Essays
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Identity Fusion - Buhrmester, Michael D.
Identity fusion represents a new form of alignment with groups that motivates personally costly, pro‐group behaviors. The approach posits that fused individuals experience a visceral sense of “oneness” with a group, wherein their personal self (characteristics of individuals that make them unique) joins with a social self (characteristics of individuals that align them with groups). Research has identified several cognitive and affective mechanisms (e.g., sense of agency, invulnerability, familial ties) unique to fusion that help explain why strongly fused persons engage in pro‐group behaviors. For example, fusion robustly predicts endorsement of self‐sacrificial behaviors to save other group members' lives as well as less extreme but nonetheless personally costly acts such as donating money to needy group members. Here, we lay out the basic tenets of the fusion approach, highlight key empirical evidence for fusion theory, and discuss important issues and promising directions for future research on the topic. -
Identity‐Based Motivation - Oyserman, Daphna
People believe that they know who they are and that who they are matters for what they do. These core beliefs seem so inherent to conceptualizations of what it means to have a self as to require no empirical support. After all, what is the point of a concept of self if there is no stable thing to have a concept about, and who would care if that concept was stable if it was not useful in making it through the day? Yet the evidence for action‐relevance and stability are surprisingly sparse. This entry outlines identity‐based motivation theory which takes a new look at these assumptions and makes three core predictions termed dynamic construction, action‐readiness, and interpretation of difficulty. That is, rather than being stable, which identities come to mind and what they mean are dynamically constructed in context. People interpret situations and difficulties in ways that are congruent with currently active identities and prefer identity‐congruent to identity‐incongruent actions. When action feels identity‐congruent, experienced difficulty highlights that the behavior is important and meaningful. When action feels identity‐incongruent, the same difficulty suggests that the behavior is pointless and “not for people like me.” -
Intersectionality and the Development of Self and Identity - Azmitia, Margarita
Intersectionality is a key theoretical, empirical, and applied construct in the social sciences and the humanities. In this essay, we review the origins of the construct and the foundational theory and research that served to cement its importance in these fields. We then present a brief overview of how intersectionality guides current theory, research, and social policy in education, feminist studies, politics, psychology, and sociology, concluding with a discussion of the key issues that need to be addressed for this construct to deliver in its promise to strengthen theory, research, and practice in the social sciences. -
Media and the Development of Identity - Manago, Adriana M.
The shift from “media” to “social media” in the digital age has implications for processes of identity formation during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. First, the Internet provides young people with opportunities to co‐construct entertainment and social environments tailored to their own needs and interests. Second, adolescents' presentations of self take place on the same screens and in the same activity settings in which they access commercial media programming. These changes reflect increasing cultural emphasis on personal agency and self‐expression which brings to bear new tasks for identity development during the transition to adulthood that involve both opportunities and challenges for creating a coherent, stable, and meaningful sense of self. In terms of opportunities, social media give youth enhanced control over presentations of self in social interactions and increased access to social information and large networks of others to solicit feedback and reify self‐concepts. However, social media also bring new demands to negotiate heightened pressure to perform a socially desirable self in a commercial environment that bestows value on attractive images and popularity. Suggestions for future research include methods that bridge youths' offline and online social contexts and that balance enthusiasm for the massive quantities of data that can be aggregated via data mining technologies with qualitative work that examines the lived experiences of adolescents' everyday social practices. -
Taking Personality to the Next Level: What Does It Mean to Know a Person? - Wilson, Robert
What does it mean to know a person? In his famous article, McAdams (1995) addresses this question from the perspective of personality psychology and concludes that personality traits are “the psychology of the stranger.” To really know someone, you need to know more than just how they typically think, feel, and behave on average (a common definition of traits). You need to know how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors change depending on their role and context, why those fluctuations occur (the underlying motives and causes of those patterns), and how they make sense of their own patterns over time (their life narrative). In this essay, we argue that although there has been little empirical work on within‐person fluctuations in personality, the time is ripe to examine these patterns. New technology has made it possible to quantify momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and to track the contextual factors that underlie these fluctuations (i.e., “personality signatures”). By capturing individual differences at this dynamic level, we can gain a better understanding of how people differ from one another. This will also open the door to new research questions, such as investigating the amount of insight people have into their own and others' personality signatures. -
Temporal Identity Integration as a Core Developmental Process - Syed, Moin
The construct of identity has captivated scholars across the social sciences, humanities, and the arts. For good reason, too, as the question who am I? cuts to the core of human experience. Following Erikson's theorizing, developmental psychologists have stressed the importance of an identity that is extended through time. A healthy identity is defined, in part, by individuals' ability to reconcile and integrate their past experiences, current concerns, and future prospects, a phenomenon we label temporal identity integration. In this chapter, we review the foundational theoretical and empirical work pertaining to temporal identity integration, drawing on developmental, social, and personality psychology perspectives. We then review some of the most exciting empirical findings across these areas, and provide suggestions for future directions on the topic.