Constructing a Conformer–Explorer Identity in Pandemic Narratives: A Qualitative Study of Chinese Emerging Adults

Existing research indicates that social crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped young people’s sense of self, but little is known about what identities emerging adults construct in their pandemic narratives. Following propositions of narrative identity and Terror Management Theory, this qualitative study investigated Chinese emerging adults’ identity construction in their narratives of the national outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2022. Participants were 62 college students invited to share their pandemic experiences with reflections. Thematic analysis of the data suggests that the participants shared their pandemic experiences as a process of managing their death terror activated in the pandemic which threatened their sense of self and meanwhile motivated them to reconstruct who they are in the world. Based on their meaning-making capacities, the participants disclosed death awareness and vulnerabilities, adopted a temporal perspective in storytelling, emphasized their interpersonal and social connections, and made meaning out of the pandemic experiences to defend against death terror. As an outcome of their narration, a conformer–explorer identity was constructed in their pandemic narratives and we proposed a dialectical model to capture the dynamics of the construction. Although with limitations, this study contributes to our understanding of the functions of mortality salience on narrative identity among emerging adults in collectivist cultures during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.