Dan P. McAdams and Kate C. McLean (2013), “Narrative Identity”, Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(3):233–238 — DOI-10.1177/0963721413475622
On the citation. The brief’s details are right: authors, title, journal, volume 22, issue 3, 2013.
Key takeaways
Registered from the abstract on Crossref, not a reading.
- The abstract’s definition: narrative identity is “a person’s internalized and evolving life story, integrating the reconstructed past and imagined future to provide life with some degree of unity and purpose”.
- The abstract reports that research on adaptation shows “narrators who find redemptive meanings in suffering and adversity, and who construct life stories that feature themes of personal agency and exploration, tend to enjoy higher levels of mental health, well-being, and maturity”.
- On development, it says that research has tracked narrative identity “from its origins in conversations between parents and their young children to the articulation of sophisticated meaning-making strategies” in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
- It names two tasks for the field: to “disentangle causal relations between features of life stories and positive psychological adaptation”, and to explore “the role of broad cultural contexts”.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, as the canonical short review of
narrative identity in personality psychology. It is the source most often
cited for the definition. Deferred because it was not read. McAdams’s 2019
essay (LIT-595) is the read substitute. It extends this article: it
quotes the definition and cites the article for the claim that narrative
identity gives a life “unity and purpose”. It covers the same ground,
adaptation and development, and adds evolution and culture.
The abstract’s first open task, the causal direction between story and well-being, is the gap the record would need closed before it could promote THEORY-060, which holds that life stories shape well-being. See the bearing section of NOTE-470.
No anthology topic holds it, and it carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.