Special Talk - Master Narratives and the Enmeshment of Individuals with Social Structures

How do people understand what a “normative” life is? More importantly, who gets to dictate how normative is defined? This talk features ongoing theoretical, methodological, and empirical work on master narratives, or culturally available stories that guide thoughts, beliefs, values, and behaviors. The master narrative framework is a structural-psychological approach that seeks to emphasize how psychological processes, especially those associated with marginalized groups, cannot be separated from the social and systemic forces that structure society—a view that has not been predominant in the field. This talk will highlight applications of the framework to substantive questions of identity and personality, contemporary debates about open science, and the historical basis of the field.