Narrative identity awareness as a regulatory pathway between rumination and reflection and personality functioning

Personality functioning reflects individual differences in self and interpersonal capacities. This study examined whether narrative identity awareness mediates the associations of rumination and reflection with personality functioning. In a community sample of 424 adults, participants completed self-report measures of personality functioning, rumination, reflection, and narrative identity awareness. Cross-sectional mediation analyses (complete cases, N = 405) showed that rumination was associated with greater impairment, whereas reflection showed a more selective pattern. Narrative identity awareness was associated with lower impairment, and significant indirect associations were observed for both rumination and reflection in the simultaneous model; sensitivity analyses indicated that the indirect association was more robust for reflection than for rumination. Indirect associations were most evident for identity and self-direction, smaller for intimacy, and not statistically detectable for empathy. Component-level analyses indicated that coherence-related facets, particularly causal coherence, showed the most consistent indirect associations.