qualitatively assessing your narrative identity and qualitatively assessing your personality using self report personality assessment
The Psychological Self as Actor, Agent,
and Author
Dan P. McAdams
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Abstract
The psychological self may be construed as a reflexive arrangement of the subjective “I” and the constructed “Me,”
evolving and expanding over the human life course. The psychological self begins life as a social actor, construed
in terms of performance traits and social roles. By the end of childhood, the self has become a motivated agent,
too, as personal goals, motives, values, and envisioned projects for the future become central features of how the I
conceives of the Me. A third layer of selfhood begins to form in the adolescent and emerging adulthood years, when
the self as autobiographical author aims to construct a story of the Me, to provide adult life with broad purpose and a
dynamic sense of temporal continuity. An integrative theory that envisions the psychological self as a developing I–Me
configuration of actor, agent, and author helps to synthesize a wide range of conceptions and findings on the self from
social, personality, cognitive, cultural, and developmental psychology and from sociology and other social sciences.
The actor–agent–author framework also sheds new light on studies of self-regulation, self-esteem, self-continuity, and
the relationship between self and culture.
Keywords
self, human development, narrative identity, autobiographical memory
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Actor, Agent, and Author 273
to recollect a single thing he had ever done or experienced
from any period in his life” (Klein & Lax, 2010, p.
927). In conceptual priming studies of people with normal
memory abilities, moreover, researchers consistently
have found that rating oneself on summary traits does
not typically activate recall of behavioral episodes indicative
of the trait (Klein & Loftus, 1993). Whereas people
may initially derive information about themselves from
concrete personal experiences, the information is ultimately
summarized into general semantic categories, like
trait labels. Retrieving the semantic, trait-based information,
therefore, may not typically require accessing the
episodic, autobiographical store. I may, therefore, know
that I am an extravert, but I do not need to recall any
particular episodes of extraverted behavior in my life to
know that I am right.
If semantic and episodic features of self-understanding
are functionally independent, then it follows that a person
may lay claim to a “trait self” and a separate-butequal
“story self.” In terms made famous by William
James (1892/1963), the “I” may reflexively construe the
“Me” as both (a) a collection of abstract traits and (b) an
anthology of personal episodes or stories about my life.
Perhaps surprisingly, the traits and the stories may have
little to do with each other. All told, what is the different
psychological material contained in the self? Considering
the self as a reflexive arrangement of the observing I and
the to-be-observed Me (Harre, 1998; James, 1892/1963;
Taylor, 1989), what does the I see when it looks on the
Me? The case of W. J. and related research on semantic
and episodic features of self suggest that the I sees and
knows at least two very different psychological things
about the Me: traits and stories. What else might the I
see? And why?
This article asserts that the self contains at least three
different kinds of psychological material or content, each
kind specifying what the I may see and know when it
reflexively encounters the Me. Building on a tripartite
framework for the study of human personality (McAdams
& Olson, 2010; McAdams & Pals, 2006), the theory contends
that human selves understand themselves from
three different psychological standpoints: as actors,
agents, and authors. Each of the three, furthermore, corresponds
to three developmental layers of psychological
selfhood, emerging at different points in ontogeny and
following their own respective developmental trajectories
over the human life course.
The first layer corresponds to the self as social actor,
encompassing semantic representations of traits, social
roles, and other features of self that result in and from
repeated performances on the social stage of life. Layered
over the self as actor is the self as motivated agent, specifying
personal goals, motives, values, hopes and fears,
and other features that involve the important decisions
and choices that a person makes regarding exploration
and commitment to life projects. Selves first emerge as
social actors, but by the time human beings reach middle
or late childhood, motivated agents have also entered the
scene. Layered over both the social actor and the motivated
agent is the autobiographical author, the self-asstoryteller
who ultimately aims to burnish and synthesize
episodic information about the self into a coherent and
integrative life story. Beginning in the emerging adulthood
years (Arnett, 2000), the autobiographical author
works to formulate a meaningful narrative for life, integrating
the reconstructed episodic past and the imagined
episodic future in such a way as to explain, for the self
and for others, why the actor does what it does, why the
agent wants what it wants, and who the self was, is, and
will be as a developing person in time (McAdams & Cox,
2010).
Table 1 lays out the main ideas of the proposed theory
and anticipates this article’s central argument. For each of
the three layers of the psychological self, Table 1 spells
Table 1. Features of the Psychological Self
The self as . . .
Feature Actor Agent Author
The self’s contents Social roles, skills, traits;
social reputation
Personal goals, plans,
values, hopes and fears
Life narrative
Mechanisms of selfdefinition
Self-attribution and
categorization, built on
observation of social
performances
Exploration of and
commitment to life
projects; planning;
prioritizing investments
for future
Autobiographical reasoning;
construction of an
integrative life story
Temporal emphasis Present Present and future Past, present, and future
Psychosocial problem Self-regulation Self-esteem Self-continuity
Developmental
emergence
Age 2–3: early childhood Age 7–9: mid- to late
childhood
Age 15–25: adolescence and
emerging adulthood
Culture provides . . . Performance norms,
display rules; behavioral
constraints
Scripts for goal content,
timing, and goal
pursuit/disengagement;
motivational constraints
A menu of images,
metaphors, and stories for
life; narrative constraints
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274 McAdams
out (a) the contents of the self (what the I sees when it
encounters the Me), (b) mechanisms of self-definition,
(c) temporal emphasis, (d) the self’s central psychosocial
problem or challenge, (e) the point in development when
the corresponding layer of selfhood begins to emerge,
and (f) the resources and constraints that culture provides
for self-development.
The self begins life as a social actor, struggling to regulate
itself (Gailliot, Mead, & Baumeister, 2008) so as to
enact effective performances in the here and now, on the
social stage of human life (Goffman, 1959). The self never
forgets that it is a social actor, but as the person moves
into middle childhood, the I gradually perceives the
Me to be a motivated agent, too, forward looking and
future oriented, defined largely by personal goals, values,
and other anticipated end states. Successful goal pursuit
goes a long way in determining self-esteem, as James
(1892/1963) originally argued. In late adolescence and
adulthood, an autobiographical author joins the agent
and actor, as the I now aims to create a story about the
Me, in order to integrate the personal past, present, and
future (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1985). The
central problem becomes self-continuity—how did the
self of yesterday become the self of today, and how will
that all lead to the anticipated self of tomorrow (Addis &
Tippett, 2008)?
As much as anything else, it is the problem of selfcontinuity—
how the I creates a dynamic sense of the Me
as retaining its sameness or identity over time, even as the
self and the world change—that renders certain forms of
amnesia, like that described in Klein et al. (1996), so psychologically
intriguing and disturbing. When 18-year-old
W. J. lost much of her episodic memory after an accident,
she experienced a profound decrement in self-continuity.
As indicated by her scores on a self-report trait scale, she
still knew what kind of a social actor she was. But she
ceased to be an author of her life. For W. J., the I retained
access to the semantic trait attributions that characterized,
in broad terms, the record of her performances on the
social stage of life. But W. J. temporarily lost access to the
episodic material out of which the authorial I creates a
story about and within the Me. A layer of selfhood—the
self as author—was temporarily stripped away.
The three guises of selfhood described herein—the
self as actor, agent, and author—are not reified and
autonomous things. Nor are they distinct roles that a person
might play at any given point in time. It is not the
case, for example, that my social actor self is activated
when I am having coffee with my friends in the afternoon
and that my motivated agent self then supplants the
actor later in the day, when I sit down to make plans for
tomorrow. Contra certain contemporary trends in psychological
science (e.g., McConnell, 2011), the theory
described herein does not view selves to be autonomous
mental structures that can be readily switched on
and off—activated and deactivated—by environmental
prompts and conditions. In the same sense that a person
endowed with self-consciousness is always both I and
Me, so, too, a psychologically fully formed adult exists at
any given time and place as an actor, an agent, and an
author. The theory specifies three different ways, then,
that the I reflexively encounters the Me, whenever and
however such reflexive activity occurs.
When I look on myself, when I think about myself,
when I consider the possibility of psychologically working
on my self, when I aim to control, regulate, evaluate,
discover, fulfill, improve, or monitor my self, what do I
focus on? I focus on my self as a social actor, a motivated
agent, or an autobiographical author or perhaps some
combination of the three. When the I self-consciously
and reflexively apprehends and works on the Me, it does
so from three different functional standpoints—as an
actor who performs in the here and now on a social
stage, as an agent who sets forth a motivated agenda for
the future, and as an author who tries to make sense of it
all—past, present, and future—through narrative.
The Social Actor: Self-Ascribed Traits
and Social Roles
Dramaturgical and symbolic-interactionist theories in
sociology (e.g., Mead, 1934) and social psychology have
traditionally underscored the performative features of
human social behavior, or what Goffman (1959) famously
called “the presentation of self in everyday life.” Taking
Shakespeare’s words more seriously, perhaps, than any
other social scientist has ever taken them, Goffman (1959)
asserted that all the world is, indeed, a stage and all the
men and women are like actors and actresses upon it.
Social actors present themselves to each other through
performances, in which people play roles, follow scripts,
enact routines, and manage the audience’s impressions.
What matters for social actors is the effectiveness of the
performance—how well do they play the role, how convincing
is their enactment of the part, and how skillful
are they at managing the impressions of others on stage?
Cognitively gifted and exquisitely social, human beings
evolved to live as social actors in small tribes, bands, and
other complex, hierarchical groups (Wilson, 2012).
Continuously striving for social acceptance (to get along)
and social status (to get ahead), actors form alliances and
shifting coalitions with each other, jockey for position in
different social arenas, and work the group through
cooperation, competition, persuasion, guile, deception,
reputation, and, when other strategies seem wanting,
brute force (Hogan, 1982). Not only do human beings,
therefore, feel strong needs to belong to groups, but they
have evolved adaptive mechanisms and systems to enact,
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Actor, Agent, and Author 275
monitor, develop, and refine the behaviors they exhibit in
groups, and (importantly) to process the feedback they
receive from other group members regarding their social
performances. For social animals, the self is initially
defined through social behavior in the group, and it
flourishes, or withers, as a function of the quality of social
performance:
First we discover what society says we are; then we
build our identity on performance in that part. If we
uphold our part in the performance, we are
rewarded with social affirmation of our identity. It is
hardly an exaggeration, then, to say that we are
created in the performance. If we bungle the
performance, show that we do not merit the part,
we are destroyed—not figuratively but literally
(Becker, 1971, p. 99).
A couple of years before they become consciously
aware of themselves as actors on the social stage of life,
human newborns enter the world ready, in a rudimentary
sense, for social performance. Even before the self
emerges, characteristic styles of social performance begin
to reveal themselves as infants express the inborn patterns
of temperament that they (unwittingly) bring to the
stage. Temperament refers to broad and basic differences
in behavioral style, emotional tone, and emotion regulation
that show up very early in life, assumed as they are
to be largely a product of genetic endowment. The first
glimmerings of basic differences in the ways human
actors characteristically play their roles in social life,
therefore, can be observed in the first few months of life.
Parents, older siblings, doctors, researchers, and other
members of the audience quickly observe how some
actors seem generally cheerful and smiley; others, distressed,
recurrently fearful, or slow to warm up. These
observers readily note that whereas some social actors
consistently approach opportunities for social reward,
others show marked behavioral inhibition or extreme
wariness in the presence of novelty (Caspi, Roberts, &
Shiner, 2005). And infants, as social actors, respond to the
audience’s feedback. Behaviors that are reinforced will
be repeated down the road; those that are punished or
ignored may decrease or even extinguish.
By the time children become aware of themselves as
social actors, therefore, they have already launched an
acting career, the contours of which are shaped by temperament
and early social interactions. Numerous studies
have shown that human infants begin to recognize themselves
in mirrors and through recording devices (e.g.,
video) around 18 months of age (Rochat, 2003). They
literally see themselves acting and recognize their actions
as their own. It is also around this time that children typically
begin to say self-referential words, such as “me” and
“mine,” and begin to express certain kinds of self-referential
emotions, such as pride and embarrassment (Tangney,
Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). To feel pride or shame in
response to one’s own actions presupposes a sense of
the self as an actor whose performances are viewed and
evaluated by others in the environment. The I emerges as
a self-conscious actor, therefore, shortly before or around
the second birthday. Reflexively, an impression or image
of the Me begins to take form as the child begins to take
note of his or her own social actions and other actors’
reactions to those actions.
When asked to describe herself, 4-year-old Sara may
tell you right off the bat that she lives in a white house,
she has green eyes and brown hair, she runs real fast, she
likes to eat macaroni and cheese, and she is a good girl
and always “nice.” By the time she is 10, she may tell you
that she is outgoing, spontaneous, a very good listener,
terrible at math, and happy with her girlfriends but shy
around boys (Harter, 2006). For younger children, the I
defines the actor Me the way a radical behaviorist or
demographer might describe social action—in terms of
observable performance and concrete situational cues
(Harter, 2006). Research shows that by age 10, the I has
become more like a trait psychologist, attributing to the
Me a range of broad dispositional tendencies that summarize
general trends in social behavior, aggregated
across social performances and over time (Harter, 2006).
Over the course of childhood and into adolescence,
the I’s characteristic manner of describing the Me as a
social actor comes to rely more and more on the discourse
of dispositional traits. Trait labels capture general
individual differences between social actors with respect
to their characteristic thoughts, feelings, and actions. As
Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory suggests, actors
repeatedly observe their own particular performances
and the performances of other actors, and they eventually
come to define themselves in terms of these observations.
Actors eventually categorize themselves in terms of
general skills and trait tendencies that characterize their
own performances as they have observed them over time
and as they have monitored feedback obtained from
other observers, such as peers, parents, and teachers.
Even though these trait labels oversimplify social behavior,
observers find them useful in summarizing broad differences
between social actors. Accordingly, the I finds
them useful, too, in depicting the basic contours of the
Me as a social actor.
In early adolescence, self-report scores on personality
scales become increasingly stable and begin to show the
common five-factor structure that has been repeatedly
observed among adults (Roberts, Wood, & Caspi, 2008).
These data are usually interpreted to suggest that personality
traits encompassed within the Big Five taxonomy
are beginning to crystallize in the teenage years. Another
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276 McAdams
way to interpret these findings, however, is to suggest
that teenage actors are beginning to settle into a stable
conception of their performative styles. To the extent that
dispositional traits are assessed via self-report, personality
trait scores are as reflective of the self as they are of
personality structure (McAdams & Cox, 2010; Robins,
Tracy, & Trzesniewski, 2008). When I respond affirmatively
to extraversion-keyed items like “I enjoy myself at
lively parties” and “Other people say that I am outgoing,”
I am making an explicit and reflexive claim about myself
as a social actor. Accordingly, the self-report personality
ratings that W. J. made when she was experiencing amnesia
(Klein et al., 1996) expressed clearly, albeit in broad
semantic form, how she saw herself then as a social
actor—what the I reflexively made of the Me—even
though she was unable to recall episodic details from her
recent social performances.
The self as social actor continues to develop in the
adult years. Findings from research on the development
of the self-concept (e.g., Diehl, 2006) dovetail with crosssectional
and longitudinal studies of personality traits in
adulthood to show that as social actors move from adolescence
and young adulthood through late midlife they
see themselves as increasingly agreeable (warm, caring,
altruistic) and conscientious (industrious, well-organized,
disciplined) and decreasingly neurotic (less anxious, less
depressive, less agitated) (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer,
2006). These broad trait attributions combine with more
situationally anchored understandings of the self as an
actor. In adolescence and adulthood, research shows, the
I tempers broad trait attributions with a dose of social
psychology; it comes to know and respect the power of
situations in the shaping of the Me (Harter, 2006). With
greater insight, the I sees how it consistently performs in
one characteristic manner in certain situations and in a
very different manner in certain other situations, reflecting
an understanding of contingency and context in
social behavior.
Even children and adolescents understand themselves
in terms of social roles. They realize that certain kinds of
social performances are expected for certain roles: I
should act this way around my parents, in the role of son
or daughter, and quite another way around my peers, in
the role of friend. Social roles seem to become more
important features of the self as social actor, however, as
people move through the adult years. Adults develop differentiated
understandings of themselves as social actors
playing such roles as parent, spouse, worker, citizen, and
so on (Erikson, 1963; Serpe & Stryker, 2011). Social roles
set forth conventional expectations and provide explicit
scripts for social behavior, while leaving plenty of room
for individual improvisation (Serpe & Stryker, 2011).
Thus, all women who assume the role of “mother” confront
common challenges and expectations, but each
mother performs her role in her own unique way. Actors
understand that different roles call for different sorts of
performances. Even though I may not see myself as an
especially conscientious person overall, I know that I
must model discipline and constraint when performing
the role of father with my obstreperous son. The fact that
I see myself as a dutiful father, then, becomes part of the
Me as a social actor, even as I retain my general selfattribution
of “not especially conscientious.” But social
roles can also change general trait attributions, as research
on social investment in adulthood shows (Lodi-Smith &
Roberts, 2007). As I invest more and more into the father
role, I may eventually come to see myself as more conscientious
overall than I used to think I was. Research has
documented striking examples of how the assumption of
certain social roles in adulthood can sometimes change
the broad trait attributions that social actors make about
themselves (e.g., Neyer & Lehnart, 2007).
Over the life course, then, the actor reflexively observes
his or her own performances on the many social stages
of human life and monitors carefully the reactions of
other actors and audiences to those performances. The
self-conscious and ever-observing actor is especially
eager to read the reviews. What is my social reputation?
How am I regarded by the audiences who are most
important to me? What kinds of traits do they attribute to
me as they watch me play my roles? The reviews convey
social reputation (Hogan, 1982), which affects the identity
that the I constructs to define the Me as an actor. As
the person moves into and through adulthood, the social
actor’s identity continues to be composed largely of selfattributed
traits and salient social roles, as well as various
representations of how traits are differentially and contingently
expressed in and through particular situations and
roles.
The Motivated Agent: Goals, Values,
and Plans for the Future
To be an agent is to make choices and, as a result of those
choices, to move forward in life in a self-determined and
goal-directed manner (Deci & Ryan, 1991). Human
agency suggests intention, volition, will, purpose, and
some modicum of personal control in life. It is clear that
a great deal of human behavior is goal-directed (Bandura,
1989). As they enact performances, actors make choices
and act in accord with goals. Even human infants act in
purposeful and goal-directed ways. But it is one thing to
say that human beings are, in a rudimentary sense, motivated
agents; it is quite another to say that individual
selves explicitly and self-consciously see and know themselves
as motivated agents. For the theory proposed
herein, the self does not become a full-fledged motivated
agent until the I, in a reflexive manner, comes to
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Actor, Agent, and Author 277
understand and define the Me in terms of personal goals,
values, and other long-term desired ends, projected into
the future. In other words, even though infants can be
seen to express agency, human beings do not consciously
and reflexively understand themselves as motivated
agents in a full sense until much later—that is, until they
set forth goals and plans for their daily lives and organize
their behavior and self-understanding to be consistent
with those goals and plans (McAdams & Cox, 2010; Walls
& Kollat, 2006). How, then, does an understanding of self
as a motivated agent develop over the human life course?
By the age of 1 year, human infants express a rudimentary
appreciation for agency. Research has shown,
for example, that 9-month-old infants can distinguish
between intentional and accidental behavior on the part
of their caregivers (Behne, Carpenter, Call, & Tomasello,
2005) and prefer to imitate intentional behavior over random
acts (Woodward, 2009). By the age of 4 years, most
children have internalized what developmental researchers
call a theory of mind. Before they enter kindergarten,
children have developed an implicit theory about how
minds (their own and others) operate and why people
do what they do. Their simple folk-psychological theory
says that people have beliefs and desires in their minds
that ultimately motivate their behavior. In other words,
children now expressly conceive of people as motivated
agents: People do things because they want to do them
(desire) and on the basis of internal beliefs they have
about things. Equipped now with theory of mind, children
may promiscuously project agency onto many other
beings and things in their environment, including inanimate
objects, imaginary companions, and culturally
mediated concepts, such as God (Kelemen, 2004). In a
reflexive manner, furthermore, children are now able to
appreciate agency in themselves. Applying theory of
mind to the self, the I is now able to attribute recurrent
desires, wants, and goals to the Me.
The magnification and refinement of individual agency
within a broadening societal context is the central psychological
theme in developmental theory and research
on what has been called the 5- to 7-year shift (Sameroff
& Haith, 1996). Cultural historians have traced back many
centuries a common belief that children become markedly
more rational, planful, and goal-oriented between
the ages of 5 and 7 years. Research has clearly shown
that, in most cultures, it is during this developmental
period that children typically enter school and/or become
responsible for such tasks as caring for younger children
and assisting in hunting, gathering, tending animals, agricultural
jobs, or household chores (Rogoff, Sellers,
Pirrotta, Fox, & White, 1975; Sameroff & Haith, 1996).
A number of classic developmental theories from the
middle of the 20th century elaborated on different features
of, and identified different mechanisms for, the 5- to
7-year shift, yet they all converged on the broad conclusion
that selves ideally begin to learn, in a reflexive sense,
how to shape their inner desires and wants into socially
acceptable goals and valued agendas during this time.
According to Erikson (1963), for example, elementaryschool
children move through a period of industry versus
inferiority, in which socializing forces like schools and
religious institutions teach children how to use material
and cultural tools and adopt social roles in order to meet
their personal goals. In Piaget’s (1970) terms, childhood
agency becomes contoured by concrete operational
thought around age 7 or 8, enabling children to understand
better the perspectives of other motivated agents
and to compare themselves and their goals systematically
with others. As such, children become autonomous moral
agents at this time, Piaget (1965) contended, an idea variously
reflected in Freud (1923/1961), Mead (1934), and
Kohlberg (1969). Vygotsky (1986) argued that language
originally derived from others is internalized to become a
self-directing organ for reflection and planning in the
elementary school years. McClelland (1961) argued that a
planful, goal-directed, and future-oriented perspective on
life is characteristic of people high in achievement motivation.
Individual differences in achievement motivation,
McClelland (1961) observed, begin to emerge around age
8.
By the time children are 8 or 9 years of age, then, they
are defining and evaluating themselves through experiences
in the family, among peers, on the playground, and
in school in terms of culturally valued goals and their
progress, or lack thereof, in accomplishing valued goals
(Harter, 2006; Walls & Kollat, 2006). In the ever expanding
Me, specific goals to be accomplished in the future (“I
want to be a good baseball player”; “I plan to get Jennifer
to like me”) join with attributions about traits (“I am an
outgoing person”) and social roles (“I am a good sister”).
In other words, features of the motivated agent now sit
side by side in the Me with features of the social actor. It
is important to note, however, that the self-attributed
goals of the motivated agent are not the same things as
the self-attributed traits and roles of the social actor, even
though social behavior itself is typically goal-directed in
nature.
For example, I may see myself as a friendly and outgoing
person (traits: the self as social actor), but this semantic
self-attribution suggests little regarding my particular
goals and aspirations for the future (the self as motivated
agent). A friendly person may set out to become a star
athlete, a good student, a popular chum, the teacher’s
pet, the class clown, a successful entrepreneur, a fashion
model, an artist, a scientist, a revolutionary, a good provider,
a loyal wife, or president of the United States. A
less friendly person might pursue these same goals. The
Me is a big house, and it can readily accommodate the
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278 McAdams
new agential self-attributions who begin to move in and
take up residence during the late-childhood and adolescent
years, even when the new arrivals sometimes have
little in common with the “older” inhabitants.
Through the articulation of and investment in personal
goals, the motivated agent extends the Me into the future.
What goals do I wish to achieve in the future? Where is
my life going? What do I wish to become? Questions
regarding personal goals link naturally to personal values
and ideology (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1990), for values refer
ultimately to those personal, social, and cultural goals
that an individual most cherishes and deems to be of
greatest worth. As Erikson (1963) suggested, questions
regarding personal goals and values gather together
around the big issues of identity in adolescence and
emerging adulthood (see also Arnett, 2000). Among other
things, identity development involves the young person’s
broadening of consciousness to encompass a wide range
of life goals and the eventual narrowing of consciousness
to focus on those goals determined to be most worthy of
pursuit. In Kroger and Marcia’s (2011) extension of
Erikson’s identity theory, broadening entails an active
exploration of ideological and vocational aspirations for
the future, to be followed (ideally) by agential choice, by
a narrowing of focus—a commitment—to value positions
and occupational goals that reflect both the emerging
adult’s agency and society’s prevailing opportunities and
constraints.
In the terms of Markus and Nurius (1986), the motivated
agent must ultimately commit to desired, valued,
and more-or-less realistic possible selves in emerging
adulthood. In the terms of related theoretical perspectives,
emerging adults aim to invest in meaningful personal
strivings (Emmons, 1986), personal projects (Little,
1999), and life longings (Schiebe, Freund, & Baltes, 2007).
Investments, however, are fluid and dynamic, changing
over time as the person comes to confront new challenges
and developmental demands. The motivated agent
must sometimes give up on an investment, cast aside a
failing possible self (King & Hicks, 2007). Like a strategic
investment banker, the agential I chooses to infuse capital
into those strivings, projects, and life goals that promise,
at any given moment in the life course, the best
returns for the future.
Research on the development of the self in adulthood
reveals both continuity and change. Central features of
the self as social actor—especially self-attributions regarding
dispositional performance traits—typically show considerable
interindividual stability over time, and this
becomes increasingly so as adults get older (Roberts &
DelVecchio, 2000). However, changes in the self as a
motivated agent are more forthcoming (Freund &
Riediger, 2006; McAdams & Cox, 2010). As trait attributions
remain relatively stable, people do change their
goals, plans, programs, projects, and possible selves in
the adult years, in response to on-time developmental
challenges, such as marriage and retirement, and unpredictable
off-time events (Elder, 1995). Research conducted
in modern societies shows that among young
adults, goals related to education, intimacy, friendships,
and careers are likely to be especially salient. Middleaged
adults tend to focus their goals on the future of their
children, securing what they have already established,
and property-related concerns. Older adults show more
goals related to health, retirement, leisure, and understanding
current events in the world (Freund & Riediger,
2006). Research shows that goals indicative of prosocial
societal engagement—generativity, civic involvement,
improving one’s community—become more pronounced
as people move into midlife and remain relatively strong
for many adults in their retirement years (McAdams, de
St. Aubin, & Logan, 1993; Peterson & Duncan, 2007).
Goals in early adulthood often focus on expanding the
self and gaining new information, whereas goals in late
adulthood may focus more on the emotional quality of
ongoing relationships (Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr, &
Nesselroade, 2000).
Reflecting a sense of agency, people often feel that
they choose or have chosen their goals in life. They may
feel, however, that their performance traits have been
thrust on them (Cantor, 1990). How many extraverts,
after all, feel that they chose this trait for themselves?
How many people who see themselves as relatively anxious
believe that they sat down one day and decided to
become an anxious person? This is not to say that people
cannot or do not work on their traits, in a reflexive manner.
But the phenomenology of selfhood still often suggests
this: I choose my goals; I have my traits (Cantor,
1990; McAdams & Pals, 2006). Self-attributions, furthermore,
regarding intentions and goals are, by their very
nature, oriented to the future. They spell out what agents
plan to accomplish in the time ahead, often in accord
with familial and/or cultural expectations about the content
and timing of goals over the life course (Elder, 1995).
By contrast, self-attributions regarding how the actor
plays his or her roles on the social stage of life do not
generally require the I to look into the future. I can talk
about myself as an extreme extravert or an anxious father
without any discussion of what my wants and desires are
or what valued goals I plan to pursue in the days and
years ahead.
Finally, goals often specify clear and detailed episodes
that the motivated agent expects or hopes to experience
in the future (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Motivated agents
frequently engage in what Szpunar (2010) calls episodic
future thought. Anticipating the outcomes of their goals
and projects, they imagine and simulate specific personal
episodes that may potentially occur in the future. Recent
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Narrative Life Identity Assignment Description
The Narrative Life Identity Assignment will give you the opportunity to employ a mixed-methods approach to personality assessment. For this assignment, you will be qualitatively assessing your narrative identity[1]– a central component of your personality. Next, you will be quantitatively assessing your personality using self-report personality assessments. By the end of this assignment you will be able to describe the development of personality and use the scores of quantitative self-report personality measures to supplement the qualitative data that you acquire which will ultimately result in one autobiographical case study.
To begin, take some time to think about your life as an ongoing story that began at your earliest memory. Then, pretend you are the narrator of this story by writing about the events that have taken place throughout your life from your earliest memory until this present moment. This story should be written using second person language. So, you should refer to yourself by your name, he/she, him/her instead of I, me, and my.
After writing your life story, use Dan P. McAdams’ Actor Agent Author Framework to describe how your identity has developed over time. This theoretical conception of identity development is introduced on page 234 of your textbook and is explained in great detail by McAdams (2013) in the original theoretical paper that he published in the Journal of the Association of Psychological Science. It is highly recommended that you read the McAdams (2013) article as it is an explicitly detailed description of the Actor Agent Author Framework.
Use McAdams’ Actor Agent Author Framework to describe the development of your identity using thematic content analysis- a qualitative data analysis method. In this method, a theory is used as a filter to identify, sort, and describe qualitative information. For this assignment, you will be using McAdams’ Actor Agent Author Framework to identify, sort, and describe the development of yourself as actor, agent, and author throughout your narrative. You will also use this framework to draw a summative conclusion about the major themes that emerged from your personality narrative overall. Thematic content analysis is described in detail in the Vaismoradi et al (2015) article.
The summative conclusion that you write will be supplemented by two quantitative personality measures including the Optimism- Pessimism Test (page 82- Try it Yourself 3.2), and the Preference for Consistency Scale (page 122- Try it Yourself 4.1). After scoring the personality measures, discuss the meaning of your scores within the context of your narrative. Do the quantitative scores align with the themes that emerged in your narrative?
It might be helpful to use a guide for this assignment. The thematic content analysis for this assignment can be carried out through the following nine steps:
After writing and coding the story, you will need to analyze the story for themes to describe the development of your identity over time which can be accomplished by following these steps:
Logistics
The Narrative Life Story Assignment should be a minimum of five pages in length (2 pages for your life story, and one page each for the actor, agent, and author sections), double spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font. There is no maximum page length, so, this assignment can be longer than five pages if you would like. This assignment must be submitted electronically through Blackboard by the deadline that is posted on the course syllabus. The submission link is located on the content tab and is entitled “Submit Narrative Here!”. Your paper will be submitted through a plagiarism tool which will generate an authenticity report for your paper. If your paper has signs of plagiarism you will not receive credit for the paper.
Late Submissions
Papers submitted at exactly the deadline and beyond will be considered late. Late submissions will not be accepted except in cases of an official documented emergency from an accredited organization or governing body that has the power to excuse an individual from work or school. The official documentation must clearly show that you were physically or psychologically unable to complete the term paper during the full time that the assignment has been available to you (e.g. a note from a doctor excusing you from work or school, a subpoena, jury duty letter, a letter from a funeral home). A copy of the supporting documentation for your emergency must be submitted at the time of your request to submit the paper late.
References
McAdams, D. P. (2013). The psychological self as actor, agent, and author. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 272-295.
Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H., & Bondas, T. (2013). Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. Nursing & health sciences, 15(3), 398-405.
[1] Please Note: It is not a requirement to disclose the true details of your life for this writing assignment. If you prefer, you may write the life story of another person, or you may fabricate the details of your own life.
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