 5. Narrative Identity and the Life Story 125
the remembered past and imagined future 
into a coherent story. Rather than relying 
on hypothesis testing and abstract thought, 
adolescents create narrative identity through 
autobiographical reasoning. Habermas and 
Bluck described a number different forms of 
such reasoning (also see Habermas & de Sil -
viera, 2008), but they all involve the person’s 
derivation of semantic, self-  relevant mean -
ing from specific episodic events.
The second landmark paper (McLean et 
al., 2007) shifted attention from the cogni -
tive prerequisites to the interpersonal and 
social aspects of narrative identity devel -
opment. Following Erikson (1963), McAd -
ams (1985) highlighted the importance of 
peer groups and societal expectations in the 
formulation of narrative identity in adoles -
cence and young adulthood. McLean et al. 
(2007) dug deeper into the process to show 
how young people tell stories about events 
in their lives to others, then use feedback 
they receive from those tellings to shape a 
narrative understanding of self. Selves cre -
ate stories, which in turn create new selves. 
Narrative identity emerges gradually, in fits 
and starts, through daily conversations and 
social interactions, introspection, decisions 
young people make regarding work and love, 
and normative and serendipitous passages in 
life, for example, when a student meets with 
a vocational counselor to discuss “What do 
I want to do with my life?” or young couples 
sit down to write their wedding vows.
Whereas adolescents and young adults 
employ autobiographical reasoning to cre -
ate self-  stories, which they then “try out” 
on their friends and family, revising their 
stories as they go along, the process of de -
veloping an integrative narrative identity un -
folds within the broader context of culture . 
Drawing on Giddens (1991) and other socio -
logical conceptions, McAdams (1996) origi -
nally argued that narrative identity becomes 
an especially salient psychological problem 
under the aegis of cultural modernity . Priz -
ing individualism and the articulation of 
unique selves, modern cultures encourage 
their constituencies to craft self-  defining life 
narratives that provide dynamic identity an -
swers in an ambiguous and ever-  changing 
world (Taylor, 1989). In a seminal contri -
bution that drew widely from the social sci -
ences, history, and the humanities, Ham -mack (2008) elaborated on this idea to show 
how many different cultures prescribe their 
own master narratives  regarding how a per -
son should live a good life. Whereas master 
narratives provide a wellspring of culturally 
approved and morally infused metaphors, 
images, and plots to be appropriated for the 
construction of individual life stories, they 
also exert a hegemonic influence. Culture 
affords, but it also constrains. Hammack 
(2008) highlighted the tension that develops 
between the authorial self on the one hand 
and the institutions and ideologies that con -
vey cultural meanings on the other, a ten -
sion that may often indicate an adversarial 
relationship between self and society in the 
construction of narrative identity.
The fourth landmark paper showed that 
regardless of how narrative identity devel -
ops, the variations in its expression that 
may be observed and quantified by person -
ality scientists demonstrate strong predic -
tive power (Adler et al., 2016). In order to 
demonstrate that individual differences in 
narrative identity might eventually prove to 
be useful as personality variables, McAd -
ams (1985) originally documented signifi -
cant empirical associations between themes 
of agency and communion in life stories on 
the one hand and independently assessed 
dimensions of power and intimacy motiva -
tion, respectively, on the other. Many stud -
ies have also shown that certain individual 
differences in narrative identity (e.g., themes 
of redemption and agency) are positively as -
sociated with independent assessments of 
psychological well-being (e.g., Adler et al., 
2015; McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, 
& Bowman, 2001). But such demonstra -
tions do not directly test the extent to which 
narrative identity adds anything useful with 
respect to predictive power beyond well- 
established personality constructs such as 
traits and motives. Reviewing the recent em -
pirical literature, Adler et al. (2016) made a 
very strong case for the incremental valid -
ity of narrative identity in the prediction of 
well-being. Even after accounting for the ef -
fects of dispositional personality traits such 
as extraversion and neuroticism, features 
of narrative identity account for additional 
increments of variance in self-  reported psy -
chological well-being, life satisfaction, de -
pression, and related constructs.