All tables are organized using the field ‘Subject ID’ or ‘Story ID’ as the primary key. This allows for straightforward linking between the demographic data and the rating data. These descriptions are provided in alphabetical order, for ease of reference. For a better understanding of the structure of the tables, refer to Figure 7.
Commonly recurring fields:
Subject ID – All subjects were given a four digit code between 1000 and 2000 upon entry into the study. These are unique identifiers.
Story ID – All narratives were given a four digit code between 5000 and 6000. These are unique identifiers. To ensure that the narrative identifiers could not be used to identify subjects, a table of random numbers was used to select the Story ID.
Rater ID – All raters were given a two letter, two digit code of the form: (RA or RR)(01- 54). Each Rater ID is a unique identifier. The distinction between RA and RR was for internal purposes only and should be disregarded for research purposes. There is no difference between the two groups.
In the text describing each table, ‘subjects’ refers to the 100 participants who told the narratives that comprise the database. ‘Raters’ refers to the 55 anonymous people who read and rated each story based on the information it contained.
Biographical Subject Data:
This table contains all of the demographic data collected about the subjects during their initial intake into the study. The headings in this table are:
Subject ID – This field is the primary key in this table.
Year of Birth – All subjects were between the ages of 40 and 60 when the study was conducted, so all years of birth are between 1943 and 1965.
Gender – Subjects were only given a choice between Male and Female. All subjects chose to identify themselves by these labels.
Marital Status – Subjects wrote in their marital status. From these write-ins, a list of possible marital statuses was generated: Single, Married, Divorced, Widowed, Separated and Partnered.
Children – Subjects provided a numerical answer to how many children they had. Ethnicity – Subjects chose from a list of ethnicity labels: American Indian, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Caucasian, Hispanic, Multiracial, Other. The label Hispanic was included separately from Caucasian to allow demographic distinction between these two
populations. This was especially important in this study because the population of Southern California has a large Hispanic population.
Education – Subjects chose the highest degree of education completed from the list of: Elementary School, Middle School, Some High School, High School, Some College, Bachelor’s Degree, Master’s Degree, Graduate Degree.
Income – Subjects chose from a list of possible income ranges. Data in this column refer to the following key: 1- $0 – $15,000; 2- $15,000 - $30,000; 3- $30,000 - $60,000; 4- $60,000 - $90,000; 5- $90,000 – 100,000; 6- $100,000 - $200,000; 7- Over $200,000. Occupation – Subjects provided a written answer about their occupation. Data in this column are transcribed exactly. Some cells include multiple occupations; some include prior occupations (before retirement or unemployment).
Handedness – Subjects chose from the list: Right Handed, Left Handed, Ambidextrous. Subjects also completed a modified Edinburgh Handedness Inventory and their answers were checked against these choices for accuracy.
Other Language – Subjects provided a written answer about any other languages they spoke fluently.
Religion Then – Subjects were given room to write a short explanation of their religious background. An independent rater read these and extracted the religion or religions that the subject grew up with. Some cells may include multiple religions.
Religion Now – Subjects were given room to write a short explanation of their current religious beliefs and practices. As with previous column, a rater extracted the current religion that subjects practiced. Cells are non-uniform as the subjects’ own descriptions were used wherever possible.
Degree of Religious Influence – After reading the subjects’ descriptions of their childhood and current religions, two independent raters gave each subject a subjective score on degree of religious influence in their life. A 0 was scored if subjects did not have any religious influence in their lives. A 1 was scored if subjects: were raised with a religion and did not currently practice a religion; were occasionally involved in some
religious activity; or appeared to have some religious influence that was not strongly significant in their lives. A 2 was scored if subjects identified themselves as practicing members of a religion. Raters did not discriminate between established religious organizations and atypical forms of religious belief. All data in this column are whole numbers; any disagreement between the two raters was resolved by a third rater.
Sexual Orientation – Subjects chose from the following list: Heterosexual, Homosexual, Bisexual, Transgender, Polyamorous, None. There is one cell that contains a write-in answer. A small number (n=6) of subjects chose not to answer this question. A blank cell is distinct from the answer None.
Cue Word Ratings:
This table contains the data collected from raters about cue words. Raters were given a table of all cue words and asked to select every word that might have elicited the story they just read. In this table, all three fields combined provide the primary key. All fields are duplicated, but the combination is unique since Story ID and Rater ID are each unique identifiers. The headings in this table are: Story ID, Rater ID and Cue Word. Cue Word – Data in this field were chosen from the table ‘LookupCues’ and include the 31 possible choices given to the raters.
Eliciting Cue Word:
This table contains the cue word that elicited each narrative. For more detail about the cue words and cued recall protocol, see Methods and Materials. The headings in this table are Story ID and Cue Word.
Story ID – This field is the primary key in this table.
Cue Word – Data in this field were chosen from the table ‘LookupCues’. They are the 31 unique cues given to subjects during the cued recall protocol.
Eliciting Cue Word (Multiple Cues):
This table contains data about the narratives that were elicited by multiple cue words. In some circumstances, subjects told the same story more than once during the cued recall protocol. In most cases, only one of these narratives was selected for the database, but in a few (n=16) cases the stories were combined to provide the best
narrative. (This is explained more fully elsewhere.) In these cases, multiple cues (2 or 3) elicited a single story. The headings in this table are Story ID and Cue Word. The primary key is the combination of both fields.
Cue Word – Data in this field were chosen from the table ‘LookupCues’.
LIWC Data:
This table contains the results from a complete Language Inquiry and Word Count 2007 analysis of each narrative in the database. (For more information about LIWC analysis, see Chapter 4. For more information about LIWC, see the LIWC2007 Language Manual180.) The headings for each field were not altered from the LIWC output to allow easier comparison between these data and other LIWC analyses. For easier
comprehension in this database, each field is briefly described below. For examples of each field, see the LIWC2007 Language Manual, Table 1. The headings in this table are
180Pennebaker, J. W., C. K. Chung, et al. (2007). The development and psychometric properties of LIWC2007. Austin, TX, LIWC.net.
divided into categories below based on the hierarchical structure of the LIWC dictionary. Be sure to understand the hierarchy before using these data.
Story ID – This field is the primary key in this table.
WC – Word Count. Note that each narrative includes the words “Memory 5xxx” in the text that was analyzed, so this word count is two words longer than the actual length of the narrative.
WPS – Number of words per sentence.
Sixltr – Number of words with greater than six letters.
Dic – Percentage of words in the text that appeared in the LIWC dictionary.
All data in the fields below are given as percentages of the total narrative. As an example, the heading ‘pronoun’ calculates the number of pronouns in the text and presents it as a percentage of the total length of the narrative.
funct – Function words. Included in this hierarchy are the headings: pronoun – Total pronouns, which includes:
ppron – Personal pronouns, which includes:
i – 1st person singular; we – 1st person plural; you – 2nd person; shehe – 3rd person singular; they – 3rd person plural
ipron – Impersonal pronouns; article – Articles;
verb – Common verbs. Some verbs are included in total function words and some are not. For details be sure to read the LIWC manual. The category verb includes:
auxverb – Auxiliary verbs; past – Past tense verbs; present – Present tense verbs; future – Future tense verbs;
adverb – Adverbs; preps – Prepositions; conj – Conjunctions; negate – Negations; quant – Quantifiers; number – Numbers;
swear – Swear words
Psychological Processes: The words in this category are all related to psychological behaviors and include:
social – Social processes, which includes:
family – Family; friend – Friends; humans – Humans; affect – Affective processes; which includes:
posemo – Positive emotion;
negemo – Negative emotion, which includes: anx – Anxiety; anger – Anger; sad –Sadness; cogmech – Cognitive processes, which includes:
insight – Insight; cause – Causation; discrep – Discrepancy; tentat – Tentative; certain – Certainty; inhib – Inhibition; incl – Inclusive; excl – Exclusive;
percept – Perceptual processes, which includes: see – See; hear – Hear; feel – Feel;
bio – Biological processes, which includes:
body – Body; health – Health; sexual – Sexual; ingest – Ingestion; relative – Relativity, which includes:
Personal Concerns: The words in this category are all related to personal behavior and include:
work – Work; achieve – Achievement; leisure – Leisure; home – Home; money – Money; relig – Religion; death – Death;
Spoken Categories: The words in this category have to do with word usage that is unique to spoken words (as compared to written word) and include:
assent – Assent words, like “OK”; nonfl – Nonfluencies, like “err” ; filler – Filler words, like “I mean”;
Punctuation Marks: This field calculates the total percentage of the text that is comprised of each type of punctuation. These types of punctuation include:
Period – Periods; Comma – Commas; Colon – Colons; SemiC – Semicolons; QMark – Question marks; Exclam – Exclamation points; Dash – Dashes; Quote – Quotes; Apostro – Apostrophes; Parenth – Parentheses; OtherP – Other punctuation marks;
AllPct – Total of all the punctuation marks in the text.
LookupCues:
This is a lookup table used to generate identical lists of cue words throughout the database. Lookup tables are used to eliminate data errors based on spelling or
capitalization inconsistencies. Throughout this work, there are references to the 35 cues in the cued recall protocol. There are only 31 choices in this table because the cue “Talk about a memorable experience” was repeated 5 times for the subjects, bringing the total number of unique cue words to 31. The heading in this table is Cue Word.
Cue Word – Cue words were presented to subjects in complete sentences in the form, “Talk about a time when you did something that made you feel _____” or “Talk about a time when you ____”. A complete list of these cues can be seen in Table 1. Most of the words used in this lookup table are exactly the cue words used. However, some of the cues used longer prompts and were abbreviated for length in this table. Those cues are listed with each heading below:
Best Thing – Please talk about the best thing you ever did.
Memorable – Please tell us about a very memorable thing that you have done.
Most Afraid – Please talk about the thing that you are most afraid that other people will find out that you did.
Most Like Others to Know – Please talk about the thing that you would most like other people to know that you did.
Most Like to Change – Please talk about the think that you would most like to change if you could go back and do it differently.
Most Proud – Please talk about the thing that you are most proud of having done. Worst Thing – Please talk about the worst thing you ever did.
LookupEmotions:
This is a lookup table for the table ‘Session Three: Emotion Data’. It contains a list of the 12 emotion choices subjects were given to choose from when rating their own narratives during Session Three. There were no write-in options given in this choice.
LookupScenes:
This is a lookup table that contains a list of all of the ‘scenes’ chosen by raters. For each narrative, raters were asked to choose the location (or scene) of the story from the following choices: Job/Business Situation; Family/Close Friend; Abroad/Vacation; Home/Neighborhood; School; Animal; Party/Club; Car. Raters also wrote in additional locations and the lookup table was used to codify those choices. This prevented items like ‘clinic’ and ‘doctor’s office’ from appearing separately, rather than together.
Neuropsychological Subject Data:
This table contains all of the neuropsychological data collected from subjects during their initial intake into the study. For more complete descriptions of each of these tests, see Chapter 4, Section 1. The headings in this table are:
Subject ID – This field is the primary key in this table.
IQ – Full-scale intelligence quotient (FSIQ) was tested in the laboratory using the 2- subtest Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence.
NEO-FFI Scores – The NEO personality inventory generates five scores based on five personality factors: Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness and
Conscientiousness. Scores are reported as T scores. These headings include: N NEO T Score, E NEO T Score, O NEO T Score, A NEO T Score and C NEO T Score.
PolV – Subjects completed a questionnaire about their political values, which generated a score between 1 and 3. A low score (1) indicates more conservative values, an
intermediate score (2) indicates middle of the road values and a high score (3) indicates more liberal values.
PANAS Scores – The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule generates two scores to assess general mood, the positive affect score (PA) and the negative affect score (NA). PA and NA are orthogonal, not opposite dimensions. (For more discussion of this, see Results.) The PANAS headings include: PA PANAS and NA PANAS.
Ethical Position Questionnaire (EPQ) Scores – The Ethical Position Questionnaire is used to measure ethical ideologies. It creates two subscores, relativism and idealism, as well as an overall score. Although the overall score can be used, the two subscores (particularly the idealism score) are more commonly reported in the literature, so they have been included in the database. The headings in the table are: Idealism EPQ, Relativism EPQ, Total EPQ.
Weighted Utilitarian Score – Subjects completed a 30 question version of philosophical moral dilemmas, including the standard trolley problem. A score of each subject’s utilitarianism was generated from the results of these dilemmas. These scores were weighted based on the severity of the dilemma. Lower scores indicate subjects who are less utilitarian in their decision making, higher scores indicate subjects who are more utilitarian.
Schwartz Value Inventory (SVI) Scores – The Schwartz Value Inventory is used to measure differences in human value structures. It generates 10 scores based on 10 core human values. For greater discussion of each of these headings, see Chapter 4, Section 1 and Table 6. The SVI headings include: Conformity SVI, Tradition SVI, Benevolence SVI, Universalism SVI, Self-Direction SVI, Simulation SVI, Hedonism SVI,
Rating Data:
This table contains all of the data collected from the raters about narratives. The rating process and information about the raters can be found earlier in this chapter. Raters were asked to make decisions about 3 major categories: What Did They Do?; Why Did They Do It?; and How Did They Feel?. In the description of the fields below, ratings will be grouped by category. Within these categories fall the majority of the fields in this table. For each item, raters gave a rating between 0 and 3 based on how well the narrative they were reading typified the action. A negative sign was used to designate narratives where the person specifically chose not to perform the item.
The headings in this table are:
Story ID – This field is combined with Rater ID to create the primary key for this table. Rater ID – As above.
Gender? – This field is the rater’s guess about the gender of the author. It is NOT the actual gender of the author. The question marks in headings throughout this table are intended to designate the raters’ opinions or feelings, not those of the subjects.
Gender Guess? – Raters were asked if they were certain of their choice of gender for each narrative. If raters felt that they were guessing, the answer is yes. If they were certain of the gender of the person in the narrative (the narrator), the answer is no. It is worth nothing that although raters believed they were certain, there are many cases in which they were still wrong. (This is discussed in Chapter 4, Section 4.)
Age – Raters chose the age of the narrator based on the information in the narrative, only if they were relevant to the narrative. Specifically, the raters were told that being an adult
was typically not relevant. The choices given to choose from are: Child, Preteen, Adolescent, Adult.
Other Feature? – This field is unique in its open-endedness. Raters were instructed to note any group affiliations that might be relevant to the story. This included ethnicity and religion in the instructions to the raters. The items that raters generated also included things as diverse as scouting groups, single parenting and more.
What Did They Do? Headings – The headings in this category include: Helping someone, Protecting someone, Taking care of someone, Being kind to someone, Self-sacrifice, Cheating in school/work, Cheating in business, Sneaking into a movie theatre, Falsifying a document, Tricking someone else, Physically unfaithful, Mentally unfaithful,
Neglecting someone, Being hurtful to someone, Being unkind to someone, Lying, Telling a white lie, Stealing/Spending someone’s money, Stealing an idea/plagiarizing,
Shoplifting, Returning lost money/wallet/things, Bank error/too much
change/undercharged, Enlisting someone’s help to do the wrong thing, Enlisting someone’s help to do the right thing, Fighting for someone else’s rights, Taking advantage of someone, Breaking a rule/law, Vandalism/Damaged property
Other What? – In this field, raters were able to write in any additional actions that they felt were missing from the What Did They Do? headings.
Why Did They Do It? Headings – The headings in this category include: Taking the high road, Doing the wrong thing, Doing the right thing, Making extra effort to do the right thing, Making extra effort to do the wrong thing, Doing lesser harm to prevent greater harm, Means do NOT justify the ends, Fear of retribution/karma, Cheating ‘the
lesson/revenge, Self-preservation, Getting out of a tight spot, Selfishness, Taking a chance, Because of money.
Other Why? – This field is the same as Other What?. The raters generated additional