The current study explored the link between psychological well-being (PWB; self-acceptance, personal growth, and purpose in life) and affective themes, including redemption (positive endings for negative events), contamination (negative endings for positive events), and positive and negative affect (no change in affect) in the life stories of Caribbean adults ranging in age from 19 to 78 (N = 105). How often the memory narrative was rehearsed, and whether or not the theme emerged after being cued in content-coded life story low, high, and turning point scenes were also considered. Affective theme alone did not predict PWB; however, when considering age, rehearsal, and cue, redemption and positive affect predicted personal growth. More work should cue meaning-making in specific ways for different age groups in order to understand why there were no associations for middle-aged adults. Efforts should also be made to understand cross-cultural differences in life stories and PWB.
AdlerJ. M.Lodi-SmithJ.PhilippeF. L.HouleI. (2016). The incremental validity of narrative identity in predicting well-being: A review of the field and recommendations for the future. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(2), 142–175. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315585068
2.
AleaN. (2018). Does the life story interview make us make sense? Spontaneous and cued redemption and contamination in life story scenes. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 37(3), 271–292. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276236617733837
3.
AleaN.AliS.AliW. A.(2021)Ethnic group differences in autobiographical memory characteristics: Values as a mediator or moderator?Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition,10(1), 74–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.09.005
4.
AleaN.BluckS. (2013). When does meaning making predict subjective well-being? Examining young and older adults across two cultures. Memory (Hove, England), 21(1), 44–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2012.704927
5.
AleaN.BluckS.AliS. (2015). Function in context: Why American and Trinidadian young and older adults remember the personal past. Memory (Hove, England), 23(1), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2014.929704
6.
AleaN.BluckS.SemegonA. B. (2004). Young and older adults’ expression of emotional experience: Do autobiographical narratives tell a different story?Journal of Adult Development, 11(4), 235–250. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JADE.0000044527.52470.5d
7.
AleaN.WangQ. (2015). Going global: The functions of autobiographical memory in cultural context. Memory (Hove, England), 23(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2014.972416
8.
BaddeleyJ. L.SingerJ. A. (2008). Telling losses: Personality correlates and functions of bereavement narratives. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(2), 421–438. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.07.006
9.
BluckS.AleaN. (2011). Crafting the TALE: Construction of a measure to assess the functions of autobiographical remembering. Memory (Hove, England), 19(5), 470–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2011.590500
10.
BuhlerJ. L.WeidmannR.NikitinJ.GrobA. (2019). A closer look at life goals across adulthood. European Journal of Personality, 33(3), 359–383. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2194
11.
ConwayM. A.Pleydell-PearceC. W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107(2), 261–288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.107.2.261
12.
CoxK. S.HanekK. J.CassarioA. L. (2017). Redemption in a single low point story longitudinally predicts well-being: The incremental validity of life story elements. Journal of Personality, 87(5), 1009–1024. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12452
13.
DanckertS. L.CraikF. I. M. (2013). Does aging affect recall more than recognition memory?Psychology and Aging, 28(4), 902–909. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033263
14.
DunlopW.WilkinsonD.HarakeN.GrahamL.LeeD. (2020). The redemption and contamination research form: Exploring relations with narrative identity, personality traits, response styles, and life satisfaction. Memory, 28(10), 1219–1230. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2020.1828926
15.
GarciaF. E.CovaF.RinconP.VasquezC. (2015). Trauma of growth after a natural disaster? The mediating role of rumination processes. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 6(1), 26557. https://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v6.26557
16.
GrahamK. L.Rahm-KniggeR. L.ConnerB. T. (2020). Profiling reminiscers: Using a self-report measure of frequency and functions of reminiscence to identify individual patterns of retrieval. Journal of Adult Development, 27(3), 170–180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-019-09339-8
17.
GrossbaumM. F.BatesG. W. (2002). Correlates of psychological well-being at midlife: The role of generativity, agency and communion, and narrative themes. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26(2), 120–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/01650250042000654
18.
HarringtonR.LoffredoD. (2010). Insight, rumination, and self-reflection as predictors of well-being. The Journal of Psychology, 145(1), 39–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2010.528072
19.
HeinrichJ.StevenH.NorenzayanJ. (2010). Beyond WEIRD: Towards a broad-based behavioral science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 111–135. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X10000725
20.
HessT. (2014). Selective engagement of cognitive resources: Motivational influences on older adults’ cognitive functioning. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(4), 388–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614527465
21.
International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook. (2010). World economic and financial surveys: Rebalancing growth. International Monetary Fund.
22.
KoppelJ.BernstenD. (2015). The peaks of life: The differential temporal locations of the reminiscence bump across disparate cueing methods. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 4(1), 66–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2014.11.004
23.
LilgendahlJ. P.McAdamsD. P. (2011). Constructing stories of self-growth: How individual differences in patterns of autobiographical reasoning relate to well-being in midlife. Journal of Personality, 79(2), 391–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00688.x
24.
MaddoxG. L. (1962). Some correlates of differences in self-assessment of health status among the elderly. Journal of Gerontology, 17(2), 180–185. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronj/17.2.180
25.
McAdamsD. P. (1999). Coding system for redemption sequences. The foley center for the study of lives. Northwestern University,https://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/foley/instruments/redemption/
26.
McAdamsD. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176933.001.0001
27.
McAdamsD. P. (2008). The life story interview. The foley center for the study of lives. Northwestern University. https://www.sesp.northwes- tern.edu/foley/instruments/interview/
McAdamsD. P.ReynoldsJ.LewisM.PattenA. H.BowmanP. J. (2001). When bad things turn good and good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and in students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(4), 474–485. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201274008
30.
McLeanK. C. (2008). Stories of the young and the old: Personal continuity and narrative identity. Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 254–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.44.1.254
31.
McLeanK. C.LilgendahlJ. (2008). Why recall our highs and lows: Relations between memory functions, age, and well-being. Memory (Hove, England), 16(7), 751–762. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210802215385
32.
NeisserU. (1986). Nested structure in autobiographical memory. In RubinD. C. (Ed.), Autobiographical Memory (pp. 71–81). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558313.009
33.
PallayS. R. (2017). Cracking the fortress: Can we really decolonize psychology?South African Journal of Psychology, 47(2), 135–140. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081246317698059
34.
ReedA. E.ChanL.MikelsJ. A. (2014). Meta-analysis of the age-related positivity effect: Age differences in preferences for positive over negative information. Psychology and Aging, 29(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035194
35.
RicarteJ.RosL.SerranoJ. P.Martinez-LorcaM.LatorreJ. M. (2016). Age differences in rumination and autobiographical retrieval. Aging & Mental Health, 20(10), 1063–1069. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2015.1060944
36.
RitchieT. D.SkowronskiJ. J.WoodS. E. (2006). Event self-importance, event rehearsal, and the fading affect bias in autobiographical memory. Self and Identity, 5(2), 172–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860600591222
37.
RyffC. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069–1081. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069
ShallcrossA. J.FordB. Q.FloerkeV. A.MaussI. B. (2013). Getting better with age: The relationship between age, acceptance, and negative affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 734–749. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031180
40.
SiedleckiK. L.HicksS.KornhauserZ. G. C. (2015). Examining the positivity effect in autobiographical memory across adulthood. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 80(3), 213–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091415015590311
41.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName = Trinidad and Tobago.
42.
WebsterJ. D. (1994). Predictors of reminiscence: A lifespan perspective. Canadian Journal on Aging/La Revue canadienne du vieillissement, 13(1), 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0714980800006565
43.
WebsterJ. D.GouldO. (2007). Reminiscence and vivid personal memories across adulthood. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 64(2), 149–170. https://doi.org/10.2190/Q8V4-X5H0-6457-5442
44.
WestonS. J.CoxK. S.CondonD. M.JacksonJ. J. (2016). A comparison of human narrative coding of redemption and automated linguistic analysis for understanding life stories. Journal of Personality, 84(5), 594–606. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12183
45.
World Health Statistics. (2011). World health organization. World Health Library Catalogue-in-Publication Data.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
