Between- And Within-Person Differences In Communion Given Gender And Personality

We considered the ways narrative communion themes may (1) change among young adults' across repeated narrations of life events, (2) differ between adults by gender and trait agreeableness, and (3) differ within adults by gender and agreeableness. Using a secondary analysis of 300 US adults (M age = 24.4 years; 60.3% women), we tested within-person differences, between-person effects, and within-person effects across expressions of communion themes in high point and low point events collected over five time points. Communion was higher in high point events and declined over time across events. Women and individuals higher in agreeableness expressed more communion. Individuals higher in agreeableness maintained higher communion across repeated narrations of high point events.