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Despite the widely accepted belief that meaning making is essential for mental health following adversity, the available research continues to provide mixed findings: meaning making is sometimes evident, sometimes not, and more frequently than we would expect associated with poor health outcomes. The papers that comprise this special issue ofMemoryput flesh to those bones by approaching the question from a narrative memory perspective. Meaning making, these studies demonstrate, is a multi-faceted phenomenon and whether it is necessary or adaptive depends on which particular form of meaning making is considered and on the context and timing in which it occurs. To situate these insights in a broader framework I consider parallels with the emergent literature on regulatory flexibility and briefly review recent research and theory on that construct as it has been applied in the literatures on coping and emotion regulation. Finally, I close by suggesting a basic framework, informed by the flexibility construct, that might guide future research on meaning making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the connections between multiple measures of meaning making and psychological adjustment in people with and without histories of abuse. Young adults (n =177), recollected their three most stressful memories and rated them on importance and emotional and sensory qualities. We analysed the narratives for lexical markers of meaning making and explicit references to meaning or meaning-making attempts. There was little overlap between self-reported qualities and narrative content, and they were differentially predictive of psychological symptoms and transient emotional reactions. Consistent with the PTSD literature, more salient self-report memory characteristics (e.g., visceral emotions), and negative emotion and sensation terms predicted more symptoms. The narrative indices provided the best prediction to psychological adjustment, with several meaning indices (e.g., references to positive impact) predicting reduced symptoms, particularly for the Abuse group. Contrary to meaning-making models, resolutions predicted more symptoms, suggesting that aversive feelings during memory telling may trigger on-the-spot sense making to cope with distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigated whether young adults' tendency to engage in autobiographical reasoning that described the self in positive and negative ways moderated: (1) the relationship between the amount and complexity of autobiographical reasoning in narratives of high and low points and psychological functioning, (2) the relationship between beliefs about the centrality of negative life events (low points) and psychological functioning. Narratives of life story high and low points, collected from 98 young adults, were coded for two types of autobiographical reasoning: self–event connections and sophistication of meaning. Participants also completed a measure of psychopathology and a measure of psychological well-being, and rated the centrality of each narrated event. Results showed that making more self–event connections and gaining more complex insights into the self was associated with higher levels of psychopathology for young adults who tended to reason about the self in negative ways. Further, endorsing low points as central to identity was associated with psychopathology and poor psychological well-being, but not for young adults who were more likely to reason about the self in positive ways in narratives of these difficult experiences. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for the relationship between psychological functioning and life story development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to examine how three factors—neuroticism, implicit theories of personality, and memory telling—relate to patterns of healthy and unhealthy meaning making in two kinds of negative memories: traumas and transgressions. Healthy meaning making was defined as self-growth, whereas unhealthy meaning making was defined as viewing the self as damaged in traumas (damaged self) and as a bad person in transgressions (bad self). A total of 85 adult participants completed survey measures of personality and memory telling (retrospective reports of extent to which memory was shared with others) and wrote a narrative of a trauma and a transgression which were coded for specific forms of meaning making. Results revealed distinct patterns of associations for trauma and transgression memories. The combination of low neuroticism and an incremental theory (belief that personality can change) predicted self-growth in traumas, whereas memory telling was predictive of self-growth in transgressions, especially among incremental theorists. For unhealthy forms of meaning making, an entity theory (belief that personality is fixed) was associated with the bad self in transgressions, and viewing the self as damaged by traumas was more common among younger adults than older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that, for certain people, attempts at making meaning about past life events, especially challenging events, might be detrimental to well-being. In this study we explored the association between narrative indicators of meaning making and psychological well-being, while also considering the role of individual level factors such as life history, personality characteristics, and locus of control, among an at-risk sample of low socioeconomic status inner-city African-American adolescent females with challenging lives. We found that having a more external locus of control and including more cognitive processing language in narratives about a highly negative past experience were associated with increased depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that certain types of narrative meaning-making language may reflect ongoing and unsuccessful efforts after meaning, and may be more similar to rumination than to resolution. Additionally they support claims that for certain individuals from challenging backgrounds, efforts after meaning might not be psychologically healthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goals of the present study were to (1) provide a first examination of the potential overlap/independence of three meaning making constructs emerging from distinct literatures, (2) examine those meaning making constructs in relation to psychological distress and (3) assess the extent to which these constructs relate to unique variance regarding psychological distress. Multiple measures of meaning making, including narrative coherence, cognitive mechanisms, narrative theme and post-traumatic growth, and their relations to psychological distress, measured as PTSD and depression, were compared in narratives written by university undergraduates regarding their most traumatic events. Results show that growth, elements of narrative coherence and narrative theme independently relate to PTSD, but not to depression. Stepwise multiple regression analyses and partial correlations suggest that the inclusion of multiple measures of meaning making account for additional variance within psychological distress. These findings suggest that meaning making is multifaceted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies in different cultures (Study 1: USA,N=174, Study 2: Trinidad,N=167) examined whether meaning making, (i.e., both searching for meaning, and directing behaviour) is positively related to subjective well-being (SWB) by age (younger, older adults). In both studies, participants self-reported engagement in meaning making, and SWB (e.g., affect, future time perspective, psychological well-being). In Study 1, young Americans (compared to older) more frequently used their past to direct behaviour but doing so was unrelated to SWB. In older Americans, both types of meaning making were positively associated with SWB. In Study 2, Trinidadian younger adults were again more likely than older adults to engage in meaning making. Unlike in the American sample, however, directing behaviour was positively related to SWB for both young and older adults. The studies demonstrate that whether meaning making shows benefits for SWB may depend on type of meaning, age and culture. Note that although meaning making was sometimes unrelated to SWB, no detrimental relations to meaning making were found. The discussion focuses on the role of moderators in understanding when meaning making should lead to benefits versus costs to SWB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia are impaired in recalling specific events from their personal past. However, the relationship between autobiographical memory impairments and disturbance of the sense of identity in schizophrenia has not been investigated in detail. In this study the authors investigated schizophrenic patients' ability to recall self-defining memories; that is, memories that play an important role in building and maintaining the self-concept. Results showed that patients recalled as many specific self-defining memories as healthy participants. However, patients with schizophrenia exhibited an abnormal reminiscence bump and reported different types of thematic content (i.e., they recalled less memories about past achievements and more memories regarding hospitalisation and stigmatisation of illness). Furthermore, the findings suggest that impairments in extracting meaning from personal memories could represent a core disturbance of autobiographical memory in patients with schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]