Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 , Department of psychology, Semnan branch, Islamic Azad University, Semnan, Iran.

2 Associate Professor Allameh Tabataba'i University

3 Associate professor, Psychology department, Islamic Azad University, Tonekabon branch, Iran

4 allameh tabatabaei

Abstract

Master Narratives are shared, sociocultural stories that contain common concepts within a specific culture and could be elicited from the personal narratives. These massive societal structures are originally the context of personal narratives as they offer appropriate material for personal narratives. The cultural narratives are not frozen and fixed in time; they modify and transform through history. Cultural meanings have been altered down the generations and the dominant narratives have inspired individuals in making their life narrative accounts. This study aims to reach the repetitive themes and the common contents of individuals’ personal narratives by analyzing them with quantitative and qualitative methods. To do so we conducted an open interview to collect the life narratives of 30 adults around the potentially conflictual identity issue of religious and sexual development. Participants also answered the HEXACO personality inventory and the Circumplex Religious Orientation Inventory (CROI). In the quantitative part, we analyzed the narratives conducting McAdams’ (1999) reliable coding schemes. In the qualitative part, the master narrative model proposed by Syed and McLean (2015) was used for the analysis. Results illustrated common repetitive themes in life narrative accounts which are considered as common societal stories. Within the massive sociocultural context, the Religious Traditional Master Narrative is in contrast with the Modern Alternative Narrative and this enormous conflict has been reflected in individuals’ identity structure. Individuals internalize this conflict while internalizing the religious traditional master narrative and negotiating with the modern alternative one. In addition, Tradition has been identified as an autonomous factor which functions independently from the religion within the cultural context of Iran.

Keywords

آقابابائی، ناصر. (1391). رابطه صداقت و فروتنی با شخصیت، دین و بهزیستی فاعلی. روانشناسی دین، 5 (3)، 40-25.
بشیری، حسن. (1389). بررسی ویژگی های روانسنجی و اعتباریابی پرسشنامه شخصیتی هگزاکو. پایان نامه کارشناسی ارشد. دانشگاه محقق اردبیلی.
پالاهنگ، حسن. نشاط دوست، ح.، و مولوی، ح. (1388). هنجاریابی پرسشنامه 6 عاملی شخصیت HEXACO-PI-R در دانشجویان ایرانی. مجلـه روا‌ن‌شناسـی دانشگاه تبریز، 16 ،66-48.
حسن زاده، رمضان. (1392). روش‌های تحقیق در علوم رفتاری. تهران: نشر ساوالان.
دلاور، علی. (1393). روش تحقیق در روانشناسی و علوم تربیتی. تهران: نشر ویرایش.
Aghababaei, N., Krauss, S. W., Aminikhoo, M., & Isaak, S. L. (in press). The Circumplex Religious Orientation Inventory: Validity and reliability of a new approach to religious orientation in a Muslim population. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55, 469–480. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066X.55.5.469
Bamberg, M. (2004). Form and functions of “slut bashing” in male identity constructions in 15-year-olds. Human Development, 47, 331–353. doi:10.1159/000081036
Bettie, J. (2002). Exceptions to the rule: Upwardly mobile White and Mexican American high school girls. Gender & Society, 16, 403–422. doi:10.1177/0891243202016003008
Erikson, E.H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crises. New York: Norton.
Fivush, R. (2004). The silenced self: Constructing self from memories spoken and unspoken. In D. Beike, J. Lampien, & D. Behrand (Eds.), Memory and self (pp. 79–99). East Sussex, England: Psychology Press.
Fivush, R. (2010). Speaking silence: The social construction of silence in autobiographical and cultural narratives. Memory, 18, 88–98. doi:10.1080/09658210903029404
Fivush, R., & Zaman, W. (2015). Gendered narrative voices: Sociocultural and feminist approaches to emerging identity in childhood and adolescence. In K.C. McLean & M. Syed (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of identity development (pp. 33–52). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Fleiss, J. L. (1981). Balanced incomplete block designs for inter-rater reliability studies. Applied Psychological Measurement, 5, 105–112.
Habermas, T. (2007). How to tell a life: The development of the cultural concept of biography. Journal of Cognition and Development, 8, 1–31. doi:10.1080/15248370709336991
Habermas, T., & Reese, E. (2015). Getting a life takes time: The development of the life story in adolescence, its precursors and consequences. Human Development, 58, 172–201. doi:10.1159/000437245
Hammack, P.L. (2006). Identity, conflict, and coexistence: Life stories of Israeli and Palestinian adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, 21, 323–369. doi:10.1177/0743558406289745
Hammack, P.L. (2008). Narrative and the cultural psychology of identity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12, 222–247. doi:10.1177/1088868308316892
Hammack, P.L. (2011). Narrative and the politics of identity: The cultural psychology of Israeli and Palestinian youth. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Hammack, P.L., & Cohler, B.J. (2009). Narrative engagement and stories of sexual identity: An interdisciplinary approach to the study of sexual lives. In P.L. Hammack & B.J. Cohler (Eds.), The story of sexual identity: Narrative perspectives on the gay and lesbian life course (pp. 3–22). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326789.003.0001
Harré, R., & Moghaddam, F. (Eds.) (2003). The self and others. Positioning individual groups in personal, political and cultural contexts. London, UK: Praeger.
Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R. and Kitayama, S. )1999(. Is there a universal needfor positive self-regard?, Psychological Review 106: 766–94
Isaak, Steven L., James Jesse R., Radeke Mary K., Krauss Stephen W., Schuler Keke L. & Schuler Eric R. )2017(. Assessing Religious Orientations: Replication and Validation of the Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex (CRC) Model. Religions, 8, 208. doi:10.3390/rel8100208
Krauss, Stephen W., and Ralph W. Hood. (2013).A New Approach to Religious Orientation: The Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric Properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39:2, 329-358. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327906mbr3902_8
Lee, K., & Ashton, M.C. (2016). Psychometric Properties of the HEXACO-100. Assessment, 1-15. doi: 10.1177/1073191116659134
McAdams, D.P. (1988). Power, intimacy and the life story: Personological inquiries
into identity
. New York: Guilford Press.
McAdams, D.P. (1999). Coding Narrative Accounts of Autobiographical Scenes for Redemption Sequences. Foley Center for the study of lives. Northwestern University.
McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press.
McAdams, D. P. and Pals, J. 2006. A new Big Five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality, American Psychologist 61: 204–17
McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K.C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22 (3), 233–238. doi:10.1177/0963721413475622
McLean, K. C. (2015). The co-authored self: Family stories and the construction of personal identity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199995745.001. 0001
McLean, K. C. and Thorne, A. )2003(. Adolescents’ self-defining memories about relationships, Developmental Psychology 39: 635–45
McLean, K.C., & Syed, M. (2015). Personal, Master, and Alternative Narratives: An Integrative Framework for Understanding Identity Development in Context. Human Development, 58:318–349. doi: 10.1159/000445817
McLean, K.C., Shucard, H., & Syed, M. (2016). Applying the Master Narrative Framework to Gender identity development in emerging adulthood. Emerging Adulthood, 1-13. doi:10.1177/2167696816656254
McLean, K.C., Lilgendahl, J.P., Fordham, C., Alpert, E., Marsden, E., Szymanowski, K., Mc Adams, D. P. (2017).  Identity development in cultural context: The role of deviating from master narratives. Journal of Personality, 1–21.doi: 10.1111/jopy.12341
Miller, P. J., Wiley, A., Fung, H. and Liang, C. H. )1997(. Personal storytelling as a medium of socialization in Chinese and American families, Child Development 68: 557–68
Mishler E. G. (1979). Meaning in context: Is there any other kind? Harvard Educational Review, 49, 1-19.
Rubin, D.C., & Berntsen, D. (2009). The frequency of voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memories across the life span. Memory & Cognition, 37, 679–688. doi:10.3758/37.5.679
Syed, M. & Nelson, S. C. (2015). Guidelines for establishing reliability when coding narrative data. Emerging Adulthood, 3 (6), 375-387. doi: 10.1177/2167696815587648
Thorne, A., & McLean, K.C. (2003). Telling traumatic events in adolescence: A study of master narrative positioning. In R. Fivush & C. Haden (Eds.), Autobiographical memory and the construction of a narrative self: Developmental and cultural perspectives (pp. 169–185). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Thorne, A. & Vickie, N. (2009). The storied construction of personality. In P. J. Corr & G. Matthews; (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology (pp.491-505). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Viera, A.J. & Garrett, J.M. (2005). Understanding interobserver agreement: The Kappa statistic. Family Medicine. 360- 363.
Way, N., & Rogers, O. (2015). “[T]hey say Black men won’t make it, but I know I’m gonna make it”: Ethnic and racial identity development in the context of cultural stereotypes. In K.C. McLean & M. Syed(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of identity development (pp. 269–285). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Weststrate, N.M., & McLean, K.C. (2010). The rise and fall of gay: A cultural-historical approach to gay identity development. Memory, 1, 225–240.