Article The Autobiographical Author Through Time: Examining the Degree of Stability and Change in Redemptive and Contaminated Personal Narratives William L. Dunlop 1 , Jen Guo 2 , and Dan P. McAdams 2 Abstract We examined continuity and change in the tendencies to construct a life story (i.e., narrative identity) that was redemptive or contaminated in nature. In Study 1, college freshmen and seniors wrote accounts of several autobiographical key scenes pertinent to narrative identity twice over a 3-year period. In Study 2, midlife adults provided, via a semistructured interview, key scenes twice over a 5-year period and also indicated whether their employment status had changed between assessments. Across studies, the rank-order consistency of redemptive and contaminated stories was moderate and low to moderate, respectively. In Study 1, the frequency of redemptive and contaminated stories increased throughout college. Furthermore, the frequency of contaminated stories decreased following graduation. In Study 2, changes in employment status corresponded with reduced redemptive imagery. These results suggest a possible narrative acculturation of young adults as well as a correspondence between changes in life circumstances and narrative identity. Keywords redemptive sequence, contaminated sequences, narrative identity, longitudinal, personality development In late adolescence, individuals begin to organize their auto- biographical experiences into broader life stories or narrative identities (Singer, 2004). Through these internalized stories, people function like authors, creating a story about their past that provides them with a sense of unity and purpose (Mc- Adams, 1995, 2013). Researchers interested in assessing nar- rative identity commonly prompt participants for several key autobiographical scenes, such as life high points and low points (McAdams, 2008). These scenes are then coded for various aspects, or themes, including affective tone and com- plexity. In addition to providing information regarding the narrator’s personality (McAdams, 1995), interindividual dif- ferences in the thematic content of these key scenes have been associated with a host of outcome variables (Adler, Lodi- Smith, Phillippe, & Houle, 2015; Dunlop & Tracy, 2013a). Narrative identity situates the storyteller in time. Aligning with this temporal emphasis, a considerable amount of atten- tion has been allotted to the longitudinal study of this construct (e.g., Habermas & de Silviera, 2008; McAdams et al., 2006). Previous research in this area has established the fact that the thematic content of narrative identity tends to be relatively con- sistent over time. For example, McAdams et al. (2006) observed that, over a 3-year period, the emotional tone and complexity of young adults’ key autobiographical scenes exhibited a moderate degree of rank-order consistency (with rs ranging between .53 and .60). This does not, however, pre- clude the possibility that certain factors may impact the devel- opment of narrative identity or that certain narrative themes may be sensitive to these factors. McLean, Pasupathi, and Pals (2007) recognized that narra- tive identity is strongly influenced by the social and cultural agents in one’s life. Over time, these agents work, implicitly and explicitly, to align narrators’ key scenes with broader socially vetted norms or master narratives (Dunlop & Tracy, 2013a; Hammack, 2011). This suggests that, in late adoles- cence/early adulthood (i.e., the period in the life span when individuals begin to construct a narrative identity; McAdams, 1995), prevalence of themes reflecting these master narratives may increase. A second discussion point pertains to the fact that narrative identity aims to keep pace with the many changes occurring in life (Dunlop, 2015). It follows that the occurrence of certain 1 University of California–Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA 2 Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA Corresponding Author: William L. Dunlop, Department of Psychology, University of California– Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA. Email: wdunlop@ucr.edu Social Psychological and Personality Science 2016, Vol. 7(5) 428-436 ª The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1948550616644654 spps.sagepub.com at NORTHWESTERN UNIV LIBRARY on May 17, 2016 spp.sagepub.com Downloaded from