Life scripts: The big moments of life

Janssen and Haque’s findings were published in this year in Memory, a journal of memory research (June 2017). Assoc Prof Dr Shamsul Haque teaches research methods and is Head of the Department of Psychology at Monash University’s Jeffrey Cheah School of M

Life scripts are beliefs about life’s most important events and when they will occur. These beliefs are commonly shared within a culture.

Examples of such events are getting married and starting one’s first full- time job. Many of these events are expected to happen during one’s early adulthood. Also, in life scripts, there tend to be more positive events ( e. g., graduation) than negative events (e.g., parent’s death).

While life scripts have been studied by psychologists, it is still unclear how teenagers and young adults learn the life scripts they know. After all, they may not have personally experienced these events.

In what may be the first study of its kind, Associate Professor Dr Shamsul Haque (Monash University Malaysia) and Associate Professor Dr Steve Janssen ( University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus) asked: How do young people form life scripts? Are life scripts similar or different across cultures?

Janssen and Haque’s study involved 124 Malaysian students from Monash University Malaysia and 152 Australian students from Flinders University, Adelaide. The participants were asked to imagine an ordinary infant from their own countries – not a specific child they know – and describe the 7 most important events that are most likely to occur in this child’s future. Participants were also asked what age the child would probably be when those 7 events occur. Finally, they described which information sources they used to think of those life events. Information sources included personal experience, comments from relatives, religious traditions, and watching television.

Janssen and Haque compared the Malaysian and Australian life scripts, expecting to find differences. They found that the Australian life script contained more positive events and expected more events to occur before the age of 16.

As for similarities, the Malaysian and Australian samples showed the typical characteristics of life scripts. There were more positive events than negative ones. Positive events were expected to occur mainly between the ages of 16 and 30, while negative events were distributed equally across the lifespan. Common top events shared by both cultures included starting primary school, starting university, graduation, first full- time job, falling in love or first kiss, marriage, and having children.

The researchers also compared the Australian life script with another Australian sample from a previous study. Both samples were the life scripts of first-year psychology students and showed much overlap, suggesting that the life script is a stable construct.

However, against expectations, “cultural traditions” and “religious traditions” were rarely reported as the information source of these life scripts. Instead, more commonly reported sources were personal experience, observation of relatives’ and friends’ experiences, hearing comments from family and friends, as well as media ( newspapers, books, movies, and television). These findings seem to go against a previous theory that life scripts are transmitted from one generation to the next by “traditions” – that is, cultural customs or rituals.

What seems certain is that life scripts are learned from multiple sources of information, particularly other people’s life stories.

Janssen and Haque’s findings were published in this year in Memory, a journal of memory research (June 2017). Assoc Prof Dr Shamsul Haque teaches research methods and is Head of the Department of Psychology at Monash University’s Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences. His current research interests include autobiographical memory and other areas of cognitive psychology.

Monash University Malaysia offers the Master of Professional Counselling. Areas of study include human growth and lifespan development; mental health issues surrounding grief, trauma and substance abuse; counselling children, adolescents, individuals and couples; cognitive behaviour therapy; group psychotherapy; career development counselling; and counselling research design, just to name a few.

With 504 hours of clinical placements in government agencies and private organisations, of which 192 hours would involve direct, face-toface ‘client contact’, the course is a very broad-based one, with students being taught to counsel across various areas, be it organisational, mental health or relationship counselling.

The course is accredited by the Australian Counselling Association, and the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia. It has also been submitted for approval to the Malaysian Board of Counsellors ( Lembaga Kaunselor Malaysia). With these accreditations, it will mean that there are ample opportunities for graduates to practice in Malaysia as well as Australia.

For more information please visit www.med.monash.edu.my.