Kate C Mclean
Biographic Data
| ID | 208699 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kate C Mclean |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kate C |
| FAMILY NAME | Mclean |
| SIGNATURE | MCLEAN K C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western Washington University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3973-1786 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 616 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 74 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Using a Master Narrative Framework to Examine Conversations About Race and Ethnicity
OBJECTIVE: Systemic racism, reinforced by color-evasive ideology, shapes the ways that emerging adults process and discuss race/ethnicity. In this preregistered and mixed methods study, we used a master narrative framework to examine narratives about race/ethnicity among U.S. emerging adult friend-pairs. METHOD: Participants consisted of 107 friend-pairs (N = 214 total) who provided individually written racial/ethnic narratives and engaged in an …
“We need it, just like we need air”
There's no need for that at this age
Many White Americans believe inequality is due to controllable causes, such as individual effort or good choices, and these beliefs are linked to the perpetuation of inequality. The current research examines the intergenerational transmission of beliefs about inequality from parents to adolescents. We collected data from a sample of 220 White American parents of 11-13-year-olds and examined how they would explain wealth and racial inequality to t…
Parent-Child Conversations About Inequality
Recent calls have urged developmental scientists to consider how basic developmental processes are at play in upholding or disrupting systemic and structural inequality in the United States. The present study examined the intergenerational transmission of ideologies used to discuss systemic and structural inequality, and how ideologies that deny or explain inequality can be perpetuated or disrupted through developmental processes, in this case pa…
Letters from Queer Elders
Intergenerational relationships have been established as a critical locus of psychosocial development, meeting needs of identity development for youth, generativity for elders, and connection and belonging for both. However, intergenerational relationships are both rare in the LGBTQ+ community and sorely needed as a buffer to the discrimination and harm that those within the community experience from systemic and structural oppression. Focusing o…
Emerging adults’ journeys out of the shutdown
The COVID-19 pandemic has defined the college career for this generation of learners, threatening mental health, identity development, and college functioning. We began tracking the impacts of this pandemic for 633 first-year college students from four U.S. universities ( M age = 18.8 years) in Spring 2020 and followed students to Spring 2023. Students provided narratives about the impacts of COVID-19 and reports of mental health concerns, identi…
Testing exploratory narrative processing as a mechanism of change in identity status processes over 4 years in college-going emerging adults
We examined the critical task of emerging adulthood-identity development-via analyses of trajectories of identity exploration and commitment over the college years, as well as whether narrative processing of important events during this period served as a mechanism of identity exploration and commitment. We took advantage of a unique and comprehensive longitudinal design, which included 12 waves of data, both quantitative and qualitative assessme…
Integrating systems of power and privilege in the study of resilience
Although current approaches to the study of resilience acknowledge the role of context, rarely do those conceptualizations attend to societal systems and structures that include hierarchies of power and privilege-namely systems of racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism-nor do they articulate how these structural realities are embedded within individual experiences. We offer critiques of the current literature from this structural lens, u…
Research as resistance
From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrovertible "hard" evidence of racial hierarchy, infallible "proof" that white people (i.e., cismale, heteronormative, and economically resourced white people) were superior to Indigenous and Black people. We first trace the historical links between postpositivist epistemology and the ideology of white supremacy in psychological science, showing that although explicitl…
Intergenerational Storytelling as a Developmental Resource in LGBTQ+ Communities
LGBTQ+ people continue to be threatened by systemic censorship and erasure in public spaces and discourses, making community-based resources for positive development crucial. In this study, we examined one such developmental resource-LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling about cultural-historical events. LGBTQ+ adults (N = 495) ranging in age from 17 to 80 years (M = 39.22, SD = 19.89) responded to an online survey about LGBTQ+ intergenerational …
A qualitative investigation into the cultural master narrative for overcoming trauma and adversity in the United Kingdom
Research in the field of narrative psychology has found that redemption—a narrative sequence in which people recount emotionally negative experiences as having positive endings—is a useful mechanism for coping with adversity. Redemption has been viewed as a cultural master narrative in North America, providing individuals with a socially valued script for narrating challenging life experiences. Presently little research has examined the presence …
“You gotta give them hope”
OBJECTIVE: In this psychobiographical study, we examined the life and times of social change agent Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay public officials in the United States. Milk is remembered as a gay hero who fought for the rights of marginalized people, often by invoking the importance of hope. Milk was assassinated less than 1 year after his election. METHOD: We adopt a structural psychobiographical approach, foregrounding social, cultur…
Creating something new from past experiences—The meaning of change in repeated narratives
OBJECTIVE: Narrative identity is an essential level of personality, and to develop, the life narrative should entail both stability and change. In this study, we examine the meaning of change in repeated narratives about occupational experiences. METHOD: Fifty-nine individuals were interviewed at age 25, 29, and 33. In these interviews 544 narratives and 142 sets of repeated narratives were identified, of these 39 sets of repeated narratives had …
The challenges of the experimental paradigm in narrative identity research
Broadening our understanding of adversarial growth
After adversity, individuals sometimes report adversarial growth - positive changes in their identity, relationships, and worldviews. We examined how narrative methods enhanced understanding of adversarial growth compared to standard questionnaires. Participants (N = 411) from college and community samples reported on their well-being, wrote a narrative about a highly challenging experience, and answered questionnaires on adversarial growth. Resu…
The role of repeated narration in identity development
“My story is not my own”
Stability and change in autobiographical reasoning
OBJECTIVE: Research on personality development has traditionally focused on rank-order stability and mean-level change in the context of personality traits. The present study expands this approach to the examination of change and stability at another level of personality-narrative identity-by focusing on autobiographical reasoning. Drawing from theory in personality and developmental science, we examine stability and change in exploratory process…
College, Interrupted
First-year college students in the 2019-2020 academic year are at risk of having their mental health, identity work, and college careers derailed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess emerging and evolving impacts of the pandemic on mental health/well-being, identity development, and academic resilience, we collected data from a racially, ethnically, geographically, and economically diverse group of 629 students at four universities acr…
Protest, panic, policy, and parades
Scholars have increasingly called for the centering of cultural-historical forces in research on psychosocial identity, particularly when that research seeks to understand development among marginalized groups.Accordingly, in this study, we investigated the content of cultural-historical events considered important to members of the LGBTQ+ community and examined the association between event internalization and psychosocial identity.Participants …
Who gets to live the good life? Master Narratives, identity, and well-being within a marginalizing society
Protest, Panic, Policy, and Parades
Scholars have increasingly called for the centering of cultural-historical forces in research on psychosocial identity, particularly when that research seeks to understand development among marginalized groups. Accordingly, in this study, we investigated the content of cultural-historical events considered important to members of the LGBTQ+ community and examined the association between event internalization and psychosocial identity. Participant…
The “stuff” of narrative identity
Post‐traumatic growth as positive personality change
OBJECTIVE: Post-traumatic growth typically refers to enduring positive psychological change experienced as a result of adversity, trauma, or highly challenging life circumstances. Critics have challenged insights from much of the prior research on this topic, pinpointing its significant methodological limitations. In response to these critiques, we propose that post-traumatic growth can be more accurately captured in terms of personality change-a…
Identity Development and Major Choice Among Underrepresented Students Interested in STEM Majors
The present study employed a narrative identity analysis to the examination of identity development in relation to major choice for college-going emerging adults. We focused on underrepresented minorities (URMs) who expressed an interest in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) majors. In a qualitative, longitudinal, case-based study of URMs at two different campuses ( n = 26), we followed their development through college over 4 years, …
Life's little (and big) lessons
A longitudinal study examined relations between 2 approaches to identity development: the identity status model and the narrative life story model. Turning point narratives were collected from emerging adults at age 23 years. Identity statuses were collected at several points across adolescence and emerging adulthood, as were measures of generativity and optimism. Narratives were coded for the sophistication of meaning-making reported, the event …
Late adolescents' self-defining memories about relationships
This study examined late adolescents' self-defining memories about relationships. Participants were 88 European Americans (mean age = 19 years) who reported 3 self-defining memories of their choosing and were selected for the study because they reported a memory about parents and/or peers. Memory narratives were coded for themes of separation, closeness, and conflict and for 2 kinds of meaning: learning lessons and gaining insight. Parent memorie…
An integrated developmental model for studying identity content in context
Historically, identity researchers have placed greater emphasis on processes of identity development (how people develop their identities) and less on the content of identity (what the identity is). The relative neglect of identity content may reflect the lack of a comprehensive framework to guide research. In this article, we provide such a comprehensive framework for the study of the content of identity, including 4 levels of analysis. At the b…
Late Adolescent Identity Development
Personally important autobiographical memories are the smallest unit of the life story, which begins to emerge in adolescence. This study examined 2 features of self-defining memories in late adolescence, the meaning made of the memories to garner an understanding of the narrative construction of identity as a life story and how those memories were told with an emphasis on the functions for telling and audiences to understand the social component…
Processes and content of narrative identity development in adolescence
The present study examined narrative identity in adolescence (14-18 years) in terms of narrative content and processes of identity development. Age- and gender-related differences in narrative patterns in turning point memories and gender differences in the content and functions for sharing those memories were examined, as was the relationship between narrative patterns and self-esteem. The narrative patterns focused on were meaning-making (learn…
The empirical structure of narrative identity
A robust empirical literature suggests that individual differences in the thematic and structural aspects of life narratives are associated with and predictive of psychological well-being. However, 1 limitation of the current field is the multitude of ways of capturing these narrative features, with little attention to overarching dimensions or latent factors of narrative that are responsible for these associations with well-being. In the present…
Constructing the Self in Early, Middle, and Late Adolescent Boys
The present study examined aspects of identity development in a sample of adolescent boys from two approaches: individuation and narrative. To extend the more recent research on narrative identity development, we also examined relations between narrative identity, well-being, and age. Narrative meaning making was predicted by themes of individuation in the narratives, specifically the interaction of autonomy and connectedness. Well-being was pred…
The Role of Domain Content in Understanding Identity Development Processes
The current studies examined the importance of domain content in the processes of identity development using two approaches—narrative and status. We examined personal narratives for identity domain content, the co‐occurrence of different contents, and the relations between content and processes, using two approaches to identity—status and narrative. Across two studies, 762 participants (average age = 19 years) and 2214 narratives, traditional ide…
Stories of the young and the old
This study examined narrative identity in 2 groups of participants who were younger (ages ranging from late adolescence through young adulthood) and older (over the age of 65 years). Participants completed an extensive interview in which they reported three self-defining memories. Interviews were coded for several characteristics of autobiographical reasoning: self-event connections representing self-stability or self-change, event-event connecti…
Master narrative methodology
These methods, including event narratives, in-depth interviews, life-script analysis, focus groups, experiments, and conversation analysis, allow for an understanding of both the nature and substance of the structures and how individuals interact with them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
Reflecting on a Difficult Life
We examined narrative processes of identity development as they related to desistance from delinquent behavior in a sample of vulnerable adolescents. Building on a robust theoretical and empirical foundation in the field of narrative identity, we examined processes of meaning-making and agency in relation to desistance. Thirty-one adolescents were interviewed to elicit commonly studied autobiographical memories (e.g., turning points, self-definin…
The content and processes of autobiographical reasoning in narrative identity
Does intra-individual variability in narration matter and for what
Narrating traumas and transgressions
Experiencing personal growth via reflection on negative events is well established. Yet, we know less about how people process and grow (or not) from different types of negative events, and how such narrative processing might differentially predict important outcomes, in this case, wisdom and well-being. Eighty-five community members participated in an online study examining the narrative processing and self-perceptions of traumas and transgressi…
Who gets to live the good life? Master Narratives, identity, and well-being within a marginalizing society
Is narrating growth in stories of personal transgressions associated with increased well-being, self-compassion, and forgiveness of others
The co-construction of adolescent narrative identity
The current study aimed to situate the development of adolescent narrative identity in the context of past-event conversations between adolescents and their mothers, extending work on conversational contexts in early childhood to adolescence. We examined a cross-section of 63 adolescents with 2 goals: (1) to examine how adolescent age and gender interacted with mothers' scaffolding behaviors and how those interactions were associated with adolesc…
Gendered Reminiscence Practices and Self-Definition in Late Adolescence
Research as resistance
From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrovertible "hard" evidence of racial hierarchy, infallible "proof" that white people (i.e., cismale, heteronormative, and economically resourced white people) were superior to Indigenous and Black people. We first trace the historical links between postpositivist epistemology and the ideology of white supremacy in psychological science, showing that although explicitl…
Adolescents’ Identity Formation
The narrative and dual-cycle approach conceptualize and operationalize adolescents' identity formation in different ways. While the narrative approach focuses on the construction of an autobiographical life story, the dual-cycle approach focuses on the formation of identity commitments. Although these approaches have different emphases, they are conceptually complementary. Yet, their empirical links and distinctions have only scarcely been invest…
Narrative identity processes and patterns of adjustment across the transition to college
Narrative identity is a distinct level of personality that is related to psychological adjustment across the life course and is at its height of development during the emerging adult years. The present study was designed to capture a contextualized understanding of how narrative identity processes relate to adjustment during college. Using a 4-wave longitudinal design (n = 437 participants; n = 1544 narratives) and multilevel growth curve modelin…
Intergenerational Storytelling as a Developmental Resource in LGBTQ+ Communities
LGBTQ+ people continue to be threatened by systemic censorship and erasure in public spaces and discourses, making community-based resources for positive development crucial. In this study, we examined one such developmental resource-LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling about cultural-historical events. LGBTQ+ adults (N = 495) ranging in age from 17 to 80 years (M = 39.22, SD = 19.89) responded to an online survey about LGBTQ+ intergenerational …
Kinship, Family, and Exchange in a Labrador Inuit Community
Kinship, family, and household have received considerable attention in Inuit studies; this paper takes a comparative social networks approach to these issues. Here kinship connections are represented in network form as a composite of individual kinship dyads of descent, coparentage, or siblingship. The composite kinship network is then used as a standard of measure for the pair-wise distances of exchange/dependency dyads appearing in other social…
It was the best worst day of my life”
This study emphasizes the role of both persons and environments in the development of wisdom, and highlights the importance of self-reflection as a mechanism through which wisdom is constructed from life experience
Letters from Queer Elders
Intergenerational relationships have been established as a critical locus of psychosocial development, meeting needs of identity development for youth, generativity for elders, and connection and belonging for both. However, intergenerational relationships are both rare in the LGBTQ+ community and sorely needed as a buffer to the discrimination and harm that those within the community experience from systemic and structural oppression. Focusing o…
Gendered Reminiscence Practices and Self-Definition in Late Adolescence
Late adolescents' self-defining memories about relationships
This study examined late adolescents' self-defining memories about relationships. Participants were 88 European Americans (mean age = 19 years) who reported 3 self-defining memories of their choosing and were selected for the study because they reported a memory about parents and/or peers. Memory narratives were coded for themes of separation, closeness, and conflict and for 2 kinds of meaning: learning lessons and gaining insight. Parent memorie…
When Remembering Is Not Enough
This study examined which kinds of self‐defining memories show spontaneous references to larger meanings, and listener responses to two kinds of meaning—lessons and insights. Narratives of three self‐defining memories and episodes of telling the memories to others were collected from each of 168 late adolescents ( M age=19). Narratives were coded for event type (relationship, mortality, achievement, and leisure) and for references to tension and …
Late Adolescent Identity Development
Personally important autobiographical memories are the smallest unit of the life story, which begins to emerge in adolescence. This study examined 2 features of self-defining memories in late adolescence, the meaning made of the memories to garner an understanding of the narrative construction of identity as a life story and how those memories were told with an emphasis on the functions for telling and audiences to understand the social component…
The Later Medieval English Urban Household
Home is one of the most emotive words in any language but our experience of being at home is historically and culturally specific. This article reviews a range of recent scholarship on the later medieval English urban household in the disciplines of History, Literary criticism and Archaeology. It has been composed collaboratively by the members of the York Medieval Household Research Group. After an introduction tracing the wider context in which…
Collaborative narration of the past and extraversion
Life's little (and big) lessons
A longitudinal study examined relations between 2 approaches to identity development: the identity status model and the narrative life story model. Turning point narratives were collected from emerging adults at age 23 years. Identity statuses were collected at several points across adolescence and emerging adulthood, as were measures of generativity and optimism. Narratives were coded for the sophistication of meaning-making reported, the event …
Selves Creating Stories Creating Selves
This article is focused on the growing empirical emphasis on connections between narrative and self-development. The authors propose a process model of self-development in which storytelling is at the heart of both stability and change in the self. Specifically, we focus on how situated stories help develop and maintain the self with reciprocal impacts on enduring aspects of self, specifically self-concept and the life story. This article emphasi…
The content and processes of autobiographical reasoning in narrative identity
Stories of the young and the old
This study examined narrative identity in 2 groups of participants who were younger (ages ranging from late adolescence through young adulthood) and older (over the age of 65 years). Participants completed an extensive interview in which they reported three self-defining memories. Interviews were coded for several characteristics of autobiographical reasoning: self-event connections representing self-stability or self-change, event-event connecti…
To Tell or Not to Tell
Drawing from a narrative identity framework, we present the results of three studies examining the nature of what people do and do not disclose about their life experiences. Across three studies, our findings indicate that (1) the major difference in what people do and do not disclose concerns the emotionality of the events and whether or not the events are transgressions; (2) for everyday memorable events, increased negative emotion is associate…
Processes and content of narrative identity development in adolescence
The present study examined narrative identity in adolescence (14-18 years) in terms of narrative content and processes of identity development. Age- and gender-related differences in narrative patterns in turning point memories and gender differences in the content and functions for sharing those memories were examined, as was the relationship between narrative patterns and self-esteem. The narrative patterns focused on were meaning-making (learn…
Narrating traumas and transgressions
Experiencing personal growth via reflection on negative events is well established. Yet, we know less about how people process and grow (or not) from different types of negative events, and how such narrative processing might differentially predict important outcomes, in this case, wisdom and well-being. Eighty-five community members participated in an online study examining the narrative processing and self-perceptions of traumas and transgressi…
Constructing the Self in Early, Middle, and Late Adolescent Boys
The present study examined aspects of identity development in a sample of adolescent boys from two approaches: individuation and narrative. To extend the more recent research on narrative identity development, we also examined relations between narrative identity, well-being, and age. Narrative meaning making was predicted by themes of individuation in the narratives, specifically the interaction of autonomy and connectedness. Well-being was pred…
Old, New, Borrowed, Blue? The Emergence and Retention of Personal Meaning in Autobiographical Storytelling
Research on narrative identity has traditionally focused on how narrative characteristics are related to personality and well-being in adults. The present pair of studies with college students (Study 1, n= 62; Study 2, n= 68 couples) examined the dynamic conversational processes that might be part of constructing that identity. We examined the characteristics of personal meanings, operationalized as self-event connections, and the retention of th…
To reason or not to reason
Autobiographical reasoning has been found to be a critical process in identity development; however, the authors suggest that existing research shows that such reasoning may not always be critical to another important outcome: well-being. The authors describe characteristics of people such as personality and age, contexts such as conversations, and experiences such as transgressions, which may hinder adaptive reasoning. They also propose alternat…
Processes of Identity Development
Erikson's seminal work on identity development focused on the question, Who Am I? Despite theoretical overlap between identity theorists, current research has primarily taken different paths. Those focused on identity statuses have primarily assessed current conceptions of exploration that presumably lead to future commitments. In contrast, narrative identity theorists have primarily focused on reconstructions of past events. Thus, current resear…
The co-construction of adolescent narrative identity
The current study aimed to situate the development of adolescent narrative identity in the context of past-event conversations between adolescents and their mothers, extending work on conversational contexts in early childhood to adolescence. We examined a cross-section of 63 adolescents with 2 goals: (1) to examine how adolescent age and gender interacted with mothers' scaffolding behaviors and how those interactions were associated with adolesc…
Narrative Identity
Narrative identity is a person’s internalized and evolving life story, integrating the reconstructed past and imagined future to provide life with some degree of unity and purpose. In recent studies on narrative identity, researchers have paid a great deal of attention to (a) psychological adaptation and (b) development. Research into the relation between life stories and adaptation shows that narrators who find redemptive meanings in suffering a…
Moms Telling Tales
Past-event conversation between parents and children has traditionally focused on developmental processes in children. The present study aimed to examine how maternal identity processes might unfold in past-event conversations with adolescents. Sixty-three mother–adolescent pairs completed a conversation about personal past events. The authors examined the degree to which the mother reported personal meaning and vulnerability in recounting past e…
Intricate Lettings Out and Lettings In”
The development of narrative identity occurs within storytelling contexts, and the present study examined the role of listener behaviors in this process. Methodology developed within studies of mother–child conversations was used to examine how listener behaviors are associated with the meanings that individuals make of their personal stories in conversations with their romantic partners and in subsequent private reflection. Fifty-two "speakers" …
Reflecting on a Difficult Life
We examined narrative processes of identity development as they related to desistance from delinquent behavior in a sample of vulnerable adolescents. Building on a robust theoretical and empirical foundation in the field of narrative identity, we examined processes of meaning-making and agency in relation to desistance. Thirty-one adolescents were interviewed to elicit commonly studied autobiographical memories (e.g., turning points, self-definin…
Storying away self-doubt
Kinship, Family, and Exchange in a Labrador Inuit Community
Kinship, family, and household have received considerable attention in Inuit studies; this paper takes a comparative social networks approach to these issues. Here kinship connections are represented in network form as a composite of individual kinship dyads of descent, coparentage, or siblingship. The composite kinship network is then used as a standard of measure for the pair-wise distances of exchange/dependency dyads appearing in other social…
Culture as Race/Ethnicity
Psychology (67 works) · Identity, Memory, and Therapy (55 works) · Narrative (53 works) · Social Psychology (52 works) · Developmental psychology (40 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Aesthetics (33 works) · Family Support in Illness (33 works) · Social Psychology (28 works) · Art (24 works)