The stories we tell: how age, gender, and forgiveness affect the emotional content of autobiographical narratives.

Objectives: Researchers have been attempting to understand the variables that predict differences in autobiographical narratives, given that these differences often reveal important information about the psychological characteristics of the person providing the narrative.

Method: A sample of young adults (n = 80) and older adults (n = 80) completed a battery of self-report measures in addition to an autobiographical narrative task in which they described a negative emotional experience. These narratives were transcribed and entered into a text analysis program.

Sensation seeking indirectly affects perceptions of risk for co-occurrent substance use.

High sensation seekers engage in more frequent substance use and perceive a host of potentially dangerous activities as less risky than do low sensation seekers. However, despite a plethora of research on these topics, no study has examined the extent to which personal substance use mediates the association between sensation seeking and perceived risk of substance use. To address this question, we recruited a sample of 79 young adults (mean age=19.

Physiological reactivity during autobiographical narratives in older adults: the roles of depression and anxiety.

Objectives: Physiological reactivity (PR) describes the change in physiological functioning (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, pulse pressure) that occurs after the induction of a stressful task.