Subjective Perception of Personal Change
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2005 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Narrative, Memory & Everyday Life |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | change; subjective perception; life course |
| Description | Personality stability and change is mostly studied nomothetically, usually by means of questionnaires. Therefore, we focus on subjective description of personal change. The research was done with the sample of 56 adults (22 men and 34 women aged from 38 to 42). We used the life-line technique to elicit a life-story telling respondents were asked to draw a line representing their lives and then were invited to tell a story about their lives. We asked the question about personal change explicitly. In most cases the referred changes can be labelled as normative, which are typical for adulthood (acquirement of autonomy, deepened sense of responsibility, shift towards the more rational and calm approach to life events, expected bodily changes). Non-normative personal changes are associated with unusual life course (eg. continued living with parents) or life events (eg. death of son). |