Psychology as Narrative: Understanding Our Science as Reflexive Worldmaking

Abstract

Narratives structure, give meaning, and create possibilities in our lives. They direct our lived experiences throughout the life-course. As people, researchers draw on narratives to frame our sense-making of societal, cultural, and psychological phenomena, and they inform the scope, limits, and possibilities of our individual and collective lives into the future. In this essay, we argue the research act itself can be fruitfully conceived and disseminated through a narrative frame, which we call research as narrative. We argue that adopting a research-as-narrative framework would lead to greater ecological validity, diversity, contextualization, and reflexivity in psychological science. Our proposition is developed through Jerome Bruner’s elements of narrative, which demonstrate how this reflective and critical perspective on our work as psychological scientists interacts with personal, social, and cultural realities. We apply Bruner’s concepts to reassess current practices in psychological science, concluding with concrete suggestions for conceiving, teaching about, conducting, and disseminating research that would align with this new perspective.