Damian Barneschi
Research Investigations – AE514
September 19, 2010
Tracking for Week 1 – This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)
Carey, B. (2007, May 22). This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It). The New York Times, p. 1 – 4.
First Steps:
I think the argument is that how one envisions his personal narrative is directly related to his personality traits.
Thesis – Verbatim: “The way in which we visualize each scene (of our personal screenplay) not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave. By better understanding how life stories are built, people may be able to alter their own narrative” (1).
The question is: Exactly how are life stories built and how can one alter their own narrative?
After more than a century, researchers have recently revealed a new way to determine the raw ingredients that account for personality.
Second Steps:
General Notes:
- Researchers have recently discovered that the first person explanation (the life story that people tell about themselves) is directly linked to their personality type.
- The ways that we visualize each scene of our lives shapes not only how we think about ourselves, but how we behave. These narratives guide behavior in every moment.
- Researchers have found a strong connection between the content of one’s life and the stories he tells.
- Narrative themes are driving factors in people’s behavior.
- Researchers have found that people’s accounts of their experiences in psychotherapy provide clues about the nature of their recovery.
- Patients who participated in talk therapy and scored highest on measures of well-being told similar tales about their experiences.
- Those who scored lower on measures of psychological well-being were likely to see their problems as being part of their character, rather than disconnected from it.
- Third-person accounts were less upsetting, compared with memories from first-person accounts.
- Envisioning oneself as acting in a movie or a play is fundamental to how people determine who they are, and who they may become.
Third Steps: Useful phrases and sentences
- “Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating the treatment of our own life” (1).
- Researchers have found that the human brain has a natural affinity for narrative construction” (1).
- “Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail” (2).
- “(Researchers) have found that people’s accounts of their experiences in psychotherapy provide clues about the nature of their recovery” (2).
- “The way that people replay and recast memories, day by day, deepens and reshapes their larger life story” (3).
- “Those who replayed (scenes) in the third person rated themselves as having changed significantly from high school.” (4).
- “Member of the third-person group were much more sociable than the others” (4).
