Psychological Bulletin 2001 Vol 127 No 5 651 672 Copyright 2001 by the American Psychological Association Inc OO33 29O9 O1 S5 OO DOI 10 1037 0O33 29O9 127 5 651 The Social Construction of the Personal Past and Its Implications for Adult Development Monisha Pasupathi University of Utah This article examines conversational recounting about experiences as a potential mechanism by which people socially construct themselves and their worlds over the life span and the resulting implications for understanding adult development Two principles governing conversational recounting of past events are proposed coconstruction the joint influences of speakers and contexts on conversational reconstructions of past events and consistency the influence of a conversational reconstruction on subsequent memory Operating together the principles provide an account for how autobiographical memory is socially constructed In addition the principles may illuminate how conversations about the past can influence the development of identity in adulthood 1995 Van Langenhove Harre 1993 Weldon in press and narrative approaches to the study of personality Bruner 1990 McAdams 1996 Thorne 2000 It complements recent trends in life span developmental research which focus on the social contexts in which development unfolds over adulthood see e g M M Baltes Carstensen 1998 Berg Meegan Deviney 1998 Edwards 1997 Gould Dixon 1993 Hess BlanchardFields 1999 Staudinger Baltes 1996 Thorne 2000 In this article I bring together insights from these different areas in considering the social construction of adult development through talk about the past Conversation is to be thought of as creating a social world just as causality generates a physical one Harr6 1983 p 65 We live our lives immersed in talk providing others with stories of what happens to us and ideas about what we think our experiences mean We all remember times when a conversation made a big difference in how we understood an experience where our listener provided new insights or perspectives or in telling we realized something about ourselves We may be less aware of more subtle influences of social context on our everyday talk about experiences or of the ways that conversations we have about our experiences shape our memory for our own past see Vorauer Miller 1997 In this article I explore conversations about experiences as a way in which we socially construct our past and our identities On a metatheoretical level my goal is to accommodate both social constructivist and more traditional approaches within psychology while developing an account of autobiographical remembering and adult development The resulting framework is rooted in research on memory and language H H Clark 1996 Engel 1999 Fivush 1991 Neisser Fivush 1994 social cognitive social constructivist and discursive approaches to cognition P B Baltes Staudinger 1996 Edwards 1997 Schank Abelson The model I present is based on the notion that much learning and development begins in social practices and gradually becomes represented internally Edwards Middleton 1986a Fivush 1991 Rogoff 1990 Vygotsky 1978 and I focus on the social practice of recounting past events in conversation Briefly stated people tell events to their listeners in ways they hope will engage and interest them and listeners contribute their own insights and reactions to the retelling Telling is a joint product of the speaker and the audience and thus influences the way we subsequently remember the told event This means that the responses of audiences have long term implications for how tellers remember their experiences Such implications include the idea that conversational remembering is one process by which people s social worlds influence their development in adulthood by shaping both what they remember and how they think of themselves This project benefited from the support of multiple institutions and individuals including fellowship support from the American Psychological Association the Andrus Foundation and the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Society for Human Development Acknowledgments are due to Lisa M Stallworth Cindy Berg Susan Bluck Laura L Carstensen Susan Charles Frank Drews Paul Florsheim Alan Fogel Alexandra Freund Tilman Habermas Quinn Kennedy Sarah Lucas Elizabeth Marsh Mara Mather Fred Rhodewalt Carol Sansone Cecilia Wainryb and the rest of the Carstensen Lab who contributed in various ways to the construction of this article Any errors and flaws are of course my own responsibility Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Monisha Pasupathi Department of Psychology University of Utah 390 South 1530 East BEH S 502 Salt Lake City Utah 84112 Electronic mail may be sent to pasupath psych utah edu Consider a concrete example Thomas tries out technical rock climbing for the first time He enjoys it to some extent but finds it difficult exhausting and somewhat anxiety provoking In telling Matthias he represents the experience as exciting justifying telling Matthias and the activity as one that interests him and perhaps downplays his anxiety Suppose Matthias supports this version of events by showing interest and enthusiasm According to the model I will propose below Thomas will remember his experience with greater detail than if he had not told it will remember it as more positive because of the way he told it and will be more likely to think of himself as being interested in and enjoying the activity of rock climbing His conversation with Matthias thus shapes his 651 PASUPATHI 652 memory of his introduction to rock climbing and perhaps the likelihood that he will climb in the future In elaborating the model I first examine evidence for the coconstruction of conversational event memories with listeners and evidence that such coconstructions influence later memory I then consider adult development beginning with the idea that conversations about the past can influence the development of identity However because conversational remembering over adulthood occurs in the context of other developmental changes I also review how those other changes might modify conversational recounting Finally I compare the proposed model with other current models of memory and consider its utility in explaining existing phenomena and generating new research questions First however let me be more specific about conversational recollections of the past What Counts as Conversations About the Past My focus is
View Full Document
Unlocking...