This is your Life... and How you Tell it

The way people talk about their pasts reveals a lot about how they approach and write the future

For more than a century, researchers have been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, the sweetness and neuroses that make the sluggishness and sensitivity that make Andrew Andrew. They have largely ignored the first-person explanation -- the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why.

Stories are stories, after all. The attractive stranger at the airport bar hears one version, the parole officer another, and the PTA board gets something entirely different. Moreover, the tone, the lessons, even the facts in a life story can all shift in the changing light of a person's mood.

"When we first started studying life stories, people thought it was just idle curiosity stories, isn't that cool?" said Dan P McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and author of the 2006 book, The Redemptive Self. "Well, we find that these narratives guide behaviour in every moment, and frame not only how we see the past but how we see ourselves in the future."

Researchers have found that the human brain has a natural affinity for narrative construction. People tend to remember facts more accurately if they encounter them in a story rather than in a list, studies find; and they rate legal arguments as more convincing when built into narrative tales rather than on legal precedent.

During a standard life-story interview, people describe phases of their lives as if they were outlining chapters, from the sandlot years through adolescence and middle age. They also describe several crucial scenes in detail, including high points (the graduation speech, complete with verbal drum roll); low points (the college nervous breakdown); and turning points. The entire two-hour session is recorded and transcribed.

In analysing the texts, the researchers found strong correlations between the content of people's current lives and the stories they tell. Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail. The pride of college graduation is spoiled when a friend makes a cutting remark. The wedding party was wonderful until the best man collapsed from drink. A note of disappointment seems to close each narrative phrase.

By contrast, so-called generative adults -- those who score highly on tests measuring civic-mindedness -- tend to see many of the events in their life in the reverse order, as linked by themes of redemption. They flunked sixth grade but met a wonderful counsellor and made honour roll in seventh. They were laid low by divorce, only to meet a wonderful new partner. Often, too, they say they felt singled out from very early in life -- protected, even as others nearby suffered.

In broad outline, the researchers report, such tales express distinctly American cultural narratives, of emancipation or atonement, of Horatio Alger advancement, of epiphany and second chances. Depending on the person, the story itself might be nuanced or simplistic, powerfully dramatic or cloyingly pious. But the point is that the narrative themes are, as much as any other trait, driving factors in people's behaviour.