My research focuses on the connections between adult identity development and psychological well-being.
I am especially interested in examining the most productive ways people make sense of the challenging things that happen to them and how that personal meaning facilitates changes in identity development and well-being.
I am a question-driven researcher. I first work to articulate the most pressing questions and then to identify the appropriate methodological and analytical approaches for pursuing those questions. As a result, my scholarship is fundamentally mixed-methods, deploying everything from qualitative tools including psychobiographical case study approaches to quantitative longitudinal modeling techniques.
Current Projects
Identity Development Among People With Disabilities
Acquiring a physical impairment inevitably serves as a biographical disruption. Not only does this experience entail physical, psychological, and economic challenges, but it also introduces a potential discontinuity in one’s identity, rendering the person a member of a social minority group with which they had not previously been associated: people with disabilities (PWDs). According to the CDC, PWDs represent the largest minority group in the United States, yet disability identity development has been almost entirely overlooked by personality psychologists. Indeed, a 2017 systematic review by Forber-Pratt and colleagues of the entire social science literature found only 41 articles on this topic, and just a handful have been published in the personality psychology literature. This pales in comparison to the thousands of articles published on identity development among racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual minorities. Understanding identity development processes in PWDs is not only a vital aim in and of itself, it also offers an opportunity to gain insight that may apply to the universal challenges of bodily change. Recognizing the nascent nature of this field, I have begun my inquiry in a qualitative, bottom-up approach that elevates the first-person accounts of PWDs, treating them as experts on their own experience. I have also been collaborating with scholars who identify as being PWDs. This project is grounded in the psychology of narrative identity, but reaches far beyond it, to humanistic literatures in disability studies, queer studies, and others. I believe that listening, rigorously, to the stories of PWDs is the ethical way to begin to develop an understanding of their identity development.
Representative publications and presentations:
Adler, J.M. (2018). Bringing the (disabled) body to personality psychology: A case study of Samantha. Journal of Personality, 86(5), 803-824.
Adler, J.M., Lakmazaheri, A., O'Brien, E., Palmer, A., Reid, M., Tawes, E., (2021). Identity integration in people with acquired disabilities: A qualitative study. Journal of Personality, 89(1), 84-112.
Adler, J.M., Manning, R.B., Hennein, R., Winschel, J., Baldari, A., Bogart, K.R., Nario-Redmond, M.R., Ostrove, J.M., Lowe, S.R., & Wang, K. (in press). Narrative identity among people with disabilities in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic: The interdependent self. Journal of Research in Personality, 101.
Identity Theft: BEYOND INDIVIDUALISTIC NOTIONS OF PERSONHOOD
I am in the early stages of a project focused on the question: who tells your story? As children, we are all characters in a story that is mostly narrated for us (usually by our parents or caregivers). In adolescence and emerging adulthood, we become the narrator of our own life story. But what happens when we lose authorial control over our story? Illnesses or injuries may cast us as protagonists in a story that feels as though it is being narrated by our body. People who become media obsessions may feel they are being narrated against their will. Innocent prisoners may fight to overcome narratives of guilt. Child celebrities may have their lives narrated for them long after they become adults. These examples surface fundamental issues about our own authorial agency, our sense of independence (versus interdependence), our ability to change our narratives, and the meaning of truth in our life stories. The project aims to marshal the insights of humanistic disciplines, like disability studies and queer studies, to complicate contemporary American notions of individualistic personhood and push us towards a dramaturgical conception of self.
Representative publications and presentations:
Adler, J.M. (July, 2021). Identity theft: A new direction in the study of narrative identity. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Association for Research in Personality (ARP), online due to COVID.
Foundational Topics in the Study of Narrative Identity
Because narrative identity is the primary focus of my scholarship, the specific content of any project relies on the foundations of this field of research. As a result, I am always interested in pursuing questions that continue to establish foundational topics in the study of narrative identity. I have worked to demonstrate the incremental validity of narrative identity in its association with psychological well-being, to develop a consensus approach to quantitative research methods, and to establish the empirical structure of narrative identity.
Representative publications and presentations:
Adler, J.M., Lodi-Smith, J., Philippe, F.L., Houle, I. (2016). The incremental validity of narrative identity in predicting well-being: A review of the field and recommendations for the future. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(2), 142-175.
Adler, J.M., Dunlop, W.L., Fivush, R., Lilgendahl, J.P., Lodi-Smith, J., McAdams, D.P., McLean, K.C., Pasupathi, M., & Syed, M. (2017). Research methods for studying narrative identity: A primer. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(5), 519-527.
Adler, J.M., Waters, T.E.A., Poh, J., & Seitz, S. (2018). The nature of narrative coherence: An empirical approach. Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 30-34.
McLean, K.C., Syed, M., Pasupathi, M., Adler, J.M., Dunlop, W.L., Drustrap, D., Fivush, R., Graci, M.E., Lilgendahl, J.P., Lodi-Smith, J., McAdams, D.P., McCoy, T. (2020). The empirical structure of narrative identity: The initial big three. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(4), 920-944.
Past Projects
Narrative Identity as the Foundation for Future Adaptation
I am interested in the ways in which narrative identity serves as a foundation for future adaptation. In prior work my collaborators and I examined individual differences in narrative identity as a predictor of variability in individual trajectories of mental health over several years. These studies suggest that different ways of narrating one’s life have significantly different impacts on the trajectory of one’s mental health, both under normal conditions and in the wake of challenging life experiences, such as being diagnosed with a major physical illness.
Representative publications and presentations:
Adler, J.M., Turner, A.F., Brookshier, K.M., Monahan, C., Walder-Biesanz, I., Harmeling, L.H., Albaugh, M., McAdams, D.P., Oltmans, T.F. (2015). Variation in narrative identity is associated with trajectories of mental health over several years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(3), 476-496.
Remembering the Person in Personality Pathology
Over the past two decades there has been increasing interest in connecting models of personality pathology to models of normative personality. Yet these approaches have tended to adopt a somewhat narrow view of personality, one that occasionally and erroneously equates “personality” and “dispositional traits.” In collaboration with others I have been advocating for the relevance of scholarship on narrative identity to the understanding of personality pathology. This stance is grounded in both empirical reasons and in a conviction that science ought to amplify the voices of the people being studied.
Representative publications and presentations:
Adler, J.M. (2011). Epistemological tension in the future of personality disorder diagnosis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 168(11), 1221-1222.
Adler, J.M., Chin, E.D., Kolisetty, A.P., & Oltmanns, T.F. (2012). The distinguishing characteristics of narrative identity in adults with features of Borderline Personality Disorder: An empirical investigation. Journal of Personality Disorders, 26, 498-512.
Adler, J.M. & Clark, L.A. (2019). Incorporating narrative identity into structural approaches to personality and psychopathology. Journal of Research in Personality, 82.
Narrative Identity and Biological Markers of Stress
Throughout my career I have been focused on the relationship between narrative identity and psychological well-being. I had the opportunity to collaborate on what I believe is the only study examining narrative identity in relationship to biological markers of stress, in this case leukocyte telomere length, an index of physical aging. While I don’t personally have the expertise to lead future efforts, this is a vital area for additional scholarship.
Representative publications and presentations:
Mason, A.E., Adler, J.M., Puterman, E., Lakmazaheri, A., Brucker, M., Aschbacher, K., & Epel, E.S. (2019). Stress resilience: Narrative identity may buffer the longitudinal effects of chronic caregiving stress on mental health and telomere shortening. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 77, 101-109.
Talking About The Talking Cure: Making Sense of Psychotherapy
In seeking to understand the ways in which the process of responding to life’s challenges fuels identity development, I have conducted a series of studies focused on people’s reconstructions of their experiences in psychotherapy, with special attention to those narratives that accompany high levels of psychological well-being. Psychotherapy provides an opportunity to study the evolution of identity over a significant change experience while simultaneously investigating the process of clinical improvement.
Representative publications and presentations:
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.
Adler, J.M. & Hershfield, H.E. (2012). Mixed emotional experience is associated with and precedes improvements in psychological well-being. PLoS ONE, 7(4), 1-10.
Adler, J.M., Harmeling, L.H., & Walder-Biesanz, I. (2013). Narrative meaning-making is associated with sudden gains in clients’ mental health under routine clinical conditions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81(5), 839-845.
Adler, J.M. (2013). Clients’ and therapists’ stories about psychotherapy. Journal of Personality, 86(5), 595-605.