This paper is an empirical examination of the notion of self-reconstruction whereby, it is argued, individuals constantly monitor, update and amend their biographies in order to present a particular conception of self to themselves and others. The study looks in detail at case studies of women going through th transition to motherhood, comparing their real-time accounts of how the pregnancy is affecting their sense of identity with retrospective accounts, fiv months post partum, when the mothers reflect back on their pregnancy.
Social cognition has begun to look at the biases or preferences employed by the individual in various tasks, so that people are seen to show preferential treatment for self-referential information (Rogers, Kuiper & Kirker, 1977), employ self-categorical schemata (Markus, 1977), and favour positive self-feedback (Swann & Hill, 1982). Markus (1980) argues that, overall, self-relevant information is more easily processed, better remembered, resists counter-information and is important in terms of evaluating new input. Greenwal (1980) argues that a self-referential bias in cognition has a motivational component, in helping to enhance self-esteem.
There has been much less work, however, on the way people may employ similarly self-enhancing, cognitive selective strategies at a more global level, in terms of recalling their autobiography or constructing life plans, for example. The review by Markus & Wurf (1987) confirms the sense of uneven progress. While the are able to discuss findings and make fairly definitive statements on social cognition when handling small chunks of information, the review is much more tentative on the processes involved in the construction, organization and examination of self and identity at a more global level.
Self-construction and reconstruction
Mead (1934) proposed a reflexive model of the person, of the individual as active agent able to monitor and modify her/his view of the self. For while, he argued, the self initially arose from social interaction, the individual become autonomous through the internal, symbolic replay of the social nexus:
After a self has arisen, it in a certain sense provides for itself its social experiences, and so we can conceive of an absolutely solitary self ... who stil has himself (sic) as a companion, and is able to think and to converse with himself as he had communicated with others.
Thus while mind is primarily a social construct:
there is nothing odd about a product of a given process contributing to, or becoming an essential factor in the further development of that process.
A number of writers are beginning to signal this reflexive turn. Gergen & Gerge (1983) argue for a model of the self which implicates the individual as activel constructing her/his view of the self, and treats the self as an emergent being This reflexivity can be invoked at a life-span level, suggesting a dynamic mode of biographical studies. Datan, Rodeheaver & Hughes (1987) suggest that adult personality or life-span psychology should be concerned more with how the individual creates a sense of order or biography, rather than assuming or measuring the order itself.
This turn to a reflexive, active self and the study of order as constructed, rather than given, suggests a dynamic role for memory in the process of constructing identity:
All I wish to propose is that for all practical purposes the past exists only when we re-create it by training our thinking on it, or that the past as individual and collective history cannot be recovered but has to be reconstructed (Wyatt, 1964, pp. 315-319).
Interestingly this reconstructive view of memory echoes voices within mainstrea experimental psychology. Bartlett's (1932) classic collection of repeated and serial reproduction studies vividly demonstrates the constructive process of memory as participants attempt to recreate the story they have previously been told. The studies were extremely constrained however, Bartlett attempting to provide context-free stimuli of no particular significance to the participant and therefore saying little about how individuals organize the important aspect of their lives.
More recently Cohen (1989) in part echoes Wyatt in arguing:
This integration of past, present and future in a unified personal history is achieved by interactive processes. New memories are stored within pre-existing knowledge structures; old memories are modified by new ones; prospective plants are built out of elements abstracted from past experience. This intricate interaction of past, present, and future allows us to maintain a coherent identity and to develop flexibly and adaptively in knowledge and experience.
Gergen & Gergen (1988) take a strong constructionist position in arguing that this coherence and flexibility are socially sanctioned properties, suggesting there is a need in our culture for individuals to have a sense of, and so construct a narrative of, both stability and change. So for example:
Functioning viably in a relationship often depends on one's ability to show tha one has always been the same and will continue to be so and, yet, contrapuntall to show how one is continuing to improve. One must be reliable but demonstrate progress: one must be changing but maintain a stable character. Achieving such diverse ends is primarily a matter of negotiating the meaning of events in relationship to each other. Thus with sufficient skill one and the same event may figure in both a stability and a progressive narrative.
Thus we see the agenda for a radically different biographical project. Such a project would, rather than taking as given the individual's biographic record, examine how that autobiography is constructed, focusing particularly on the pressure of differing forces, for example, for stability and order, change and progress.
Empirical studies in self-reconstruction
In a series of studies Ross and colleagues have examined experimentally the revising self. For example, Conway & Ross (1984) carried out an experiment on a study aid programme. While the programme did not lead to an improvement in students' performances compared with controls, the students in the study programme overestimated their improvement at test time and six months later, an underestimated their original performance. Ross (1989) claims people invoke implicit theories of the self, either of continuity or of change, and that data is then selected to confirm the chosen theory. Therefore 'recall is inaccurate if a theory dictates greater or lesser change than has actually occurred' (Conway & Ross, p. 745). In this instance the students invoked a model of self-development and progress and therefore adjusted to the reality of lack of improvement by exaggerating previous inability. This confirms Greenwald's (1980 notion of the self as a personal historian which as well as selecting self-relevant and self-enhancing information, also revises autobiographical memory to conform with the current self-concept.
Miell (1987) conducted a study with a similar temporal design. Participants wer asked to draw weekly graphs of the course of the relationship with their partner. Each time they had to start the graph at week 1 and therefore each wee the graph grew longer. This enabled comparison of actual and retrospectively perceived trajectories. Miell found considerable retrospective reconstruction o the relationship courses. She describes her results as showing a recency effect the most recent move in the relationship is retrospectively exaggerated, so tha for example if last week has seen an improvement in the relationship a previous point is downgraded, increasing the extent of the positive change. Miell seems to draw on mainstream cognitive psychology and schema theory to interpret her results. However, this author would suggest further motivational interpretation It could be argued that Miell's results demonstrate that the participants are changing the view of the past to promote the present. Thus for example if the relationship is improving, downplaying the past produces a self-enhancing story of increased progress. If the relationship is not improving, inflating the past suggests a stability rather than a decline.
Lowenthal, Thurner, Chiriboga and associates (1976) asked people facing important life transitions to reflect on the course of their lives. The transitions were: leaving high school, marriage, onset of middle age, retirement. People in all age groups tended to see the best time of their lives as being within five years of the present, the worst time as distant -- in thei adolescence for the older groups, in future old age for the youngsters. All groups tended to emphasize the positive attributes of the current period, so that the young describe it as exciting, the older group as easier. Lowenthal et al. do interpret their findings motivationally, suggesting an essentially self-promotional, present-enhancing, biographical construction. However, Lowenthal et al.'s study is cross-sectional and is not therefore able to separate individual or ageing from cohort effects. Also there is no real-time line or account to compare these retrospective stories with.
Taylor (1983) discusses the strategies employed by cancer victims in coping wit their illness. Taylor suggests her interviews reveal three central themes: a search for meaning in the experience, an attempt to regain mastery of ones life an attempt to enhance self-esteem. A common strategy was the perception of a discontinuity between the present and past, that is a separation of the previou cause and course of the illness from a present more successful position and prognosis. For example one woman suggests a changing diet is helping her contro the disease; another woman accuses a first husband of being a boorish rapist in contrast to her current husband who provides unstinting support. These strategies are of course flexible, Taylor arguing that an individual will attempt to find a currently self-enhancing explanation which will then be discarded later if no longer appropriate. The …
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