Emerging Adults' Redemptive Reasoning in Self-Defining Memories: Relations with Personality, Identity, Context, and Adjustment

Redemption is a major life storytelling archetype, involving the recognition of both challenges and a constructive resolution in past events. People who tend to express redemptive reasoning during life storytelling better match U.S. societal norms and report greater personal adjustment. Still, there is room to address how redemption may differ given multiple social identities and timing around major societal events. We studied redemptive storytelling using three cohorts of emerging adults from the same college site. Redemption was a prevalent storytelling approach among adults. Redemption was related to personality traits, but not to social identities (i.e., gender, religious affiliation, political affiliation). Accounting for personality traits, social group memberships, and timing around COVID impacts, people who expressed redemption endorsed greater adjustment than people who expressed contaminated life stories. Findings reinforce theories and support growing consensus on redemptive reasoning as a critical dimension of narrative identity for emerging adults.