Traits and Stories: Links Between Dispositional and Narrative Features of Personality
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Date
2004
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Personality (Blackwell Publishing)
Abstract
Dispositional traits and life narratives represent two
different levels of personality that have not previously been empirically
linked. The current study tested five hypotheses connecting Big-Five traits
to life-narrative indices of emotional tone, theme, and structure. Students
(Study 1) and adults (Study 2) completed a self-report measure of the Big-
Five traits and provided extended written accounts of either ten (students)
or eight (adults) key life-narrative scenes, including life high points, low
points, and turning points. Content analysis of the narrative data revealed
that for both samples Neuroticism was positively associated with an
emotionally negative life-narrative tone, Agreeableness was correlated
with narrative themes of communion (e.g., friendship, caring for others),
and Openness was strongly associated with the structural complexity of
life narrative accounts. Contrary to prediction, however, Conscientiousness
was not consistently associated with themes of agency (e.g., achievement,
self-mastery) and Extraversion was unrelated to positive narrative
tone. The results are discussed in the context of contemporary research and theorizing on the narrative study of lives and the relation of
narrative research in personality to more conventional, trait-based
approaches.
In an effort to organize the many different ways that personality
psychologists do and might explore the multifaceted nature of
human individuality, McAdams (1994, 1995, 2001a; Hooker &
McAdams, in press) proposed a three-level model for personality
constructs. At Level 1 reside dispositional traits—global, internal,
and comparative dispositions that account for consistencies perceived
or expected in behavior from one situation to the next and
over time (e.g., Goldberg, 1990; McCrae & Costa, 1987). At Level 2,
characteristic adaptations are contextualized facets of human individuality
that speak to motivational, social-cognitive, and developmental
concerns in personality. Included at this level are constructs
such as current concerns and strivings, goals and motives, defensive
and strategic operations, conditional patterns, and other constructs
that are contextualized in time, place, or social role (e.g., Little, 1999;
Mischel & Shoda, 1995). At Level 3, finally, are integrative life
stories—internalized and evolving narratives of the self that speak to
how a person understands him- or herself and his or her position in
the world in broadly existential terms (Habermas & Bluck, 2000;
McAdams, 1993, 2001b; Singer, 1995). If dispositional traits sketch
an outline and characteristic adaptations fill in some of the details of
human individuality, then internalized life stories speak to what a
person’s life may mean in the overall.
How are personality constructs from these three different levels
related to each other? McAdams (1995) argued that there is no
reason to expect strong symmetry and consistency across different
levels of personality description, for people’s lives are typically
complex and often contradictory. Furthermore, conceptual mappings
for one level (e.g., the five-factor model for Level 1) may not do
justice to the indigenous features of other levels. Relations across
levels, therefore, remain an open empirical question. A few recent
studies have examined the question as it pertains to relations
between Levels 1 and 2. For example, Roberts and Robins (2000)
linked Big-Five factors and the narcissism trait to goal profiles, and
Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, and Knafo (2002) documented associations
between the five factors and value clusters. There is also an
established literature showing that motives and goals (Level 2) are positively associated with some life-narrative themes (Level 3). For
example, studies have shown that individual differences in goals and
motives for power are positively correlated with life-narrative themes
of agency (e.g., self-mastery, influencing others, attaining victory and
status), whereas motives and goals for intimacy are positively associated
with life-narrative themes of interpersonal communion (e.g.,
love and friendship, caring for others, dialogue) (McAdams, 1982,
1984, 1985; McAdams et al., 1981; McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield,
& Day, 1996; Woike, 1995; Woike, Gersekovich, Piorkowski, &
Polo, 1999; Woike & Polo, 2001). McAdams and colleagues,
furthermore, have shown that high scores on generativity (a developmental
concern of midlife – Level 2 – indicating a strong commitment
to promoting the well-being of youth and the next generation)
are consistently linked with a life-narrative format that emphasizes
themes of personal destiny, redemption, and forward progress in life
(McAdams & Bowman, 2001; McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin,
& Mansfield, 1997).
Virtually nothing, however, is known about how dispositional
traits (Level 1) might relate to narrative features of personality
(Level 3). One reason for the absence of data in this regard may be
the very different methodologies and epistemological assumptions
employed by social scientists who specialize in these two respective
domains of inquiry. Trait psychologists value rigorously quantitative
and psychometric investigations that aim to test hypotheses with
large samples, while many narrative psychologists prefer qualitative,
idiographic studies that aim to discover new psycho-literary forms
(e.g., Gregg, 1995; Rosenwald & Ochberg, 1992). Closer to the
mainstream of psychological science, trait research follows what
Bruner (1986) describes as the paradigmatic mode of thought and
inquiry, seeking to validate clear and empirically replicable assertions
about behavior. By contrast, life-story scholars often place a
high premium on the subjective interpretation (hermeneutics) of the
life text, as they operate in Bruner’s narrative mode of inquiry, where
stories are used, both by the investigator and the subject, to express
the lived experience of a particular human being (Cohler, Hostetler,
& Boxer, 1998).
The current investigation seeks to bridge the gap between these
two approaches by exploring relations between Level 1 traits and
Level 3 life narratives in samples of college students and adults. Like
trait studies, the current investigation employs sample sizes that are large enough and scoring procedures that are objective enough to
test hypotheses about how traits relate to other phenomena. Like
narrative studies, the investigators have collected a substantial
amount of rich and highly personal life-story data from each subject,
providing a small narrative case study for each participant in the
study. The written narratives are coded for content themes and then
related to scores on a self-report measure of the Big-Five traits ( John
& Srivastava, 1999). The investigation tests five simple hypotheses—
one for each of the Big-Five traits—drawn from a reading of the trait
and life-narrative literatures.
The first two hypotheses link the traits of Extraversion (E) and
Neuroticism (N) to what McAdams (1993) termed narrative tone.
Every story has a characteristic emotional tone, ranging most simply
from extreme positivity (happiness, joy, optimism—think comedy)
to extreme negativity (despair, fear, pessimism—think tragedy). In a
parallel fashion, a number of researchers have provided data to
support the argument that positive affectivity and negative affectivity
form the emotional cores of E and N, respectively (e.g., Watson &
Clark, 1984, 1997). For the current study, then, the first hypothesis is
that E should be positively associated with a positive affective tone in
life-narrative accounts; the second hypothesis is that N should be
associated with a negative life-narrative tone.
Hypotheses 3 and 4 link the traits of Conscientiousness (C) and
Agreeableness (A) to what McAdams (1985) termed a narrative’s
thematic lines. Whereas tone refers to the overall emotional feel of a
story, theme gets to the issue of plot and movement—how characters
act to accomplish their intentions. According to Bruner (1986) a
story is fundamentally about the ‘‘vicissitudes of intention’’ organized
in time (p. 17). Characters’ intentional acts spread out over
time to make the story’s plot. Thematic lines refer to what kinds of
intentions characters display—that is, what they are trying to get,
achieve, or avoid. In life stories, two general thematic lines are what
Bakan (1966) called agency and communion (McAdams, 1985).
Agency encompasses characters’ intentional movements toward
self-mastery, self-control, achievement, and power. Communion
encompasses love, intimacy, care, and the sense of being part of a
community. In a parallel fashion, C and A may be viewed as
orthogonal constructs comprising an interpersonal circumplex for
Level 1 traits, with C predicting behavior suggestive of self-control
and achievement (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996) and A linked, at least in theory, to warm and caring
behavior (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997). Therefore, the third hypothesis
is that C should be positively associated with narrative themes of
agency; the fourth is that A should be associated with narrative
themes of communion.
Hypothesis 5 is about Openness to Experience (O) and the concept
of narrative complexity (McAdams, 1985). Simple stories contain few
characters, straightforward plots, and clear resolutions; complex
stories may have a multitude of characters and interwoven plots,
and they may suggest multiple meanings and ambiguous resolutions.
Among the different aspects of O, researchers have identified dimensions
of cognitive and emotional complexity (McCrae & Costa, 1997).
Persons high in O are described as original, imaginative, and complex.
McCrae and Costa (1980) found that O was positively associated,
furthermore, with higher stages of ego development, which also
indicate higher levels of cognitive complexity (Loevinger, 1976).
McAdams (1985) showed that adults with high levels of ego development
expressed a greater number of generic plots in their life stories
compared to those scoring low in ego development. Therefore, this
study’s fifth hypothesis is that O should be positively associated with
the structural complexity of life-story accounts.
The five hypotheses are tested in two parallel studies. In the first
study, 125 college students provide detailed narrative accounts of ten
significant moments or scenes in their life stories, such as lifenarrative
high points, low points, turning points, important childhood
scenes, and scenes of moral decision making. The accounts are
scored for indices of emotional tone, thematic lines, and narrative
complexity, and these scores are correlated with self-report Big Five
traits. The second study follows a similar procedure with a sample of
51 adults, who provide comparably detailed accounts of eight
significant life-narrative scenes.
Description
Keywords
Traits and Stories, Links, Dispositional, Narrative, Personality