LIFE SCRIPTS - IMPLICIT REPRESENTATIONS OF LIFE-COURSE PATTERNS

This study dealt with three questions: (1) Are emotional cues relatively more useful for reconstructing long-term action patterns than short-term ones? This would suggest that emotion operates as a high-level action controller. (2) Does the ''reconstruction method'' of sequence analysis work with the kinds of long-term action patterns found in life stories? (3) Are measures of autobiographical recall liable to be inflated by the way (even unfamiliar) life stories can be pieced together using generally known principles? Twenty participants reassembled the autobiographical accounts of eight strangers from a set of disordered parts, using emotional or cognitive cues. They performed quire well overall, but better with life-long accounts than with shorter periods. The effect was more marked when participants attended to rational choices than to emotional factors. The results show that reconstruction procedures can be used to study behaviour in the long term. They also suggest that people have representations of life-course patterns on various time-scales. The most global of these, ''life-scripts,'' may be of special importance, as aids to autobiographical recall, and as objects of study in their own right. The data did not suggest that emotion plays an overarching role in the control of action.