Getting a Life Takes Time: The Development of the Life Story in Adolescence, Its Precursors and Consequences
Abstract
The life story is a special cognitive-communicative format which allows understanding persons from a biographical perspective through autobiographical reasoning and life narrating. Reviewing research on the development of the life story from the past 15 years, we clarify the conceptual and developmental specificity of the life story by comparing it to single event stories, and the specificity of autobiographical reasoning by comparing it to other forms of reasoning. To support the claim that the life story emerges only in adolescence, we review the earlier development of self and autobiographical remembering leading up to the life story. We outline the significance of autobiographical reasoning for bridging biographical ruptures, and we discuss the meaning of the cultural context for the development of the life story and its functionality. Finally, we suggest major developmental research questions that remain to be pursued.
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The life story typically begins to emerge in late adolescence and helps develop a narrative identity that connects past to present.
“This life story, which typically begins to emerge in late adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000;Habermas & Reese, 2015), helps us develop a narrative identity that connects our past to our present (McAdams & McLean, 2013;McAdams & Olson, 2010;Singer, 2004).”
From Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model (2024) · cites this paper as Habermas & Reese, 2015
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BackgroundThe Psychology of Life Stories
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“Although personal identity conceived as a unique combination of social identities, or as a combination of numerical values on several personality dimensions, does allow differentiating one person from another in an economic way, social roles and traits do not define each person as unique [McAdams, 2001].”
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McLean, K. C., & Syed, M. (2015) · Human Development · doi:10.1159/000445817 · Cited by 743 · see citing works
Research Methods for Studying Narrative Identity: A Primer
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Self-citationUnderstanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model
Hutmacher, F., Appel, M., & Schwan, S. (2024) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1080/1047840x.2024.2384125 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
- Authors
- Habermas, T., & Reese, E.
- Affiliations
- Goethe University Frankfurt (DE)
- University of Otago (NZ)
- Venue
- Human Development
- Publisher
- S. Karger AG
- Published
- 2015
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 172-201
- ISSN
- 0018-716X (ISSN-L)
- 1423-0054
- OpenAlex
- W2267872374
- Cited by
- 168
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 28.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Human Development (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychological and Temporal Perspectives Research
- Social Sciences › Education › Qualitative research in health
- Keywords
- life stories, autobiographical reasoning, adolescence, self-development, biographical rupture, cultural context
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