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Lecture 5 Self and Identity
Part 1 - Introduction
Video: what kind of elements of identity do you recognize?
Everybody wears a mask
Insecurity, focus on others
Different faces > multiple identities
Showing her true face > search for autonomous identity: being yourself
Social/peer identities, peer groups
Why is identity an adolescent issue?
Biological changes
Puberty
Appearance
Changes on the outside have an impact on how one perceives oneself.
Cognitive changes
More self-conscious
Develop a future orientation
Imagine themselves from the outside, different time, able to consider different types of identities that they may want to adopt.
Social changes
Norms and values
Social choices
Educational choices
What is important for them?
Identity
Who am I?
Personal identity: who am I in terms of sense of self
Central is the process of figuring out who one is
Social identity: who am I in terms of group memberships
Identifying with social group
Central is one's sense of belonging to social groups
These identities may influence ones believes about oneself > self-concept
Mental image that one has about oneself
Views about oneself, including:
Values
Attributes
Goals
Self-esteem
Competence
Self-concept clarity (consistent self-concept)
Identity + self-concept > the self (the totality of me)
Part 2 – personal identity
Erikson's identity development
Adolescence = psychosocial moratorium
Time gap between childhood security and adult autonomy
Adolescents experiment with numerous roles and identities
Sense of insecurity: what is the future? What am I going to do?
Crisis in adolescence
Identity diffusion versus achievement
Identity diffusion: failure to form a stable and secure identity
Identity achievement: establishing a clear and definite sense of who you are and how you fit into the world around you
Erikson: achievement by end of adolescence
Characteristics that can help you to achieve identity achievement:
Mental and emotional capacity (so, not possible before end of adolescence)
Interactions with others (others serve as a mirror)
Exploration (trying out possibilities, only possible in environment that gives you the opportunity to explore)
Commitment (making choices among alternatives. Making decisions: who are you?)
Marcia's 4 stages model (extension of Eriksons model)
4 markers: commitment vs crisis/exploration
Absent/present
Identity diffusion:
No direction > ‘it doesn't matter’
Unstable self-esteem
Feeling alienated
Apathy
Hopelessness, suicidal thoughts
Moratorium
Working on something, exploring
Open, flexible, no direction (‘it depends’), collecting information
External doubt, anxious
Identity foreclosure
Dogmatic, inflexible, intolerant, black and white thinking, authority sensitive
Obedient, sensitive to rejection
Identity achievement
Open, flexible, creative, abstract and critical thinking
High self-esteem, high in moral reasoning
During adolescence there is a clear decline (with age) with adolescents who are in moratorium and identity diffusion. But: adolescents in identity achievement are low. This stage is more seen in early adulthood or after. The early years of adulthood is most interesting: you see fluctuations in identity statuses. Adolescence is a stage of exploration, no commitment.
The development across these stages is not fixed (no chronological sequence). It's a process which you can imagine as a cycle.
Identity achievement generally not established before age 18.
College years prolong psychosocial moratorium.
Over time, diffusion and moratorium decrease and achievement increases.
Critique on Marcia's model
Dual cycle models
Dual cycle models
Adolescents do not begin with a blank slate
Identity formation is already starting in childhood
Identity is not a static status process but a cyclic process
Identity formation is a process of continuous interplay between commitment, reconsideration, and in-depth exploration
Identity formation occurs in several domains (e.g., educational and interpersonal) and becomes increasingly complex over time
Crocetti et al. Model
Commitment: in several identity domains > self-confident
This phase is not fixed. It's possible that people keep exploring their commitments. They get new information > changing commitment.
In depth-exploration: reflecting on current commitments
> Identity maintenance cycle
Reconsider commitment: comparing present commitments to possible alternatives
> Identity formation cycle
Personal identity: summary
Refers to identity search and commitment
Goal is a coherent sense of self
Continuous (across time and place)
Develops through exploration and commitment on various domains
Part 3 – Social identity
Social identity theory
Person's sense of who they are becomes of identification with group (sense of belonging)
Belongingness to a group affects self-definition
Beliefs, interests and actions are aligned with those of the group
Strive to positive self and group evaluation drives group comparison and favorable bias towards ingroup
Ingroup: identify with them
Outgroup: don't identify with them
People need groups to survive: they need to know who to invest in, resources for own group > increases for change of survival (evolutionary idea)
People have a favorable bias towards their own ingroup.
Multiple groups: gender, peers, religiosity, humanity (research: when you include people to identify with humanity, they automatically include everybody)
For adolescents:
Gender identity
Peer group identity
Identity & gender
First social group that children feel belonged to
Gender identity
One's sense of oneself as male, female or transgender
Sexual orientation
Whether one is sexually attracted to individuals of the same sex, other sex, or both
Gender-role behavior
The extent to which an individual behaves in traditionally “masculine” or “feminine” ways
What do we see in development? > Childhood:
Labeling around 2, preference for gender-congruent toys, play mates, future professions, accomplishments
Compared to girls, boys have stronger gender-identity, are more content with their gender, place more pressure on themselves to conform to the expected gender role
Adolescence:
Sexual orientation (I.e. gay, lesbian, bisexual, or heterosexual) develops
Beliefs about gender roles become more flexible; more and more androgynous, but... societal pressure for gender-stereotypic behavior increases (gender intensification hypothesis)
Graph: expressivity (refers to gentle and helpful behavior > feminine)
There are no differences between boys and girls on the early side of the graph. While children develop, the gender differences increases with the top being age 13/14, and then it decreases again.
Girls' behavior remains steady in comparison with boys.
Graph: instrumentality (traditional male characteristic – competitive, adventure)
Gender differences are highest at age 7 and 19 and is the least at age 12/13.
What are possible explanations for these results?
During adolescence, boys show a drop in emotional expressiveness, but girls do not show a similar decline in instrumentality.
It really depends on kind of behavior whether you see gender intensification hypothesis. For girls much wider than for boys.
Peer identity
Why are peer identities so important in adolescence?
Benefits of peer identity
Secure environment for exploration: we are all the same > secure environment
More diverse peer groups = more exploration and smoother identity formation in adulthood
Pathway from external regulation by others to self-determination
How to regulate your emotions externally (through others) to a more self-regulation process. Identifying with peers helps in that sense.
Gender and peer identity in adolescence
Three adolescent group: early (12-13 years)…
Types of ingroups: gender and peer
Outcome variables: self-typicality (how much self is perceived typical of ingroup) and ingroup favoritism (allocating money to ingroup vs outgroup)
Results:
Self-typicality:
Gender identity: early to mid-adolescence, people identify more with their gender ingroup
Peer identity: increase (especially in late adolescence)
Ingroup favoritism:
Gender ingroup: decreases over age
Peer identity: increases, then decreases
These findings illustrate that adolescents indeed identify with their gender and peer groups, but that especially the peer groups are an important part of adolescents life and being reflected in how much they favor their ingroup above the outgroup.
Bright side of social identities
Sense of identity (who you are)
Sense of belonging
Uncertainty reduction
Higher self-esteem
Downside of social identities
Exclusion (e.g., discrimination, outcast lash-out effect)
Stereotype threat (e.g., performance drops) (> self-fulfilling prophecy?)
Little autonomy (e.g., level of individual voice)
Social identity: summary
Defining the self in terms of group membership
Beliefs, interests, and actions are aligned with those of the group
Identification with social groups increases during adolescence
Can have both positive and negative effects
Part 4 - Self-concept
View or perception that one has about oneself (values, goals, personal attributes, abilities, self-esteem). There are a few developmental changes in how adolescents view themselves.
Self-concepts
During adolescence self-concepts become more:
Abstract, complex, and linked to specific situations
Examples:
Childhood: concrete terms, related to traits
Adolescence: more complex, more abstract, related to both traits and personality characteristics
Functional: a way that individuals can cope with the recognition of having both strengths and weaknesses > more insight in who you are
Consistent between descriptions and actual behavior
Example Davis-Kean:
How good are you in math? > actual grade
First age wave: no high correlations
In adolescence correlations are much higher
How adolescents report themselves matches with how they behave
Hypothetical and future-oriented
Perceive themselves in a hypothetical/future way
Due to the capacity of abstract thinking adolescents can distinguish between:
Actual self: who am I
Possible selves: who might I become
Negative/feared selves
Able to view themselves from a distance
Immersed vs. Distal self
Immersed self:
Self through own eyes
Using singular pronouns
Distal self:
Self through the eyes of others
Using third person pronouns
Particularly salient in adolescence
Can have negative and positive effects:
Constant concern about how others evaluate you > fear > social anxiety disorder
Study Kross et al.:
Emotional reactivity (I'm still upset)
The participants in the self-distance position reported less intense emotions
Thought flow (recounting, reconstruing)
Self-distance positions lowered the details that the participants recalled. Better in reconstruing the situation, making it more adaptive.
Possible selves
Positive, hoped-for, or ideal selves
Who I would like to be
Negative, or feared selves
Who I wish to avoid becoming
Possible self categories
Achievement: relates to school and school interactions with teachers, achievement-related activities
Largest category
Interpersonal relationships: involves family, friends, relationships and social interactions
Personality traits: relates to personality characteristics, self-descriptions of traits
Physical/health-related: relates to physical health, weight, height
Material/lifestyles: relates to material possessions and living situation, including moving
Possible selves motivate action
Possible selves improve well-being and performance because they:
You are explicit about what you want
You are linking these goals with behavior, you make it concrete
You start working on it (you have written down what you want > obligates you to get working on it)
However... everyone has aspirations to do well, but not everyone succeeds = aspiration-attainment gap
You don't have the possibilities to reach the goal > it doesn't fit with actual social identity
Accessible behavior (strategies, asking for help) can conflict with identity
Possible selves works best when...
Positive and negative possible selves are balanced
They have incorporated strategies (you know the steps to get where you want)
They are identity-congruent (not motivated when people you identify with don't do this)
They fit the context
Possible selves and context fit
Context: success-likely
The college years...
Context: success-unlikely
The college years...
The likelihood of academic behavior
The match mannered: participants who were thinking about positive possible selves and they were thinking about it in the context that was cued successful, they were more motivated than when thinking about negative selfs.
The same pattern was found for failure-likely context: much more adaptive to think about what you don't want to be like.
Self-concept: summary
Self-concept refers to perception about the self (goals, values, attributes, (perceived) ability)
Develops in adolescence (more abstract, complex, consistent with behavior, future oriented, distal)
Possible selves motivate action, but work best under certain conditions
Imaging a distal self can be adaptive in emotional situations
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