The Narrative Self in Context: An Examination of Narrative Identity within Interpersonal Contexts and Relational Domains

Narrative identity is an internal story about the self, capturing the personal past, present, and anticipated future. In this dissertation, I applied a contextualized approach to the study of narrative identity. Across four studies, I examined narrative identity via a focus on three interpersonal contexts and relational domains—a social setting (e.g., interpersonal perceptions; Study 1), the romantic domain broadly (Studies 2 and 4), and a particular event from within the romantic domain (Study 3). In Study 1, I investigated the extent to which individuals are aware of, and accurately portray, their close social contacts’ significant autobiographical stories. In Study 2, I assessed narrative coherence, a fundamental feature of narrative identity, within self-definitional love life narratives, and explored this construct in relation to self-reports of romantic attachment tendencies. In Study 3, I further contextualized narrative identity by examining narratives of romantic breakups in relation to these same romantic attachment tendencies. In Studies 1-3, distinct coding paradigms were used to operationalize narrative identity. In Study 4, I conducted an expansion and reanalysis of the data presented in Study 2c, by applying the three narrative identity coding paradigms used in Studies 1-3 to these data and explored these distinct features in relation to psychological adjustment. Together, this dissertation further extends the contextualized study of narrative identity

The Narrative Self in Context: An Examination of Narrative Identity within Interpersonal Contexts and Relational Domains

Narrative identity is an internal story about the self, capturing the personal past, present, and anticipated future. In this dissertation, I applied a contextualized approach to the study of narrative identity. Across four studies, I examined narrative identity via a focus on three interpersonal contexts and relational domains—a social setting (e.g., interpersonal perceptions; Study 1), the romantic domain broadly (Studies 2 and 4), and a particular event from within the romantic domain (Study 3). In Study 1, I investigated the extent to which individuals are aware of, and accurately portray, their close social contacts’ significant autobiographical stories. In Study 2, I assessed narrative coherence, a fundamental feature of narrative identity, within self-definitional love life narratives, and explored this construct in relation to self-reports of romantic attachment tendencies. In Study 3, I further contextualized narrative identity by examining narratives of romantic breakups in relation to these same romantic attachment tendencies. In Studies 1-3, distinct coding paradigms were used to operationalize narrative identity. In Study 4, I conducted an expansion and reanalysis of the data presented in Study 2c, by applying the three narrative identity coding paradigms used in Studies 1-3 to these data and explored these distinct features in relation to psychological adjustment. Together, this dissertation further extends the contextualized study of narrative identity

Early Memories Study

A memory and narrative identity project aimed at exploring content in earliest memories of ethnicity and how they relate to exploration, commitment, and ideology

UCPC 2016

The University of California Personality Conference (UCPC) is a bi-annual conference designed to bring together faculty and graduate students across the UC system to discuss and present topics relating to personality psychology