ArticleJournal of personality and social psychology2015
Variation in narrative identity is associated with trajectories of mental health over several years.
Article in Journal of personality and social psychology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 218 citations in OpenAlex.
- Narratives About COVID Challenges in Mexican American Couples as Predictors of Relationship Satisfaction.Family process · 2026Article
- New horizons in advance care planning: narratives, identity and cultural humility.Age and ageing · 2026Review
- Narrative Agency and Communion as Predictors of Trait and State Self-Esteem Dynamics.Journal of personality · 2026Article
- Rethinking success in public health education and promotion: a narrative ownership framework for sustainable health behavior change.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Starting with Story, Not Symptom: Narrative Collapse and Cultural Repair in Appalachia.Journal of Appalachian health · 2026Article
- Using Intersectionality to Understand How Structural Domains Are Embedded in Life Narratives.Journal of personality · 2025Article
- Narratives of transformation and recovery in New Zealand Defence Force personnel accessing mental health support.Journal of military, veteran and family health · 2024Article
- "Identity theft" inFrontiers in genetics · 2024Article
- Nothing less than a creative triumph: a study of children admitted to hospital for serious somatic illness or injury and their experience of art therapy.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Narrative as active inference: an integrative account of cognitive and social functions in adaptation.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Narrative identity among people with disabilities in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic: The interdependent self.Journal of research in personality · 2022Article
- Temporal self-compression: Behavioral and neural evidence that past and future selves are compressed as they move away from the present.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The Episodic Man: How a Psychological Biography of Donald J. Trump Casts New Light on Empirical Research Into Narrative Identity.Europe's journal of psychology · 2021Article
- Post-traumatic growth as positive personality change: Challenges, opportunities, and recommendations.Journal of personality · 2021Article
- The plasticity of well-being: A training-based framework for the cultivation of human flourishing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Article
- Can a Commercial Video Game Prevent Depression? Null Results and Whole Sample Action Mechanisms in a Randomized Controlled Trial.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Stress resilience: Narrative identity may buffer the longitudinal effects of chronic caregiving stress on mental health and telomere shortening.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
This article presents 2 longitudinal studies designed to assess the relationship between variability in narrative identity and trajectories of mental health over several years. In Study 1, core scenes from 89 late-mid-life adults' life stories were assessed for several narrative themes. Participants' mental health and physical health were assessed concurrently with the narratives and annually for the subsequent 4 years. Concurrent analyses indicated that the themes of agency, redemption, and contamination were significantly associated with mental health. Longitudinal analyses indicated that these same 3 themes were significantly associated with participants' trajectories of mental health over the course of 4 years. Exploratory analyses indicated that narratives of challenging experiences may be central to this pattern of results. In Study 2, similar longitudinal analyses were conducted on a sample of 27 late-mid-life adults who received a major physical illness diagnosis between the baseline assessment and 6 months later and a matched sample of 27 control participants who remained healthy throughout the study. Participants' mental health and physical health were assessed every 6 months for 2 years. In this study, the themes of agency, communion, redemption, and contamination in participants' life narratives collected at baseline (before any participant became sick) were significantly associated with mental health in the group of participants who went on to receive a medical diagnosis, but not in the control group. Taken together, the results of these 2 studies indicate that the way an individual constructs personal narratives may impact his or her trajectory of mental health over time.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.