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Sage Reference

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Lifespan Human

Development

Author: Kate C. McLean, Moin Syed

Pub. Date: 2018

Product: Sage Reference

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781506307633

Keywords: identity development, identity, emerging adulthood, identity status, exploration, social identity, the

self

Disciplines: Psychology, Lifespan & Developmental Psychology, Lifespan Development, Lifespan &

Developmental Psychology (general)

Access Date: March 22, 2023

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks,

Online ISBN: 9781506307633

https://doi.org/10.4135/9781506307633

Identity development is a critical psychosocial task with relevance across the life span, but which plays a

central role in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Broadly, identity development involves constructing an

understanding of who one is and how one came to be that person; that is, identity is an understanding of self

that is integrated and coherent across time and context. Successful management of this developmental task

facilitates psychological health, the ability to connect with others, and the ability to contribute to one’s society.

This entry reviews two main approaches to identity development, describes identity development across dif-

ferent developmental stages, and considers identity development in the context of different social roles.

Contemporary Approaches to Identity Development

Although there are somewhat divergent contemporary approaches to the study of identity development, which

are described in the following subsections, these approaches share roots in Erik Erikson’s life-span develop-

ment theory. Erikson proposed that there are three basic aspects of identity: ego, personal, and social identity.

Ego identity has a focus on personal continuity, which is found when one is able to integrate one’s most im-

portant, basic, and private beliefs about the self, particularly in terms of how those aspects of self change or

remain the same across time. Personal identity centers on how one defines one’s values or goals to others,

which is represented in the negotiation of culturally relevant roles across various contexts (e.g., political affili-

ation). Social identity is the emphasis on the connection one has to a larger group, such as language or coun-

try of origin. Thus, identity development is a broad and multidimensional task and, for healthy development,

requires an engagement at all of these levels. These processes are represented somewhat differentially in

the two most common empirical approaches to identity development: identity statuses and narrative identity.

The Identity Status Approach

Jim Marcia proposed the first empirical application of Erikson’s theory, the identity status paradigm, which

most clearly captures the assessment of personal identity, with the developmental issue at play focused on

finding one’s roles in society. In particular, researchers examine the processes of exploration and commit-

ment in various identity domains, such as politics and religion. Exploration involves seeking out new informa-

tion, talking to others, reflecting on one’s beliefs, and other activities that facilitate thinking about one’s take

on these culturally important domains of consideration. For example, in exploring one’s political identity, one

may talk with others about their political beliefs, examine party platforms, and consider one’s personal values.

Commitment involves staking one’s claim to these various roles, such as registering as a Republican or a

Democrat.

One can take these two processes of exploration and commitment and determine four different places to be

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in the process of identity development, each with different implications for psychological health. Achievement

involves commitment after a period of exploration, and is viewed as the most complete, and thus the healthi-

est resolution to this task. Moratorium represents the state of exploring, without yet committing. Although this

is developmentally normal in adolescence and emerging adulthood, individuals in this state can experience

anxiety due to the uncertainty about who they are or who they might be. Foreclosure involves a commitment

to valued roles but without any preceding exploration. This can be conceptualized as adopting the beliefs or

expectations of others, such as one’s family, without much thought. Individuals who are foreclosed tend to be

more rigid in their thinking but have strong relationships with their families and are relatively certain about who

they are. There are also some suggestions that the degree to which foreclosure is psychologically healthy de-

pends in part on the culture in which the individual resides, with foreclosure potentially a healthier outcome for

those in more hierarchical cultures. The final category is diffusion, representing those individuals who have

neither explored nor committed to these various domains. This state of being is associated with poor psycho-

logical health, given that it suggests that someone is not tackling the appropriate developmental task.

In recent years, identity status researchers have tackled some of the drawbacks of Marcia’s initial model, no-

tably the implicit assumption that identity development is somehow complete with identity achievement, which

is in contradiction to Erikson’s theoretical proposals. The dual-cycle model is one antidote to this drawback.

In this model, both exploration and commitment are further delineated into more finely grained developmen-

tal processes. Here, exploration can come in three forms: exploration in breadth represents Marcia’s origi-

nal conceptualization of exploration, exploration in depth represents the process of rethinking and evaluating

one’s commitments once they have been made, and ruminative exploration represents a place of being un-

productively stuck in the process. Commitment is conceptualized as commitment making, again representing

Marcia’s original process, and identification with commitment, representing the integrating of commitments

once made into the self.

The Narrative Identity Approach

The second approach focuses on narrative identity and is most clearly rooted in Erikson’s writings on ego

identity. The emphasis here is on the need for the individual to find and establish a sense of personal continu-

ity through time to commit to adult life. Thus, the developmental issue at play is how individuals manage and

make sense of the inevitable personal changes that occur across the life span. The developmental task, from

this perspective, is to form a coherent story that explains how one has changed and remained the same in a

way that preserves a sense of personal continuity through time.

Narrative researchers place a heavy emphasis on what is called autobiographical reasoning. This process

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involves reflecting on past experiences and making sense of them in a way that connects those experiences

to one’s current understanding of self. This reflective process most often occurs in the context of negative

events or events that are disruptive or unexpected. That is, people do not need to make sense of events that

are predictable and ordinary. This is consistent with other developmental theories that focus on challenge as

critical to promoting learning or development, more broadly. Further, this reasoning process is facilitated by

conversations with close others, such as parents, who can help a person to understand connections between

the past and present self. Thus, engaging in reasoning processes, particularly as they help to resolve or make

sense of disruptive events, is associated with healthy development.

Aside from the processes of identity development—exploration, commitment, and autobiographical reason-

ing—recent evidence suggests that the content of identity is also important to consider for a full understanding

of this developmental project. In particular, certain topics appear to be especially salient or require more work

to make sense of. For example, across both status and narrative studies in adolescence and emerging adult-

hood, relationships play a large role in the content of identity development, particularly those relationships

within the family. This suggests that others are a large part of how individuals define themselves. Individuals

are also more likely to discuss the exploration or meaning making in those content domains that are more

likely to require some sort of decision process or action (e.g., political or religious affiliation). All in all, taking

these two approaches into account, there are a variety of ways that individuals can construct an identity and

a variety of content domains to be integrated into that identity.

Identity Across Developmental Stages

Infancy

Although identity development is viewed as beginning in earnest in adolescence and emerging adulthood,

there are roots and precursors to this developmental task in infancy and childhood. Perhaps the first event

in this process is understanding that one’s body is one’s own, as when infants recognize themselves in the

mirror. This earliest recognition of self is linked to subsequent pronoun use, self-concept, understanding of

the continuity of the self through time, as well as the understanding that one’s mind is different from others.

Thus, this early awareness of the body as one’s own is linked to understanding the cognitive self as one’s

own.

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Childhood

This understanding of the body as separate from others then leads to the ability to engage in increasingly

autonomous behaviors across childhood. As children engage in more activities, with opportunities to be suc-

cessful or not, and to enjoy them or not, they begin to develop a self-concept. This self-concept concerns their

likes and dislikes, traits, and self-evaluations of skills and abilities. Self-concept increases in complexity and

coherence across childhood as more domains become salient or relevant, some of which have the potential

for conflict (e.g., the self with parents and with friends).

Adolescence

This overview of infancy and childhood highlights that adolescents do not start with a blank slate; they have

a good idea of their general conception of self, but what they are lacking is an integration of the increasing

multiple aspects of self. Indeed, Erikson viewed the culmination of the engagement with personal, ego, and

social identity as identity synthesis, which he defined as a process of reworking childhood identifications in-

to a current self-representation. This new self-representation should be coherent across time and contexts

and is also represented by a commitment to adult roles. Because part of this process involves the realization

that childhood identifications are no longer useful, adolescence is when this developmental work is viewed

to begin. There are several other reasons that make adolescence an ideal time to begin work on this task.

Adolescents gain new cognitive skills that make this kind of complex self-exploration possible. As individuals

are able to think more abstractly, and with greater complexity, they are able to see contradictions between

their own beliefs and behaviors currently and over time. These new ways of thinking can put individuals in a

vulnerable period of uncertainty as they work to resolve those discrepancies or what Erikson called a crisis.

Indeed, the multitude of changes that occur in adolescence, such as puberty, new relationships with peers, a

renegotiation of relationships with parents, demand sense making.

Emerging Adulthood

In many contemporary industrialized societies, a recent shift in life-course expectations has resulted in the

postponement of adult roles, with more time for self-exploration. That is, as more individuals attend some

form of postsecondary education, and postpone marriage and childbearing, a new stage has emerged that

has identity development as its central task. Thus, adolescence is when individuals first begin to engage in

the work of constructing an identity, but emerging adulthood is when a lot of the action happens. Part of this is

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due to the cultural norms shifting toward greater self-focus. In other words, given a tolerance for, or even ex-

pectation of, delayed adulthood in modern society, this is a time to engage in role experimentation so that in-

dividuals can explore the possibilities for defining themselves within the larger society. In many contemporary

societies, it is in emerging adulthood when the opportunities for exploration of roles become more available

and when the lack of commitment to such roles is still acceptable. Thus, in adolescence, there are a multitude

of changes, coupled with increasing cognitive complexity, which both demand and facilitate attention to this

task. In emerging adulthood, increasing choice and autonomy allow for even greater strides toward defining

the self.

Adulthood

Erikson was very clear that this developmental task was not one that was left behind once resolved. Indeed,

identity continues to be a concern across adulthood, particularly as events occur that demand revision to

one’s identity (e.g., marriage, parenthood, job loss, illness). Some events may transform identity, particularly

those that dramatically change one’s life structure (e.g., widowhood, parenthood). Some experiences result in

a continued exploration of commitments once made. That is, one may explore one’s role as a parent, commit

to that role by bearing and rearing children, but may continue to explore that role with the passage of time

and new experiences; this process results in a deepening of one’s commitment rather than a dramatic shift.

Older Adulthood

There is less research on the processes and contexts of identity development at the end of the life span, al-

though there are important implications for identity work at this stage. First, the body may return as a central

component of identity, as one reconciles physical declines. One way that older adults can manage the chal-

lenges of old age is to shift focus from one’s body and maintain some form of self-efficacy. Further, in old age,

the relevant identity work may shift away from the exploratory and meaning-making work of earlier stages to

finding a sense of peace, or integrity, with who one is.

Elaborations on Identity Development

Although Erikson was very clear about the importance of establishing oneself in a specific cultural context,

social identity, which represents how one aligns with or fits into the culture in which one resides, has been rel-

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atively neglected in the field of identity development. Part of this is due to the emphasis on personal process-

es of autobiographical reasoning and exploration, with less attention paid to the objects of those reasoning

processes or the content of identity. One major component of identity content is the socially defined roles that

one plays in society.

Attention to culture raises the issue of the constraints that individuals have in constructing their identities. For

example, if access to only one type of religious practice is available to the person, this may constrain possi-

bilities for the development of religious identity. Further, when considering the role of culture, more attention

is put to the specific domains or experiences that individuals find salient or important. Thus, in some cultures,

the exploration or sense-making of one’s religious beliefs will be much more important than in others. This

could occur because of a diversity of choice in religious beliefs or because of the centrality of a particular

religious belief system in a given culture.

Another barrier to studying social identity is that the term is not consistently defined. In addition to the Erik-

sonian sense in which social identity corresponds to fit within society, some define social identity as how indi-

viduals express their identities in everyday interactions and still others define it as social group membership

(e.g., ethnicity, gender, social class). This latter conceptualization has led to a large and complex body of

research. Within developmental psychology, the focus has been on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral

aspects of group membership. That is, rather than using group membership itself as an explanatory variable,

this research seeks to understand the variations with which individuals think, feel, and behave in relation to

their groups. Applying this approach to ethnic identity, developmental psychologists have established pro-

gressive developmental increases in ethnic identity and that an emotional connection to one’s ethnic group

has positive implications for well-being and academic success. A task still to be tackled by the field at large is

the meaning of the intersection of these multiple group identities. That is, what does it mean to be Black and

female versus White and female? In general, little is known about how individuals balance and integrate their

multiple identities or about the developmental process of social identities beyond emerging adulthood.

In conclusion, engaging in identity development processes that facilitate seeking and developing an integrat-

ed and coherent understanding of self across multiple domains, across time, and within one’s cultural context

is a critically important developmental project with relevance across the lifespan.

See also Emerging Adulthood; Eriksonian Theory; Life Narrative; Racial and Ethnic Identity; Self; Social Iden-

tity

• identity development

• identity

• emerging adulthood

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https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-lifespan-human-development/i9727.xml

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https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-lifespan-human-development/i23300.xml

• identity status

• exploration

• social identity

• the self

Kate C. McLean Moin Syed