The way older adolescents and emerging adults talk about meaningful experiences in their lives is related to their psychological well-being (McLean et al., 2010, Mitchell et al., 2020, Reese et al., 2017). Indeed, adults who narrate well-structured and insightful life stories tend to have greater psychological well-being (e.g. Adler et al., 2016, Baerger and McAdams, 1999, Lilgendahl and McAdams, 2011, Vanderveren et al., 2019, Waters and Fivush, 2015). Narrative coherence is a multidimensional construct (Adler et al., 2018): coherent life stories are situated in time and place, include a temporal progression, develop and maintain a theme, and interpret key events in terms of the narrator’s personality or personal development (Habermas and Bluck, 2000, Reese et al., 2011). These reflections upon how one came to be this person — termed autobiographical reasoning — create narratives that are high in causal coherence (Habermas, 2011, Reese et al., 2014). Causal coherence in life stories increases dramatically between mid-adolescence and young adulthood (Habermas and de Silveira, 2008, Köber et al., 2015).
The way parent–child dyads discuss past events is hypothesized to play a role in the development of adolescents’ narrative identity (Fivush et al., 2011, McLean et al., 2007, Reese, 2009). Empirical support for this hypothesis is emerging. For instance, correlational evidence supports a link between maternal reminiscing in early childhood and young adolescents’ autobiographical reasoning about turning points (Reese, Jack, & White, 2010). Turning-point narratives are based on self-defining memories and thus constitutive of narrative identity (McLean et al., 2020, McLean et al., 2007, Reese et al., 2017). However, only one experimental study to date has demonstrated this effect. Specifically, the Growing Memories study showed that an elaborative maternal reminiscing intervention during early childhood improved the contextual and thematic coherence of young adolescents’ low-point narratives (Reese et al., 2020), and the causal coherence of turning-point narratives and well-being by mid-adolescence (Mitchell & Reese, 2022). To date, it remains unclear whether these benefits of mothers’ elaborative reminiscing persist into emerging adulthood for their offspring, given the dramatic developments in causal coherence over this period (Köber et al., 2015). Thus, the current study is an emerging adult follow-up of the same sample which aimed to clarify whether an elaborative maternal reminiscing style in childhood continues to benefit causal coherence of turning-point narratives and well-being in emerging adulthood. We also extended the investigation of emerging adults’ turning point narratives to motivational themes (agency and communion; McAdams et al., 1996, Adler et al., 2016). Agency concerns one’s perceived autonomy and motivation to influence their own, or other people’s lives, whereas communion concerns one’s interconnectedness with others (Bakan, 1966, Deci and Ryan, 2004, McAdams et al., 1996, Wiggins, 1991). In adulthood, both agency and communion themes of life stories are positively linked to well-being (Adler et al., 2016, McLean et al., 2020).
The way we present on the social stage reflects a unique twist of the human nature blueprint; our personality manifests and can be categorized by others from the first few months of life in the form of one’s temperament. Children show remarkable variability in how they interact with the world. Some take great interest in novelty, while others shy away from unfamiliar situations (Peterson et al., 2018). Later, personality traits encompass a range of unique yet reasonably stable patterns of behavior and experience, which may pertain to a particular cultural context (McAdams & Pals, 2006). Evidence for the influence of an individual’s traits on behavior and thought is deeply convincing, and pervasive across behavioral science (for reviews see Hurtz and Donovan, 2000, Soto and Tackett, 2015). The most commonly used measure to assess personality traits is known as the Big Five Index (BFI; Costa and McCrae, 1994, John et al., 1991). Studies that operationalize the BFI almost unanimously champion the model’s effectiveness at explaining broad individual trait differences and similarities (for reviews see Dunn et al., 1995, Giluk and Postlethwaite, 2015). Research also suggests that traits are recognizable from around 3.5 years old, demonstrate reasonable stability over time, but change due to environmental forces and age (McAdams and Olson, 2010, Roberts and Mroczek, 2008, Shiner and DeYoung, 2013). Yet trait models of personality alone cannot fully account for enduring patterns of inner experience and social behavior. Acknowledging these limitations, McAdams’ layers model of personality offers an integrative framework by proposing that traits (Layer 1), motivational and cognitive constructs (Layer 2; characteristic adaptations), and narrative identity (Layer 3) are all essential (McAdams, 2001, McAdams, 2013, McAdams and McLean, 2013, McAdams and Olson, 2010, McAdams and Pals, 2006). Life stories serve as vessels for our narrative identity and establish temporal self-continuity by bridging our past with our present sense of self to guide our future (Habermas and Bluck, 2000, McLean et al., 2020, Ricoeur, 1991). Life stories allow us to explain why we act the way we do, why we desire what we want, and who we once were, are, and will likely become (McAdams & Cox, 2010). Based on a multi-sample study of 2565 life stories of emerging and mid-life adults coded from multiple perspectives, McLean et al. (2020) identified three critical dimensions of life stories for narrative identity: structure (e.g., contextual and temporal coherence), autobiographical reasoning (e.g., causal coherence), and motivational-affective themes (e.g., agency and communion).
In addition to the content we include in our life stories, the way we describe a particular event varies, depending on a range of cultural and personal factors (Adler et al., 2016, McAdams and Pals, 2006, Reese et al., 2017). Mounting evidence suggests that these factors influence us from early childhood, and are hypothesized to have far-reaching effects on our narrative identity into adulthood (Fivush et al., 2011, Fivush and Nelson, 2004). Theorists have argued that caregiver reminiscing style predicts children’s autobiographical memory, which in turn predicts later narrative identity development (Fivush and Nelson, 2004, McLean et al., 2007, Reese, 2009). Indeed, burgeoning research has highlighted parental (typically mothers’) reminiscing style as important for children’s autobiographical memory (Fivush et al., 2006, Haden et al., 2009, Peterson et al., 1999, Salmon and Reese, 2016, Van Bergen and Salmon, 2010, Wang, 2007, Water et al., 2019) and later narrative identity (Mitchell and Reese, 2022, Reese et al., 2010). Specifically, mothers with an elaborative reminiscing style frequently discuss past experiences with their children in rich factual and emotional detail, ask open-ended questions, and confirm their child’s utterances to a greater extent than they repeat information (Fivush, 2007, Reese et al., 1993). Elaborative reminiscing appears to be particularly important for the autobiographical reasoning dimension of adolescents’ narrative identity, especially as revealed in turning point narratives of life-changing events (e.g., Mitchell and Reese, 2022, Reese et al., 2010). The benefits of elaborative reminiscing permeate broad domains of child development (see Fivush et al., 2006, Reese, 2017, Salmon and Reese, 2016 for reviews). Research suggests that children of elaborative mothers display fewer externalizing problems at school (Swetlitz et al., 2021), and tend to have better socioemotional skills, such as emotion understanding, regulation, and theory of mind (Leyva et al., 2014, Leyva et al., 2020, Reese and Cleveland, 2006, Van Bergen et al., 2009, Wang and Fivush, 2005). Indeed, these trends held true for a recent meta-analytic investigation, which found that across 38 correlational studies, an elaborative maternal reminiscing style was associated with children’s increased memory, language, and theory of mind development (Waters et al., 2019). Moreover, intervention research demonstrates that mothers can be taught elaborative reminiscing skills, which predicts similar developmental gains for their children in later years (Reese and Newcombe, 2007, Taumoepeau and Reese, 2013, Valentino et al., 2013, Van Bergen et al., 2018, Van Bergen et al., 2009). Their children in turn tell more accurate and detailed narratives about their own experiences (Peterson et al., 1999, Reese and Newcombe, 2007) and demonstrate better comprehension and retelling of fictional stories (Reese, Leyva, et al., 2010). Taken together, these findings suggest that elaborative reminiscing during early childhood enhances socioemotional, language, and memory development in childhood, which precedes narrative identity growth in adolescence, particularly autobiographical reasoning as revealed in turning point narratives. This theme echoes throughout McAdams’ (2013) developmental extension of his layers theory of personality, which posits that we are actors in our life story during early childhood, become agents from middle childhood, then become authors starting from adolescence. Thus, we can infer that initial authorship of our life stories lies in the hands of important others during childhood.
Autobiographical story-telling parallels what Erikson (1950) viewed as the search for identity during adolescence and young adulthood. Adolescence is marked by considerable change; aside from physiological maturity, adolescents become increasingly concerned with how they are seen in the eyes of others, and with what roles in society to play as adults. The search for identity continues in many Western cultures through the years of 18 to 25, during what Arnett (2000) defines as emerging adulthood. Throughout, an important indicator of the autobiographical reasoning dimension of narrative identity is causal coherence, which refers to the causal links a narrator draws between past experiences and current personality or personal development (Habermas & Bluck, 2000). In whole-life stories and life story key scenes, causal coherence develops dramatically from early adolescence to emerging adulthood (Köber et al., 2015, Reese et al., 2014). This increase is especially evident in turning-point narratives in contrast to other key scenes, such as low points or high points (Reese et al., 2014). In contrast, the developmental trajectories for agency and communion across the lifespan are not yet clear. The implications of autobiographical reasoning for development extend to what we view as indicative of living the good life: subjective, psychological well-being. In brief, we consider well-being as dualistically, yet irreducibly concerned with the experience of hedonia (feeling pleasure without distress) and functioning of eudaimonia (feeling purpose in goals, values and the self). Evidence supports the notion that a sense of self-continuity across time anchors oneself against adverse experiences, facilitates future planning, and buffers against psychopathology (Habermas and Köber, 2015, Sokol and Eisenheim, 2016, Sokol and Serper, 2019). In turn, causally coherent narratives indicate that one is making sense of difficult events, and integrating personal change with self-continuity. Likewise, positive experiences of autonomy and connections with others are considered intrinsically related to well-being, because they satisfy culturally valued notions of eudaimonia and hedonia (McLean et al., 2020, Ryan and Deci, 2000, Wiggins, 1991). Across adult samples, research generally supports a positive link between autobiographical reasoning in life stories and well-being (e.g. Adler et al., 2016, Baerger and McAdams, 1999, Banks and Salmon, 2013, Lilgendahl and McAdams, 2011; but cf. McLean et al., 2020, Vanderveren et al., 2021). There is some indication that these relationships are more reliably found in studies focused only on turning-point events (e.g. Mitchell et al., 2020, Reese et al., 2017), compared to those that assess for, and aggregate, autobiographical reasoning scores across different events (e.g. McLean et al., 2010, McLean et al., 2020).