and adolescents, negative scaffolding behaviors were associated with increased physiological reactivity, whereas positive scaffolding behaviors were associated with decreased reactivity. Furthermore, children in higher quality parent-child relationships showed greater reactivity to reiterations and lower reactivity to new interpretations, but those in lower quality relationships demonstrated the opposite patterns. CONCLUSIONS: Specific aspects of parent-child interactions appear to contribute to physiological responses to challenging events, which in turn may have implications for health.

Intergenerational Storytelling as a Developmental Resource in LGBTQ+ Communities.

LGBTQ+ people continue to be threatened by systemic censorship and erasure in public spaces and discourses, making community-based resources for positive development crucial. In this study, we examined one such developmental resource-LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling about cultural-historical events. LGBTQ+ adults (N = 495) ranging in age from 17 to 80 years (M = 39.22, SD = 19.89) responded to an online survey about LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling and relationships. Results showed that although LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling was reported to occur infrequently, sharing stories across generations was considered important, and LGBTQ+ people desired even greater intergenerational connection. Intergenerational narratives reported by participants were primarily about cultural-historical events involving adversity and oppression (e.g. AIDS crisis), policy and legislation (e.g. marriage equality), and protest, resistance, and activism (e.g. Stonewall uprising). Stories were mostly told by older friends in private or social settings for the purpose of passing on LGBTQ+ history. Lessons learned through storytelling were diverse but tended to focus on appreciation and affirmation. Valuing intergenerational storytelling was associated with positive psychosocial identity. This study suggests that intergenerational storytelling may be an important developmental resource for LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized communities.

Testing exploratory narrative processing as a mechanism of change in identity status processes over 4 years in college-going emerging adults.

We examined the critical task of emerging adulthood-identity development-via analyses of trajectories of identity exploration and commitment over the college years, as well as whether narrative processing of important events during this period served as a mechanism of identity exploration and commitment. We took advantage of a unique and comprehensive longitudinal design, which included 12 waves of data, both quantitative and qualitative assessments, collected over 4 years, on two distinct college campuses in the Northwestern and Northeastern regions of the United States (Wave 1, n = 639; growth models using all waves, n = 251). Analyses for this study were preregistered after data collection was complete. We first examined trajectories of exploration and commitment via the dual-cycle identity model. Second, we examined whether exploratory processing in the narration of future self-defining memories at specific waves predicted changes in exploration and commitment in subsequent waves. Findings indicated that exploration and commitment showed trajectories typically viewed as normative (e.g., increasing adaptive forms of exploration and commitment), although trajectories for those at higher socioeconomic statuses differed by showing more exploration and less commitment. We failed to find evidence that exploratory processing predicted changes in exploration and commitment. Implications include distinctions in measurement and theoretical approaches to the study of identity development, the need for greater understanding of what is developing before theorizing how it develops, and the limitations of what is considered normative without attention to structural constraints, such as social class. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Letters from Queer Elders: Transmitting Intergenerational Wisdom in LGBTQ+ Communities.

Intergenerational relationships have been established as a critical locus of psychosocial development, meeting needs of identity development for youth, generativity for elders, and connection and belonging for both. However, intergenerational relationships are both rare in the LGBTQ+ community and sorely needed as a buffer to the discrimination and harm that those within the community experience from systemic and structural oppression. Focusing on sexual identity, and employing a letter writing paradigm, we investigated the content of wisdom that LGB elders have to share with youth. In a descriptive, exploratory, mixed-methods, and pre-registered study, 94 adults ranging in age 50 to 79 years (M = 55.98; SD = 6.30) wrote letters to a fictional youth, Sam, as well as completed surveys of psychosocial development and well-being. Letters were content coded for themes, as well as for emotional tone and subjective perspective. The most common themes of wisdom shared included knowing and celebrating oneself, negotiating an oppressive society, and finding one's community. Those who wrote more emotionally positive letters scored higher on measures of wisdom and generativity, and lower on embitterment. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of cultivating opportunities for wisdom-sharing within LGBTQ+ communities to promote flourishing across the lifespan.

Research as resistance: Naming and dismantling the master narrative of "good" science.

The call for psychological science to make amends for "causing harm to communities of color and contributing to systemic inequities" (American Psychological Association, 2022a) requires a critical acknowledgment that science itself is not neutral but a sociopolitical and ideological endeavor. From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrovertible "hard" evidence of racial hierarchy, infallible "proof" that white people (i.e., cismale, heteronormative, and economically resourced white people) were superior to Indigenous and Black people. We first trace the historical links between postpositivist epistemology and the ideology of white supremacy in psychological science, showing that although explicitly racist science (e.g., eugenics) has faded, the widely shared and strictly enforced epistemological norms about what is (and is not) "good" science remain entrenched. We then outline three epistemic imperatives to resist this harmful master narrative: (a) embrace humanizing epistemologies, (b) listen and learn from those who have been systematically left out of science, and (c) recognize resistance as normative and necessary. We discuss how these imperatives, rooted in critical, feminist, and antiracist scholarship, disrupt oppression and guide us toward doing science that does good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The story of 'us' is the story of 'me': A cross-sectional test of the influence of insecure attachment on narratives of romantic transgressions and high points.

Narratives play an important role in the development of the self-identity. Romantic relationships offer a powerful context in which to develop these narratives about the self through the good and the bad experiences people have with their partners. However, the stories we tell can also be colored by how we already see ourselves. In a secondary analysis, using a prospective longitudinal study of people in established romantic relationships (N = 402), we tested pre-registered hypotheses regarding how attachment anxiety and avoidance lead people to develop narratives about their relationship high-points and transgressions, and whether these narratives influence their relationship satisfaction over time. Relatively higher avoidance, but not anxiety, was related to narrative construction. Those relatively higher in avoidance made more negative event connections about themselves in their transgression narratives, and more positive event connections about themselves in their relationship high-point narratives. Narrative content, however, did not mediate the association between attachment anxiety and avoidance and relationship satisfaction. Despite the lack of support for some of our pre-registered hypotheses, these findings provide valuable insights into how insecure attachment influences the stories people tell about their relationships, and how they link these events back to the self.

Emerging adults' journeys out of the shutdown: Longitudinal narrative patterns in a college career defined by COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has defined the college career for this generation of learners, threatening mental health, identity development, and college functioning. We began tracking the impacts of this pandemic for 633 first-year college students from four U.S. universities (Mage = 18.8 years) in Spring 2020 and followed students to Spring 2023. Students provided narratives about the impacts of COVID-19 and reports of mental health concerns, identity development, well-being. Students reported concerns for mental health, identity, and well-being during the first year of COVID-19 impacts. The return to in-person activities predicted broad increases in narrative growth and concomitant decreases in COVID-19 stressors, increases in identity exploration and commitment, and increases in psychological and academic well-being. Changes in COVID-19 stressors and narrative growth served as mediators between the return to in-person activities around campus and student outcomes. Findings expand insights of development and mental health across much of this generation-defining event. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).