Psychological Bulletin2001, Vol. 127, No. 5, 651-672Copyright 2001 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.OO33-29O9/O1/S5.OO DOI: 10.1037//0O33-29O9.127.5.651The Social Construction of the Personal Past and ItsImplications for Adult DevelopmentMonisha PasupathiUniversity of UtahThis article examines conversational recounting about experiences as a potential mechanism by whichpeople socially construct themselves and their worlds over the life span and the resulting implications forunderstanding adult development. Two principles governing conversational recounting of past events areproposed: coconstruction (the joint influences of speakers and contexts on conversational reconstructionsof 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 sociallyconstructed. In addition, the principles may illuminate how conversations about the past can influence thedevelopment of identity in adulthood.Conversation is to be thought of as creating a social world just ascausality generates a physical one. (Harr6, 1983, p. 65).We live our lives immersed in talk, providing others with storiesof what happens to us and ideas about what we think our experi-ences mean. We all remember times when a conversation made abig difference in how we understood an experience, where ourlistener provided new insights or perspectives, or, in telling, werealized something about ourselves. We may be less aware of moresubtle influences of social context on our everyday talk aboutexperiences or of the ways that conversations we have about ourexperiences shape our memory for our own past (see Vorauer &Miller, 1997). In this article, I explore conversations about expe-riences as a way in which we socially construct our past and ouridentities.On a metatheoretical level, my goal is to accommodate bothsocial constructivist and more traditional approaches within psy-chology while developing an account of autobiographical remem-bering and adult development. The resulting framework is rootedin 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,This project benefited from the support of multiple institutions andindividuals, including fellowship support from the American PsychologicalAssociation, the Andrus Foundation, and the Center for Lifespan Psychol-ogy at the Max Planck Society for Human Development.Acknowledgments are due to Lisa M. Stallworth, Cindy Berg, SusanBluck, Laura L. Carstensen, Susan Charles, Frank Drews, Paul Florsheim,Alan Fogel, Alexandra Freund, Tilman Habermas, Quinn Kennedy, SarahLucas, Elizabeth Marsh, Mara Mather, Fred Rhodewalt, Carol Sansone,Cecilia Wainryb, and the rest of the Carstensen Lab, who contributed invarious 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 MonishaPasupathi, Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 390 South 1530East BEH-S 502, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112. Electronic mail may be sentto [email protected]; Van Langenhove & Harre, 1993; Weldon, in press), andnarrative approaches to the study of personality (Bruner, 1990;McAdams, 1996; Thorne, 2000). It complements recent trends inlife span developmental research, which focus on the social con-texts in which development unfolds over adulthood (see, e.g.,M. M. Baltes & Carstensen, 1998; Berg, Meegan, & Deviney,1998; Edwards, 1997; Gould & Dixon, 1993; Hess & Blanchard-Fields, 1999; Staudinger & Baltes, 1996; Thorne, 2000). In thisarticle, I bring together insights from these different areas inconsidering the social construction of adult development throughtalk about the past.The model I present is based on the notion that much learningand development begins in social practices and gradually becomesrepresented internally (Edwards & Middleton, 1986a; Fivush,1991; Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978), and I focus on the socialpractice of recounting past events in conversation. Briefly stated,people tell events to their listeners in ways they hope will engageand interest them, and listeners contribute their own insights andreactions to the retelling. Telling is a joint product of the speakerand the audience and thus influences the way we subsequentlyremember the told event. This means that the responses of audi-ences have long-term implications for how tellers remember theirexperiences. Such implications include the idea that conversationalremembering is one process by which people's social worldsinfluence their development in adulthood by shaping both whatthey remember and how they think of themselves.Consider a concrete example. Thomas tries out technical rockclimbing for the first time. He enjoys it to some extent but finds itdifficult, exhausting, and somewhat anxiety provoking. In tellingMatthias, he represents the experience as exciting (justifying tell-ing Matthias) and the activity as one that interests him and perhapsdownplays his anxiety. Suppose Matthias supports this version ofevents by showing interest and enthusiasm. According to themodel I will propose below, Thomas will remember his experiencewith greater detail than if he had not told it, will remember it asmore positive because of the way he told it, and will be more likelyto think of himself as being interested in and enjoying the activityof rock climbing. His conversation with Matthias thus shapes his651652PASUPATHImemory of his introduction to rock climbing and, perhaps, thelikelihood that he will climb in the future.In elaborating the model, I first examine evidence for the co-construction of conversational event memories with listeners andevidence that such coconstructions influence later memory. I thenconsider adult development, beginning with the idea that conver-sations about the past can influence the development of identity.However, because conversational remembering over adulthoodoccurs in the context of other developmental changes, I also reviewhow those other changes might modify conversational recounting.Finally, I compare the proposed model with other current modelsof memory and consider its utility in explaining existing phenom-ena and generating new research questions. First, however, let mebe
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