Spot redemption and contamination sequences

Find the patterns in how your stories of setback and success tend to end.

Why it works

McAdams’ research found that redemption sequences (bad → good) in life narratives predict generativity and psychological maturity, while contamination sequences (good → bad) predict lower well-being. The mechanism is not that life is objectively better or worse, but that the person is extracting growth meaning from adversity — which shapes expectation, resilience, and future behavior. Identifying your default sequence is the first step to revising it.

How to do it

1. List five significant negative events in your life. For each, write one sentence about how it ended up affecting you.
2. Score each: does the event lead to something gained or lost, grown or diminished?
3. Look for the ratio. If most end in contamination, notice — this is a revisable pattern, not a verdict about your life.
4. For one contamination sequence, find a genuine growth outcome you may have minimized or overlooked.

Evidence

McAdams and colleagues found in multiple studies that adults high in generativity — the concern for contributing to the next generation — reliably narrated more redemption sequences in their life stories. A dedicated study of redemption and contamination sequences further tied each sequence type directly to psychosocial adaptation across midlife adults and students. (observational)

Correlation, not causation — it’s possible that higher well-being causes more redemptive narrating rather than the other way around. Active narrative revision has not been trialed in isolation.

Sources

• McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin & Mansfield (1997), "Stories of commitment: the psychosocial construction of generative lives," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• McAdams, D. P., Reynolds, J., Lewis, M., Patten, A. H., & Bowman, P. J. (2001). When Bad Things Turn Good and Good Things Turn Bad: Sequences of Redemption and Contamination in Life Narrative and Their Relation to Psychosocial Adaptation in Midlife Adults and in Students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(4), 474–485.
• McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St. Aubin, E., & Mansfield, E. (1997). Stories of commitment: The psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(3), 678–694.

Common mistake

Forcing a redemption narrative on genuinely traumatic events before they’re ready to be reframed — premature positive meaning-making can short-circuit genuine processing.