Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

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Journal of Research in Personality

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Full Length Article

The single greatest life challenge: How late-midlife adults construct

narratives of significant personal challenges
Henry R. Cowan a,⇑, Xiaodi Chen b, Brady K. Jones c, Dan P. McAdams d
a
Psychology, Northwestern University, United States
b
The Family Institute, Northwestern University, United States
c
Psychology, University of St. Francis, United States
d
Psychology, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study introduces the concept of the single greatest life challenge—the most subjectively-significant
Received 12 June 2019 challenge a person has ever faced—and explores its implications for narrative identity. Through content
Revised 29 August 2019 coding of 157 late-midlife community adults’ life challenge narratives, we catalogued the distribution of
Accepted 6 September 2019
18 life challenge topics. Through exploratory factor analysis of narrative features, we found a four-factor
Available online 7 September 2019
structure (identity processing, agency/emotion, verbosity/specificity, and scope) largely consistent with the
‘‘big three” narrative identity metastructure. The agency/emotion factor was most closely tied to traits
Keywords:
and functioning: it correlated negatively with neuroticism and depression, correlated positively with psy-
Stress
Coping
chological well-being and life satisfaction, and provided incremental validity in predicting depression.
Agency The stories adults tell of their greatest challenges are informative about personality and psychological
Emotion functioning.
Autobiographical reasoning Ó 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Specific autobiographical content
Well-being
Narrative identity
Personality traits

1. Introduction events reveal important aspects of their personality traits, motiva-

Challenging life events have been central to psychological auto-
biography since the genre’s literary inception in St. Augustine’s
Confessions, written in c. 397 CE (Augustine, 397/2014; Augustine
and Hammond, 2014; Freccero, 1986). Modern researchers have
similarly gleaned important insights into narrative identity, or
the individual’s ‘‘internalized and evolving life story, integrating
the reconstructed past and imagined future to provide life with
some degree of unity and purpose”, by studying difficult or stress-
ful life events (McAdams & McLean, 2013, p. 233). These studies
find that various narrative features including agency, narrative
identity processing, accommodative processing, and coherent pos-
itive resolution are associated with positive psychological func-
tioning (Adler, Skalina, & McAdams, 2008; Adler et al., 2015;
Graci, Watts, & Fivush, 2018; Lilgendahl, Helson, & John, 2013;
Pals, 2006). The ways in which people narrate difficult or stressful
⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University,
2029 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208, United States.
E-mail address: hrcowan@u.northwestern.edu (H.R. Cowan).
tions, and present-day functioning.
Studies in this area have thus far defined relevant life events in
terms of stress, difficulty, or trauma. For instance, Pals (2006) ana-
lyzed narratives of ‘‘the most unstable, confusing, troubled, or dis-
couraging time in your life” (p. 1088) while Graci et al. (2018)
prompted participants to ‘‘write about your most traumatic expe-
rience” (p. 1223). However, great life challenges are not necessarily
defined by these characteristics. Consider the following example,
in which a research participant—a middle-aged American
woman—has been asked to describe the single greatest challenge
she has ever faced:
I think my [greatest challenge] is that I am a liberated woman in
a conservative woman’s body. I mean, I think that I basically
toed the line for years for the sake of harmony and I am basi-
cally not happy. And I am just figuring that out [over the last
five years]. But I came to the conclusion that I am not ready
for a divorce, that I can live my life and have the financial
security of being married and live more for myself and less as
someone’s helpmate.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103867
0092-6566/Ó 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867
Her account implies some amount of difficulty—renegotiating a
decades-old marriage is not an easy task—but there is no objective
stressor in this scenario and, aside from a brief mention of unhap-
piness, difficult emotions are not prominent. Rather, we would
argue that the most relevant characteristic of this challenge is that
the participant subjectively defines it as significant.
Several lines of research suggest that it may be fruitful to define
challenging life events by subjective significance. Since the 1960s,
it has been well-established in the stress and coping literature that
a given event’s stressfulness is determined by interactions between
a situation’s objective characteristics and a person’s subjective
appraisals of relevance, difficulty, and available coping resources
(Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus & Folkman, 1987). Similarly, cognitive the-
ories of psychopathology argue that characteristic patterns of
appraisals are codified over time as core beliefs—an individual’s
evolving internal models of oneself, the world, and the future—
which influence present and future behaviour (Beck, 1979, 2011).
In fact, cognitive theory predicts that the most relevant life events
are those which had the largest impact on a person’s core beliefs.
When evaluating past experiences, a cognitive therapist asks,
‘‘what meaning did the patient glean from these experiences, and
which beliefs originated from, or became strengthened by, these
experiences?” (Beck, 2011, p. 30). A person who lived through a
traumatic experience as an adult may be more bothered by a core
belief of unlovability related to experiences of social rejection in
high school and college; in this case, the social rejection would
be more relevant than the trauma.
Research on self-defining memories also emphasizes subjective
significance. Self-defining memories are vivid, emotionally intense,
frequently-recalled memories which relate to a person’s enduring
concerns, goals, or conflicts (Blagov & Singer, 2004; Conway &
Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Singer & Salovey, 1993). These memories
tend to be recalled when a person searches for autobiographical
content matching a relevant semantic theme, and they retain their
vividness and emotional intensity because they are frequently rec-
ollected. A memory is not imprinted as ‘‘self-defining”, but rather
achieves this status through repeated, motivated searches of auto-
biographical memory. Thus, these types of memories reflect which
semantic themes are most subjectively significant to the individual
(Blagov & Singer, 2004). This is shown vividly in research on
trauma survivors, which finds that survivors with post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) are more likely than survivors without PTSD
to report both trauma-related personal goals and trauma-related
self-defining memories (Sutherland & Bryant, 2005).
Based on stress, coping, cognitive therapy, and self-defining
memory research, it seems that life events inform us about a per-
son’s enduring motivations and present-day functioning to the
extent that they are subjectively significant. From this perspective,
the greatest challenges we face in life are not those which cause
the most stress or difficulty, but rather those which play the largest
role in informing our beliefs, characteristic adaptations, and narra-
tive identities. Indeed, research on Sehnsucht, or ‘‘life longings”,
finds that many people are motivated by a feeling that life is miss-
ing something which could make it perfect (Kotter-Grühn, Wiest,
Zurek, & Scheibe, 2009; Scheibe, Freund, & Baltes, 2007). Signifi-
cant life challenges may be as much about striving toward valued
personal goals as about coping with stress. These wide-ranging
lines of research suggest that we may learn more about life chal-
lenges through an open-ended prompt focused on subjective sig-
nificance rather than stress or difficulty. In the current
exploratory, cross-sectional study, we asked participants to subjec-
tively define and narrate the single greatest challenge they had
ever faced. We investigated three research questions: first, what
was the specific content of life challenges, i.e., what were the sto-
ries about; second, what were the narrative features of life chal-
lenges, i.e., how were the stories told; and third, how did
narrative features relate to personality traits and psychological
functioning?
1.1. Specific content
Specific content has received increased research attention in
recent years. Research on self-defining memories shows that speci-
fic content impacts the way a narrative is told. For instance,
McLean and Fournier (2008) showed that cognitive effort and eval-
uation (narrative features) were affected by the type of connection
a participant made between the past and present self (specific con-
tent). More recently, several authors have highlighted the effects of
different narrative prompts—which presumably elicit different
specific content—on narrative features (Adler et al., 2017;
McLean, Pasupathi, Greenhoot, & Fivush, 2017; McLean et al.,
2019). Common recommendations for narrative studies are to
use open-ended prompts and to include multiple prompts per par-
ticipant (McLean et al., 2019). The current study used a single, very
open-ended prompt. What types of stories did participants tell in
response to this prompt? We measured specific content directly
by inductively coding the topics that appeared in each narrative.
This allowed us to describe specific content and investigate its con-
nections to narrative features.
1.2. Narrative features
Because this study was exploratory, we aimed for relatively
broad coverage of narrative features. A range of narrative features
have been studied (for summaries, see Adler et al., 2017; Adler,
Lodi-Smith, Philippe, & Houle, 2016; McAdams & McLean, 2013;
McLean et al., 2019). Traditionally, these have been classified as
motivational, affective, integrative, or structural (Adler et al.,
2017). In the current study, we tailored a set of narrative features
to the life challenge prompt, while aiming for at least some cover-
age of all four traditional narrative categories. See Section 2.2
below for more details.
However, the field has recently made significant advances in
the empirical structure of narrative features. Notably, McLean
et al. (2019) combined data across multiple datasets and many
raters (total N = 2565 narratives told by 855 participants in various
labs in response to various narrative prompts) to analyze the latent
structure of sixteen commonly studied narrative features (e.g.,
agency, communion, meaning-making, temporal coherence).
Through exploratory and confirmatory structural equation model-
ing, the authors consistently found three higher-order factors:
motivational/affective themes, autobiographical reasoning, and
structure. These three dimensions seem to form the foundation
for narrative identity. Supporting these findings, two recent data-
driven studies which examined narrative coherence and
meaning-making through principal components analysis and
exploratory structural equation modeling, have also found factors
that fit within the ‘‘big three” framework (Adler, Waters, Poh, &
Seitz, 2018; Graci et al., 2018).
In the ‘‘big three” taxonomy, motivational and affective themes
interpret the protagonist’s role in events, motivations, and affective
experience and relate to mental health and well-being outcomes
(Adler et al., 2016; Bauer, McAdams, & Pals, 2008; McLean et al.,
2019). Autobiographical reasoning entails an active narrator situat-
ing events within a lifetime of experience, thematically interpret-
ing events, drawing connections between various life events, and
inferring morals and lessons. Autobiographical reasoning relates
to wisdom, ego integrity, and well-being (Bauer et al., 2008; Pals,
2006). Finally, structural features provide a narrative with its
framework and scaffolding. These are not so much interpretations
of life events but rather facts, context, conversational style, and
temporal sequencing (Adler et al., 2017; McLean et al., 2019).
 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867
The current study was conceived and designed under the older,
four-category classification. Our goal was to explore unique facets
of the life challenges prompt while achieving at least some cover-
age of each of the four traditional categories. However, our analysis
plan mirrored McLean et al.’s (2019) on a much smaller scale. We
took a fine-grained approach, coding a total of fourteen low-level
variables and analyzing them through exploratory factor analysis.
This provides an opportunity to further validate the ‘‘big three”
model within the more focused context of life challenge narratives.
It would be notable if our study, which was exploratory and not
designed as a test of the ‘‘big three”—in fact, not designed with ref-
erence to the ‘‘big three” at all—nevertheless found a factor struc-
ture resembling agency/emotion, autobiographical reasoning, and
structure.
1.3. Individual differences and psychological functioning
Although narrative features are typically considered a separate
level of personality, layered on top of dispositional traits
(McAdams, 2013), personality traits do influence narrative features
to some extent. Largely working in the Big Five trait framework
(Costa & McCrae, 1992), narrative researchers have shown some
specific relationships between traits and narrative features in diffi-
culty or stress narratives. One study of undergraduates’ narratives
of their most traumatic experiences reported that neuroticism pre-
dicted positive motivational/affective processing, while agreeable-
ness predicted autobiographical reasoning (Graci et al., 2018).
Similarly, a study of life story interviews, which included a low
point scene, found neuroticism to be related to positive processing
and openness to be related to differentiated processing (Lilgendahl
& McAdams, 2011). Two more studies support the role of openness.
A study of low-point narratives found that agreeableness and
openness both predicted autobiographical reasoning (McLean
et al., 2019). Likewise, a study of difficult life experiences found
that coping openness, a trait which reflects tolerance of ambiguity
and absence of repression, was related to autobiographical reason-
ing (Pals, 2006).
Finally, neuroticism and extraversion are both strongly impli-
cated in the life stress literature. Neuroticism predicts more stress-
ful life events, threat appraisals, and negative affect in stressful
situations, while extraversion predicts the opposite (Carver &
Connor-Smith, 2010; Ebstrup, Eplov, Pisinger, & Jørgensen, 2011;
Gallagher, 1990; Schneider, 2004; Schneider, Rench, Lyons, &
Riffle, 2012). Although the current study was exploratory and not
confirmatory, the available evidence suggested that that neuroti-
cism would likely inversely relate to motivational and affective
features, that extraversion might relate to motivational and affec-
tive features, and that agreeableness and openness might relate
to autobiographical reasoning features.
How do narrative features in life challenge narratives relate to
psychological functioning? There is evidence that motivational,
affective, and autobiographical reasoning features are all associated
with better mental health and well-being. Reviewing the literature
on narrative features and eudaimonic well-being, Bauer et al.
(2008) reported that agentic personal growth and positive resolu-
tion were both correlated with well-being. Similarly, positive pro-
cessing and differentiated processing have both been shown to
correlate with life satisfaction (Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011). How-
ever, modeling the narrative ‘‘big three” in a large dataset, McLean
et al. (2019) reported consistent effects for motivational/affective
themes but not for autobiographical reasoning in predicting life sat-
isfaction, positive and negative affect, and depression. Similarly,
Graci et al. (2018) found that anxiety and depression scores were
associated with motivational/affective processes but not
autobiographical reasoning processes. In the current study,
the available evidence suggested that motivational, affective, and
3
autobiographical reasoning features might all relate to psychologi-
cal functioning, and that effects might be larger for motivational
and affective features.
There is some debate about the distinctiveness of various well-
being measures, and whether well-being is best modeled as a bipo-
lar construct with mental illness or ill-being (e.g., languishing,
depression) as its negative pole (Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King,
2008; Keyes, 2002, 2005; Ryff et al., 2006). Because of this ambigu-
ity, we included indices of positive well-being (psychological well-
being and life satisfaction) and negative ill-being (depression) in
the category of ‘‘psychological functioning”.
1.4. The current study
In summary, this exploratory study analyzed subjectively
defined greatest life challenges narrated in open-ended interviews
by 157 late-midlife Americans. This study examined specific con-
tent (i.e., what happened in the story) and narrative features (i.e.,
how the story was told), investigating their latent structure and
relationships to each other, to personality traits, and to psycholog-
ical functioning.
2. Method
The current study reports a secondary analysis of narrative and
self-report data collected as part of the Foley Longitudinal Study of
Adulthood (FLSA), an intensive, multi-year study on narrative iden-
tity and longitudinal personality development in a sample of
Chicago-area midlife adults. In Year 1 of the project, participants
completed a semi-structured life story interview, as well as self-
report scales of personality traits and psychological functioning.
2.1. Participants
A total of 157 late-midlife community participants were
recruited from the greater Chicago area. Interviews were con-
ducted from May 2008 to September 2010. Participants’ ages ran-
ged from 54 to 59, with a mean age of 56 and a standard deviation
of 1.1 years. Slightly more than half of participants (n = 87; 56%)
identified as White, slightly less than half (n = 67; 42%) as
African-American, and a small minority (n = 3; 2%) as interracial
or other. The sample was roughly two thirds female (n = 101;
64%). Most participants (n = 106; 67%) were married or cohabiting;
40 (25%) were widowed, divorced, or separated; and 12 (8%) were
single or never married. Education ranged from some high school
to post-graduate study, with 105 participants (66%) having com-
pleted college, of whom 66 (42% of the total sample) had also com-
pleted some post-graduate education. Participants’ median annual
family income was $75,000 to $100,000, with 39 participants (25%)
reporting a family income less than $50,000, and 63 participants
(40%) reporting a family income greater than $100,000. Twenty-
three participants (15%) were retired and 13 (8%) were
unemployed.
2.2. Interviews and interview analysis
Participants completed a 2-hour semi-structured Life Story
Interview (McAdams, 2008) in which they divided their lives into
chapters, described key scenes from their lives and a script for
the future, discussed significant challenges they had faced, and
defined a personal ideology and an overall life theme (see
McAdams & Guo, 2015, for a more extended description). As part
of the interview, participants were asked to describe their single
greatest life challenge:
4 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Looking back over your entire life, please identify and describe
what you now consider to be the single greatest challenge you have
faced in your life. What is or was the challenge or problem? How
did the challenge or problem develop? How did you address or deal
with this challenge or problem? What is the significance of the
challenge or problem in your own life story?

Interviewers were faculty members, post-doctoral researchers,

and graduate students trained to administer the Life Story Inter-
view. Interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed by a
professional transcription service. Responses ranged from 3 to
2573 words in length (mean = 512, SD = 358). Nine narratives (6%
of the sample) were overly brief, truncated, or incoherent, and
could be coded for specific content but not for narrative features.1
The 148 narratives which were coded for narrative features ranged
from 77 to 2573 words in length (mean = 527, SD = 353).

2.2.1. Specific content

Two independent raters read the interview transcripts and
noted topics that recurred in multiple participants’ responses
(e.g., parenting, loss, finances). The list of topics was finalized by
consensus. Then, both raters independently coded all narratives
for the presence or absence of each topic, with disagreements
resolved by consensus. Topics were not mutually exclusive. Raters
agreed on 18 specific topics, which were grouped thematically into
six broad content domains to minimize issues of multiple compar-
isons. The content domains were: Family, Personal, Professional,
Social, Health and Wellness, and Loss or Trauma. At the level of
domains, narratives were coded for the presence or absence of Fig. 1. Percentage of participants whose greatest life challenge narratives contained
various topics. Topics are grouped into life domains by color (from top to bottom):
any topic within the domain. Fig. 1 shows the percentages of nar- Family (red), Personal (blue), Health and wellness (orange), Professional (green),
ratives which included each topic and domain. Domains were used Social (purple), and Loss or trauma (yellow). Data were analyzed at the level of
for statistical testing; we therefore report reliability ratings for the content domains. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend,
content domains rather than topics (Hallgren, 2012). Interrater the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
reliability of the content domains was good to excellent: Family
j = 0.94; Personal j = 0.78; Professional j = 0.95; Social j = 0.92;
experience of the challenge’s length, ranging from short-lived epi-
Health and Wellness j = 0.97; Loss or Trauma j = 0.95.
sodes to lifelong struggles (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.85). Finally, loca-
tion refers to whether the challenge was experienced as internal
2.2.2. Narrative features
or external to the protagonist (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.65). Note that,
Pairs of independent raters coded each interview transcript for
theoretically, the same objective events can be interpreted inter-
a total of fourteen narrative variables. Raters coded the entire set of
nally or externally depending on how the individual frames them.
transcripts, with final scores averaged between raters. Motiva-
For example, a narrative of an acrimonious divorce could focus on
tional and affective features tended to be bipolar (e.g., negative
the protagonist’s inner emotional struggle or the spouse’s objec-
emotional tone—positive emotional tone) and were coded on a 5-
tionable behaviour. Two codes addressed the degree of difficulty
point scale with a neutral midpoint (1–5). Identity processing fea-
and emotional challenge. Difficulty refers to the subjective diffi-
tures tended to be unipolar (e.g., absence of positive self-transfor
culty experienced by the protagonist (bipolar scale; ICC = 0.70).
mation—presence of strong self-transformation) and were coded
Emotional tone refers to the overall emotional tenor of the narrative
on a 4-point scale with zero indicating absence (0–3). See Table 1
(bipolar scale; ICC = 0.78).
for a summary of all narrative variables. Interrater reliabilities are
Following the traditional four-category narrative structure
reported as intraclass correlations.
(Adler et al., 2017), we then expanded the scope of the inquiry to
In developing a set of narrative codes for this study, our first
include identity processing and structural codes. Four codes were
inclination was to focus on agency and degree of difficulty. What
adapted from Pals (2006) study of narrative identity processing
was facing the motivated protagonist in great life challenges?
of difficult life experiences. Narrative elaboration refers to willing-
Did they have the resources to tackle it, the freedom to do so,
ness and interest in telling the story; amplifying its significance;
and the emotional wherewithal to survive and flourish? Capturing
elaborating on causes and consequences; and engaging with diffi-
these constructs, freedom vs. constraint refers to the protagonist’s
cult, complex, or challenging aspects of the narrative and the pro-
ability to act in a situation; in other words, whether the protago-
tagonist’s role (unipolar scale; ICC = 0.62). Open exploration
nist was trapped by circumstances beyond their control, or
captures the extent to which the narrator delved into the experi-
whether they had the opportunity for decisive action (bipolar
ence’s personal impact and allowed him- or herself to change as
scale; ICC = 0.81). Perceived solution refers to the extent to which
a result (unipolar scale; ICC = 0.58). Emotional resolution captures
a challenge was solved or unsolved/unsolvable (bipolar scale;
the extent to which the protagonist has achieved emotional clo-
ICC = 0.76). Duration similarly refers to the participant’s subjective
sure, so that he or she is no longer ‘‘stuck” in the grip of negative
emotions associated with the experience (unipolar scale;
1
Even in the briefest or most truncated narratives, the specific content raters were
ICC = 0.65). Finally, positive self-transformation signifies the extent
able to reach consensus on content domain(s). For example, the briefest narrative in
the dataset read, ‘‘My disease. . .yeah” (3 words). Although this response is bereft of to which the narrator reports positive change within him- or her-
narrative features, it includes the specific content topic of ‘‘health”. self due to the experience (unipolar scale; ICC = 0.63).
 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867 5

Table 1
Summary of narrative variables.

Category Variable Low Anchor High Anchor Range Mean SD

Motivational/ Difficulty Easy, manageable Difficult, insurmountable 1–5 3.16 0.98
affective
themes Emotional tone Completely negative, distressing, hopeless Completely positive, enthusiastic, hopeful 1–5 2.95 0.90
Freedom vs. Actions are constrained by the situation Protagonist is free to act in the situation 1–5 3.02 1.05
constraint
Perceived solution Challenge is unsolved, unsolvable, or getting Challenge is solved, solvable, or getting better 1–5 3.21 1.05
worse
Duration Challenge is brief, short-lived Challenge is lengthy, interminable 1–5 3.71 1.00
Location Challenge is internal, protagonist focuses on Challenge is external, protagonist focuses on 1–5 2.97 1.28
private experience outside events
Autobiogr-aphical Narrative Absence of richness, complexity, challenging Engages with richness, complexity, challenging 0–3 1.55 0.76
reasoning elaboration aspects of narrative aspects of narrative
Open exploration Does not engage with personal meaning, Explores personal meaning and opens the self 0–3 1.38 0.83
minimizes impact on self to change
Emotional No emotional closure; unresolved emotions Strong emotional closure 0–3 1.68 0.90
resolution
Positive self- No positive self-transformation Strong positive self-transformation 0–3 1.27 0.92
transformation
Structural Word count n/a n/a 77– 527 353
2573
Event-specific No event-specific detail Event-specific detail 0–1 0.18 0.37
detail
Beginning life stage Childhood Recent adulthood 1–4 2.68 0.82
End life stage Childhood Ongoing 1–5 4.35 0.86

We also included several simple structural variables: verbosity,
specificity, and temporal context. Verbosity was operationalized as
a word count. Specificity was operationalized as the presence or
absence of event-specific detail (kappa = 0.84), the most specific
level of autobiographical memory in the self-memory system
which captures scene-specific episodic details (e.g., direct quotes,
sensory details; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Temporal con-
text was operationalized by categorizing the life stage at which
the challenge began (ICC = 0.66) and ended (ICC = 0.77). These codes
were entered on an ordinal scale where 1 = childhood; 2 = adoles-
cence; 3 = adulthood; 4 = recent adulthood (i.e., within the past
5 years); and 5 = ongoing.
Reliability statistics for some codes—particularly the identity
processing codes—were somewhat lower than is typically seen in
narrative coding. It is worth noting that these reliabilities were
similar to those reported by Pals (2006) for the same set of codes.
Moreover, the current study does not analyze specific codes, but
rather their latent structure as revealed through exploratory factor
analysis. In this design, each latent variable is defined based on the
common, reliable variance across multiple codes. Therefore, the
reliability of individual codes is not as essential as in a typical
content-coding study.
2.3. Self-report measures
Several weeks prior to the interview, participants completed
four self-report questionnaires. These included the NEO-Five Factor
Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992), a 60-item measure of
five-factor model personality traits. The NEO-FFI captures 75–85%
of the variance accounted for by the full 240-item NEO-Personality
Instrument-Revised (NEO-PI-R) and has demonstrated strong con-
vergent and test-retest validity (McCrae & Costa, 2008). Each item
is rated from 1 (‘‘strongly disagree”) to 5 (‘‘strongly agree”).
Participants also completed measures of life satisfaction, psy-
chological well-being, and depression. Life satisfaction was mea-
sured by the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons,
Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), a brief 5-item self-report scale that mea-
sures contentment with one’s life circumstances (e.g., ‘‘if I could
live my life over again, I would do nothing differently”). Psycholog-
ical well-being was measured by Ryff’s Scales of Psychological
Well-Being (PWB; Ryff, 1989). The PWB are composed of 42 items,
grouped into six scales: autonomy, environmental mastery, per-
sonal growth, positive relationships, purpose in life, and self-
acceptance. To assess depression, participants completed the Beck
Depression Inventory-II (BDI; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996), a 21-
item self-report measure of depression symptom severity within
the past two weeks.
2.4. Data analysis
All analyses were carried out in the psych package, version 1.6.8
(Revelle, 2018) in the R statistical programming language, version
3.3.2 (R Core Team, 2018). All statistical tests corrected for the false
discovery rate (FDR) using Benjamini and Hochberg’s method
(1995). For specific content, we examined content domains’ poly-
choric intercorrelations. This allowed us to compare the effect sizes
of relationships between various pairs of specific content domains.
To investigate the latent structure of the fourteen narrative vari-
ables, we entered them into an exploratory factor analysis, using
minimum residual factor extraction and oblimin rotation. Number
of factors was determined by parallel analysis (Horn, 1965) and
comparing Bayesian Information Criteria (Schwarz, 1978) for vari-
ous numbers of factors. For the final factor model, we examined
relationships between factor scores and specific content domains
through two-tailed t-tests. We examined Pearson correlations
between factor scores, personality traits, and psychological func-
tioning. Finally, we computed supplemental simultaneous regres-
sion models to investigate: (a) the total effect of specific content
domains on narrative factors; and (b) the incremental validity of
narrative factors in predicting functioning beyond the strong
effects of traits. A full correlation table of all study variables is pro-
vided in the supplemental materials.
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103867.
This study reports a secondary analysis of extant data, so it was
not possible to compute an a priori power analysis. We computed
sensitivity analyses to determine the sample’s statistical power.
The full sample size of n = 157 was powered at 0.80 to detect a cor-
relation of r = |0.158| or greater. Excluding the nine narratives that
could not be coded for narrative features (see Section 2.2 above),
6 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Table 2
Item loadings, factor statistics, and factor correlations from an exploratory factor analysis of narrative features in adults’ life challenge narratives.

Identity Processing Agency/Emotion Verbosity/Specificity Scope Com.

Positive self-transformation 0.83 0.06 0.02 0.10 0.72
Emotional resolution 0.81 0.14
0.13
0.16 0.75
Open exploration 0.65
0.19 0.19 0.19 0.58
Difficulty 0.15
0.83 0.05
0.10 0.67
Freedom vs. constraint 0.08 0.74 0.09
0.08 0.58
Emotional tone 0.11 0.69
0.08 0.08 0.53
Perceived solution 0.34 0.58 0.09
0.21 0.61
Word count
0.09 0.06 0.92
0.01 0.80
Narrative elaboration 0.36
0.15 0.67 0.12 0.74
Event-specific detail
0.11
0.03 0.63
0.16 0.41
Duration 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.87 0.75
Beginning life stage
0.06 0.02 0.05
0.62 0.39
Location
0.17 0.00 0.20
0.46 0.27
End life stage
0.35 0.02 0.07 0.45 0.32
SS Loadings 2.28 2.22 1.85 1.77
Proportion Variance 0.16 0.16 0.13 0.13
Cumulative Variance 0.16 0.32 0.45 0.58
Factor correlations
Identity processing 1
Agency/emotion 0.16 1
Verbosity/specificity 0.15
0.27 1
Scope 0.02
0.27 0.05 1

Note: Com. = Item communality; SS Loadings = sum of squared loadings for each factor.
Item loadings greater than 0.35 shown in bold.

the sample size of n = 148 was powered at 0.80 to detect a correla-
tion of r = |0.161|. Studies in this research area typically interpret
correlations of roughly r = |0.20| or larger (see, e.g., Graci et al.,
2018; Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011), so we concluded that the
sample size was adequate.
3. Results
3.1. Specific content
reflecting the fact that many family challenges involved loss of fam-
ily members through death or divorce. Significant negative relation-
ships emerged between the domains of Social and Health/Wellness,
polychoric r =
0.30, FDR-corr. p < .001, Professional and
Health/Wellness, polychoric r =
0.30, FDR-corr. p = .001, Personal
and Health/Wellness, polychoric r =
0.26, FDR-corr. p = .001, Family
and Professional, polychoric r =
0.25, FDR-corr. p = .005, and Family
and Personal, polychoric r =
0.21, FDR-corr. p = .018. Overall,
Health/Wellness was the domain most likely to appear alone (mean
polychoric r with other domains =
0.25).

Independent raters reached consensus on 18 specific content 3.2. Narrative features

topics, grouped into 6 life domains (see Fig. 1). Life challenge topics
were heterogeneous, combining life events (e.g., trauma), beha-
vioural and psychological processes (e.g., addictive behaviours),
interpersonal functioning (e.g., peer relationships), lifespan
development (e.g., parenting), and external circumstances
(e.g., society/culture). Moreover, life challenges were complex; any
given challenge included a mean of 2.6 topics (SD = 1.2), spread
across a mean of 1.7 domains (SD = 0.67). In some cases, this was
because events or circumstances impacted several areas of life. For
instance, David’s challenge2 began when his daughter started behav-
ing erratically and hearing voices, and continued through his daugh-
ter’s diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, institutionalization, and
recovery (topics: parenting, caregiving, mental illness). In other cases,
participants’ psychological processes and developmental context
modified events. For instance, Gabrielle was left to raise her grandson
after her son was murdered; she defines her challenge as a search for
forgiveness to raise her grandson without hate (topics: parenting, loss,
trauma, existential). Finally, some participants downplayed life
events altogether and focused on psychological or developmental
challenges. For instance, Louise has struggled throughout her life to
build mastery and overcome shyness and low self-esteem after an
unhappy childhood with an ‘‘overbearing, opinionated, domineering”
mother (topics: family of origin, personality processes, existential).
Family was the most common domain, present in all three of
these examples and more than half of the life challenges overall. A
significant positive relationship emerged between the domains of
Family and Loss or Trauma, polychoric r = 0.33, FDR-corr. p = <0.01,
2
All names and identifying information have been changed.
Examination of Bayesian Information Criteria (Schwarz, 1978)
and parallel analysis plots (Horn, 1965) determined that 4 factors
were appropriate. Factors, factor correlations, and item loadings
for the oblique four-factor model are shown in Table 2. Represen-
tative sample quotes for each factor are shown in Table 3. The four
factors together accounted for 58% of the observed variance. Fig. 2
is a path diagram illustrating item loadings and factor
intercorrelations.
The first factor captured identity processing. Three of the four
variables adapted from Pals (2006) loaded on this factor, and the
fourth variable (narrative elaboration) had a substantial cross-
loading on this factor. This latent variable reflected the extent to
which participants reflected on their life challenges within the con-
text of their self-concept and narrative identity. The second factor,
agency/emotion, was identified with some but not all motivational
and affective variables. This latent variable reflected the way in
which participants discussed the protagonist’s role in the life chal-
lenge and the emotional experience of living through it. The iden-
tity processing and agency/emotion factors were uncorrelated and
had low item cross-loadings, suggesting that they were relatively
distinct from one another. Two other factors captured structural
or extraneous aspects of the narratives. A verbosity/specificity factor
captured the extent to which participants used more words,
recalled more specific autobiographical detail, and engaged in
more narrative elaboration. Finally, a scope factor represented chal-
lenges that began early in life, were ongoing or recently resolved,
and were experienced as being lengthy and internal to the
participant.
 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867 7

Table 3
Example quotes.

Factor Example quote

Identity I’m working for a man who up until recently used to think it
processing was okay to scream at people including me. . .and I happen to
know he’s an adult child of an alcoholic just like I am. . ..But
what I realized was he became my mother. And I let him
become my mother. And I let him treat me the way, you know,
she treated me as a child. . ..So I think the lesson learned for me
about that is there are authority figures, I still have issues with
that. . .not surprisingly, while all this was going on I started
having more thoughts about my mother than I have had for
many, many years. And I realized that I needed to go to the next
level of forgiveness.
Agency/ People who were in positions of power intimidated me. . . ‘cause
Emotion I had never been around white people except to have them as
teachers. . ...I, I just have to be this little humble person, and,
you know, I can’t ask this question cause it’s going to be
wrong. . ..The way I got over it was to put myself in those
situations where I got to know those people better or I got to
see that they were just like me, and just coming up to my fear
and dealing with it. . ..And travel did that for me. . .leaving my
hometown did first. Going to New York City on my own. . ..
Traveling abroad. I was like, shit, I’m afraid? Of what?
Verbosity/ You know, it’s one or the other, either Amanda or it’s me. I
Specificity mean, I don’t see where I can put anything above my own
cancer, but. . .in a way Amanda was harder because. . .I can’t fix
her. Maybe that is harder, and it was the first time I had any
indication that my parenting wasn’t perfect. So maybe that was
it, and then it’ll be something different for me to talk about I
guess. . ..She was, you know, she was a skinny kid, and she, you Fig. 2. Path diagram illustrating an exploratory factor analysis of autobiographical
know, got to high school, stopped growing, put on a few reasoning processes in adults’ life challenge narratives. All item loadings, cross-
pounds. . ..And at this point, well, she was getting more into loadings, and factor intercorrelations were modeled. Only those >0.35 are shown
maybe – well, she’s 50 5 1/200 , getting more into the 135 area. I here.
mean it’s not a disaster. Yeah, but her friends were still 115.
Maybe she was 130, 35, yeah, she was not heavy at all. . .
[Continues at length about her daughter’s struggle with an
eating disorder]
14.4% of the variance in agency/emotion could be accounted for
Scope I’m a very shy person. . .And that’s been a lifelong, lifelong
problem for me. And I really work at overcoming it and I really by content domains, multiple R2 = 0.144, F(6, 141) = 3.91, p = .001.
believe that I can, you know, even in my older years can keep
working [at it]. It’s hard for me to build relationships because of 3.4. Demographic variables and narrative features
it and it’s hard for me to feel comfortable in group settings. . .. I
think I’m working on it and overcoming that little by little even
in my old age. ANOVAs examined the possible effects of demographic vari-
ables (race, sex, education, and income) on narrative features. No
Note: all names and identifying information have been changed.
effects were significant after FDR-correction.

3.5. Personality traits and narrative features

3.3. Specific content and narrative features
Two-tailed t-tests with FDR-corrected p-values indicated some
associations between specific content domains and narrative fac-
tors. As shown in Fig. 3, the scope factor tended to appear more
(i.e., with a broader scope) in personal challenges, t(78) = 3.63,
FDR-corr. p = .012, d =
0.63, and less in professional challenges, t
(93) =
3.01, FDR-corr. p = .021, d = 0.48. The agency/emotion factor
tended to appear more in personal challenges, t(75) = 3.01, FDR-
corr. p = .021, d =
0.54, and possibly professional challenges, t
(70) = 2.55, FDR-corr. p = .052, d =
0.46, and less in health and
wellness challenges, t(69) =
3.42, FDR-corr. p = .013, d =
0.63.
The verbosity/specificity factor tended to appear less in personal
challenges, t(99) =
2.68, FDR-corr. p = .041, d =
0.43.
What was the total magnitude of these effects? In other words,
to what extent did the specific content in an interview transcript
determine its narrative features? To obtain a rough estimate, we
examined the coefficients of determination (R2) in post-hoc simul-
taneous linear regression models with the scope and agency/emo-
tion factors entered as dependent variables and all six content
domains entered as independent variables. These models found
that 17.9% of the variance in scope could be accounted for by con-
tent domains, multiple R2 = 0.179, F(6, 141) = 5.12, p < .001, while
Correlations between traits and narrative features are shown in
Table 4. After FDR correction, only one correlation remained signif-
icant, between neuroticism and agency/emotion, r =
0.33 [95% CI

0.18,
0.47], FDR-corr. p < .001, while trends suggested that
extraversion may have related to agency/emotion, r = 0.18 [95%
CI = 0.01, 0.33], FDR-corr. p = .09, and that neuroticism may have
related to scope, r = 0.18 [95% CI = 0.02, 0.33], FDR-corr. p = .09.
3.6. Narrative features and psychological functioning
Correlations between narrative features and psychological func-
tioning variables (psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and
depression) are shown in Table 5. After FDR correction, correlations
remained significant between agency/emotion and depression,
r =
0.35 [95% CI
0.20,
0.49], FDR-corr. p < .001, agency/emotion
and psychological well-being, r = 0.29 [95% CI 0.13, 0.43], FDR-corr.
p = .001, and agency/emotion and life satisfaction, r = 0.24 [95% CI
0.08, 0.39], FDR-corr. p = .008.
Did personality traits account for these effects? Agency/emotion
correlated with neuroticism and possibly extraversion (see
Table 4), both of which correlated with all three psychological
functioning variables (absolute rs ranging from 0.28 to 0.73, see
Supplemental Material). This raises the question of whether
8 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867

Fig. 3. Mean scores for narratives factors in the presence or absence of specific content domains. Agency/emotion and scope were most connected to specific content. Error
lines indicate the standard error of the mean. *FDR-corrected p < .05; yFDR-corrected p = .052.

Table 4
Correlations between narrative factors and personality traits.

Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Agreeableness Conscientiousness

r [95% CI] r [95% CI] r [95% CI] r [95% CI] r [95% CI]
Identity processing
0.06 [
0.21, 0.11] 0.16 [0.00, 0.32] 0.02 [
0.14, 0.18] 0.16 [0.00, 0.32]
0.03 [
0.19, 0.13]
Agency/emotion
0.33 [
0.47,
0.18]*** 0.18 [0.01, 0.33]y 0.06 [
0.10, 0.22] 0.00 [
0.16, 0.16] 0.14 [
0.02, 0.30]
Verbosity/specificity 0.15 [
0.01, 0.30] 0.00 [
0.15, 0.17] 0.00 [
0.16, 0.17]
0.05 [
0.21, 0.11]
0.03 [
0.19, 0.14]
Scope 0.18 [02, 0.33]y
0.04 [
0.21, 0.12] 0.14 [
0.03, 0.29] 0.00 [
0.16, 0.16]
0.06 [
0.22, 0.10]

Note: Personality traits assessed by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory. ***FDR-corrected p < .001, **FDR-corrected p < .01, *FDR-corrected p < .05, yFDR-corrected p < .10.

agency/emotion adds incremental validity in predicting psycholog-
ical functioning, beyond the strong effects of neuroticism and
extraversion. As a supplemental analysis, we entered agency/emo-
tion, neuroticism, and extraversion as the independent variables
in simultaneous linear regression models predicting depression,
psychological well-being, and life satisfaction.
Standardized regression coefficients and fit statistics from these
models are shown in Table 6. Effects for agency/emotion were
attenuated in all models and remained significant only in the
model predicting depression, B =
0.052, SE = 0.021, std.
beta =
0.15, p = .016. Similarly, effects for extraversion were
attenuated and remained significant only in the model predicting
psychological well-being, B =
0.273, SE = 0.080, std. beta = 0.22,
p < .001.
4. Discussion
Life’s challenges have been central to psychological autobiogra-
phy since at least the time of St. Augustine. Modern narrative
researchers have built a strong foundation in narratives of chal-
lenging events including difficult life periods (Pals, 2006), trau-
matic events (Graci et al., 2018), and outpatient psychotherapy
(Adler, 2012). The current study broadens this framework to inves-
tigate participants’ single greatest life challenge. In an integrative
exploratory study, we knitted together specific content (the stories
participants selected as their greatest life challenges) with narra-
tive features (how those stories were told) and covariates (traits
and psychological functioning) to examine this unique narrative
prompt and test recent advances in the meta-structure of narrative
identity (McLean et al., 2019).
4.1. Life challenges
The specific content of life challenges was complex. Participants
described a rich breadth of human experience which freely com-
bined life events, behaviours, psychological processes, interper-
sonal functioning, developmental concerns, and external
circumstances. The topics did not predominantly reflect stress, dif-
ficulty, and trauma. Rather, the distribution of life challenge topics
was similar to the distribution of topics in sehsnuchts, or life long-
ings, reported by Kotter-Grühn et al. (2009) in an inductive coding
study of 1316 participants. Most narratives also included content
from multiple domains. Family was the most common, and the
modal challenge would be one which combined Family with one
 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867
Table 5
Correlations between narrative factors and psychological functioning.
BDI
r [95% CI]
Identity processing
0.07 [
0.22, 0.10]
Agency/emotion
0.35 [
0.49,
0.20]***
Verbosity/specificity
0.02 [
0.18, 0.14]
Scope 0.11 [
0.05, 0.27]
Note: BDI = Beck Depression Inventory-II; PWB = Scales of Psychological Well-Being; SWLS = Satisfaction with Life Scale. ***FDR-corrected p < .001, **FDR-corrected p < .01,
*FDR-corrected p < .05, yFDR-corrected p < .10.
Table 6
Regression models predicting psychological functioning—standardized coefficients
and fit statistics.
Variable BDI PWB
Neuroticism b 0.55***
0.57***
Extraversion b 0.00 0.22***
Agency/emotion b
0.15* 0.06
R2 0.44 0.53
F 37.2*** 53.0***
Note: BDI = Beck Depression Inventory-II; PWB = Scales of Psychological
Well-Being; SWLS = Satisfaction with Life Scale. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05.
other content domain. At least among late-midlife urban Midwest-
ern adults, life challenges do not tend to be solitary concerns, but
are likely to include one’s parents, siblings, spouse, or children.
Again, this mirrors the content of life longings. For example, part-
nership and family are two of the three most common life longing
topics (Kotter-Grühn et al., 2009), both of which would fit within
the current study’s Family domain. There seems to be individual
variation in which kinds of experience are most salient, and this
variation is apparent when participants are reflecting on past chal-
lenges or longing for future completeness.
4.2. Narrative features in life challenges
We found four latent factors underlying fourteen narrative vari-
ables. Overall, the factor structure fit within the ‘‘big three” narra-
tive structure recently proposed by McLean et al. (2019). Identity
processing and agency/emotion were cleanly separated from one
another and uncorrelated. These factors are exemplars of two
broad factors in the ‘‘big three” taxonomy: respectively, ‘‘autobio-
graphical reasoning” and ‘‘motivational/affective themes” (McLean
et al., 2019). They also resemble the factors of ‘‘integrative mean-
ing” and ‘‘positive/negative processing” which Graci and colleagues
reported in a narrative study of traumatic experiences in under-
graduates (2018). Notably, the agentic and emotional items loaded
together cleanly on one factor, consistent with the ‘‘big three”
model. In other words, there was no separation between narratives
about a capable, agentic protagonist and narratives told with a pos-
itive emotional tone.
Although the verbosity/specificity and scope factors resemble
‘‘structural” features in the ‘‘big three” taxonomy, they had no
cross-loadings and did not correlate with one another. Examining
the items in each factor, verbosity/specificity matches the structural
feature of ‘‘facts” reported by McLean et al. (2019) and the ‘‘struc-
ture” factor reported by Graci et al. (2018). Participants who scored
high on verbosity/specificity used more words in their narratives,
and these extra words were not bloviation; rather, they added
specific detail to the story. Verbosity/specificity, therefore, appears
to be a structural factor analogous to ‘‘facts” in the ‘‘big three”.
Scope does not obviously correspond to any of the ‘‘big three”
features. Scope was the narrative factor most associated with speci-
fic content, with 17.9% of its variance attributable to specific
content domains (see Fig. 3). Although it has a temporal aspect,
9
PWB SWLS
r [95% CI] r [95% CI]
0.08 [
0.09, 0.23] 0.12 [
0.04, 0.28]
0.29 [0.13, 0.29]** 0.24 [0.08, 0.39]**

0.00 [
0.17, 0.16]
0.02 [
0.18, 0.14]

0.12 [
0.28, 0.04]
0.01 [
0.17, 0.15]
this factor captures duration and recency rather than more tradi-
tionally ‘‘structural” features such as coherence and continuity (c.
f., Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019). Similarly, while the loca-
SWLS tion of a challenge (internal vs. external) intuitively seems to be a
meaningful narrative feature, it also touches on objective charac-

0.44***
0.06
teristics of a memory. External challenges prioritize the person’s
0.10 context and environment, which change during the life course,
0.26 whereas internal challenges prioritize the self, which is continuous
16.27*** throughout the life course. Scope included some amount of objec-
tive detail about a memory and seemed somewhat orthogonal to
the ‘‘big three” narrative factors; perhaps it is best considered as
a hybrid construct with elements of narrative identity and specific
content.
To a lesser extent, agency/emotion also related to specific con-
tent, with 14.4% of its variance attributable to specific content
domains. Previous research has found agency to be more consis-
tent—in its relationships to other narrative features and to well-
being variables—in low point, turning point, and health challenge
narratives than in high point narratives (Adler et al., 2015;
McLean et al., 2019). One study also found agency to be more
prevalent in undergraduates’ narratives about their careers than
about their relationships (Dunlop, Walker, & Wiens, 2014). The
current study reinforces the idea that a narrative’s specific content
sets certain limits on a protagonist’s ability to influence the course
of events. Specifically, narratives about existential struggles, iden-
tity development, work, and education, and narratives which
avoided physical or mental illness, were particularly fertile ground
for expressions of motivated agency and positive emotion.
These findings support two theoretical conclusions. First, the
‘‘big three” taxonomy appears to be a reliable, replicable, and prac-
tical taxonomy for narrative features. The current study was
designed under the traditional four-category classification system,
examined a novel prompt, examined one open-ended prompt
rather than a range of prompts, and used a restricted set of codes.
Yet it still largely replicated the ‘‘big three” factor structure. This
provides additional evidence for the ‘‘big three”, and particularly
supports its utility for smaller-scale studies with specific prompts.
Based on the current results, it is an open question whether the
structure identified here would apply only to this life challenge
prompt; to all prompts on stress, difficulty, or challenge; or to all
narrative prompts. Given that the ‘‘big three” were identified at
the level of ‘‘all narrative prompts”, we would argue that the struc-
ture is best understood as adding nuance to the ‘‘big three” in the
context of challenging memories, analogous to findings that speci-
fic lower-order facets of five-factor model traits are particularly
relevant for certain contexts or behaviours (Paunonen & Ashton,
2001; Paunonen, Haddock, Forsterling, & Keinonen, 2003; Ziegler
et al., 2014). An important direction for future research would be
to apply the same coding scheme to the same prompt at multiple
time points.
Second, the field of narrative identity research is currently
tackling dependencies between specific content and narrative
processes (Adler et al., 2017; Adler et al., 2015; Dunlop et al.,
2014; McAdams & McLean, 2013; McLean et al., 2017). While the
10 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867
typical approach is to vary narrative prompts to obtain various
kinds of specific content, another viable approach is to administer
open-ended prompts and analyze relationships between specific
content and narrative features, as was done in the current study.
4.3. Narrative features and personality traits
Traits and narrative identity are typically thought to represent
different levels or layers of the psychological self (McAdams,
2013), and narrative identity researchers do not necessarily expect
strong associations between narrative features and personality
traits. In the current study, we found few associations between
traits, demographics, and narrative features. For the most part, par-
ticipants told similar stories regardless of their trait or demographic
profiles. Only one association survived correction for multiple com-
parisons, that between neuroticism and agency/emotion. Although
previous research has reported associations between openness,
agreeableness, and autobiographical reasoning (Lilgendahl et al.,
2013; McLean et al., 2019; Pals, 2006), we observed no significant
relationships between these variables. The greatest life challenge
prompt, which highlights—in part—the action a protagonist took
to address or resolve a challenge, may have maximized trait associ-
ations for motivational and affective themes and minimized trait
associations for autobiographical reasoning.
4.4. Narrative features and psychological functioning
Narrative features are commonly found to correlate with psy-
chological functioning variables such as psychological well-being,
life satisfaction, and depression (Adler, 2012; Adler et al., 2016,
2008, 2015; Bauer et al., 2008; Graci et al., 2018; Pals, 2006). Pre-
vious research has found that affective and motivational themes
tend to be the most closely tied to functioning (Adler, 2012;
Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019), and that these relationships
are most evident using narrative prompts of difficult experiences,
such as low points and traumatic experiences (Adler et al., 2015;
Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019). Consistent with this body
of research, in the current study we found the narrative factor of
agency/emotion to be associated with lower depression and higher
life satisfaction and psychological well-being (see Table 5).
To a certain extent, low agency/emotion reflected an interpretive
style which neurotic individuals use to make sense of their chal-
lenging experiences. These individuals: (a) are predisposed to high
levels of hostility, impulsivity, self-consciousness, and negative
emotion (Costa & McCrae, 1992); (b) constructed narratives in
which a constrained protagonist is helpless in the face of a difficult,
painful, intractable challenge; and (c) reported more depression
and poorer well-being. However, agency/emotion did not only
reflect neuroticism. Its correlation with neuroticism was moderate
(r =
0.33), and regression models holding neuroticism and
extraversion constant (see Table 6) showed agency/emotion to be
uniquely associated with lower depression scores. This supports
previous findings that motivational and affective themes are clo-
sely tied to psychological functioning, especially in narratives of
difficult or stressful experiences (Adler, 2012; Adler et al., 2015;
Graci et al., 2018; McLean et al., 2019). Agency/emotion recon-
structs the life story as the continued efforts of a potent, motivated,
optimistic protagonist. This style is more common among less neu-
rotic individuals. And, even when holding neuroticism constant, it
is a style associated with better psychological functioning in the
form of lower depression scores.
4.5. Limitations and future directions
This study had several limitations. First, this set of codes was
not exhaustive, and the factors presented here should not be inter-
preted as a taxonomy of ‘‘narrative identity” writ large (for such a
taxonomy, see McLean et al., 2019). Second, some of the narrative
codes in the current study (particularly the identity processing
codes) achieved less-than-ideal interrater reliability. Mitigating
this issue, reliability scores were similar to those for the same
codes in previous research (Pals, 2006), and reliability scores are
less essential in a factor analytic study because factor scores are
derived based on multiple codes’ common variance (aka. shared
or reliable variance). Nevertheless, this could have suppressed true
associations between identity processing and other variables of
interest.
Third, the Foley Longitudinal Study of Adulthood is a cohort
study of adults in a specific life stage in a specific time and place.
Although the method and materials (i.e., an interviewer asking
about a significant life challenge) is likely to generalize to other
samples, the specific results may be constrained by cultural, devel-
opmental, or cohort effects. Results are likely to generalize to urban
North Americans in this age range and cohort; however, it is unclear
how these results would generalize to less similar participants.
Cross-cultural research on challenging narratives would be particu-
larly valuable here. Furthermore, while FLSA includes multiple time
points, the current study was cross-sectional and only focused on
one time point. There are currently many interesting unresolved
questions about stability and change in life narratives (see, e.g.,
McLean et al., 2019), and future research examining temporal
aspects of specific content and narrative features in life challenge
narratives would be particularly valuable.
Fourth, in the narrative identity paradigm, the data are the stories
people tell about their lives rather than the objective details of their
life histories. Nevertheless, this study’s design collapsed two sources
of variance together: objective events in participants’ lives and sub-
jective selections of which events to discuss. Future research could
address this by adding an objective assessment of life stress such
as the UCLA Life Stress Interview (Hammen Lab, 2007). Fifth, this
study’s analyses were exploratory, which limits their evidentiary
value somewhat. Future research using confirmatory designs would
add evidentiary weight to the findings reported here.
4.6. Conclusion
In this study, we presented an integrative analysis of the
unique ways in which late midlife adults narrated their single
greatest life challenges. A single greatest life challenge is the most
subjectively-significant challenge a person has ever faced, with an
emphasis on how it developed, how the person addressed it, and
what significance it holds for their overall life story. This study of
life challenges replicated the ‘‘big three” narrative taxonomy of
motivational/affective themes, autobiographical reasoning, and
structure on a smaller scale. Moreover, it showed the importance
of agency/emotion in narratives of difficult, stressful, or challeng-
ing life events. This factor was more prevalent in some types of
narratives than others, was linked to neuroticism, and was rele-
vant for psychological functioning (particularly depression). This
study expands our understanding of challenging life events
beyond the confines of stress and difficulty, and builds a founda-
tion for integrative narrative identity research focused on specific
prompts, informed by recent advances in the underlying structure
of narrative features, and modeling the complex interplay
between specific content, narrative features, traits, and psycho-
logical functioning.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dan Mroczek and Rick Zinbarg for helpful comments
on an earlier draft of this manuscript. HRC, BKJ, and DPM con-
 H.R. Cowan et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 83 (2019) 103867
tributed to the study conceptualization and design. All authors
contributed to the content-coding of narrative transcripts. HRC,
DPM, and XC contributed to data analysis. HRC wrote the first draft
of the manuscript and all other authors contributed substantive
revisions. All authors have approved the final version of the manu-
script. No authors have any relevant disclosures that could affect
this work’s objectivity.
This work was a secondary analysis of an extant longitudinal
dataset which recently completed data collection and is not yet
publicly available. In the meantime, interested readers are wel-
come to contact the first author at hrcowan@u.northwestern.edu
for the data and R code used in this study. This study was also
not preregistered, although all analyses are clearly reported as
being exploratory, and this is noted as a study limitation in the Dis-
cussion section.
Funding sources
This work was supported in part by grants from the Foley Fam-
ily Foundation (to DPM) and the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research DFS-152268 (to HRC).
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