Normative Life and Identity

 

The Normative and the Personal Life: Individual Differences in Life Scripts and Life Story Events among U.S.A. and Danish Undergraduates - David C. Rubin, Dorthe Berntsen, and Michael Hutson

In a (post)modern age with changing life conditions, unstable values, and constant demands of flexibility, life stories are often depicted as a process through which the individual through the construal of personal meaning with very few stable cultural norms for guidance (e.g., Giddens, 1991). However, life stories are not created in isolation based simply on personal experience. As pointed out by several theorists, life stories are guided by shared cultural norms for their content and organization. For example, Habermas and Bluck (2000) identify four different types of life story coherence, of which cultural coherence - reflecting a cultural concept of biography - is one. McAdams (2001) states that life stories "live in cultures. They are born, they grow, they proliferate, and they eventually die according to the norms, rules and traditions that prevail in a given society" (p. 114). Consistent with this view, we have demonstrated that the idea of a normative biography still exists in most people's mind - even though their own lives may deviate from it. We have introduced the notion of the cultural life script, which refers to measurable culturally shared expectations about the order and timing of events in a prototypical life course (Berntsen & Rubin, 2002, 2004; Rubin & Berntsen, 2003). We have provided systematic empirical evidence for the existence of life scripts as shared cognitive structures within a culture and we have found a high correlation between the life course pattern predicted by life scripts and the distribution of autobiographical memories retrieved in response to requests for emotionally charged autobiographical memories (Rubin & Berntsen, 2003; Berntsen & Rubin, 2004).

Narrative and the Cultural Psychology of Identity

These are the stories of the Israelis and the Palestinians - historical narratives of collective struggle characterized by formidable polarization (Hammack, 2006) and negative interdependence (Kelman, 1999). They are the stories of threatened identities and of perceptible existential insecurity (Pettigrew, 2003). If the maintenance of antagonism between groups requires the internalization of such narratives (Bar-Tal & Salomon, 2006; Rouhana & Bar-Tal 1998; Salomon, 2004; Salomon & Nevo, 2001), what is the process by which the discourse of a culture or nation is reproduced through individual personality and social development?

The purpose of this article is to articulate an integrative perspective on culture and identity for personality and social psychologists interested in processes of social reproduction and social change. More precisely, I argue that a cultural psychology approach that privileges narrative helps to integrate a number of social science perspectives on the relationship between culture and the individual. A focus on individual processes of engagement with the social environment reflects both early traditions in personality and social psychology (e.g., Allport, 1937; Murray, 1938) and more recent efforts to restore an emphasis on idiographic methods (e.g., Gjerde, 2994; Gregg, 2007; Schachter, 2004, 2005). What is particularly unique about the perspective advanced in this article is its attempt to integrate these perspectives, connect them to the historical tradition of personality and social psychology, and suggest a novel theoretical and methodological perspective in the process.

Why Identity?

(...) First, the process of identity development represents the link between self and society. This claim is by no means novel. It was prominently advanced by Erik Erikson in a number of his theoretical writings (e.g., Erikson, 1958, 1959, 1963. 1968). It is through the individual identity formation process that the narratives of a given social order, which serve the interests of those in power (cf. Foucault, 1972, 1978; Gramsci, 1971), are either reproduced or repudiated. The interrogation of identity provides direct access to the process of social change.

If identity as a construct links the individual to an ongoing social process, how do social scientists gain access to this process? The second general argument about identity advanced in this article is that the relationships between a "master" narrative and a personal narrative of identity provides direct access to the process of social reproduction and change. The concept of a master narrative (see Bamberg, 2004; Thorne, 2004; Thorne & McLean, 2003) is consistent with notions of a "dominant discourse" that social theorists have long argued is confronted by individuals as they make meaning of their cultural surrounds (e.g., Foucault, 1978). (...)

The example of Israelis and Palestinians leads to the third argument about identity that is developed in this article. The experience of identity threat, or of existential insecurity in matters of identity, or of existential insecurity in matters of identity, most certainly influences the process of social regeneration (see Giddens, 1991; Kinnvall, 2004; Pettigrew, 2003). Concern over the possible loss of collective identity, which is common among many groups who are marginalized or disempowered within a particular social structure, likely motivates a strong connection between master narratives and personal narratives of identity.