The normative and the personal life: individual differences in life scripts and life story events among USA and Danish undergraduates.

Rubin, David C

Berntsen, D

Hutson, Michael

England

2015-05-19T04:45:04Z

2009-01

Life scripts are culturally shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in a prototypical life course. American and Danish undergraduates produced life story events and life scripts by listing the seven most important events in their own lives and in the lives of hypothetical people living ordinary lives. They also rated their events on several scales and completed measures of depression, PTSD symptoms, and centrality of a negative event to their lives. The Danish life script replicated earlier work; the American life script showed minor differences from the Danish life script, apparently reflecting genuine differences in shared events as well as less homogeneity in the American sample. Both consisted of mostly positive events that came disproportionately from ages 15 to 30. Valence of life story events correlated with life script valence, depression, PTSD symptoms, and identity. In the Danish undergraduates, measures of life story deviation from the life script correlated with measures of depression and PTSD symptoms.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19105087

907094089

1464-0686

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10080

eng

Memory

10.1080/09658210802541442

Adolescent

Adult

Cross-Cultural Comparison

Denmark

Female

Humans

Interpersonal Relations

Life Change Events

Male

Mental Recall

Middle Aged

Retention (Psychology)

Students

United States

Young Adult

The normative and the personal life: individual differences in life scripts and life story events among USA and Danish undergraduates.

Journal article

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19105087

54

68

1

Duke

Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

Institutes and Provost's Academic Units

Psychology and Neuroscience

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

University Institutes and Centers

Published

17