(Press-News.org) Commitment to well being of others difficult to sustain over long run
Personal redemption narrative sustains motivation to engage in prosocial behavior
African-Americans more likely to be motivated by stories of personal redemption
Redemptive stories sustain hope that sacrifices today may produce future dividends
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Middle-aged Americans who show high levels of societal involvement and positive mental health are especially likely to construe their lives as stories of personal redemption, according to new Northwestern University research.
Previous research has shown that adults who are inclined toward generativity -- the concern for and commitment to promoting the growth and well-being of future generations -- are more likely to engage in a wide range of prosocial behaviors, including positive parenting styles, political participation and community volunteerism.
"A strong commitment to generativity can be difficult to sustain in the long run and in the face of life's many challenges," said Dan McAdams, lead author of the study and chair of the psychology department in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. "Therefore, highly generative adults may need to call upon a particular kind of personal story to support their generative efforts."
McAdams and co-author Jen Guo, also of Northwestern, hypothesized that constructing a redemption narrative about one's life, which centers on a personal mission to transform suffering into positive outcomes, might function as a psychological resource for generative adults. Redemption stories sustain hope that sacrifices and suffering today may produce positive dividends in the future, helping generative adults to persevere in their commitment to promoting the well-being of future generations.
McAdams, also professor of human development and social policy in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern, and Guo, a graduate student in psychology, conducted intensive two- to three-hour interviews with 157 adults ages 55 to 57, asking them to think about their lives as if they were a novel, with chapters, key scenes, characters and themes. Each participant was asked about particular points in their life stories, including their happiest and least happy moments, a marked turning point, positive and negative early memories, a vivid adult memory, an experience of wisdom and what the next chapter in life will bring.
Independent coders examined these interviews, analyzing the extent to which they featured the five themes that comprise a prototypical redemption narrative: the protagonist enjoys an early advantage in life (theme one) but comes to realize that the world is a dangerous place where people suffer (theme two), leading the protagonist to develop strong moral beliefs (theme three) that ultimately drive future prosocial behavior (theme four). Throughout the story, the protagonist encounters personal misfortunes that often give way to positive, redemptive outcomes (theme five).
McAdams and Guo found that all five redemption-related, life-story themes were strongly associated with self-reported generativity, just as they hypothesized. That is, adults who were more concerned about the well-being of future generations were more likely to view their lives as following the outlines of a redemption story.
And this redemption narrative was also stronger for adults who showed greater overall mental health and well-being.
Furthermore, the researchers were surprised to find that African-American adults in their sample actually had higher levels of generativity and more pronounced redemptive life stories compared to the white participants.
"The narrative rhetoric of redemption seems to resonate deeply with especially generative African-American adults, perhaps in part because of the central place of the African-American church in the Black community," McAdams said.
The researchers note that additional research will be needed to determine whether the link between generativity and redemptive life stories holds across geographic and cultural boundaries.
INFORMATION:
Read more about the study "Narrating the Generative Life" published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
NORTHWESTERN NEWS: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/
A review of clinical trial data suggests vitamin D supplementation was ineffective at lowering blood pressure (BP) and should not be used as an antihypertensive, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Intervention studies have produced conflicting evidence on the BP-lowering effect of vitamin D. An increasing number of clinical trials of have studied vitamin D and cardiovascular health, according to the study background.
Miles D. Witham, B.M., B.Ch., Ph.D., of the University of Dundee, Scotland, and coauthors analyzed clinical trial data ...
An analysis of publicly available outbreak data suggests that substandard vaccination compliance is likely to blame for the recent measles outbreak linked to Disneyland in California, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
Without vaccination, measles is highly contagious. The recent outbreak started in December 2014, although the index case has not yet been identified. The rapid growth of cases indicates that a substantial percentage of the exposed population may be susceptible to measles infection due to lack of, or incomplete, vaccination, according ...
A study of brain aging finds that being male was associated with worse memory and lower hippocampal volume in individuals who were cognitively normal at baseline, while the gene APOE ?4, a risk factor for Alzheimer disease, was not, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology.
Typical cognitive aging may be defined as age-associated changes in cognitive performance in individuals free of dementia. To assess brain imaging findings associated with typical aging, the full adult age spectrum should be included, according to the study background.
Clifford ...
Inadequate vaccine coverage is likely a driving force behind the ongoing Disneyland measles outbreak, according to calculations by a research team at Boston Children's Hospital. Their report, based on epidemiological data and published online by JAMA Pediatrics, indicates that vaccine coverage among the exposed populations is far below that necessary to keep the virus in check, and is the first to positively link measles vaccination rates and the ongoing outbreak.
By examining case numbers reported by the California Department of Public Health and current and historical ...
There are only five bodies in our solar system that are known to bear rings. The most obvious is the planet Saturn; to a lesser extent, rings of gas and dust also encircle Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The fifth member of this haloed group is Chariklo, one of a class of minor planets called centaurs: small, rocky bodies that possess qualities of both asteroids and comets.
Scientists only recently detected Chariklo's ring system -- a surprising finding, as it had been thought that centaurs are relatively dormant. Now scientists at MIT and elsewhere have detected a possible ...
March 16, 2015 - As more women veterans seek health care in the Veterans Administration (VA) system, effective approaches are needed to ensure that their unique needs are recognized and met. A special April supplement to Medical Care collects new studies from an ongoing research initiative to inform health care policy for women veterans. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
"The goal of this supplement is to disseminate new research findings related to the planning, organization, financing, provision, evaluation and improvement of health services and/or outcomes ...
URBANA - University of Illinois scientists have engineered a "jailbreaking" yeast that could greatly increase the health benefits of wine while reducing the toxic byproducts that cause your morning-after headache.
"Fermented foods--such as beer, wine, and bread--are made with polyploid strains of yeast, which means they contain multiple copies of genes in the genome. Until now, it's been very difficult to do genetic engineering in polyploid strains because if you altered a gene in one copy of the genome, an unaltered copy would correct the one that had been changed," ...
NEW YORK, March 16, 2015 - Newer drug-coated stents that keep arteries open have similar long-term rates of death compared with traditional bypass surgery for patients with more than one diseased coronary artery.
The findings come from a clinical registry study, led by cardiologists at NYU Langone Medical Center, which appears in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
In the study, a sample of over 9,000 patients who received the latest stents were no more likely to die in the few years following the procedure, compared to a matched sample of over ...
SAN DIEGO (March 16, 2015) -- Among patients with heart failure and atrial fibrillation, those who underwent catheter ablation were less likely to die, be hospitalized or have recurrent atrial fibrillation than patients taking a heart rhythm regulating drug, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session.
Catheter ablation was most successful in procedures where ablation was required in other areas in addition to the pulmonary vein, researchers said.
Heart failure and atrial fibrillation often co-occur and are two ...
SAN DIEGO (March 16, 2015) -- Patients with atrial fibrillation who received ablation while they were already undergoing surgery to correct a leaky heart valve had fewer episodes of atrial fibrillation a year later compared to patients who had the valve surgery alone, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session.
The patients who received ablation along with mitral valve surgery had no more deaths, adverse cardiac events or hospitalizations than patients who only received the valve surgery alone, but they were ...
