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