A post by Laura E.R. Blackie and Kate C. McLean
We all make mistakes. Sometimes our mistakes even upset or hurt the people we care most about. Regardless of whether we intended to harm or not, our actions and the consequences can offer us an opportunity to reflect on who we are and who we want to be. The question is does engaging in this reflective exercise lead to self-development or self-improvement? We (Blackie & McLean, 2021) designed a longitudinal research study to examine this question. We examined if the type and degree of reflection individuals engaged in after an interpersonal mistake was associated with increases in empathy, compassion and humility over the 12-month study period.
We recruited 311 people who were in committed romantic relationships into a research study and followed them every 3 months for 1 year. In each survey, individuals answered questionnaires about their character traits and provided written narratives about recent experiences within their romantic relationship. The narratives focused on occasions where individuals reported that they had done or said something to upset their partner. For example, participants reported events that included picking arguments with their partner when they were feeling low or stressed, upsetting their partner by failing to show their appreciation for things their partner had done for them and checking up on their partner’s behavior through their social media accounts. The type and degree of reflection were coded from individuals’ written narratives. Specifically, every narrative from each participant was coded on the following dimensions: (1) redemption – the degree to which the individual narrated a positive ending, (2) self-event connections – the degree to which the individual connected the event to their identity or relationship in a positive or constructive manner, and (3) responsibility – the degree to which the individual acknowledged their role in the mistake.
We examined the degree to which these narrative signatures were associated with changes in empathy, compassion and humility over time across the 12-month study period. For the three character traits examined in this study, there was no evidence demonstrating that the style of reflection (in the written narrative) was a mechanism for promoting character growth in terms of mean-level change among those who had made mistakes in their relationships. In fact, on average across all individuals, there was very little evidence that these character traits changed at all over the course of 12-months.
In light of these null results, what can we conclude about the value of narration of interpersonal mistakes for the process of character growth? We are careful to communicate that this study alone cannot conclusively demonstrate that narration is not a mechanism for character growth. Indeed, other research studies, such as the longitudinal study by Adler (2012) have found repeated narration to lead to self-improvement in mental health after 12-weeks of a psychotherapy course. Instead, we discuss two issues for consideration in future research in this area. First, researchers need to think carefully about the outcomes they examine in this context. Is it reasonable to expect to see changes in character traits across a short timeframe? There is nascent research showing that character traits do not change after challenging experiences (Chopik et al., 2021; Lamade et al., 2021).
Second, what are the essential characteristics of the mistake needed to trigger the quality of reflection needed for self-development? The mistakes individuals reported in this study simply might not have been impactful enough to trigger character growth because many of them were small acts or misunderstandings where the participant had not always considered their partner’s needs or feelings in that specific instance. Alternatively, we may expect that acts that could comprise the shared trust in a relationship, such as infidelity, might be impactful enough to trigger reflections on the type of partner and type of relationship one wants to have moving forward.
Thus, despite not confirming study hypotheses, this research has raised several important theoretical and methodological issues for researchers to consider and incorporate into their future studies.
References:
Adler, J. M. (2012). Living into the story: Agency and coherence in a longitudinal study of narrative identity development and mental health over the course of psychotherapy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(2), 367–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025289
Blackie, L.E.R., & McLean, K.C. (2021, July 7). Examining the Longitudinal Associations between Repeated Narration of Recent Transgressions Within Individuals’ Romantic Relationships and Character Growth in Empathy, Humility and Compassion European Journal of Personality. Advance Online Publication.
https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070211028696
Chopik, W. J., Kelley, W. L., Vie, L. L., Oh, J., Bonett, D. G., Lucas, R. E., & Seligman, M. E. (2021). Development of character strengths across the deployment cycle among US Army soldiers. Journal of Personality, 89(1), 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12564
Lamade, R. V., Jayawickreme, E., Blackie, L. E., & McGrath, R. E. (2020). Are sequential sample designs useful for examining post-traumatic changes in character strengths? The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(3), 292–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1610481