Reevaluating the Identity Status Paradigm: Still Useful after 35 Years

In this article we respond to van Hoof's (1999) critique of the identity status paradigm. Our review and evaluation of the existing data on identity statuses lead us to be more optimistic than van Hoof about the convergent and discriminant validity of identity status measures, especially objective measures that provide continuous status scores as well as nominal status classifications. Our review of longitudinal studies revealed that among university students tested annually 3 or more times, change in status classifications is significantly more likely to be observed than stability. Moreover, virtually all longitudinal studies with university students indicate that status changes are more likely to be progressive rather than regressive in terms of the hypothesized identity status developmental sequence. However, considerable status regression and fluctuation is observed and we agree with van Hoof that it may no longer be useful to postulate an invariant sequence of identity status stages. Nonetheless, the data do indicate reliable status differences in self-regulatory control processes including ego development, social-cognitive processing orientations, cognitive complexity, self-integration, moral development, and so on. Consequently, we conclude that a useful strategy, at least with university students, may be to focus on the social-cognitive processes that underpin identity statuses and to conceptualize these identity orientations as different styles of dealing with the demands, challenges, and opportunities afforded by institutionalized moratoria, such as a university context. Two lines of recent research inspired by this conceptualization are discussed.     

Brief report: Relativism and identity crisis in young adulthood

This study investigated the relationship between epistemological world views and identity formation. Forty college students, aged 17 to 23 years, were presented with a paradigm belief scale (Social Paradigm Belief Inventory; SPBI), an identity status questionnaire, and an indepth interview about a conflict they had recently experienced. It was hypothesized that a relativistic world view would be related to a moratorium identity status because relativistic thought processes involve a questioning of the objectivity of knowledge and authority structures and hence an awareness of the variety of alternative and potentially conflicting roles and choices. Results indicated that relativism was the most common world view used when responding to questions about a personal conflict and that relativistic scores on the SPBI were predictive of the moratorium status. Relativistic scores on the SPBI were also negatively related to identity achievement, as were mechanistic scores. Females experienced moratorium to a greater extent than males but were not more relativistic. Results are discussed in terms of linkages among cognitive development, psychosocial development, gender, and the type of measures used to assess world view status.     

Continuing education,identity, sex role,and psychosocial development in adult women

Comparisons on psychosocial development and sex-role identification were made between 39 adult women returning to college in midlife and 40 traditional homemakers. Significantly more homemakers had foreclosed on the adult identity issues of goals and religion and scored lower on a measure of psychological androgyny. Women in continuing education showed greater evidence of identity crisis as they neared graduation. The two groups did not differ along Eriksonian developmental stages, but there were differences in the pattern of favorable and unfavorable resolutions of psychosocial crises within both groups. The results support the existence of an identity crisis as a response to life events in adulthood and demonstrate a relationship between behavioral and self-report indices of rejection or acceptance of the traditional feminine role.This research was completed in partial fulfillment of the doctorate degree from the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester.     

Correlates of sexual interest among elderly men

Interview data were collected from 46 English elderly men (age 70 to 94 years) relating to attitudes, psychological traits, and life satisfaction. Sexual interest was not related to life satisfaction or marital status but was significantly correlated with measures of emotional expressivity, personal identity, as well as regrets about the past. Findings are discussed in terms of Erikson's later stages of ego development.     

Ego Identity,Ethnic Identity,and the Psychosocial Well-Being of Ethnic Minority and Majority College Students

Although empirical studies have linked a consolidated ego identity to positive psychosocial outcomes for White middle-class adolescents, there is little research documenting this relationship for ethnic minority youth. This study investigated the relationships among ego identity, ethnic identity, and psychosocial functioning, and compared these relationships for ethnic minority and majority college students. The findings revealed that students with an achieved ego identity status had a more positive sense of ethnic identity than did students with a diffused ego identity. Findings also revealed that ethnic minority students reported stronger ethnic identification than did White students and that a stronger sense of ethnic identity was associated with more positive psychosocial outcomes among ethnic minority students, but not among White students. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Young adult identities and their pathways: a developmental and life course model

Developmental and life course studies of young adult identities have focused on 2 dimensions: subjective age and psychosocial maturity. This study examines the developmental synchrony of these 2 processes. In a longitudinal sample of young adults from Add Health (ages 18-22), a person-centered analysis of indicators of these dimensions identified 4 identity profiles. Two depict early and late patterns of identity; the others represent contrasting types of discordance: pseudo-adult, with subjective age more advanced than maturation level, and anticipatory, with subjective age less advanced than maturational level. The profiles vary by gender, socioeconomic status, and race-ethnicity, as well as by adolescent (ages 12-16) pubertal maturation, psychosocial adjustment, and family context. These results provide support for a more holistic, interdisciplinary understanding of adult identity and show that young adult identities in the Add Health sample follow differentiated paths into the adult years, with largely unknown consequences for the subsequent life course.     

Identity statuses in young adult employees: Prospective relations with work engagement and burnout

The importance of identity statuses for individuals' well-being and psychosocial functioning has been demonstrated abundantly in high school and college samples. The present longitudinal study complemented this research line by (a) focusing on identity clusters or statuses in a sample of 300 working young adults (21–40 years of age), and (b) investigating the concurrent and prospective implications of these identity statuses for work engagement and burnout. Based on a recently developed dimensional model of personal identity formation, five distinct statuses were obtained, largely replicating previous research on identity clusters. These five statuses were meaningfully differentiated on the basis of their associations with the outcome measures, with the identity achievement status showing the most optimal profile (low burnout, high engagement) and the diffused diffusion status the least adjusted profile across time. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

The Dynamics of Emotions and Life Cycle Identity

Emotions are discussed as organizers and motivators in the dynamics of identity across the life span. Discrete emotions, functionalist, and dynamic systems approaches to emotion development are applied to issues of change and continuity in identity, considered within Erikson's psychosocial model of lifespan development (Erikson, 1963). The contributions of emotion to both identity-relevant processes (ex-ploration and commitment) and outcomes (the identity statuses of achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion) are discussed. Two main premises guide this discussion. One is that individual differences in emotion help to identify paths along the trajectory of identity emergence, consolidation, and change. Another is that psychosocial transition phases, as marked by Eriksonian theory, are likely to be times of maximal influence between developments in the emotion system and psychosocial identity. A review of emotion development is presented that argues for the continued vitality of the emotion system throughout adulthood and that highlights the importance of negative emotion. As well, suggestions are offered for linking emotion development to adulthood identity stability and change. Excerpts from a biographical case study of Ingmar Bergman (Lahr, 1999) are presented as illustrative examples in the concluding sections.     

Women,Men, and Persons: A Response to "Feminist Perspectives on Erikson's Theory: Their Relevance for Contemporary Identity Development Research"

The search for the structure of identity formation is a necessary undertaking for the comprehension of identity, identity changes, and identity development. This article attempts to show that the identification of structure and structural stages of identity implies a movement away from the identity status model.We support and clarify our claim by discussing how Kroger's (this issue) definition of the concepts of structure and structural stages in relation to the identity status model leads to serious restrictions in these concepts. The concept of structural integration is introduced as an alternative interpretation and definition of the structure of identity formation. The definition and theoretical implications of the concept of structural integration are clarified and related to other recent conceptual and empirical analyses of identity theory and research.We then go on to show how the concept of structural integration can be studied in empirical research.     

Taking the Red Pill: Using The Matrix to Explore Transgender Identity Development

This article presents a plot analysis of The Matrix and comparisons to a transgender identity development model. Major scenes throughout the movie are discussed through the lens of Devor’s transgender identity development model. The main character’s evolution from Mr. Anderson to Neo is presented, as well as how his experiences align with multiple stages in transgender identity development. Stages of transgender identity development are discussed and emphasized, including identity confusion, discovery of transgenderism, identity acceptance, transition, and transgender pride. These stages and others are discussed and related to uses in counseling sessions with transgender individuals and their family members.     

Identity and Intimacy Development,Humor Styles,and Psychological Well-Being

This study explored how humor may be involved in the identity and intimacy stages of Erikson’s psychosocial model and also bear on psychological well-being. Participants completed measures of identity and intimacy development, several humor styles, and psychological well-being. Findings revealed that greater identity development was associated with more self-enhancing and affiliative humor use and less self-defeating humor use. Greater intimacy, in turn, was associated with higher affiliative humor and lower self-defeating humor use. Additional findings indicated that the prediction of psychological well-being was significantly enhanced when identity, intimacy, and humor styles were all taken into account. These findings were then considered in terms of specifying the underlying processes that may account for the observed links between identity, intimacy, humor styles, and well-being.     

“Behave like a responsible adult” – Relation between social identity and psychosocial skills at stake in self-management of a chronic disease

We show that the development of psychosocial skills promoting self-management of a chronic disease is associated with the acquisition of a social identity valued in the ideological context of reference. To do this, we focus on a skill that is important for people suffering from a chronic disease to acquire: Assuming responsibility for self-managing one’s own pathology. Because acting responsibly is also a skill socially attributed to the identity of adults in Western liberal societies, we studied the chronically ill’s sense of belonging to the adult social group. In Study 1 (N = 102 diabetics), we suggested that behaving like a “responsible adult” in the self-management of a chronic disease is socially valued. In Study 2 (N = 261 diabetics), we suggested that identification with this group is associated with a feeling of responsibility promoting improved self-management behaviors. The results obtained from the two studies are consistent with our hypotheses. They allow us to conceptualize psychosocial skills through the identity, ideological and normative issues that underpin their development.     

Linkages Between the Psychosocial Stages of Identity and Intimacy and the Ego Strengths of Fidelity and Love

According to Erik Erikson, fidelity and love are ego virtues or strengths that emerge from successful psychosocial stage resolutions of identity and intimacy. However, such proposed linkages have remained untested. To examine these assumptions, we conducted a study among 153 undergraduates (ages 18 through 22) from predominantly White, middle class backgrounds. Participants completed measures of identity and intimacy, fidelity and love, and masculinity and femininity. Fidelity and love served as dependent variables in regression analyses, and identity, intimacy, femininity, masculinity, and gender served as independent variables. Consistent with Eriksonian theory, advanced identity formation predicted fidelity for men and women. In respect to love, identity was the strongest predictor for men, and both intimacy and identity predicted love for women. Femininity and masculinity shared in the prediction of fidelity and love, but for women only. The role of sex roles in identity and intimacy is discussed.     

College-educated women's personality development in adulthood: perceptions and age differences

Adulthood encompasses a large time span and includes a series of psychosocial challenges (E. H. Erikson, 1950). Five aspects of personality (identity certainty, confident power, concern with aging, generativity, and personal distress) were assessed in a cross-sectional study of college-educated women who at the time of data collection were young adults (age: M = 26 years), middle-aged adults (age: M = 46 years), or older adults (age: M = 66 years). Respondents rated each personality domain for how true it was of them at the time, and they then rated the other 2 ages either retrospectively or prospectively. Results are discussed with attention to the ways in which women's adult development may have been shaped by experiences particular to both gender and birth cohort, and to how these women fit with E. H. Erikson's theory of adult development.     

The Relation Between Self-Continuity and Measures of Identity

Conceptualizations of Erikson's (1968) fifth psychosocial stage, identity formation, have been criticized for failing to be inclusive of an individual's sense of self-continuity. However, recent research has shown that identity commitment is significantly correlated to measures of continuity. This study further examined the relation among measures of identity, including identity commitment and continuity. The results suggest that many of the current measures of identity do indeed share a significant amount of variance with continuity. The specific results concerning identity commitment and continuity add to the growing evidence that these constructs are reliably related.     

Life history strategy, identity consolidation, and psychological well-being

Previous research has shown that individual differences in life history strategies co-vary with a large array of variables to the extent that latent variables from a number of psychological measures load on a single (Super-K) factor. Similar to research on the Super-K factor, the purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that various measures of identity would load on a single factor and that this latent variable would in turn be associated with other variables reflecting life history strategy and psychological well-being, making a Super-K factor. A sample of 248 university students were administered a variety of questionnaires related to identity, life history strategy, and psychological well-being. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed the hypothesized Super-K factor and the relationship remained even when controlling for variance in social-desirable responding. The results are discussed in terms of the association between Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development and life history theory.     

Readiness to change: A longitudinal study of changes in adult identity

It has been suggested in the identity literature that a readiness to change may play a role in identity development beyond adolescence, but an empirical investigation of this relationship had yet to be conducted until now. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to establish a longitudinal relationship between readiness to change and adult identity development. Participants completed measures of readiness to change and identity at both the beginning and the end of the study. The results revealed a relationship between readiness to change and changes in identity exploration over the study interval, and between readiness to change and changes in identity commitment. The findings are discussed in terms of the currently available literature on identity development in adulthood.     

Evaluating Self-Concept and Ego Development Within Erikson's Psychosocial Framework: A Formulation

The purpose of this article is to suggest criteria developed within the context of Erikson's first five psychosocial stages that may be helpful in evaluating self-concept and ego development. The strength of Erikson's theory has been in its contribution to the understanding of the self's development over a series of psychosocial stages. A weakness, however, has been in the ambiguity about what behaviors to look for during any particular stage that allow one to evaluate the status of a person's psychological growth. To assess areas of strengths and weaknesses in the self's growth as it progresses through these stages, five behavioral expressions tables are presented, each illustrating possible behaviors and implicit attitudes associated with positive and negative ego resolutions at each stage. Implications for the evaluation of problem areas and counseling are noted.     

Convergent validity in objective measures of identity status: implications for identity status theory

The present study was conducted to test two primary assumptions of Marcia's identity status model: (a) that measures of the identity statuses would relate to identity exploration and commitment in ways consistent with the definitions of the statuses; and (b) that status assignments made using continuous status measures would converge with those made using exploration and commitment scores. Seven hundred fifty-eight university students (174 males, 560 females, 24 not reporting gender) completed the Ego Identity Process Questionnaire, which is a measure of identity exploration and commitment, and the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status II, which provides continuous measures of each identity status. Results provided mixed support for both assumptions of the identity status model. The findings are discussed in light of recent calls for expansion of identity theory and research beyond the identity status model.