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PsychologyNiche
intermediate

Autobiographical reasoning: Arguing and narrating from a biographical perspective

Tilmann Habermas (2011)

Published
Mar 1, 2011
Journal
New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development · Vol. 2011 · No. 131
DOI
10.1002/cd.285
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At a GlanceAI

Clarifies autobiographical reasoning as how people link life events into stories that shape identity over development.

SummaryAI

This paper highlights autobiographical reasoning as a key process for turning lived events into meaningful life stories. It frames this process as both narrative (telling a story) and argumentative (giving reasons and interpretations from a life-history perspective). The novelty is the explicit focus on reasoningnot just memoryas a developmental capacity that supports a coherent sense of self. Its implication is that studying identity development should examine how people explain and justify life changes, not only what they remember.

Method SnapshotAI

Conceptual/theoretical analysis that synthesizes developmental and narrative approaches to autobiographical reasoning.

BackgroundAI

Basic background in developmental psychology and narrative identity (how life stories relate to the self).

In Collections

Psychology14 papers

Narrative coherence in life stories

The essential papers that built our understanding of how people turn lived experience into coherent stories — and why that coherence matters for identity. From Linde's life stories as linguistic acts, through McAdams' narrative identity framework, to Habermas and Bluck's developmental account of the life story — this collection traces how the field learned to see personality not as a set of traits, but as a story being told.

ES
Evgeny Smirnov

A conceptual mechanism of autobiographical reasoning is proposed, linking events to identity through coherence.

— ES