adolescence identity development essay

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Identity development in adolescence and adulthood.

Jane Kroger Jane Kroger Department of Psychology, University of Tromsoe
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.54
Published online: 27 February 2017

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson was the first professional to describe and use the concept of ego identity in his writings on what constitutes healthy personality development for every individual over the course of the life span. Basic to Erikson’s view, as well as those of many later identity writers, is the understanding that identity enables one to move with purpose and direction in life, and with a sense of inner sameness and continuity over time and place. Erikson considered identity to be psychosocial in nature, formed by the intersection of individual biological and psychological capacities in combination with the opportunities and supports offered by one’s social context. Identity normally becomes a central issue of concern during adolescence, when decisions about future vocational, ideological, and relational issues need to be addressed; however, these key identity concerns often demand further reflection and revision during different phases of adult life as well. Identity, thus, is not something that one resolves once and for all at the end of adolescence, but rather identity may continue to evolve and change over the course of adult life too.

Following Erikson’s initial writings, subsequent theorists have laid different emphases on the role of the individual and the role of society in the identity formation process. One very popular elaboration of Erikson’s own writings on identity that retains a psychosocial focus is the identity status model of James Marcia. While Erikson had described one’s identity resolution as lying somewhere on a continuum between identity achievement and role confusion (and optimally located nearer the achievement end of the spectrum), Marcia defined four very different means by which one may approach identity-defining decisions: identity achievement (commitment following exploration), moratorium (exploration in process), foreclosure (commitment without exploration), and diffusion (no commitment with little or no exploration). These four approaches (or identity statuses) have, over many decades, been the focus of over 1,000 theoretical and research studies that have examined identity status antecedents, behavioral consequences, associated personality characteristics, patterns of interpersonal relations, and developmental forms of movement over time. A further field of study has focused on the implications for intervention that each identity status holds. Current research seeks both to refine the identity statuses and explore their dimensions further through narrative analysis.

identity status
identity formation
adolescence

Introduction

We know what we are, but not what we may be . Shakespeare, Hamlet

The question of what constitutes identity has been answered differently through different historical epochs and through different theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding identity’s form and functions. However, basic to all identity definitions is an attempt to understand the entity that, ideally, enables one to move with purpose and direction in life and with a sense of internal coherence and continuity over time and place. Despite the changing physique that aging inevitably brings and the changing environmental circumstances that one invariably encounters through life, a well-functioning identity enables one to experience feelings of personal meaning and well-being and to find satisfying and fulfilling engagements in one’s social context. The means by which one experiences a feeling of sameness in the midst of continual change is the focus of identity theory and research.

Historically, concerns with questions of identity are relatively recent. Baumeister and Muraven ( 1996 ) and Burkitt ( 2011 ) have noted how changes in Western society, specifically the degree to which society has dictated one’s adult roles, have varied enormously over time. Additional changes have occurred in the loosening of social guidelines, restrictions, and constraints, such that contemporary late adolescents experience almost unlimited freedom of choice in their assumption of adult roles and values. In Medieval times, adolescents and adults were prescribed an identity by society in a very direct manner. Social rank and the kinship networks into which one was born set one’s adult roles for life. In early modern times, wealth rather than kinship networks became the standard for self-definition. In the first half of the twentieth century , apprenticeship systems that prepared adolescents for one specific line of work were giving way to more liberal forms of education, thus preparing adolescents for a broad range of occupational pathways. A more liberal educational system, however, eventually required occupational choice in line with one’s own interests and capacities. In addition, many regions in the United States became more tolerant of diversity in attitudes and values, and gender roles became more fluid. Thus, by the middle of the twentieth century in the United States and many other Western nations, the burden of creating an adult identity was now falling largely on the shoulders of late adolescents themselves.

Into this twentieth century United States context came Erik Erikson, a German immigrant (escaping Hitler’s rise to power) and psychoanalyst, trained by Anna Freud. Erikson began his clinical work and writings on optimal personality development in the Boston area, focusing, in particular, on the concept of identity and identity crisis . As an immigrant, Erikson was acutely attuned to the role of the social context and its influence on individual personality development, and, as a psychoanalyst, he was also adept at understanding the roles of conscious as well as unconscious motivations, desires, and intentions, as well as biological drives on individual behavior.

Erikson ( 1963 ) first used the term “ego identity” to describe a central disturbance among some of his veteran patients returning from World War II with a diagnosis of “shell shock” (or currently, post-traumatic stress disorder), who seemed to be experiencing a loss of self-sameness and continuity in their lives:

What impressed me most was the loss in these men of a sense of identity. They knew who they were; they had a personal identity. But it was as if subjectively, their lives no longer hung together—and never would again. There was a central disturbance in what I then started to call ego identity. (Erikson, 1963 , p. 42)

Through identity’s absence in the lives of these young men, Erikson came to understand the tripartite nature of identity, that he believed to be comprised of biological, psychological, and social factors. It was often a particular moment in a soldier’s life history where soma, psyche, and society conspired to endanger identity foundations that necessitated clinical care. And, thus, it was through disruptions to individual identity that Erikson more clearly came to understand identity’s form and functions.

Erikson has often been referred to as “identity’s architect” (e.g., Friedman, 1999 ), and his initial writings on identity served as the springboard for many later theorists and researchers to examine further identity’s many dimensions. Erikson’s psychosocial approach will thus serve as the organizing framework for a review of research on identity development during adolescent and adult life.

Erikson’s Psychosocial Orientation

Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) understanding of identity views the phenomenon as a result of the mutual interaction of individual and context; while individual interests and capacities, wishes and desires draw individuals to particular contexts, those contexts, in turn, provide recognition (or not) of individual identity and are critical to its further development. Erikson stressed the important interactions among the biological, psychological, and social forces for optimal personality development. He suggested a series of eight psychosocial tasks over the course of the life span that follow an epigenetic principle, such that resolution to one task sets the foundation for all that follow. Identity vs. Role Confusion is the fifth psychosocial task that Erikson identified, becoming of primary importance during adolescence. Resolution to preceding tasks of Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Doubt and Shame, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority are the foundations upon which one’s resolution to Identity vs. Role Confusion is based, according to Erikson; resolution to subsequent adult tasks of Intimacy vs. Role Confusion, Generativity vs. Stagnation, and Integrity vs. Despair all similarly depend upon resolution to the Identity vs. Role Confusion task of adolescence.

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) postulated a number of key identity concepts that have served as foundations for much subsequent identity research. For Erikson, identity formation involves finding a meaningful identity direction on a continuum between identity attainment and role confusion . The process of identity formation requires identity exploration and commitment , the synthesis of childhood identifications into a new configuration, related to but different from, the sum of its parts. The identity formation process is extremely arduous for some, and the resolutions of a negative identity or identity foreclosure are two means by which the identity formation process can be bypassed. A negative identity involves identity choices based on roles and values that represent polar opposites of those espoused by one’s family and/or immediate community. Thus, the daughter of a Midwestern minister of religion runs away to become a prostitute in inner city Chicago. A foreclosed identity resolution also avoids the identity formation process by basing identity-defining choices on key identifications, mostly with parental values, without exploring potential alternatives.

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) also proposed several further concepts for optimal identity development. A moratorium process, the active consideration and exploration of future possible identity-defining adult roles and values, was considered vital to optimal identity development. Erikson also became well known for his use of the term identity crisis , an acute period of questioning one’s own identity directions. And finally, Erikson stressed that while an initial resolution to the Identity vs. Role Confusion task often occurs during adolescence, identity is never resolved once and for all, but rather remains open to modifications and alterations throughout adult life. The strength of Erikson’s approach lies in its consideration of both individual and sociocultural factors and their mutual interaction in identity construction and development. Erikson’s model of identity development has wide applicability across cultural contexts and highlights the ongoing nature of identity development throughout adulthood. Weaknesses include his imprecise language, which at times makes operationalization of key concepts difficult, and his historically dated concepts regarding women’s identity development.

While other psychosocial models have evolved from Erikson’s original writings (e.g., Whitbourne’s [ 2002 ] identity processing theory, Berzonsky’s [ 2011 ] social cognitive identity styles, McAdams’s [ 2008 ] narrative approach), it is Erikson’s identity formation concepts, particularly those operationalized by Marcia ( 1966 ) (Marcia, Waterman, Matteson, Archer, & Orlofsky, 1993 ) that have generated an enormous volume of empirical research over past decades and will be the primary focus of subsequent sections of this article.

Erikson’s Psychosocial Approach and Marcia’s Identity Status Model

As a young Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, James Marcia was interested in Erikson’s writings but suspected that the process of identity formation during late adolescence to be somewhat more complicated than what Erikson ( 1963 ) had originally proposed. While Erikson had conceptualized an identity resolution as lying on a continuum between identity and role confusion, an entity that one had “more or less of,” Marcia proposed that there were four qualitatively different pathways by which late adolescents or young adults went about the process of forming an identity. Based on the presence or absence of exploration and commitment around several issues important to identity development during late adolescence, Marcia ( 1966 ; Marcia et al., 1993 ) developed a semi-structured Identity Status Interview to identify four identity pathways, or identity statuses, among late adolescent or young adult interviewees.

An individual in the identity achieved status had explored various identity-defining possibilities and had made commitments on his or her own terms, trying to match personal interests, talents, and values with those available in the environmental context. Equally committed to an identity direction was the foreclosed individual, who had formed an identity, but without undergoing an exploration process. This person’s identity had been acquired primarily through the process of identification—by assuming the identity choices of significant others without serious personal consideration of alternative possibilities. An individual in the moratorium identity status was very much in the process of identity exploration, seeking meaningful life directions but not yet making firm commitments and often experiencing considerable discomfort in the process. Someone in the diffusion identity status had similarly not made identity-defining commitments and was not attempting to do so.

Marcia et al.’s ( 1993 ) Identity Status Interview was designed to tap the areas (or domains) of occupation, political, religious, and sexual values that had been described by Erikson as key to the identity formation process. In Marcia’s view, however, the nature of the identity domain was not as critical to the assessment of identity status as was finding the identity-defining issues most salient to any given individual. Marcia suggested the use of clinical judgment in assigning a global identity status, the mode that seemed to best capture an adolescent’s identity formation process. It must be noted that Marcia and his colleagues (Marcia et al., 1993 ) have never attempted to capture all of the rich dimensions of identity outlined by Erikson through the Identity Status Interview; such a task would be unwieldy, if not impossible. Marcia does, however, build on Erikson’s concepts of identity exploration and comment to elaborate these identity dimensions in relation to those psychosocial roles and values identified by Erikson as key to the identity formation process of many late adolescents.

Subsequent to the original Identity Status Interview, several paper-and-pencil measures were developed to assess Marcia’s four identity statuses. One widely used measure has been the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (EOM-EIS II), devised and revised through several versions by Adams and his colleagues (Adams, Bennion, & Huh, 1989 ; Adams & Ethier, 1999 ). This questionnaire measure enables identity status assessments in four ideological (occupation, religion, politics, philosophy of life) and four interpersonal domains (friendships, dating, gender roles, recreation/leisure), as well as providing a global rating.

Different dimensions of identity exploration and commitment processes have also been identified through several recent and expanded identity status models (Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, & Beyers, 2006 ; Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008 ). Luyckx and his colleagues differentiated two types of exploration (exploration in breadth and exploration in depth) and two types of commitment (commitment making and identification with commitment). Exploration in breadth is that moratorium process identified by Marcia, while exploration in depth describes the process of considering a commitment already made and how well it expresses one’s own identity. Commitment making refers to deciding an identity-defining direction, while identification with commitment describes the process of integrating one’s commitments into an internal sense of identity. Later, Luyckx and his colleagues (Luyckx, Schwartz, Berzonsky, Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Smits, et al., 2008 ) also identified a process of ruminative exploration.

Meeus and his colleagues (e.g., Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008 ) also identified three identity processes: commitment, exploration in depth, and reconsideration of commitments. Commitment here refers to the dimensions of commitment making and identification with commitment in the Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, and Beyers ( 2006 ) model; exploration in depth corresponds to that dimension in the Luyckx model. Reconsideration of commitment refers to one’s willingness to replace current commitments with new ones. In this model, commitment and reconsideration reflect identity certainty and uncertainty, respectively, in the identity formation process.

Through cluster analysis, these two groups of researchers have extracted clusters that match all of Marcia’s original identity statuses. In addition, Luyckx and his colleagues (Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, Beyers, & Vansteenkiste, 2005 ) identified two types of diffusion—troubled and carefree—while Meeus, van de Schoot, Keijsers, Schwartz, and Branje ( 2010 ) found two types of moratoriums—classical (where the individual exhibits anxiety and depression in the identity exploration process) and searching (where new commitments are considered without discarding present commitments). Work has now begun to explore the identity formation process during adolescence and young adulthood with these refined identity statuses, which hold interesting implications for understanding both adaptive and non-adaptive identity development.

Over the time since Marcia’s initial studies, the identity statuses have been examined in relation to personality and behavioral correlates, relationship styles, and developmental patterns of change over time. Most of the studies reviewed in subsequent sections address some aspect of identity development during adolescence or young adulthood; a later section will focus on identity development research during adulthood. It must be further noted that discussion of identity statuses here will be limited to general (or global) identity and its relationship to associated variables.

Personality and Behavioral Correlates of the Identity Statuses

Work utilizing Marcia’s original identity status model, as well as its more recent refinements, have focused on personality and behavioral variables associated with each identity status in order to help validate the model; such studies have produced some reasonably consistent results over time. In terms of personality variables associated with the identity statuses, Kroger and her colleagues (e.g., Martinussen & Kroger, 2013 ) have produced a series of findings utilizing techniques of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is a “study of studies,” using statistical procedures to examine (sometimes contradictory) results from different individual studies addressing comparable themes over time. Results from such meta-analytic studies allow greater confidence in results than a narrative review of individual studies can provide. The personality variables of self-esteem, anxiety, locus of control, authoritarianism, moral reasoning, and ego development and their relations to identity status have attracted sufficient studies for meta-analyses to be undertaken and are described in the sections that follow. While a number of other personality variables have also been examined in identity status studies over the past decades, their numbers have been insufficient to enable meta-analytic studies.

An initial database for all studies included in the meta-analytic work described in the following sections was comprised of some 565 English-language studies (287 journal publications and 278 doctoral dissertations) identified from PsycInfo, ERIC, Sociological Abstracts, and Dissertation Abstracts International databases, using the following search terms: identity and Marcia, identity and Marcia’s, and ego identity. Cohen’s ( 1988 ) criteria were used to define small, medium, and large effect sizes. In some of the meta-analyses that follow, different methods were used to assess identity status (categorical ratings of identity status and scale measures of identity status). Separate meta-analyses had to be undertaken for studies utilizing each of these two types of identity status assessments for statistical reasons.

Self-Esteem

Ryeng, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) undertook meta-analytic studies of the relationship between identity status and global self-esteem. A total of twelve studies with 1,124 participants provided the data for these studies. The achieved identity status was the only status to have a positive correlation with self-esteem ( r = .35), considered to be moderate in effect size. Mean correlations between self-esteem and the moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion statuses were all negative (−.23, −.23, and −.20, respectively) and considered small to moderate in effect size. All of these correlations were significantly different from zero, based on their confidence intervals. When identity status was assessed categorically, there was no difference in effect size between achievements and foreclosures on self-esteem measures. The effect size for the foreclosure-diffusion comparison ( g̅ = −0.19) was small to medium and also significant. Remaining comparisons evidenced small effect size differences in self-esteem scores. Findings here were mixed, as previous research had also produced mixed results on the question of whether foreclosure self-esteem scores would be lower than or similar to those of the identity achieved. Here, results show that only the achieved status (when the identity statuses were measured by continuous scales) produced a moderately positive correlation with self-esteem, while there was no difference in effect sizes between the achieved and foreclosed identity status when studies assessing identity status categorically were analyzed. Thus, the relationship between identity status and self-esteem may depend upon how identity status is measured.

Lillevoll, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) examined the relationship between identity status and generalized anxiety through meta-analysis. Twelve studies involving 2,104 participants provided data for this investigation. Effect size differences in anxiety scores for moratoriums compared with foreclosures ( g̅ = 0.39) and for the foreclosure–diffusion comparison ( g̅ = −0.40) were small to moderate. Additionally the confidence intervals for both of these effect sizes did not contain zero, indicating a significant result. A significant moderate effect size ( g̅ = 0.46) was also found in the achievement–foreclosure comparison, but for men only. As predicted, foreclosures had lower anxiety scores compared with all other identity statuses except the achievement women. While it was predicted that those in the achievement identity status would have lower anxiety scores than those in moratorium and diffusion statuses, a small but significant effect size difference was found for the achievement–moratorium comparison only ( g̅ = −0.22). Thus, the moratoriums showed higher generalized anxiety scores than foreclosures, who, in turn, showed lower anxiety scores than the diffusions and male achievements. It appears that unexamined identity commitments undertaken by the foreclosures provided relief from the anxieties and uncertainties of uncommitted identity directions experienced by the moratoriums and diffusions.

Locus of Control

Lillevoll, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ) examined the relationship between identity status and locus of control. Some five studies with a total of 711 participants provided data for this study. A positive correlation between identity achievement and internal locus of control ( r = .26) and a negative correlation between identity achievement and external locus of control ( r = −.17) was found; these effect sizes are considered small to medium. The moratorium identity status was negatively correlated with internal locus of control ( r = −.17) and positively with an external locus of control ( r = .17), both considered small to medium effect sizes. The foreclosure status was negatively correlated the internal locus of control ( r = −.12) and positively with external locus of control ( r = .19), both considered small to medium effect sizes. The diffusions’ status was negatively correlated with internal locus of control ( r = −.15) and positively with external locus of control ( r = .23), both considered small to medium effect sizes. Apart from the moratorium findings, which were anticipated to reflect an internal locus of control, all other results were in expected directions. It appears that the ability to undertake identity explorations on one’s own terms by the identity achieved is associated with an internal locus of control. Moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion statuses are associated with an external locus of control.

Authoritarianism

The relationship between identity status and authoritarianism was investigated by Ryeng, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ) through meta-analysis. Some nine studies involving 861 participants provided data for this study. The mean difference between authoritarianism scores for the achievement—foreclosure comparison ( g̅ = −0.79) was large in terms of Cohen’s criteria and significant. The mean difference in authoritarianism scores for the moratorium–foreclosure comparison ( g̅ = −0.67) was medium and significant, while the mean difference in authoritarianism scores for the foreclosure and diffusion identity statuses was medium ( g̅ = 0.42) and significant. Other comparisons were relatively small and not significant. That the foreclosures scored higher on authoritarianism than all other identity statuses is consistent with expectations. Foreclosures often base their identity commitments on their identifications with significant others, rather than exploring identity options on their own terms; thus, the rigidity and intolerance of authoritarian attitudes seem to characterize the terms of their identity commitments, in contrast to the more flexible commitments of the identity achieved or moratoriums in the process of finding their own identity directions.

Ego Development

Jespersen, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) examined studies utilizing Loevinger’s ( 1976 ) measure of ego development in relation to the identity statuses through meta-analysis. Eleven studies involving 943 participants provided data for this investigation. Odds ratios (OR) were used to examine frequency distributions of the categorical data. Results of correlational studies showed a moderate, positive relationship between ego development and identity status ( r = .35), which was significant. Results from categorical assessments of identity status also showed a strong relationship between identity status and ego development (mean OR = 3.02). This finding means that the odds of being in a postconformist level of ego development were three times greater for those high in identity statuses (achievement and moratorium) compared with those in the low identity statuses (foreclosure and diffusion). The study also found a moderate relationship between identity achievement and ego development (mean OR = 2.15), meaning that the odds of being in a postconformist level of ego development were over two times greater for those in the identity achievement status than remaining identity statuses. However, no relationship was found between the foreclosed/nonforeclosed identity statuses and the conformist/nonconformist levels of ego development, contrary to prediction (mean OR = 1.31). While results indicate a strong likelihood of being in a post-conformist level of ego development for the identity achieved and moratoriums, as one would predict, it is somewhat surprising that the foreclosure status was not associated with conventional levels of ego development. This lack of association requires further investigation.

Moral Reasoning

A meta-analysis of moral reasoning stages (using Kohlberg’s [ 1976 ] stages in relation to the identity statuses) was also undertaken by Jespersen, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ). Some ten studies involving 884 participants provided data appropriate for this study. Results showed a small positive mean correlation (.15) between identity status and moral reasoning development, which was significant. Results from categorical assessments of both measures indicated a strong relationship between high identity status (achievement and moratorium) and postconventional levels of moral reasoning (mean OR = 4.57). This result means that the odds of being in the postconventional level of moral reasoning are about four and a half times greater for the high identity status group (achievement and moratorium) than the low (foreclosure and diffusion) group. A strong relationship was also found between the achieved identity status and the postconventional level of moral reasoning (mean OR = 8.85), meaning that the odds of being in a postconventional level of moral reasoning were almost nine times greater for the identity achieved than for other identity statuses. However, no significant relationship appeared for the foreclosed/nonforeclosed identity statuses and the conventional/nonconventional levels of moral reasoning, contrary to prediction. While a meaningful relationship was found between postconventional stages of moral reasoning and the moratorium and achievement identity statuses, it is again surprising that no relationship appeared for the foreclosed identity status and conventional levels of moral reasoning. This finding warrants further investigation.

Additional Personality and Behavioral Variables

A number of additional personality and behavioral variables have been explored in relation to the identity statuses, but no further meta-analyses have yet been undertaken. With regard to the newer, more refined measures of identity status, some additional personality and behavioral associations have been noted. Luyckx et al. ( 2008 ) found ruminative exploration related to identity distress and low self-esteem, while exploration in breadth and depth were positively related to self-reflection. Furthermore, commitment-making (particularly identification with commitment) was associated with high self-esteem, high academic and social adjustment, as well as with low depressive symptoms. Crocetti et al. ( 2008 ) similarly found strong, positive associations between commitment and self-concept clarity, in addition to strong negative associations between in-depth exploration and reconsideration of commitment with self-reflection. Emotional stability was strongly associated with commitment and negatively with in-depth exploration.

Recent work has performed cluster analyses on the exploration and commitment variables, finding four clusters replicating Marcia’s four identity statuses (with the diffusion status including carefree and diffuse diffusions) and an undifferentiated status (Schwartz et al., 2011 ). In terms of psychosocial functioning, achievements were significantly higher than carefree diffusions on a measure of self-esteem; diffusions, in turn, were significantly lower than all other identity statuses on this variable. On a measure of internal locus of control, achievements and moratoriums were significantly higher and carefree diffusions significantly lower than all other identity statuses. On psychological well-being, identity achievements scored significantly higher and carefree diffusions significantly lower than all other identity status groups. For general anxiety, moratoriums and the two diffusion groups scored significantly higher than achievement and foreclosure groups, while the moratoriums scored significantly higher than foreclosures and the two diffusions groups on depression. These findings are generally in line with findings of earlier studies using Marcia’s original model.

Further behavioral studies in relation to the identity statuses have consistently found the identity diffusion status to be related to psychosocial problem behaviors. Delinquent behavior (e.g., Jessor, Turbin, Costa, Dong, Zhang, & Wang, 2003 ; Schwartz, Pantin, Prado, Sullivan, & Szapocznik, 2005 ), substance abuse (e.g., Jones & Hartmann, 1988 ; Laghi, Baiocco, Longiro, & Baumgartner, 2013 ), risky behaviors (e.g., unsafe sex, Hernandez & DiClemente, 1992 ), social, physical aggression, and rule-breaking (carefree diffusions, Schwartz et al., 2011 ), and procrastination (Shanahan & Pychyl, 2006 ) have all been linked with the identity diffusion status. By contrast, the identity achieved have demonstrated a low prevalence of all preceding problem behaviors, coupled with high levels of agency or self-direction and commitment making (e.g., Schwartz et al., 2011 ; Shanahan & Pychyl, 2006 ). Moratoriums have also scored relatively high on levels of social and physical aggression, although they have also scored high on a number of psychosocial measures of well-being (e.g., Schwartz et al., 2011 ).

Relationships and the Identity Statuses

While a number of relational issues have been explored in identity status research (e.g., parental attitudes toward childrearing, family styles of communication, and friendship styles), to date, meta-analyses have been undertaken to examine identity status only in relation to attachment patterns and intimacy or romantic relationships.

Bartholomew and Horowitz ( 1991 ) have proposed that one’s very unique attachment history and subsequent working models of attachment lead to one of four different adolescent/adult attachment styles, or patterns of relating to significant others; these attachment styles become activated particularly in times of stress. S ecurely attached individuals are at ease in becoming close to others and do not worry about being abandoned or having someone become too close to them. Furthermore, they are interdependent—comfortable depending on others and having others depend on them. Those using the avoidant attachment style find it difficult to trust and depend on others and are uncomfortable in becoming too emotionally close. The preoccupied (anxious/ambivalent) attachment group wants to be close to others but worries that others will not reciprocate and will abandon them, while the fearful attachment group wants to be emotionally close to others but are too frightened of being hurt to realize this desire.

These varied styles of attachment have been examined in relation to Marcia’s identity statuses among adolescents and young adults in a number of studies over the past decades, and recent meta-analytic work has explored patterns of findings across studies (Årseth, Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2009 ). From the large database of 565 identity status studies described earlier, some 14 had data suitable for meta-analysis (a full description of the database can be found in Martinussen & Kroger, 2013 ). A total of 2,329 participants were involved in this investigation. Weak to moderate correlations were found between identity status and attachment style when scale measures were used to assess each variable; the highest mean correlations were between the secure attachment style and identity achievement ( r = .21) as well as identity diffusion ( r = −.23). (Cohen, 1988 , regarded a correlation of .30 as moderate and .10 as weak.) The diffusion status was also weakly to moderately positively correlated with the fearful attachment style ( r = .19). Among categorical assessments of identity status and attachment style, results suggest there are real differences between the identity achieved and foreclosed as well as diffusion identity statuses, with the identity achieved far more likely to be securely attached than foreclosed or diffusion statuses. Data from these studies suggests that one’s relational experiences do have some links to one’s identity status.

According to Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) epigenetic principle, resolution to the task of Identity vs. Intimacy should set the foundation for resolution to the task of Intimacy vs. Isolation during late adolescence and young adulthood. In Erikson’s ( 1968 ) view, true intimacy involves mutuality and commitment, an acceptance of another with all of his or her strengths and weaknesses in an interdependent, sexual relationship. Erikson ( 1968 ) believed that genuine intimacy requires a sense of identity to be firmly in place, or the relationship becomes merely a tool to help resolve identity concerns for each partner. However, Erikson was unclear about the potential for gender differences in his theory, and a number of feminist writers (e.g., Gilligan, 1982 ) have stressed the importance of relationship issues for women to the identity formation process. Literature examining the relationship between identity and intimacy statuses for late adolescent and young adult men and women has often produced conflicting results.

Thus, a meta-analysis of the relationship between identity status and intimacy for men and women was undertaken by Årseth, Kroger, Martinussen, and Marcia ( 2009 ). Some 21 studies with a total of 1,983 participants were included in meta-analyses here. For studies utilizing scale measures of intimacy, results indicated a low to moderate effect size for men ( g̅ = .35) and women ( g̅ = .30) considered separately, as well as for the total group ( g̅ = .40). All results were significant and indicate that high identity status individuals (achievement and moratorium) scored higher on scale measures of intimacy than low identity status individuals (foreclosures and diffusions). For categorical assessments of identity and intimacy, the picture was somewhat more complex. Among men, the mean odds ratio of having both a high identity and high intimacy status was very high at 22.09, while for women the mean odds ratio was 2.61. In terms of percentages, some 69% of high identity status men were also high in intimacy, while only 23% of low identity status men were high in intimacy. Erikson’s epigenetic principle thus finds strong support among men. Among women, while 65% of high identity status women were also high in intimacy status, some 46% of low identity status women were also high in intimacy status. Thus, the low identity status women were almost equally distributed over high and low intimacy status groups. These results indicate Erikson’s epigenetic principle also was present for a large proportion of women sampled; however, the relationship was significantly stronger for men than women (p < .001), and reasons for this gender difference require further investigation.

Identity Status Change from Adolescence Through Adulthood

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) had proposed that while making initial identity resolutions was a key developmental task of adolescence, identity remained malleable, open to further changes throughout adult life. Similarly, the identity status literature that has pointed to different patterns of movement during young, middle, and late adolescence clearly shows that identity will continue to meet challenges and, for some, the need for revision throughout adulthood. What are the most prevalent patterns of identity status change over the course of adolescent and adult life, and what are the key events primarily associated with these changes?

A number of studies addressing identity status changes over time have now been undertaken, and a series of meta-analytic investigations are perhaps the most effective means of summarizing common patterns of movement and stability in the identity status literature. Kroger, Martinussen, and Marcia ( 2010 ) investigated some 72 of 124 identity studies that contained developmental information from the larger database of 565 English-language identity status studies described earlier. Movement patterns were investigated in several ways.

When movements over approximately three years of late adolescence and young adulthood were examined longitudinally from data that assessed identity status in categorical terms, the mean proportion of adolescents making progressive identity status changes (D–F, D–M, D–A, F–M, F–A, and M–A) was .36, compared with .15 who made regressive changes (A–M, A–F, A–D, M–F, M–D, and F–D) and .49 who remained stable (A–A, M–M, F–F, D–D) over this time period. It is interesting that the mean proportion of those remaining stable in identity status was so high, especially during the time of late adolescence that Erikson ( 1968 ) has identified as central to the identity formation process. As anticipated, the highest mean proportions of progressive movements were from M–A (.46), F–A (.22), and F–M (.22). The highest mean proportions of those remaining stable were the committed identity achieved (.66) and the foreclosed (.53) statuses. The highest mean proportions of those making regressive movements were from A–F (.17) and M–F (.17).

For cross-sectional studies assessing identity status in categorical terms, the mean proportion of identity achievements increased steadily through the high school years, dropped upon university entry and increased to .34 by age 22 years. It was not until the 30–36 year age group that about half of the participants were rated identity achieved (.47). The mean proportion of moratoriums rose fairly steadily to age 19 years, which peaked at .42 and declined fairly steadily thereafter through the 30–36 year age span. The mean proportion of foreclosures dropped fairly steadily to a low at age 19 years of .12, but then showed and up and down movement throughout remaining ages to .17 in the 30–36 year age group. The mean proportion of diffusions declined fairly steadily from age 14–20 years of age (from .36 to .21), but by age 21 years, the diffusions rose again to .26 and showed up and down movement until the final 30–36 year age span (.14).

For cross-sectional studies using continuous measures of identity status, it was anticipated that achievement and moratorium scores would increase across age groups and foreclosure and diffusion scores would decrease over time. Studies here were based on data for early and mid-adolescents. The anticipated patterns were found, but all effect sizes were small. It may be that more pronounced identity status changes occur during and beyond late adolescence.

Additional studies of identity status change through middle and later adulthood years not included in meta-analyses have also generally found slow, progressive identity status movements over time. Fadjukoff, Pulkkinen, and Kokko ( 2016 ) analyzed identity status longitudinally in a Finnish sample of men and women drawn from the general population. Identity status was assessed at ages 27, 36, 42, and 50 years. Movement towards identity achievement was predominant on the overall measure of identity status, with women typically reaching identity achievement earlier than men. In a narrative analysis of identity pathways among women assessed from late adolescence through mid-life, Josselson ( 1996 ) found a diversity of identity pathways, with achievement and foreclosure pathways tending to be the most stable over time. Carlsson, Wängqvist, and Frisén ( 2015 ) have also examined identity status change and stability in a longitudinal study of young adults at ages 25 and 29 years in Sweden. Half of participants were coded in the same identity status at Times 1 and 2, while half who changed did so in a progressive direction. Additional identity processes of how people approach life-changing situations, the extent to which they continue to engage in meaning-making, and how they continue to develop their personal life directions were explored through narrative methods among foreclosed and achieved participants. Identity achievement was associated with continued identity development over time, while patterns for ongoing development among foreclosures were more mixed. McLean and Pasupathi ( 2012 ) have made a plea for the use of narrative methods that examine reconstructions of past events to supplement current understandings of the exploration and commitment processes involved on ongoing identity development throughout the life span. Additional identity processes may usefully be identified through such means.

Events Associated with Identity Status Change

An issue that researchers have been exploring over several decades is the question of what kinds of circumstances are associated with identity status change and, conversely, what circumstances are linked with identity status stability. Some hints have appeared in related literatures. For example, Helson and Roberts ( 1994 ) found that some optimal level of “accommodative challenge” or life stimulation is critical for adult ego development (referring to Loevinger’s, 1976 , model of ego development). Accommodative challenge is a circumstance or event that involves either a positive or negative disruption to one’s life. It may be that such life challenges are important to ongoing identity development over time as well.

Anthis and colleagues (Anthis, 2002 , 2011 ; Anthis & La Voie, 2006 ) have conducted several investigations into life events associated with identity exploration and commitment. In her “calamity theory of growth” model, Anthis ( 2002 ) has found stressful life events, such as divorce or job loss, to be associated with increased levels of identity exploration and decreases in identity commitments. She has also found increased levels of identity exploration to be associated with a “readiness for change” measure (Anthis & La Voie, 2006 ). Anthis suggests investigating how optimal levels of perceived conflict interact with other factors for different cohorts of people in exploring the role that life events may play in ongoing identity development during adulthood.

Additionally, Kunnen ( 2006 , 2010 ) asks if conflict may be the driver of identity change. In a study of freshman university students, she found that students who experienced a conflict in their career goals increased identity exploratory activity and also manifested a decrease in the strength of their present commitments. Furthermore, those experiencing conflict perceived more change in their commitments as compared to nonconflicted students. The types and levels of perceived identity conflict and the mechanisms by which conflict may stimulate or impair ongoing identity development are in need of further study. Lilgendahl’s ( 2015 ) narrative work reiterates the value of negative events and their potential for psychological growth during midlife, while events that are understood as positive are key to the formation of identity commitments during young adulthood.

Identity Development in Adulthood

Research into ongoing identity development during adulthood has taken several forms. Some researchers have attempted to understand the relationship between resolution to identity issues during late adolescence or young adulthood and the Eriksonian psychosocial tasks of adulthood: Intimacy vs. Isolation (young adulthood), Generativity vs. Stagnation (middle adulthood), and Integrity vs. Despair (late adulthood). Others have attempted to examine selected issues of identity during these specific adult life phases and whether or not identity cohesion and stability increase with age over the course of adulthood. The following brief overview presents some selected findings from these strands of identity research during various phases of adult life.

According to Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) epigenetic principle, resolutions to earlier psychosocial tasks will impact resolutions to all subsequent ones. Research to date has generally supported this proposal, with some caveats for the relationship between identity and intimacy, described in meta-analytic studies in a preceding section. The relationships among identity, generativity, and integrity have only recently become a focus of research attention, and they present important opportunities for future investigations. Beaumont and Pratt ( 2011 ) have examined links among Berzonsky’s ( 2011 ) identity styles, Intimacy vs. Isolation, and Generativity vs. Stagnation in samples of young and midlife adults. They found that the informational style (associated with identity achievement) was linked with both the capacity for intimacy and generativity, while the diffuse–avoidant style (associated with identity diffusion) was negatively linked with both intimacy and generativity. The normative identity style (associated with the foreclosure identity status) also positively predicted resolution to intimacy and generativity tasks of adulthood. Pulkkinen, Lyyra, Fadjukoff, and Kokko ( 2012 ) obtained longitudinal data from Finnish adults at ages 27, 36, 42, and 50 years on measures including parental identity, general identity, generativity, and integrity. Generativity scores (as well as scores for psychological and social well-being) were highest if parental identity was achieved by age 42. On a cross-sectional basis, Hearn, Saulnier, Strayer, Glenham, Koopman, and Marcia ( 2012 ) examined the relationship between identity status and a measure of integrity status. A significant relationship was found, with some 86% of integrated persons rated as identity achieved, while no despairing persons were. Those in the non-exploring integrity status (in which questions of personal life meanings were unexplored), the pseudo-integrated integrity status (in which the world was understood in terms of simplistic templates or clichéd meanings), and the despairing integrity status were most frequently in the foreclosed identity status. Hannah, Domino, Figueredo, and Hendrickson ( 1996 ) explored predictors of Integrity vs. Despair in a sample of later life adults, finding the most predictive and parsimonious variables to be trust, autonomy, identity, and intimacy, with no meaningful gender differences. Thus, Erikson’s epigenetic principle has found considerable support over time and illustrates the important role that identity resolution plays to the resolution of subsequent psychosocial tasks during adulthood.

While Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) had postulated the ongoing nature of identity development throughout adulthood, and Stephen, Fraser, and Marcia ( 1992 ) had first proposed the likelihood of ongoing moratorium–achievement–moratorium–achievement cycles in adult identity development, there have been relatively few efforts to examine the nature of change and continuity in identity development over the course of adulthood. While some early research has estimated the likelihood of a midlife identity crisis to be about 10% (e.g., Brim, 1992 ), recent work has pointed to ongoing times of identity crisis (or revision) during the later adult years as well (Robinson & Stell, 2015 ). Experiences of well-being have been examined in relation to adult psychosocial stage resolutions in the Rochester Adult Longitudinal Study (Sneed, Whitbourne, Schwartz, & Huang, 2011 ), where scores on both identity and intimacy measures in early and middle adulthood predicted midlife feelings of satisfaction and well-being. A sense of coherence and life satisfaction in later adult years has been fully mediated by resolution to Integrity vs. Despair (Dezutter, Wiesmann, Apers, & Luyckx, 2013 ). Much remains to be learned about ongoing identity development in the adulthood years, and the relation of identity to subsequent psychosocial tasks and additional personality variables.

What the Identity Statuses Mean

Through the decades since Marcia ( 1966 ) developed his identity status model, there has been considerable discussion in the literature about what the identity statuses actually mean and how best to assess them. Marcia ( 1980 ) considers identity to be a structure for organizing individual conscious and unconscious wishes, interests, skills, and talents within the framework of one’s biology and cultural context. His identity status model was intended to reflect the movement through Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) identity formation process, from an identity based on identifications (foreclosure status), through an exploration (moratorium) process, to a new configuration, based on but different from the sum of its identificatory elements (achievement).

In considering the question of what it is that actually changes in an identity status transition, Kroger ( 2003 ) has suggested that qualitatively different forms of ego organization underlie each of Marcia’s identity statuses. However, after an initial identity has formed, further use of the identity status model during adult life begs the question of what the identity statuses actually mean when applied to adults. While new identity-defining decisions may occur in adult life, is there an actual underlying structural change of identity? There may or may not be. There may actually be new or additional structures of ego organization that underlie the identity achievement status of adulthood, and future research could fruitfully explore this issue. Lile ( 2013 , 2015 ) considers structural identity boundaries for each of the identity statuses and offers some empirical support for a structural model of identity that underlies the identity statuses. Identity status research in adulthood should carefully consider the meaning that the identity statuses may hold when applied to a life phase beyond that for which they were originally developed.

Conclusions

Historically, the task of identity formation is a relatively recent phenomenon. Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) first used the identity concept in his clinical writings to describe that entity that seemed to be lacking in the lives of young men returning from combat in World War II. From Erikson’s early writings, several broad approaches to identity theory and research have emerged, laying differential emphasis on the psychosocial, phenomenological, and the contextual nature of identity. This article has reviewed some of the writings and research that have sprung from the identity status model of James Marcia ( 1966 , 1980 ). This review has documented meta-analytic work covering the associations of Marcia’s four identity statuses with various personality, relational, and behavioral variables, as well as documenting the most common patterns of identity status change and stability during adolescence and adulthood. The review has also documented the role that resolution to questions of identity plays in resolutions to ongoing psychosocial tasks of adulthood.

Further identity research could fruitfully explore both the meaning of the identity statuses in ongoing adult identity development as well as the processes and contents of identity changes during adult life. The role of regression in adolescent and adult identity development is poorly understand, occurring more frequently than can be predicted by chance alone (see Kroger et al., 2010 ). Understanding what kinds of regression there may be and whether or not specific types of regression are vital to ongoing adult identity development are important avenues for further identity research. And though identity concerns of adolescence have many parallels to identity issues of later adulthood, very little identity-related theory and research has been undertaken with older adults. (For example, individuals in both phases of the life span must adjust to important biological changes, deal with philosophical questions of life’s meanings, and readjustment to changing demands from social contexts.) It is hoped that this article will present a foundation upon which future psychosocial research into the process and contents of identity development from adolescence through adulthood can take place.

4 Identity Development from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: What We Know and (Especially) Don’t Know

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts.

Published: 03 March 2014
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A critical analysis is presented of Erikson’s theory of identity development and the field of identity development research. Erikson’s proposal of identity development as a human universal is critiqued by examining the applicability of this idea in human phylogenetic history and across world regions today, with a focus on adolescence and emerging adulthood. The current state of research in identity develop is also critiqued, with the conclusion that, because most research to date has been based on the identity status model, and because this model and the methods used to investigate it are of dubious validity, much remains to be known about the most basic, fundamental questions of identity development. The narrative approach is advocated as a more promising model for future investigations, and the questions to be addressed by this approach are summarized.

Of the eight stages Erikson proposed in his lifespan theory of development, it is his concept of the adolescent stage, identity versus role confusion, that has been the most influential. In recent decades, an entire field has sprung up devoted to identity research and its many permutations, including ethnic identity, cultural identity, and sexual identity. Erikson himself seemed partial to identity among his concepts. He devoted an entire book to the topic, Identity: Youth and Crisis ( Erikson, 1968 ), and his psychobiographies of Martin Luther and Mohandas Gandhi focused on identity issues.

Perhaps his preoccupation with identity issues arose from the ways his own identity was a complicated stew of influences. Born in Germany in 1902 as Erik Salomonsen to a Jewish mother from Denmark, he became Erik Homberger at age 9 when his mother remarried, lived as an artist in Austria as a young man, then became a psychoanalyst. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he and his new wife immigrated to the United States. In effect, he remade his identity during his twenties and thirties as he chose a new profession, a new country, a new religion (he converted to Christianity from Judaism), and a new name: Erik Homberger Erikson.

Like many theorists in the psychology of his time, and like his mentors in psychoanalysis, Erikson sought human universals, principles of psychology that would apply to all people in all cultures in all times. His lifespan theory was proposed as a universal stage theory, although he recognized the possibility of cultural variations. In Childhood and Society ( Erikson, 1950 ), where he first presented his lifespan theory, he drew on his ethnographic experiences among the Sioux and Yurok cultures of Native Americans, but he was less interested in their cultural distinctiveness than in finding evidence for the universal validity of the life stages he proposed. His psychobiographies, in particular his analysis of the life of Luther ( Erikson, 1958 ), implied that his life stages applied across historical eras as well, in particular the special salience of the “identity crisis” as the major issue to be confronted and resolved on the threshold of adulthood.

Erikson’s emphasis on universals of human development is sometimes downplayed in current summaries of his theory. According to the standard version of twentieth-century psychology, it was Freud who proposed universals, in his psychosexual theory. Erikson, in contrast, presented a psychosocial theory of development, which rejected Freud’s psychosexual theory and underlined the importance of social, historical, and cultural contexts. In fact, however, Erikson presented his theory as a supplement to psychoanalytic theory, not as an alternative. In both his first book, Childhood and Society (1950) , and his final book, The Life Cycle Completed ( Erikson & Erikson, 1997 ), he placed the psychosexual and psychosocial stages side by side, as mutually important human universals.

Moreover, in The Life Cycle Completed , written near the end of his life, Erikson uncritically endorsed the whole panoply of Freudian nonsense—oral and anal stages in infancy and toddlerhood, the Oedipus complex in early childhood, even penis envy. Erikson not only believed in the validity of these ideas but regarded them as universal and biologically based, arguing that “psychoanalysis discovered the pregenital stages of sexuality” (p. 27) much as the early biologists discovered stages of embryonic development. He developed the analogy further as he described his psychosocial stages, likening them, too, to the “epigenetic” stages of the embryo. There would be historical and cultural variations, yes, but they would be variations on the same universal themes.

However, like the would-be universal stage theories proposed by Freud, Piaget, and Kohlberg in the twentieth century, Erikson’s claims of the universality of his lifespan theory of development have proven difficult to sustain. From the perspective of a more empirically based twenty-first-century psychology, the universal ambitions of the twentieth-century theorists seem far-fetched, to say the least, based as they were on such tiny slices of humanity: for Freud, upper-class Jews in Vienna; for Piaget, his own three children and a handful of Swiss boys; for Kohlberg, a small sample of boys in Chicago; and for Erikson, the children he saw in his psychoanalytic practice along with his brief experiences among the Sioux and Yurok. Nevertheless, the success of Erikson’s identity concept in generating a large body of research in the past several decades, and its continued vitality as an inspiration to theoretical conversations and new research, suggest that it remains an idea that has the potential to enlighten our understanding of human development.

In this chapter, the focus will be on the cultural and historical contexts of identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. I will not attempt to summarize the existing research, as this has been done well recently by several authors ( Meeus, 2011 ; Kroger & Marcia, 2011 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ). Rather, I provide a critical analysis of Erikson’s theory and the research based on it. First, I take a fresh look at the question of cultural and historical variation in the scope of identity options and how recognizing this variation alters our understanding of Erikson’s ideas. Second, I look at what we know—and, mostly, do not know—about the development of identity from adolescence through emerging adulthood. Third, and finally, I critically evaluate the methods that have been used in identity research on adolescents and emerging adults and advocate the narrative method as the most promising approach to revivifying the identity paradigm.

The Rise of Identity: Cultural and Historical Considerations

For all his attention to historical figures in his psychobiographies, Erikson was surprisingly quiet on the larger question of the human evolutionary past. Perhaps he was deterred by Freud’s evolutionary misadventures in proposing the “primal horde,” which must have seemed preposterous, to put it gently, even by the time Erikson was proposing his theory. Whatever the reason, Erikson’s neglect of the human past is a major omission in his theory. Any theory of human development that purports to be universal must address not only ontogenetic development but phylogenetic development; that is, it must explain how the elements of the theory can be seen to arise in the course of our development as a species and thereby became a characteristic that all humans possess.

This test is not one that Erikson’s theory of identity development survives very well. Erikson proposed identity as having three domains, love, work, and ideology, and he believed that exploration of possibilities led, by the end of adolescence, to choices in all three domains that would form the structure of an adult life: a marriage partner, stable work, and a worldview. There is a consensus among evolutionary anthropologists that Homo sapiens first took its modern form about 200,000 years ago ( Wrangham, 2010 ). The earliest humans apparently relied on a hunter-gatherer way of life, hunting whatever animals were available and gathering edible plants. They controlled fire, which they used for warmth, light, and to cook their food, but their other tools were limited mainly to sharpened stones used to cut their meat and to make pointed sticks for hunting and defense against animal and human attackers.

It is difficult to find any evidence of identity as a salient issue in this way of life. With regard to work, what options were there to explore? They hunted, they gathered; the goal was survival, not the development of the individual’s unique abilities. With regard to love, exploration followed by individual choice seems equally unlikely. Early human communities were small, usually only 100–150 persons. We know nothing about how they regarded love and marriage, but from what we know about modern hunter-gatherer cultures of similar size, marriage was most likely a community and family transaction in which the young people involved had little say.

As for ideology, from what the archeological record shows, this appears to have arisen more recently, about 40,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic period ( Diamond, 1992 ; Gazzaniga, 2008 ). This was when a variety of cultural objects that may have symbolized ideologies first appeared, including jewelry, musical instruments, painting, and sculpture. For the first time, humans buried their dead, and they often buried them with artifacts and objects from daily life, which implies that they held a worldview that included afterlife beliefs. Ideological expression may have been led in some groups by a shaman, such as those depicted in European cave paintings some 30,000–40,000 years old ( Wilson, 2012 ). Still, it seems unlikely that the people of that era had a range of ideologies to explore and select from. These small human communities must have shared in common the ideology they had developed.

The next major shift in human phylogenetic history took place from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago, known as the Neolithic period ( Taylor, 2010 ). Agriculture began as people cultivated the plants they had once gathered, and, at the same time, they began raising domestic animals so that they would not have to hunt constantly. Dwellings were built because people stayed in settled communities to tend their plants and animals, rather than living nomadically as people in hunter-gatherer cultures tend to do. Although the archeological record of this period is limited, it can be surmised that here, too, there must have been little in the way of what we now think of as identity development in love, work, and ideology. Marriages were probably family-based transactions arranged by elders, work was farming and raising domestic animals almost exclusively, and ideological variation was limited ( Ember, Ember, & Peregrine 2011 ).

With the development of civilizations about 5,000 years ago, the story of our phylogenetic identity development becomes more complex, and perhaps it is here that it truly begins. For the first time, there was a range of occupations, including priests, soldiers, craftsmen, government workers, and slaves ( Ember, Ember, & Peregrine, 2011 ). Ideologies became systematized and recorded in written languages for the first time and were represented and celebrated in monuments such as the Egyptian pyramids. Did people begin to have a range of identity choices in love, work, and ideology for the first time? Perhaps some did. We know little about how they regarded love and marriage, but as human populations began to cluster in cities rather than small agricultural communities, there may have been a greater potential range of marriage partners. Whether or notyoung people were allowed to choose from among them is another question, one that is difficult to answer. Perhaps some young men had the opportunity to choose whether to be a priest, soldier, craftsman, or government worker, but young women were entirely excluded from professions. Furthermore, it is important to note that even as these professions developed, most people, men and women alike, remained dependent on farming and raising domestic animals. As for ideology, with the development of civilizations, people were exposed to a wider range of ideologies as a consequence of trade, migration, and war. Some were converted to new ideologies; others were forced to convert once they were conquered. Still, for most people in most places during this era, it seems unlikely that they ever became aware of any worldview beyond their own local version.

Over the past 5,000 years, even until recent times, this pattern of severely limited identity options has continued ( Ridley, 2010 ). With regard to love, most cultures developed a custom of arranged marriage that allowed young people little or no individual choice in the selection of a marriage partner. Even after the idea of love-based marriage became accepted in Western societies in recent centuries, this meant that a young man was allowed to court and then propose marriage to a young woman. It would not have been acceptable for either young men or young women to explore their options in love by having a series of relationships with romantic partners. Even after work became more diverse as economies grew and became more complex following the Industrial Revolution several centuries ago, most people remained farmers until about 200 years ago, even in “industrialized” societies. Whether they were farmers or not, few people had the freedom to consider and explore a range of possible occupational paths. Young men generally did what their fathers did; young women were wives and mothers, as they had been throughout human history, and those in farm families contributed farm work. Even after ideologies developed into religious and political systems, few people would have known much about any ideologies except what they were taught locally, within their families and communities.

This whirlwind tour of human phylogenetic history has been necessarily brief, but it serves to highlight and underscore just how modern Erikson’s theory of identity is, just how specific it is to our time, and just how little it seems to describe a human universal. In developing and presenting his ideas about identity development in adolescence, Erikson was describing the world as he found it in the mid-twentieth-century in European and American societies. The idea of an “identity crisis” in adolescence was quickly embraced by scholars and in the general public because, for people in these societies, Erikson’s description matched what they witnessed in the young people around them. Scores of scholars conducted hundreds of studies on identity development among adolescents in these societies, and the results seemed to these scholars to validate the insights Erikson had proposed, that forming an identity is a crucial challenge of development in the adolescent stage of life.

Erikson’s theory of identity development has thus served as a productive and fruitful paradigm for understanding adolescents in developed countries today, but it can only be sustained in our time if it is shorn of his proposition of universality. It is only in recent times, really only since the early twentieth century, that young men and women have been encouraged or even allowed to have a series of romantic partners in order to explore their options in love prior to making a marriage commitment. It is only since the early twentieth century that young men have had a range of work options to choose from, and really only since the late twentieth century for young women. It is only since the late twentieth century that an ethic of tolerance has become dominant in developed countries, allowing young people to choose for themselves what their religious and political beliefs, and their social attitudes, shall be. Human societies have had a mix of ideologies for centuries, but it is only in recent times that choosing an ideology different from what was dominant in the family and community did not result in ostracism or even execution.

Adolescent identity development, then, is a modern idea, suitable for the modern world, not a universal and eternal stage of ontogenetic human development. However, even in our time, it has only limited application outside the Western societies that gave it birth, as we will see in the following section.

Adolescent Identity Development: What Do We Know?

Although scholarship on identity development has generally ignored the phylogenetic history just reviewed and the way Erikson’s theory depends on conditions that have come to exist only recently, a substantial body of research has accumulated in recent decades on identity in adolescence ( Meeus, 2011 ; Kroger & Marcia, 2011 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ). For many decades, the dominant paradigm for mainstream identity development research has been the identity status paradigm. Originally proposed by James Marcia (1966) , it operationalized Erikson’s theory of adolescent identity development into two dimensions, exploration and commitment. The various combinations of these two dimensions resulted in four identity statuses: foreclosure (low exploration, high commitment), diffusion (low exploration, low commitment), moratorium (high exploration, low commitment), and achievement (high exploration, high commitment).

Research using the identity status model has yielded a number of consistent findings ( Berzonsky & Adams, 1999 ; Meeus, 2011 ). Perhaps most prominently, it has shown that adolescents’ identity status tends to be related to other aspects of their development. For example, the “achievement” and “moratorium” statuses are notably related to favorable development. Adolescents classified in these categories of identity development are more likely than adolescents in the “diffusion” or “foreclosure” categories to be self-directed, cooperative, and good at problem solving. Diffusion is considered to be the least favorable of the identity statuses and is viewed as predictive of later psychological problems. Compared with adolescents in the achievement or moratorium statuses, adolescents in the diffusion status are lower in self-esteem and self-control. Diffusion status is also related to high anxiety, apathy, and disconnected relationships with parents.

Yet a critical analysis of the existing research reveals that we still know surprisingly little about identity development. First, identity research has focused almost entirely on a narrow proportion of humanity: adolescents living in developed countries. Second, the main framework for identity research has been the identity status paradigm, which has serious limitations, and the focus of this research has been on the relation of identity statuses in adolescence to other aspects of functioning. Third, there has been little research establishing identity as the central crisis or challenge of adolescence, as Erikson proposed.

Identity Research and the Neglected 95 Percent

One obligation of proponents of a universal theory is to establish that it actually exists universally, among all or at least a broad and diverse range of the human population. This is something that scholars devoted to Erikson’s theory of identity development in adolescence have not done. In fact, the vast majority of the research on adolescent identity development so far has been conducted in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. What I have called “the neglected 95 percent”—the vast human population that lives outside the United States—has been almost entirely neglected by research on adolescent identity development ( Arnett, 2008 ). In this case, it is more accurately a neglected 90 percent, as a substantial amount of research on adolescent identity has taken place in Western Europe, and, added together, the United States, Canada, and Western Europe currently comprise about 10 percent of the human population. But most studies on “adolescent” identity development have actually taken place among students at four-year colleges and universities, constraining further the range of what is known so far.

This neglect of 90 percent of the world’s population poses a serious challenge to the universal claims of identity theory because the conditions of adolescence in the neglected 90 percent are dramatically different from the 10 percent living in developed countries, in ways that have important implications for identity development. Two key differences are in income and education. Nearly half the world’s population lives on less than US$2 per day, and 80 percent of the world’s population lives on a family income of less than US$6,000 per year ( United Nations Development Program [UNDP], 2012 ). It seems likely that, among this 80 percent, the focus for adolescents would be on contributing work that would help their families survive from day to day, not on the pursuit of a self-chosen identity.

With regard to education, a sharp contrast exists between developed and developing countries. In developed countries, virtually all children obtain primary and secondary education, and 50 percent go on to tertiary education (college or other postsecondary training). In contrast, only about half of adolescents in developing countries are enrolled in secondary school ( UNDP, 2012 ). Tertiary education is only for the wealthy elite. Education is the basis of identity development in work for adolescents in developed countries because it provides them with an introduction to a variety of occupational paths from which they may choose. For adolescents in developing countries, limited education means limited work options, chiefly in agriculture or manufacturing.

Not only in work but in love and ideology, identity options for adolescents are much more restricted in developing countries than in developed countries. In developed countries, for the most part, it is assumed—even encouraged—that adolescents will have a series of romantic partners beginning in their late teens and that their romantic relationships will include some sexual play. Most emerging adults in developed countries have more serious and enduring romantic relationships than in adolescence, culminating in an enduring commitment in the late twenties, usually marked by marriage. However, in most developing countries, including in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, having a series of love partners is discouraged or prohibited ( Hatfield & Rapson, 2006 ; Schlegel & Hewlett, 2011 ). Courtship is allowed—the expression of a serious interest in a potential marriage partner—but not “dating”; that is, not casual relationships that are understood to be transient, as a kind of practice for a relationship that will eventually involve a commitment. Consequently, for adolescents in most of the world, there is no identity exploration of possible love partners of the kind that is accepted and normative in developed countries.

In the area of ideology as well, the contrast between developed and developing countries is stark. Across developed countries, it is an accepted principle that a diverse range of ideological views is allowed, expressed in politics, religion, and the arts, including views that expressly contradict the views held by the majority. However, in most developing countries, the question of the acceptability of ideological diversity is contested, and in some cases it is actively suppressed. For example, in China, the most populous country in the world, any attempts to advocate a democratic alternative to the dominant communist ideology quickly land the proponents in a labor camp, without trial. With regard to religion, more than 90 percent of the Latin American continent is Catholic ( Galambos & Martinez, 2007 ). It seems unlikely that the people of this continent have all gone through a period of considering religious alternatives during adolescence and happened to end by choosing Catholicism. Rather, for most, the Catholic religion is the only alternative presented, and, by adolescence, they have been thoroughly socialized to believe and practice this faith. Erikson’s theory, as well as the identity status model based on it, assume that adolescents have a range of alternatives and the freedom to explore and choose among them, but this assumption has never applied to most adolescents, not in love, work, or ideology.

Of course, adolescents in developing countries almost certainly form an identity despite these restrictions on explorations in love, work, and ideology. It seems likely that they would have a ready answer to the central identity question, “Who are you?” The answer would likely be based on ascribed social roles: son/daughter; grandchild/cousin/nephew niece; member of this ethnic group, that geographic group, this religion; perhaps (already in adolescence) worker in a particular job. But this is not what Erikson meant in describing an adolescent “crisis” of identity versus role confusion. For Erikson, identity was not only a consciousness of “who you are” but also the outcome of a period of “free role experimentation” in adolescence that would entail “choices and decisions” that would “lead to commitments ‘for life’” (1968, pp. 156, 155). But it is as difficult to detect anything resembling “free role experimentation” for adolescents in developing countries as it is to find it in our evolutionary history.

In short, with respect to identity development, the conditions of life for most adolescents in developing countries today more closely resemble the conditions of our phylogenetic past than they resemble the lives of adolescents in developed countries today: an economy with a severely limited range of work options, tightly restricted conditions of mate selection, and little variation in ideological options, as well as little tolerance for choosing a non-normative ideology. Like the phylogenetic review that preceded it, this overview of identity in developing countries has necessarily been presented in broad strokes, and there is of course a substantial amount of variability within both developed and developing countries. Furthermore, in some ways, adolescent identity development in developing countries is changing rapidly and becoming more complex than ever, as we will see in the following section.

Globalization and Identity Development

The gap between living conditions in developed countries and developing countries is wide, and it has profound implications for identity development. However, developing countries are indeed developing economically, and, along with their economic development, the pace of cultural change is accelerating and the challenges of forming an identity in adolescence and beyond is becoming more formidable even as options for identity formation broaden.

The influence of globalization on identity formation may be particularly salient in adolescence and emerging adulthood. By 2008—for the first time in human history—more people were living in urban than rural areas ( Population Reference Bureau, 2008 ), and this migration has been led mainly by emerging adults ( Hugo, 2005 ). According to projections by the United Nations, by 2050, 70 percent of the human population will be urban; a combination of increased total population (to at least 9 billion) plus rural–urban migration will result in an urban population of more than 6 billion ( United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2012 ). In urban areas, young people come into contact with the ideology and values promoted by the global economy, including independence, consumerism, and individual choice ( Arnett, 2011 ). Recent media technologies make it possible for young people to connect with the whole world, even if they remain at home (see Manago, this volume).

Furthermore, adolescence and emerging adulthood are stages of life with a pronounced openness to diverse cultural beliefs and behaviors. Research has noted that, in many ways, adolescents and emerging adults have not yet settled on particular beliefs and behaviors ( Arnett, 2000 , 2004 , 2011 ). Some research with immigrants to the United States has also shown that adolescents change their behaviors, beliefs, values, and identifications more than adults do ( Phinney, Ong, & Madden, 2000 ). This phenomenon may apply not only to immigrants but also more generally to adolescents and emerging adults who are exposed to globalization.

Especially in places where economic and social changes are occurring rapidly, young people may decide in the course of growing up that their local culture has little or nothing to offer them ( Liechty, 1995 ). They may see the global culture, not the local culture, as where their future will be found. Consequently, as soon as they are able—usually in adolescence or emerging adulthood—they may leave behind the ways of their local culture as much as possible for the ways of the global culture.

One example of this pattern can be seen in the lives of young women in China. In her book Factory Girls , Leslie Chang (2008) describes a massive migration in recent years from rural villages to booming urban industrial centers led by young women in their late teens and early twenties. When they first arrive in the city, they are often tentative and reserved. They work in a strenuous factory job for long hours and little pay. They send a substantial part of their pay home to their family in the village. Their limited social life is spent with other girls whom they already know from the village or with others who are from their region.

Gradually, however, many of them gain more confidence and begin to learn and adopt the ways of the city. Many embrace the values of the global culture as presented to them in city life: individualism, consumerism, and self-development. They learn that there is a wide range of jobs available, and they switch jobs frequently for better pay, better working conditions, and greater opportunity to learn and advance themselves. They begin to send less of their income back home and spend more of it on themselves, for example on clothes, make-up, technological products such as cell phones, and a nicer place to live. Many seek out additional education and training—including training in how to speak English—so that they can compete for better jobs in not only Chinese but also international companies. Some undergo a dramatic change in values because they learn that, in the global culture, values of assertiveness, self-confidence, and initiative are rewarded, not the traditional Chinese values of humility, self-sacrifice, and self-denial. The lives and identities of these young Chinese women, then, in many ways fit with a pattern of assimilation to global values even as they also experience the competing demands of the patriarchal family and socialist state ( Ngai, 2005 ).

However, so far, it appears that for adolescents and emerging adults in developing countries, globalization does not typically result in a wholesale assimilation to global (usually Western) values. More common is that young people maintain their identification with their culture of origin even as they also seek to adapt to the ways of the global cultural influences. This response has also been termed bicultural in the literature on ethnic identity ( Phinney, 1990 ). Applying the concepts of integration and biculturalism more broadly, they may pertain to anybody who has been exposed to and has internalized two cultures ( Nguyen & Benet-Martinez, 2010 ). Applied to globalization, the integration response means that, in addition to their local identity, young people may develop a global identity that gives them a sense of belonging to a worldwide culture and includes an awareness of the events, behaviors, styles, and information that are part of the global culture. (However, there are alternative definitions of global identity, as noted below.) Their global identity allows them to communicate with people from diverse places when they travel from home, when others travel to where they live, and when they communicate with people in other places via media technology (see Manago, this volume).

Alongside their global identity, adolescents and emerging adults in developing countries continue to develop a local identity as well, based on the local circumstances, local environment, local traditions, and local language of the place where they grew up. This is the identity they are likely to use most in their daily interactions with family, friends, and community members. For example, India has a growing, vigorous high-tech economic sector, led largely by young people. However, even the better educated young people who have become full-fledged members of the global economy still tend to prefer to have an arranged marriage, in accordance with Indian tradition ( Verma & Saraswathi, 2002 ). They also generally expect to care for their parents in old age, again in accord with Indian tradition. This suggests that they may have one identity for participating in the global economy and succeeding in the fast-paced world of high technology, and another identity, rooted in Indian tradition, that they maintain with respect to their families and their personal lives. However, it remains to be investigated whether young Indians view their identities in this bicultural way.

Although developing a bicultural identity means that a local identity is retained alongside a global identity, there is no doubt that local cultures everywhere are being modified by globalization, specifically by the introduction of global media, free market economics, democratic institutions, increased length of formal schooling, and delayed entry into marriage and parenthood. These changes greatly alter traditional cultural practices and beliefs. In fact, individuals who integrate two or more cultures into their identities are taking part in an active process of constructing and co-constructing their social milieu in a multicultural world ( Chao & Hong, 2007 ). Such changes may, in effect, lead less to a bicultural identity than to a hybrid identity , combining local culture and elements of the global culture in ways that lead to entirely new concepts and practices ( Hermans & Dimaggio, 2007 ).

The concept of a global identity is intriguing and shows great potential for understanding identity development in the twenty-first century, but thus far this area has been richer in theoretical proposals than in empirical investigation. A variety of basic questions have yet to be answered. First, how should “global identity” be defined? Is it primarily a consumer identity, reflected in one’s interest in purchasing products from around the world ( Tu, Khare, & Zhang, 2012 )? Does it require the individual to consider the interests and welfare of humanity as a whole ( Karlberg, 2008 )? Does it mean embracing Western values such as independence, personal choice, and hedonism ( Arnett, 2011 )? Or is it, rather, a subjective sense of being a member of a world community, capable of social interactions with people anywhere ( Arnett, 2002 )? Second, how do we know that a large number of people worldwide are developing a global identity? Are adolescence and emerging adulthood periods when people are most likely to develop a global identity? Third, to what extent can a global identity co-exist with other aspects of identity, such as ethnic identity, national identity, or local identity? When people develop both a global identity as well as a local identity, does that enhance their prospects for success in the globalized world economy, or does it result in greater anxiety, frustration, and depression when the bright world promised by global media fails to appear in the lives of the individual adolescent or emerging adult? These are questions to challenge researchers for many years to come.

The Limitations of Conventional Identity Development Research

Mainstream identity development research has mostly ignored issues of global and cultural identity and has focused on American and European adolescents and emerging adults. The body of this research was recently summarized by Jane Kroger and James Marcia (2011) . Because identity research has accumulated over nearly a half century, they were able to report a wide range of meta-analyses, mostly performed by Kroger and her colleagues. For the most part, the identity statuses of achievement and (to a lesser extent) moratorium were associated with more favorable characteristics than were foreclosure and diffusion. For example, with regard to concurrent personality variables , achievement was associated with higher self-esteem, “postconventional” moral reasoning, and “postconformist” ego development; achievement and moratorium were associated with lower authoritarianism. With regard to antecedent conditions , achievement was associated with secure attachment “style.” For consequent conditions , achievement and moratorium were associated with high intimacy status.

Meta-analyses were also conducted on developmental changes in identity status from adolescence (13–19 years) to what they called “young adulthood” (20–36 years). It was hypothesized that there would be mostly “progressive rather than regressive developmental movements” (p. 46); that is, from diffusion and foreclosure to moratorium and achievement, and from moratorium to achievement. In general, “progressive” patterns were found, but the effect sizes were small and there was also a substantial proportion of “regressive” patterns.

These conclusions seem like a rather paltry result for hundreds of studies using the identity status model, spanning a half century. What happened to the richness of Erikson’s theory of identity development, with its compelling proposal of identity as a process of integrating past identifications with the adolescent’s sense of his or her talents, abilities, and desires, leading to a motivating vision of an adult future? Like so much in psychology, it fell victim before long to the discipline’s focus on quantification and statistics.

Actually, the original basis of the identity status model was Marcia’s (1966) Identity Status Interview, but because the interview was used only to establish the individual’s identity classification, it was soon superseded by questionnaires that served the same purpose (e.g., Adams, 1999 ; Berzonsky, 1989 ). The identity status model inspired a large number of studies in relation to a wide range of variables, even though the questionnaires did not do justice to the complexity of identity but provided only a surface view.

If this conclusion seems harsh, it is one shared by Kroger and Marcia (2011) , even though Marcia is the originator of the identity status model:

A number of questionnaire measures assessing identity status have been developed in the service of “efficiency” and “objectivity.” These measures could be acceptable to the extent that they correspond closely to identity status categorization using the interview. However, because of their closed-ended form, they all lack the opportunity to probe, in depth, the genuineness and extensiveness of a person’s exploratory process and the depth of subsequent commitment…What can be, and, to some extent, has been lost with questionnaire methods is the original theoretical grounding of the construct. (pp. 38–39)

Is Identity a Crisis of Adolescence?

Even if we were to limit our focus to the 10 percent of the world’s adolescents who reside in Europe and North America, and even if we were to accept the validity of the legions of questionnaire studies of identity development despite the limitations detailed in the previous section, it would have to be recognized that there is surprisingly little evidence of any kind on the question that lies at the heart of Erikson’s theory: Is identity a crisis that is central to adolescence? That is, do most adolescents experience it, and is it more likely to occur in adolescence than in any other life stage?

In Erikson’s lifespan theory, he proposed that each of the eight stages is characterized by a distinctive “psychosocial crisis” ( Erikson, 1950 . By “crisis” Erikson meant “[not] impending catastrophe” but “a necessary turning point, a crucial moment, when development must move one way or another, marshaling resources of growth, recovery, and further differentiation” ( Erikson, 1968 , p. 16). However, few studies have even addressed directly the question of whether an identity crisis is normative in adolescence because the identity status model that became so dominant did not examine whether a crisis occurred. The Identity Status Interview, and later questionnaires based on it, looked for a more gradual “exploration” of identity options as a signifier of identity development, rather than a dramatic “turning point,” the “crucial moment” proposed by Erikson.

Nevertheless, Kroger and Marcia (2011) and other identity researchers (e.g., Waterman, 1999 ) view the progression from the diffusion and foreclosure statuses to the moratorium status to the achievement status as consistent with Erikson’s theory of identity development. In this model, “moratorium” represents the exploration stage, in lieu of Erikson’s “crisis.” In a meta-analysis by Kroger, Martinussen, and Marcia (2010) , the overall conclusion was that longitudinal and cross-sectional studies generally show this kind of progression, with the diffusion, foreclosure, and moratorium statuses decreasing in proportion from the teens through the late twenties and early thirties, while the achievement proportion increases. However, in studies using the identity status model, it does not appear to be normative to experience the progression diffusion/foreclosure → moratorium → achievement. On the contrary, there is a great diversity of patterns, including about 15 percent that show a “regression” going the other way.

If studies using the identity status model do not show that an identity crisis is normative in adolescence, do they at least show that identity is a more salient issue in adolescence than at other life stages? The answer to this question depends on how “adolescence” is defined. Erikson (1950 , 1968 ) never specified an age range for adolescence or any of his other life stages. Identity researchers have generally viewed university students as being in “late adolescence” (and some still do; e.g., Kroger & Marcia, 2011 ). I have proposed that the age period from 18–25 in developed countries is better understood as emerging adulthood, a life stage distinguished from adolescence, and the life stage when identity explorations mainly take place. Meta-analyses of research using the identity status model have found that the proportion of people in the moratorium status rises in the teens, peaks at age 18–19, and then declines, which might be taken to indicate support for the notion that identity explorations peak in the early part of emerging adulthood ( Kroger et al., 2010 ; Waterman, 1999 ). However, given the inadequacies of the identity status model described earlier, this conclusion should be viewed as preliminary at best.

Few studies of identity development compare children in middle childhood (ages 6–9) to adolescents, either cross-sectionally or longitudinally. Research by Susan Harter (1999) and others has examined changes in self-concept from childhood through adolescence and emerging adulthood, but more should be done to connect these findings to identity development theory and research. Similarly, few studies have compared emerging adults to young adults in their thirties. Are identity issues resolved once enduring choices have been made in love and work? Or do people continually assess their identities through their thirties and beyond, and make changes in their adult lives as their identities change? Is it true, as Erikson proposed, that “A sense of identity is never gained nor maintained once and for all…It is continually lost and regained” (1959, p. 118)? Narrative research by Dan McAdams ( McAdams, Josselson, & Lieblich, 2001 ) indicates that “turns in the road” in self-concept and identity can take place throughout the lifespan, but more research is needed on identity development beyond emerging adulthood.

Given that (1) the identity status model has dominated research on identity; (2) this model is a highly questionable framework for identity research, both conceptually and in how it has been operationalized; and (3) few studies have been done that compare middle childhood to adolescence or emerging adulthood to young adulthood with regard to identity development, it must be concluded that, with regard to the question of whether identity is central to development in either adolescence or emerging adulthood, the answer is: we still do not know. In fact, the question has not yet been addressed at all in a conceptually and empirically persuasive way.

The Future of Identity Research: The Promise of the Narrative Approach

Fortunately, in recent years, research on identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood has begun to supplement the paradigm of the identity status model with more in-depth approaches, using the narrative method. This method emphasizes the stories people tell, to themselves and others, as they seek to make sense of their lives and create meaning ( McAdams, 2006 ). The narrative approach is a perfect methodological fit for the topic of identity development because it enables researchers to investigate identity development in the depth the topic requires ( Hammack, 2008 ). The narrative method also provides a vivid sense of individual variation in identity development, in contrast to the questionnaire method that classifies people into a few discrete categories. By allowing people to tell their stories, researchers are able to discern how people perceive the parts of themselves—in love, work, and ideology—fit together into a coherent self. The narrative approach has the potential to fulfill Erikson’s original vision of identity development as taking place through adolescents and emerging adults reflecting on the important people they have identified with throughout childhood, evaluating their abilities and interests, and seeking to find a match between the adult life they wish to build for themselves and the range of opportunities available to them in their society.

Use of the narrative method in research on identity development has expanded greatly in the past two decades. However, much remains to be learned about identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood from a narrative perspective. Many of the studies taking the narrative approach have focused on adults in midlife and beyond, examining how their autobiographical accounts reflect their identity development (e.g., McAdams, 2006 ; Wang & Conway, 2004 ). Narrative studies of adolescents and emerging adults have focused mostly on Americans (e.g., McLean, 2005 ; McAdams et al., 2006 ; Syed & Azmitia, 2010 ). Consequently, many of the most important questions are wide open for further investigation. I end this chapter with a list of those questions, as a stimulus to what will hopefully be an expanding body of narrative research on identity development.

Is identity development primarily focused on adolescence and emerging adulthood? Just as in studies using the identity status model, narrative studies have so far insufficiently addressed this key question. Notably, one narrative study has investigated identity among 8- to 20-year-olds ( Habermas & de Silveira, 2008 ) and showed a progression with age in causal coherence (understanding of how one autobiographical event led to another) and thematic coherence (integration of multiple life events into a coherent conception of the self). Also, as noted, McAdams (2006 ; McAdams et al., 2001 ) has shown that identity issues can arise in life stages beyond emerging adulthood. But more narrative studies that compare emerging adulthood to later development are needed.

How is identity development in adolescence different from identity development in emerging adulthood? Which represents the apex of identity development? So far, few narrative studies of identity have compared adolescents to emerging adults, perhaps because the theoretical proposition that the heart of identity development lies in emerging adulthood has been advanced only recently. It seems likely, theoretically, that identity development intensifies during adolescence and reaches its apex in emerging adulthood, when most people make enduring choices in love, work, and ideology ( Arnett, 2004 ). However, this promising question remains to be investigated.

Does identity development follow a coordinated path across the three major domains (love, work, and ideology)? With some exceptions (e.g., Frisen & Wangqvist, 2011 ), narrative studies using the autobiographical approach have not systematically explored the three domains of identity proposed by Erikson (e.g., McAdams, 2006 ). In fact, most narrative studies do not examine identity in terms of love, work, and ideology, but are more focused on general issues of self-development and self-concept (e.g., McAdams, 2006 ). This is a potentially important extension of narrative research.

Is identity development primarily a phenomenon of developed countries? Narrative identity studies have focused so far mostly on Americans. Is identity development mainly possible in developed countries, where many options are available to most people in terms of love, work, and ideology? Or are identity paths even more complicated for people in developing countries because their societies are changing so rapidly? Are people in developing countries commonly developing bicultural or hybrid identities that include components of a global identity, or not?

What is the intersection of personal identity and cultural identity? In all countries and cultures, it is important to understand identity development as not just a process within the self but of the self in the context of a culture. This is how Erikson originally postulated identity formation. Phillip Hammack (2008) has provided an expansion and updating of Erikson’s theory, explaining the interaction between the master narrative of the culture and the personal narrative of the individual, and Hammack’s ideas would be an excellent basis for narrative research.

Jensen (2011) also provides a model for cultural–developmental research that could be applied to identity research. In her model of moral development, Jensen (2011) proposes a developmental template that is modified according to cultural context and individual characteristics. That is, there may be age-related tendencies across cultures (e.g., children are more self-oriented than adults) that are then modified by cultural context (e.g., some cultures promote individualism, others emphasize obligations to others). It may be that a similar interaction of development and culture takes place for identity development.

Erikson’s ideas about identity development were conceived in an early-twentieth-century context of theorizing in psychology that sought to propose universals of human development that would underlie any cultural structure that might be built on them. From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, it is easy to see how his theory of identity development was not simply conceived but misconceived and made claims of universal validity that have not held up well in the succeeding decades. However, Erikson’s insights regarding identity remain valuable and continue to inspire new theorizing and research. Although it is necessary to concede that, at this point, little is actually known about the most important questions in identity development despite a half century of empirical investigations, the rise of the narrative method in identity research holds out the promise that a very different conclusion will be made a half century hence.

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6.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence and Identity

Learning objectives.

Summarize the physical and cognitive changes that occur for boys and girls during adolescence.
Explain how adolescents develop a sense of morality and of self-identity.

Adolescence is defined as the years between the onset of puberty and the beginning of adulthood. In the past, when people were likely to marry in their early 20s or younger, this period might have lasted only 10 years or less—starting roughly between ages 12 and 13 and ending by age 20, at which time the child got a job or went to work on the family farm, married, and started his or her own family. Today, children mature more slowly, move away from home at later ages, and maintain ties with their parents longer. For instance, children may go away to college but still receive financial support from parents, and they may come home on weekends or even to live for extended time periods. Thus the period between puberty and adulthood may well last into the late 20s, merging into adulthood itself. In fact, it is appropriate now to consider the period of adolescence and that of emerging adulthood ( the ages between 18 and the middle or late 20s ) together.

During adolescence, the child continues to grow physically, cognitively, and emotionally, changing from a child into an adult. The body grows rapidly in size and the sexual and reproductive organs become fully functional. At the same time, as adolescents develop more advanced patterns of reasoning and a stronger sense of self, they seek to forge their own identities, developing important attachments with people other than their parents. Particularly in Western societies, where the need to forge a new independence is critical (Baumeister & Tice, 1986; Twenge, 2006), this period can be stressful for many children, as it involves new emotions, the need to develop new social relationships, and an increasing sense of responsibility and independence.

Although adolescence can be a time of stress for many teenagers, most of them weather the trials and tribulations successfully. For example, the majority of adolescents experiment with alcohol sometime before high school graduation. Although many will have been drunk at least once, relatively few teenagers will develop long-lasting drinking problems or permit alcohol to adversely affect their school or personal relationships. Similarly, a great many teenagers break the law during adolescence, but very few young people develop criminal careers (Farrington, 1995). These facts do not, however, mean that using drugs or alcohol is a good idea. The use of recreational drugs can have substantial negative consequences, and the likelihood of these problems (including dependence, addiction, and even brain damage) is significantly greater for young adults who begin using drugs at an early age.

Physical Changes in Adolescence

Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty , a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body, culminating in sexual maturity . Although the timing varies to some degree across cultures, the average age range for reaching puberty is between 9 and 14 years for girls and between 10 and 17 years for boys (Marshall & Tanner, 1986).

Puberty begins when the pituitary gland begins to stimulate the production of the male sex hormone testosterone in boys and the female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone in girls. The release of these sex hormones triggers the development of the primary sex characteristics , the sex organs concerned with reproduction ( Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics” ). These changes include the enlargement of the testicles and the penis in boys and the development of the ovaries, uterus, and vagina in girls. In addition, secondary sex characteristics ( features that distinguish the two sexes from each other but are not involved in reproduction ) are also developing, such as an enlarged Adam’s apple, a deeper voice, and pubic and underarm hair in boys and enlargement of the breasts, hips, and the appearance of pubic and underarm hair in girls ( Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics” ). The enlargement of breasts is usually the first sign of puberty in girls and, on average, occurs between ages 10 and 12 (Marshall & Tanner, 1986). Boys typically begin to grow facial hair between ages 14 and 16, and both boys and girls experience a rapid growth spurt during this stage. The growth spurt for girls usually occurs earlier than that for boys, with some boys continuing to grow into their 20s.

Figure 6.9 Sex Characteristics

Diagram of sex characteristics, man on left, woman on right

Puberty brings dramatic changes in the body, including the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics.

A major milestone in puberty for girls is menarche , the first menstrual period , typically experienced at around 12 or 13 years of age (Anderson, Dannal, & Must, 2003). The age of menarche varies substantially and is determined by genetics, as well as by diet and lifestyle, since a certain amount of body fat is needed to attain menarche. Girls who are very slim, who engage in strenuous athletic activities, or who are malnourished may begin to menstruate later. Even after menstruation begins, girls whose level of body fat drops below the critical level may stop having their periods. The sequence of events for puberty is more predictable than the age at which they occur. Some girls may begin to grow pubic hair at age 10 but not attain menarche until age 15. In boys, facial hair may not appear until 10 years after the initial onset of puberty.

The timing of puberty in both boys and girls can have significant psychological consequences. Boys who mature earlier attain some social advantages because they are taller and stronger and, therefore, often more popular (Lynne, Graber, Nichols, Brooks-Gunn, & Botvin, 2007). At the same time, however, early-maturing boys are at greater risk for delinquency and are more likely than their peers to engage in antisocial behaviors, including drug and alcohol use, truancy, and precocious sexual activity. Girls who mature early may find their maturity stressful, particularly if they experience teasing or sexual harassment (Mendle, Turkheimer, & Emery, 2007; Pescovitz & Walvoord, 2007). Early-maturing girls are also more likely to have emotional problems, a lower self-image, and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating than their peers (Ge, Conger, & Elder, 1996).

Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Although the most rapid cognitive changes occur during childhood, the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, and even into the 20s (Weinberger, Elvevåg, & Giedd, 2005). During adolescence, the brain continues to form new neural connections, but also casts off unused neurons and connections (Blakemore, 2008). As teenagers mature, the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and problem solving, also continues to develop (Goldberg, 2001). And myelin, the fatty tissue that forms around axons and neurons and helps speed transmissions between different regions of the brain, also continues to grow (Rapoport et al., 1999).

Adolescents often seem to act impulsively, rather than thoughtfully, and this may be in part because the development of the prefrontal cortex is, in general, slower than the development of the emotional parts of the brain, including the limbic system (Blakemore, 2008). Furthermore, the hormonal surge that is associated with puberty, which primarily influences emotional responses, may create strong emotions and lead to impulsive behavior. It has been hypothesized that adolescents may engage in risky behavior, such as smoking, drug use, dangerous driving, and unprotected sex in part because they have not yet fully acquired the mental ability to curb impulsive behavior or to make entirely rational judgments (Steinberg, 2007).

The new cognitive abilities that are attained during adolescence may also give rise to new feelings of egocentrism, in which adolescents believe that they can do anything and that they know better than anyone else, including their parents (Elkind, 1978, p. 199). Teenagers are likely to be highly self-conscious, often creating an imaginary audience in which they feel that everyone is constantly watching them (Goossens, Beyers, Emmen, & van Aken, 2002). Because teens think so much about themselves, they mistakenly believe that others must be thinking about them, too (Rycek, Stuhr, McDermott, Benker, & Swartz, 1998). It is no wonder that everything a teen’s parents do suddenly feels embarrassing to them when they are in public.

Social Development in Adolescence

Some of the most important changes that occur during adolescence involve the further development of the self-concept and the development of new attachments. Whereas young children are most strongly attached to their parents, the important attachments of adolescents move increasingly away from parents and increasingly toward peers (Harris, 1998). As a result, parents’ influence diminishes at this stage.

According to Erikson ( Table 6.1 “Challenges of Development as Proposed by Erik Erikson” ), the main social task of the adolescent is the search for a unique identity—the ability to answer the question, “Who am I?” In the search for identity, the adolescent may experience role confusion in which he or she is balancing or choosing among identities, taking on negative or undesirable identities, or temporarily giving up looking for an identity altogether if things are not going well.

One approach to assessing identity development was proposed by James Marcia (1980). In his approach, adolescents are asked questions regarding their exploration of and commitment to issues related to occupation, politics, religion, and sexual behavior. The responses to the questions allow the researchers to classify the adolescent into one of four identity categories (see Table 6.4 “James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development” ).

Table 6.4 James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development

Source: Adapted from Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of adolescent psychology, 5 , 145–160.

Figure 6.10

Collage of: girls on the dance team, girls dressed up for halloween, guys at a concert

Adolescents search for stable attachments through the development of social identities.

Russell Mondy – Mission vs. Balboa – CC BY-NC 2.0; Gage Skidmore – Teen Titans cosplay – CC BY-SA 2.0; Toni Protto – Mistura Freak – CC BY 2.0.

Studies assessing how teens pass through Marcia’s stages show that, although most teens eventually succeed in developing a stable identity, the path to it is not always easy and there are many routes that can be taken. Some teens may simply adopt the beliefs of their parents or the first role that is offered to them, perhaps at the expense of searching for other, more promising possibilities (foreclosure status). Other teens may spend years trying on different possible identities (moratorium status) before finally choosing one.

To help them work through the process of developing an identity, teenagers may well try out different identities in different social situations. They may maintain one identity at home and a different type of persona when they are with their peers. Eventually, most teenagers do integrate the different possibilities into a single self-concept and a comfortable sense of identity (identity-achievement status).

For teenagers, the peer group provides valuable information about the self-concept. For instance, in response to the question “What were you like as a teenager? (e.g., cool, nerdy, awkward?),” posed on the website Answerbag, one teenager replied in this way:

Responses like this one demonstrate the extent to which adolescents are developing their self-concepts and self-identities and how they rely on peers to help them do that. The writer here is trying out several (perhaps conflicting) identities, and the identities any teen experiments with are defined by the group the person chooses to be a part of. The friendship groups (cliques, crowds, or gangs) that are such an important part of the adolescent experience allow the young adult to try out different identities, and these groups provide a sense of belonging and acceptance (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). A big part of what the adolescent is learning is social identity , the part of the self-concept that is derived from one’s group memberships . Adolescents define their social identities according to how they are similar to and differ from others, finding meaning in the sports, religious, school, gender, and ethnic categories they belong to.

Developing Moral Reasoning: Kohlberg’s Theory

The independence that comes with adolescence requires independent thinking as well as the development of morality —standards of behavior that are generally agreed on within a culture to be right or proper. Just as Piaget believed that children’s cognitive development follows specific patterns, Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) argued that children learn their moral values through active thinking and reasoning, and that moral development follows a series of stages. To study moral development, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to children, teenagers, and adults, such as the following:

Video Clip: People Being Interviewed About Kohlberg’s Stages

As you can see in Table 6.5 “Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning” , Kohlberg concluded, on the basis of their responses to the moral questions, that, as children develop intellectually, they pass through three stages of moral thinking: the preconventional level , the conventional level , and the postconventional level .

Table 6.5 Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning

Although research has supported Kohlberg’s idea that moral reasoning changes from an early emphasis on punishment and social rules and regulations to an emphasis on more general ethical principles, as with Piaget’s approach, Kohlberg’s stage model is probably too simple. For one, children may use higher levels of reasoning for some types of problems, but revert to lower levels in situations where doing so is more consistent with their goals or beliefs (Rest, 1979). Second, it has been argued that the stage model is particularly appropriate for Western, rather than non-Western, samples in which allegiance to social norms (such as respect for authority) may be particularly important (Haidt, 2001). And there is frequently little correlation between how children score on the moral stages and how they behave in real life.

Perhaps the most important critique of Kohlberg’s theory is that it may describe the moral development of boys better than it describes that of girls. Carol Gilligan (1982) has argued that, because of differences in their socialization, males tend to value principles of justice and rights, whereas females value caring for and helping others. Although there is little evidence that boys and girls score differently on Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (Turiel, 1998), it is true that girls and women tend to focus more on issues of caring, helping, and connecting with others than do boys and men (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000).If you don’t believe this, ask yourself when you last got a thank-you note from a man.

Key Takeaways

Adolescence is the period of time between the onset of puberty and emerging adulthood.
Emerging adulthood is the period from age 18 years until the mid-20s in which young people begin to form bonds outside the family, attend college, and find work. Even so, they tend not to be fully independent and have not taken on all the responsibilities of adulthood. This stage is most prevalent in Western cultures.
Puberty is a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body.
The cerebral cortex continues to develop during adolescence and early adulthood, enabling improved reasoning, judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning.
A defining aspect of adolescence is the development of a consistent and committed self-identity. The process of developing an identity can take time but most adolescents succeed in developing a stable identity.
Kohlberg’s theory proposes that moral reasoning is divided into the following stages: preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality.
Kohlberg’s theory of morality has been expanded and challenged, particularly by Gilligan, who has focused on differences in morality between boys and girls.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

Based on what you learned in this chapter, do you think that people should be allowed to drive at age 16? Why or why not? At what age do you think they should be allowed to vote and to drink alcohol?
Think about your experiences in high school. What sort of cliques or crowds were there? How did people express their identities in these groups? How did you use your groups to define yourself and develop your own identity?

Anderson, S. E., Dannal, G. E., & Must, A. (2003). Relative weight and race influence average age at menarche: Results from two nationally representative surveys of U.S. girls studied 25 years apart. Pediatrics, 111 , 844–850.

Answerbag. (2007, March 20). What were you like as a teenager? (e.g., cool, nerdy, awkward?). Retrieved from http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/171753

Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (1986). How adolescence became the struggle for self: A historical transformation of psychological development. In J. Suls & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 3, pp. 183–201). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Blakemore, S. J. (2008). Development of the social brain during adolescence. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61 , 40–49.

Elkind, D. (1978). The child’s reality: Three developmental themes . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Farrington, D. P. (1995). The challenge of teenage antisocial behavior. In M. Rutter & M. E. Rutter (Eds.), Psychosocial disturbances in young people: Challenges for prevention (pp. 83–130). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Ge, X., Conger, R. D., & Elder, G. H., Jr. (1996). Coming of age too early: Pubertal influences on girls’ vulnerability to psychological distress. Child Development, 67 (6), 3386–3400.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized mind . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Goossens, L., Beyers, W., Emmen, M., & van Aken, M. (2002). The imaginary audience and personal fable: Factor analyses and concurrent validity of the “new look” measures. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 12 (2), 193–215.

Harris, J. (1998), The nurture assumption—Why children turn out the way they do . New York, NY: Free Press.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108 (4), 814–834.

Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: Essays on moral development (Vol. 2, p. 200). San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.

Jaffee, S., & Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126 (5), 703–726.

Lynne, S. D., Graber, J. A., Nichols, T. R., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Botvin, G. J. (2007). Links between pubertal timing, peer influences, and externalizing behaviors among urban students followed through middle school. Journal of Adolescent Health, 40 , 181.e7–181.e13 (p. 198).

Mendle, J., Turkheimer, E., & Emery, R. E. (2007). Detrimental psychological outcomes associated with early pubertal timing in adolescent girls. Developmental Review, 27 , 151–171; Pescovitz, O. H., & Walvoord, E. C. (2007). When puberty is precocious: Scientific and clinical aspects . Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, 5 , 145–160.

Marshall, W. A., & Tanner, J. M. (1986). Puberty. In F. Falkner & J. M. Tanner (Eds.), Human growth: A comprehensive treatise (2nd ed., pp. 171–209). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Rapoport, J. L., Giedd, J. N., Blumenthal, J., Hamburger, S., Jeffries, N., Fernandez, T.,…Evans, A. (1999). Progressive cortical change during adolescence in childhood-onset schizophrenia: A longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56 (7), 649–654.

Rest, J. (1979). Development in judging moral issues . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Rubin, K. H., Bukowski, W. M., & Parker, J. G. (2006). Peer interactions, relationships, and groups. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 571–645). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Rycek, R. F., Stuhr, S. L., Mcdermott, J., Benker, J., & Swartz, M. D. (1998). Adolescent egocentrism and cognitive functioning during late adolescence. Adolescence, 33 , 746–750.

Steinberg, L. (2007). Risk taking in adolescence: New perspectives from brain and behavioral science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16 , 55–59.

Turiel, E. (1998). The development of morality. In W. Damon (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Socialization (5th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 863–932). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Twenge, J. M. (2006). Generation me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable than ever before . New York, NY: Free Press.

Weinberger, D. R., Elvevåg, B., & Giedd, J. N. (2005). The adolescent brain: A work in progress. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Retrieved from http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/BRAIN.pdf

Introduction to Psychology Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Identity Development

Identity development theory.

A well-developed identity is comprised of goals, values, and beliefs to which a person is committed. It is the awareness of the consistency in self over time, the recognition of this consistency by others (Erikson, 1980). The process of identity development is both an individual and social phenomenon (Adams & Marshall, 1996). Much of this process is assumed during adolescence when cognitive development allows for an individual to construct a ‘theory of self’ (Elkind, 1998) based on exposure to role models and identity options (Erikson, 1980). Erikson (1968) believed this period of development to be an ‘identity crisis,’ a crucial turning point in which an individual must develop in one way or another, ushering the adolescent toward growth and differentiation. Identity is formed through a process of exploring options or choices and committing to an option based upon the outcome of their exploration. Failure to establish a well-developed sense of identity can result in identity confusion. Those experiencing identity confusion do not have a clear sense of who they are or their role in society.

Identity development is vital to a person’s understanding of self and participation in their social systems. Adams and Marshall (1996) established that identity formation provides five functions: a structure and order to self-knowledge; a sense of consistency and coherence to beliefs, goals, and self-knowledge; a sense of continuity for one’s history and future; goals and direction; a sense of personal control of their choices and outcomes.

Erikson’s Identity vs. Role Confusion

According to psychosocial theory, we experience eight stages of development over our lifespan (Table 8.1), from infancy through late adulthood. At each stage, there is a conflict, or task, that we need to resolve. Successful completion of each developmental task results in a sense of competence and a healthy personality. Failure to master these tasks leads to feelings of inadequacy.

Figure 8.3.1 . Erik Erikson

Table 8.3.1. Erikson’s psychosocial Stages of Development

Video 8.3.1. Erikson’s Psychosocial Development explains all stages of this theory.

Erik Erikson believed that the primary psychosocial task of adolescence was establishing an identity. Erikson referred to life’s fifth psychosocial task as one of identity versus role confusion when adolescents must work through the complexities of finding one’s own identity. This stage includes questions regarding their appearance, vocational choices and career aspirations, education, relationships, sexuality, political and social views, personality, and interests. Erikson saw this as a period of confusion and experimentation regarding identity and one’s life path. During adolescence, we experience psychological moratorium , where teens put on hold commitment to an identity while exploring the options .

Individual identity development is influenced by how they resolved all of the previous childhood psychosocial crises, and this adolescent stage is a bridge between the past and the future, childhood, and adulthood. Thus, in Erikson’s view, an adolescent’s central questions are, “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” Identity formation was highlighted as the primary indicator of successful development during adolescence (in contrast to role confusion, which would be an indicator of not successfully meeting the task of adolescence). This crisis is resolved positively with identity achievement and the gain of fidelity (ability to be faithful) as a new virtue when adolescents have reconsidered the goals and values of their parents and culture. Some adolescents adopt the values and roles that their parents expect for them. Other teens develop identities that are in opposition to their parents but align with a peer group. This change is common as peer relationships become a central focus in adolescents’ lives.

The culmination of this exploration is a more coherent view of oneself. Those who are unsuccessful at resolving this stage may withdraw further into social isolation or become lost in the crowd. However, more recent research suggests that few leave this age period with identity achievement and that most identity formation occurs during young adulthood (Côtè, 2006).

Marcia’s Identity Statuses

Expanding on Erikson’s theory, Marcia (1966) described identity formation during adolescence as involving both exploration and commitment with respect to ideologies and occupations (e.g., religion, politics, career, relationships, gender roles). Identity development begins when individuals identify with role models who provide them with options to explore for whom they can become. As identity development progresses, adolescents are expected to make choices and commit to options within the confines of their social contexts. In some cases, options are not provided or are limited, and the individual will fail to commit or will commit without the opportunity to explore various options (Marcia, 1980).

Identity confusion/diffusion occurs when adolescents neither explore nor commit to any identities. Foreclosure occurs when an individual commits to an identity without exploring options. A moratorium is a state in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made commitments. As mentioned earlier, individuals who have explored different options, discovered their purpose, and have made identity commitments are in a state of identity achievement.

Figure 8.3.2. Marcia’s identity statuses. Adapted from Discovering the Lifespan, by R. S. Feldman, 2009.

The least mature status, and one common in many children, is identity diffusion. Identity diffusion is a status that characterizes those who have neither explored the options nor made a commitment to an identity . Marcia (1980) proposed that when individuals enter the identity formation process, they have little awareness or experience with identity exploration or the expectation to commit to an identity. This period of identity diffusion is typical of children and young adolescents, but adolescents are expected to move out of this stage as they are exposed to role models and experiences that present them with identity possibilities. Those who persist in this identity may drift aimlessly with little connection to those around them or have little sense of purpose in life. Characteristics associated with prolonged diffusion include low self-esteem, easily influenced by peers, lack of meaningful friendships, little commitment, or fortitude in activities or relationships, self-absorbed, and self-indulgent.

Those in identity foreclosure have committed to an identity without having explored the options . Often, younger adolescence will enter a phase of foreclosure where they may, at least preliminarily, commit to an identity without an investment in the exploration process. This commitment is often a response to anxiety about uncertainty or change during adolescence or pressure from parents, social groups, or cultural expectations. It is expected that most adolescents will progress beyond the foreclosure phase as they can think independently, and we multiple identity options. However, sometimes foreclosure will persist into late adolescence or even adulthood.

In some cases, parents may make these decisions for their children and do not grant the teen the opportunity to make choices. In other instances, teens may strongly identify with parents and others in their life and wish to follow in their footsteps. Characteristics associated with prolonged foreclosure well-behaved and obedient children with a high need for approval, authoritarian parenting style, low levels of tolerance or acceptance of change, high levels of conformity, and conventional thinking.

During high school and college years, teens and young adults move from identity diffusion and foreclosure toward moratorium and achievement. The most significant gains in the development of identity are in college, as college students are exposed to a greater variety of career choices, lifestyles, and beliefs. This experience is likely to spur on questions regarding identity. A great deal of the identity work we do in adolescence and young adulthood is about values and goals, as we strive to articulate a personal vision or dream for what we hope to accomplish in the future (McAdams, 2013).

Identity moratorium is a status that describes those who are actively exploring in an attempt to establish an identity but have yet to have made any commitment . This time can be an anxious and emotionally tense period as the adolescent experiments with different roles and explores various beliefs. Nothing is guaranteed, and there are many questions, but few answers. This moratorium phase is the precursor to identity achievement. During the moratorium period, it is normal for adolescents to be rebellious and uncooperative, avoid dealing with problems, procrastinate, experience low self-esteem, feel anxious, and uncertain about decisions.

Identity achievement refers to those who, after exploration, have committed . Identity achievement is a long process and is not often realized by the end of adolescence. Individuals that do reach identity achievement feel self-acceptance, stable self-definition, and are committed to their identity.

While Marcia’s statuses help us understand the process of developing identity, there are several criticisms of this theory. First, identity status may not be global; different aspects of your identity may be in different statuses. An individual may be in multiple identity statuses at the same time for different aspects of identity. For example, one could be in the foreclosure status for their religious identity, but in moratorium for career identity, and achievement for gender identity.

Further, identity statuses do no always develop in the sequence described above, although it is the most common progression. Not all people will reach identity achievement in all aspects of their identity, and not all may remain in identity achievement. There may be a third aspect of identity development, beyond exploration and commitment, and that is the reconsideration of commitment. This addition would create a fifth status, searching moratorium . This status is a re-exploring after a commitment has been made (Meesus et al., 2012). It is not usual that commitments to aspects of our identity may change as we gain experiences, and more options become available to explore. This searching moratorium may continue well into adulthood.

Video 8.3.2. Macia’s Stages of Adolescent Identity Development summarizes the various identity statuses and how an individual may move through them.

Supporting identity development

As the process of identity development can be a confusing and challenging period, how can adults support adolescents through this process? First, affirm that the anxiety, doubts, and confusion are reasonable and that most teens do not complete identity achievement before graduating high school. Exposing adolescents to various role models can help them imagine different roles or options for their future selves. Role models can come from within the family, schools, or community. Adults should talk with adolescents about their values, goals, and identities to help build awareness. They may be interested to know how others made decisions while developing their own identities. Finally, support the commitments that adolescents have made. Identity commitments can help someone feel grounded and less confused while they engage in identity exploration.

Identity Development Theory. Authored by : Nicole Arduini-Van Hoose. Provided by : Hudson Valley Community College. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/adolescent/chapter/identity-development-theory/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Identity Formation. Authored by : Tera Jones. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-lifespandevelopment/chapter/identity-formation/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Psychology. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : . License : CC BY: Attribution
Erikson's Psychosocial Development . Authored by : Shreena Desai. Provided by : Khan Academy. Located at : https://youtu.be/SIoKwUcmivk . License : All Rights Reserved
Macia's Stages of Adolescent Identity Development. Authored by : Tiffany Dickie. Located at : https://youtu.be/a8HIY_bqrVo . License : All Rights Reserved

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Dynamics of Identity Development in Adolescence: A Decade in Review

Susan branje.

1 Utrecht University

Elisabeth L. de Moor

Jenna spitzer, andrik i. becht.

2 Erasmus University Rotterdam

One of the key developmental tasks in adolescence is to develop a coherent identity. The current review addresses progress in the field of identity research between the years 2010 and 2020. Synthesizing research on the development of identity, we show that identity development during adolescence and early adulthood is characterized by both systematic maturation and substantial stability. This review discusses the role of life events and transitions for identity and the role of micro‐processes and narrative processes as a potential mechanisms of personal identity development change. It provides an overview of the linkages between identity development and developmental outcomes, specifically paying attention to within‐person processes. It additionally discusses how identity development takes place in the context of close relationships.

In the current review, we discuss progress in the field of identity research between 2010 and 2020. One of the key developmental tasks in adolescence and young adulthood is to develop a coherent sense of self and identity (Erikson, 1968 ). Personal identity refers to one’s sense of the person one genuinely is, including a subjective feeling of self‐sameness and continuity over contexts and time. From early adolescence onwards, adolescents begin to question and explore their identity, that is, the person they are and want to be, the roles they want to occupy in adulthood, and their place in society (Meeus, Van De Schoot, Keijsers, Schwartz, & Branje, 2010 ). They become aware of their distinctiveness and uniqueness from others, coherence and similarity across domains, and continuity across time and situations (van Doeselaar, Becht, Klimstra, & Meeus, 2018 ). As they try to find out who they are and what they want to become in their lives, adolescents re‐examine the identifications they formed in childhood as they consider different identity possibilities (e.g., what kind of occupation fits my interests and abilities, what kind of relationships do I want to have), and form new commitments to identifications.

One way in which adolescents attempt to create continuity and self‐sameness is by integrating their past, present, and future selves into a personal narrative about their lives (McAdams, 2001 ; Pasupathi & Mansour, 2006 ). By constructing a sense of identity in the form of autobiographical stories, adolescents recognize that they are the same person across time and different contexts. Importantly, these life narratives are based on real experiences but are also highly subjective, as adolescents form them according to their own understanding of what was important for who they have become, and are also subject to change, as what adolescents find important for their identity may change over time. Individuals’ life stories differ in certain characteristics that are seen as indicative of identity, such as their level of autobiographical reasoning, complexity, dominant themes, and structure.

Dual‐cycle identity models focus on development of the dynamic identity processes of exploration and commitment that operate along two interrelated cycles. In the identity formation cycle, adolescents consider identity alternatives (i.e., in‐breadth exploration) and form identity commitments. The identity maintenance cycle serves the function to maintain and further strengthen chosen commitments in a dynamic between identity commitment and in‐depth exploration of current commitments. When adolescents’ in‐depth exploration results in increased identity uncertainty about their commitments, they may reconsider their commitments and go back to the identity formation cycle (Crocetti, 2017 ). Moreover, self‐concept clarity, or the extent to which individuals describe themselves consistently and feel sure of themselves (Campbell, 1990 ), has been described as a key ingredient of personal identity (Schwartz et al., 2011 ). Whereas dual‐cycle models of identity account for how the self‐concept is formed, self‐concept clarity might indicate how well the process of developing one’s own identity is going (Schwartz et al., 2011 ), or one’s identity synthesis.

Personal identity concerns self‐sameness and continuity of perceptions of who one is across multiple domains or aspects in life. Salient domains of identity during adolescence are the educational and vocational domain, which involve questions such as which kind of education or profession one wants to obtain, and the relational domain, which involves questions such as what kind of friendships or intimate relationship one wants to have. Other important identities are gender identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, and (mental) illness identity. Although global personal identity reflects the integration of one’s self‐concept across these domains, individuals do not necessarily experience similar levels of self‐sameness and continuity in all domains, particularly in adolescence when identity is still under development. At the same time, experiences in different domains will be intertwined and mutually influence each other. This distinction between global and domain‐specific identity is also apparent in the narratives that individuals construct. Individuals may construe narratives about several life domains, and their narratives may differ depending on the life domain (e.g., Dunlop, 2015 ; Galliher, McLean, & Syed, 2017 ) and on whether these narratives encompass one or multiple life domains (McLean, Syed, Yoder, & Greenhoot, 2016 ).

Personal identity is also strongly intertwined with social identity, which concerns those aspects of individuals’ self‐concept that are derived from the social groups they belong to. Individuals try to maintain a balance between their social identity of belonging to certain groups in comparison with outgroups, and their personal identity, which contains elements of distinctiveness in comparison with other members of the group. Those aspects of social identity that reflect individual’s social orientations or attitudes toward that domain can be considered a part of personal identity (Schwartz, Zamboanga, & Weisskirch, 2008 ). For example, whereas one’s social gender identity reflects the extent to which one perceives oneself as belonging to men, women, or other groups, one’s personal gender identity reflects the extent to which one perceives oneself as unique within the specific gender group. Personal and social identity are likely to reinforce each other and are integrated in the self‐concept (Crocetti, Prati, & Rubini, 2018 ) and identity narrative (Galliher et al., 2017 ). In the current review, we do not focus on social identity per se but include aspects of social identity that are relevant for adolescents’ personal identity, such as their engagement in exploration of their social‐cultural background and forming a clearer sense of what this background or group identity means for their self‐concept.

Even though adolescents increasingly know who they are and who they want to become, identity continues to develop into young adulthood (Schwartz, Côté, & Arnett, 2005 ). Contemporary Western society is characterized by prolonged education and a delay of transitions into adult roles such as work, stable partner relationships, and family life (Schoon, 2015 ). Thus, it might take well into adulthood before individuals reach a mature identity across these various identity domains and are able to create a coherent and relatively stable narrative of their self. The process of establishing a coherent sense of identity can be very stressful. For instance, ongoing identity uncertainty in adolescence and young adulthood has been related to the development of a range of psychosocial adjustment problems (for reviews see Meeus, 2011 ; van Doeselaar, Becht, et al., 2018 ; van Doeselaar, Klimstra, et al., 2018 ). Understanding how and why some individuals develop a coherent identity, whereas others remain highly uncertain about who they are and want to become, is therefore vital for supporting healthy development.

This review aims to synthesize research on the development of personal identity during adolescence. The review will predominantly focus on studies from the perspectives of the dual‐cycle models of identity development (e.g., Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008 ; Luyckx, Goossens, & Soenens, 2006 ; Meeus et al., 2010 ) and of narrative identity (McAdams, 2001 ; McLean & Pasupathi, 2012 ), but will also include research using other approaches to personal identity, such as studies focusing on self‐concept clarity or identity processing styles. Narrative processes may be considered one of the key mechanisms of personal identity change (e.g., van Doeselaar, McLean, Meeus, Denissen, & Klimstra, 2020 ; McLean & Pasupathi, 2012 ), and such a synthesis may thus provide more insight into both strands of research, as well as their intersection. This focus aligns with the recently proposed framework for the study of identity development by Galliher et al. ( 2017 ), in which identity is understood as enacted at the micro‐level of real‐time interactions. In these interactions, different personal identity domains are pivotal and intersect, creating an integrated subjective sense of self. These micro‐processes take place within the context of the social roles that adolescents uptake.

By focusing on the underlying processes of identity development, and providing examples from a variety of identity domains, we integrate the current knowledge and offer directions for future research. We cannot give a full account of all the different identity domains, and instead, we focus predominantly on mechanisms underlying personal identity development, thereby giving examples from different identity domains. In our review of the adolescent identity field between 2010 and 2020, we address recent developments on the role of life events and transitions in identity development and discuss the role of within‐person micro‐processes in identity development. We particularly focus on the daily experiences and relational contexts with parents and peers in which identity emerges and is enacted, as these real‐time experiences are the driving mechanisms of intraindividual identity development.

INTRAINDIVIDUAL PROCESSES AND INTERINDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Mean level development of identity.

The development of personal identity has predominantly been studied using dual‐cycle models of identity (Crocetti et al., 2008 ; Luyckx et al., 2006 ; Meeus et al., 2010 ). Longitudinal studies have shown that these identity processes mature systematically (for a review on development of commitments see van Doeselaar, Becht, et al., 2018 ; van Doeselaar, Klimstra, et al., 2018 ), but these changes are modest and there is also quite some evidence for stability in identity processes during adolescence and young adulthood. For instance, decreasing mean levels of identity reconsideration in the educational and relational domain indicate that with age, adolescents become more certain about the commitments they have made (Klimstra, Hale, Raaijmakers, Branje, & Meeus, 2010 ), yet mean levels of educational and relational identity commitments are relatively stable in adolescence (Klimstra et al., 2010 ) and young adulthood (Shirai, Nakamura, & Katsuma, 2016 ). In addition, the less adaptive identity statuses of diffusion and moratorium, which are characterized by relatively weak commitments, systematically decrease, while the frequency of the most advanced identity status, identity achievement, increases from early‐to‐late adolescence (Hirschi, 2012 ; Meeus, van de Schoot, Keijsers, & Branje, 2012 ; Meeus et al., 2010 ). Despite these changes, however, the majority of individuals remains in the same identity status during adolescence (ages 12–20, Meeus et al., 2010 ) and young adulthood (ages 25–29, Carlsson, Wängqvist, & Frisén, 2015 ). A study using daily measures of identity in 15 weeks spread across a period of 5 years also found mostly stable patterns: Around 50% of the sample showed relatively high and stable commitment levels, while the other 50% of adolescents experienced a temporal discontinuity of identity commitments, indicated by a dip in commitments during middle adolescence (Becht et al., 2016 ).

Moderate increases during adolescence have been found for self‐concept clarity as well. Although one study showed that self‐concept clarity significantly increased over time in a sample of 12‐ to 21‐year‐olds (Wu, Watkins, & Hattie, 2010 ), this study did not further differentiate age to examine age‐related change patterns. Two other longitudinal studies showed that levels of self‐concept clarity between the ages of 13 and 18 were stable for girls and slightly increasing and then decreasing for boys (Crocetti, Moscatelli, et al., 2016 ) and that self‐concept clarity developed nonlinearly between the ages 17 and 23, with an initial decline from 16 to 17 years of age, followed by an increase until age 23 (Crocetti, Rubini, Branje, Koot, & Meeus, 2016 ).

For development of cultural and gender identity, the evidence thus far also suggests stability combined with some increase. In a sample of Black American boys, the centrality of race and gender to the self and the personal evaluation of one’s race and gender were either stable or decreased (Rogers, Scott, & Way, 2015 ). No developmental changes between the ages 15 to 18 were found in ethnic exploration and belonging of American adolescents with Latinx American, Asian, and European backgrounds (Kiang, Witkow, Baldelomar, & Fuligni, 2010 ). Comparably, among Asian American adolescents followed over a 4‐year period, ethnic Asian American identity remained stable, yet American identity increased over time (Kiang, Witkow, & Champagne, 2013 ).

Overall, these findings show that there is considerable stability in identity synthesis, identity statuses, and the underlying identity processes of commitment, exploration, and reconsideration across adolescence and young adulthood, but when there is developmental change, this change is mostly in the direction of maturation in identity. Also, there is substantial heterogeneity in development of identity processes across individuals and domains, with some adolescents showing changes toward lower self‐certainty and more identity confusion, and some domains showing more stability than others.

Most individuals may not reach a mature identity characterized by an integrated sense of self across multiple identity domains until well into adulthood (Branje & Koper, 2018 ; Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2010 ). Attesting to this principle of ongoing identity maturation, changes in commitment and exploration processes in educational and interpersonal identity domains have been found to become more strongly intertwined over time into late adolescence (Albarello, Crocetti, & Rubini, 2018 ). Also, young adults (18–23 years of age) showed relatively high identity congruence when comparing developmental patterns of identity commitment across identity domains, such as intimate relationships, parents, and education (Kunnen, 2010 ). That is, 73% of the young adults showed similar patterns in four out of six identity domains, and by young adulthood, most individuals showed an achieved identity as indicated by strong commitments and high levels of exploration across domains. However, only a limited amount of congruence in young adults’ identity statuses was found across vocational and relational identity, with only 18% showing strong commitments in both domains (Luyckx, Seiffge‐Krenke, Schwartz, Crocetti, & Klimstra, 2014 ). Similarly, a second‐order factor analysis showed that global identity processes could only partly explain domain‐specific identity processes in young adulthood (Vosylis, Erentaitė, & Crocetti, 2018 ). Thus, also in young adulthood, it remains important to distinguish between identity domains.

Beyond Mean Level Identity Development

More recently the focus of research has shifted from understanding mean level change to understanding the more complex developmental mechanisms underlying identity maturation. Studies have increasingly focused on intraindividual processes of identity development, and on the transitional periods or salient life events that might require adolescents to reconsider who they are and change their identity. Moreover, in addition to the annual or biannual measures of identity typically employed, micro‐level assessments of identity processes have emerged to offer a more detailed picture of the mechanisms underlying identity development.

Intraindividual associations among identity processes

Research has typically examined developmental changes in identity processes and their associations by focusing on the group level, such as changes in means or interindividual differences. In line with the dual‐cycle model of identity formation, studies have consistently shown negative associations between commitment making and exploration in breadth, positive associations between exploration in depth and identification with commitments, and negative associations between reconsideration and identification with commitments (Waterman, 2015 ). Although these studies offer valuable knowledge about why some individuals develop differently than others, they have not captured the intraindividual processes of identity development, such as whether and how intraindividual changes arise over time. For example, a mean change in identity commitments across adolescents does not tell us how these changes unfold within‐individual adolescents. Additionally, despite relatively stable interindividual differences in adolescent identity, changes within individuals may occur, as processes at the group level are unrelated to processes at the individual level (i.e., at the within‐person level, Molenaar, 2004 ).

The importance of examining intraindividual processes becomes evident when investigating central theories of identity development more closely. These theories in fact describe developmental processes at the intraindividual level; adolescents’ identity formation is expected to take place within individuals across time. For instance, adolescents are thought to experience an identity crisis before developing a clear and stable identity (Erikson, 1968 ). Tests of this hypothesis with interindividual analyses have shown that adolescents who experience more uncertainty about the self than their peers, for example by having weaker commitments and exploring more, typically remain more uncertain than those peers across adolescence (Meeus et al., 2010 ). One might conclude from this research that an identity crisis is not necessary for developing a coherent and mature identity, but these findings do not rule out that individual adolescents go through periods of uncertainty before establishing a more mature identity, irrespective of their level of identity certainty relative to their peers.

In the last decade, research has increasingly focused on how these reorganizations occur within‐individual adolescents. At the within‐person level, although the pattern of concurrent associations is similar to between‐person associations, the over‐time patterns seem to be different. In a 5‐year study among Dutch adolescents (Becht et al., 2017 ), within‐person cross‐lagged models showed that within the same waves, reconsideration was moderately to strongly negatively associated with commitment in the educational and interpersonal domain. That is, in years when adolescents reported higher than usual reconsideration, they also reported lower than usual commitments. Prospectively, when adolescents reported lower educational commitments in a particular year, they reported higher than usual reconsideration in the subsequent year. For interpersonal identity, however, higher reconsideration in a particular year was followed by stronger commitments the next year (Becht et al., 2017 ). Relatedly, within‐person cross‐lagged models indicated that when adolescents scored higher on identity synthesis than usual, they reported higher proactive exploration processes than usual 1 year later (Bogaerts et al., 2019 ). These within‐person findings suggest that reaching a degree of identity synthesis is a prerequisite for proactive identity exploration, and that reconsideration goes hand in hand with weaker commitments, but might be a prerequisite to find new commitments, consistent with the shift from the evaluation cycle to the formation cycle of identity. These findings offer initial support for the Eriksonian idea that commitments result from identity uncertainty.

Development of identity in relation to life transitions and events

Adolescents and young adults develop a sense of self during a phase of life that involves many role changes. These salient transitional periods, such as entering tertiary education, initiating intimate relationships, and joining the workforce, may form an important context that increases the salience of identity processes, and may go hand in hand with identity change. Indeed, much of the narrative tradition is built on the idea that individuals need to integrate important experiences in their lives into their identity (McAdams, 2001 ). Also, identity theory (Bosma & Kunnen, 2008 ; Marcia, 1966 ; Waterman, 1982 ) predicts that identity maturation occurs as the result of individuals’ investment in social roles that require them to engage in mature and socially responsible behavior.

In the last decade, empirical research has increasingly focused on the associations between transitions to new roles and the development of identity. Interindividual differences in identity may affect how individuals navigate through life transitions and take on new social roles. A study of over 1000 adolescents found that educational and relational identity processes in adolescence did not predict involvement in work or an intimate relationship in young adulthood 5 years later, but did predict vocational and relational identity processes in young adulthood (Branje, Laninga‐Wijnen, Yu, & Meeus, 2014 ). These findings suggest that identity processes in adolescence contribute to successful fulfillment of adult roles once these role transitions in young adulthood are made. At the same time, transitions might also affect identity processes. A study on heterogeneity in the development of educational identity across the transition to tertiary education (Christiaens, Nelemans, Meeus, & Branje, 2021 ) revealed that many adolescents show stable patterns of commitment and reconsideration surrounding this transition, yet a sizable minority has either more or less adaptive patterns after the transition, which are meaningfully associated with sociodemographic, academic, individual, and relational characteristics. Thus, transitioning into adult roles may foster the development of the self, but might also confront some adolescents with challenges to their identity.

In addition to normative life transitions, incidental and stressful life events, such as the death of a relative, a breakup of a relationship, or an accident, can serve as turning points in the development of identity (Slotter & Gardner, 2011 ; Waterman, 2020 ). Stressful life events can induce feelings of discontinuity and force adolescents to reconsider their identity. In particular, traumatic events, such as the experience of war, might result in a diminished sense of sameness and continuity of the self (Erikson, 1968 ). This may be reflected in weaker commitments and more exploration and reconsideration especially in identity domains related to the event (Kroger, 1996 ), and an overall sense of identity diffusion (Penner, Gambin, & Sharp, 2019 ). The sense of discontinuity may make individuals reconsider their identity and try to integrate the experienced event into a new sense of identity (Anthis, 2002 ; McAdams, 2001 ). This autobiographical integration of the event into one’s identity is thought to alleviate stress and restore one’s sense of self‐continuity (Habermas & Köber, 2015 ).

Two recent studies examined the longitudinal associations between stressful life events and identity processes. The first study (van Doeselaar, Becht, et al., 2018 ; van Doeselaar, Klimstra, et al., 2018 ) used a two‐sample design and did not find evidence for longitudinal effects between interpersonal commitments and stressful life events in either sample. Although bidirectional negative effects were found between career commitments and stressful life events in one of the samples, only an inconsistent effect of career commitment on subsequent stressful life events was found in the other sample. Thus, adolescents who experienced more negative life events had weaker career commitments, but the evidence for longitudinal effects remains inconsistent. The second study examined within‐person effects of specific life events on identity commitments, exploration, and reconsideration (de Moor, van der Graaff, van Dijk, Meeus, & Branje, 2019 ). Adolescents with fewer commitments and higher levels of reconsideration were more likely to repeat a grade, but the study found no evidence that the experience of a single life event resulted in subsequent changes in identity processes. Hence, while theory suggests that events should be important for identity change, this is not found empirically. A closer focus on how adolescents deal with events and integrate them into their identity may be needed to better understand the role of life events in identity formation.

Micro‐processes of identity

In the last decade, researchers have paid increasing attention to the micro‐level processes that underlie developmental changes in identity commitment and exploration (Lichtwarck‐Aschoff, van Geert, Bosma, & Kunnen, 2008 ). These micro‐level processes refer to the real‐time experiences and expressions of identity in adolescents’ daily lives and are thought to accumulate in the macro‐level development of identity processes (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001 ; Grotevant, 1987 ; Kerpelman, Pittman, & Lamke, 1997 ; Korobov, 2015 ). That is, identity commitments are thought to emerge from the here‐and‐now interactions of adolescents in their daily context. These real‐time micro‐processes are sensitive to context and are more variable than macro‐level identity processes.

To understand the micro‐processes that unfold within individuals over shorter periods of time and their associations with macro‐level identity processes, researchers have developed daily identity measures. A study among 13‐year‐old Dutch adolescents measured daily identity processes for commitment and reconsideration in the interpersonal and educational domain across three 5‐day weeks (Klimstra et al., 2010 ), and found that interindividual differences in daily commitment and reconsideration in the interpersonal identity domain were negatively and reciprocally related, but daily reconsideration in the educational domain negatively predicted next‐day commitment. A study using the same data (Schwartz et al., 2011 ) showed that adolescents with higher levels of reconsideration reported less self‐concept clarity the next day, but self‐concept clarity and commitments were reciprocally associated across days, in which adolescents with stronger global identity commitments on a particular day were more likely to have a clearer self‐concept the next day and vice versa. These studies reveal that day‐to‐day changes in identity processes are associated with each other, and that daily processes differentiate adolescents from each other. How these daily identity processes operate might differ across different identity domains, however.

These findings suggest that especially identity reconsideration might trigger daily change in commitments. When adolescents start reconsidering alternative commitments, it may be functional that the strength of the individual’s current commitment decreases to open‐up the possibility to explore and commit to new identity choices. However, to be able to draw such conclusions regarding how adolescents’ daily identity processes play a role in identity formation at the individual level, we need to investigate intraindividual identity processes at the micro‐level, particularly as such within‐person analyses at the macro‐level suggested that reconsideration was followed by an increase in commitments (Becht et al., 2017 ). Applying an intensive longitudinal design among 31 female university students, van der Gaag, de Ruiter, and Kunnen ( 2016 ) showed that when students reported more than usual daily commitment in the educational domain, they reported less than usual exploration of fit (resembling exploration in depth) and reconsideration, and more than usual exploration of self at the within‐individual level. The negative association between commitment and exploration at the within‐person daily level was consistent with the within‐person association at the annual level (Becht et al., 2017 ). However, the study by Van der Gaag and colleagues also revealed a large amount of heterogeneity between individuals in these within‐person day‐to‐day associations. Although about 50–60% of individuals showed a negative correlation between exploration and commitment, a minority showed a positive or negligible relation. These results stress the importance of examining which individual and contextual factors can explain the large variation that exists in within‐person, micro‐level identity processes.

Even though these studies on micro‐processes of identity have offered new insights into the dynamics of identity development across different time scales, so far micro‐processes have mostly been assessed in a rather abstract and global way, for example by asking whether adolescents felt certain on a particular day regarding their identity. Alternative, more concrete ways to grasp the real‐time experiences that contribute to identity formation are needed, particularly as many identity processes might be unconscious (Schachter, 2018 ). A recent qualitative study examined the concrete micro‐level exploration behaviors adolescents engage in during real‐time interactions with their peers and showed three overarching interaction patterns that advanced exploration: creating a safe environment for exploration, clarifying and elaborating an idea, and a process in which finding a keyword and repeating it helped adolescents explore an aspect of identity and find tentative, emerging commitments (Sugimura, Gmelin, van der Gaag, & Kunnen, 2021 ). Also, among students conducting a clinical internship, real‐time fulfillment versus frustration of the need for competence, relatedness, and autonomy was related to stronger and weaker commitments, respectively (Kunnen, 2021 ). Future research should include such meaningful assessments of the concrete micro‐level behaviors adolescents engage in to form their identity (see also Klimstra & Schwab, 2021 ). Particularly, micro‐level assessments during transitional periods are required to understand identity change.

Daily emotions and identity processes

Daily emotions and experiences may play a particularly important role in the heterogeneity of identity processes, as emotions might have a feedback function to the individual that is relevant to their identity and identity processes in daily life might thus be strongly related to emotions (Kunnen, Bosma, van Halen, & van der Meulen, 2001 ). Using within‐person analyses of daily associations between identity processes and mood in early adolescence, Klimstra et al. ( 2016 ) showed that negative mood was positively associated with educational and interpersonal reconsideration, and weakly positively with in‐depth educational exploration. In addition, negative mood was weakly negatively associated with interpersonal commitment, and strongly negatively with educational commitment. Thus, experiencing negative emotions can elicit uncertainty regarding one’s identity and lead to increased exploration, while experiencing positive emotions can reinforce identity commitments, resulting in increased identification with current identity‐relevant choices. However, the process of identity formation can be stressful and might itself also elicit mood disruptions (Erikson, 1968 ).

In addition to mood, van der Gaag, Albers, and Kunnen ( 2017 ) showed that among first year university students, both positive and negative emotional experiences that were personally important and had impacted their attitude toward their education were related to increases in micro‐level educational commitment. The study used weekly measures of commitment, exploration, and emotional experiences across 22–30 weeks. For most individuals, emotional experiences had a stronger impact on commitment than exploration. Surprisingly, for a minority of students, positive experiences predicted a decrease in educational commitment. As the content of the experiences did not necessarily relate to the domain of education (e.g., forming a romantic relationship), it might be that positive experiences competing with educational commitment resulted in a decrease of educational commitment. Similarly, negative experiences in other domains might result in an increased commitment to one’s education. The finding that negative emotional experiences resulted in increased commitment could also be due to assimilation processes. Following the assimilation‐accommodation perspective (Bosma & Kunnen, 2001 ), a single negative experience might result in assimilation, in which the interpretation of the experience changes to keep the commitment intact. When negative experiences accumulate, individuals may need to accommodate, resulting in a decrease in commitment (Kunnen, 2006 ). Thus, both positive and negative emotional experiences are important in micro‐level educational commitment development. Future research should explore which adolescents are more likely to assimilate their experiences into their identity commitments and how positive and negative emotional experiences within and outside current commitments accumulate to result in identity change.

Narratives as micro‐processes

Narrative processes are also considered micro‐processes that can be studied to examine how individuals engage in commitment and exploration processes. For instance, individuals’ narratives about personally relevant moments in their lives (e.g., low points, high points, and turning points) are thought to be important accounts of continuity or change in their identity (Kunnen & Bosma, 2000 ). Moreover, the function of narratives of creating continuity (McAdams, 2001 ; Pasupathi & Mansour, 2006 ) is thought to be related to establishing commitments (Erikson, 1968 ). For example, young adults with gender narratives reflecting equality positions reported higher identity exploration and lower commitment than young adults with traditional gender narratives, suggesting that identity exploration is related to engagement with alternative narratives and that engagement with traditional narratives is related to conventionality comparable to identity foreclosure (McLean, Shucard, & Syed, 2017 ). Also, increases in young adults’ ethnic identity commitments were not only related to changes in narrative themes, but also to changes in narratives about prejudice or connection to culture (Syed & Azmitia, 2010 ).

Forming commitments can also change the narratives that individuals construe. For example, Swedish young adults who were in identity achievement generally reported a deepening of their life narrative across 4 years, in terms of the way they derived meaning from new experiences, handled changes, and determined their own direction in life (Carlsson et al., 2015 ). However, no clear pattern of narrative development was found for young adults in the stably committed status of identity foreclosure. Also, in a sample of Dutch adolescents, autobiographical reasoning and agency were found to be related to commitment and exploration processes both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally (van Doeselaar et al., 2020 ). However, the size of these associations was small, indicating that narratives and dual‐cycle processes may capture different parts of adolescents’ identity. Thus, narrative processes might be linked to processes of commitment and exploration and might form the underlying mechanism behind identity development more broadly. Future research should further explore how these different approaches toward studying identity development can be used to complement and extend one another.

The role of variability in the development of the self

Another aspect of micro‐level processes relevant for identity development is the amount of variability in identity processes, or the within‐person fluctuations in commitments and exploration across days and weeks. A dynamic system approach suggests that identity micro‐processes fluctuate and change on a daily basis (Lichtwarck‐Aschoff et al., 2008 ). Developmental changes are thought to be nonlinear (Lewis, 2000 ) and may particularly occur at times of transitions or life events that motivate identity development. These transitional periods are thought to be marked by a substantial temporary increase in intraindividual variability (Lichtwarck‐Aschoff et al., 2008 ), or fluctuations in identity processes, after which a restabilization occurs and a more mature identity emerges. Indeed, when adolescents showed a temporal increase in their educational commitment fluctuations across days (i.e., more ups and downs in their commitments), they reported higher educational commitment levels 1 year later (Becht et al., 2017 ). These temporal fluctuations might indicate a period of active reflection on present commitments to support identity development. Identity processes also have been found to be meaningfully related to variability in identity salience among ethnically diverse adolescents (Wang, Douglass, & Yip, 2017 ). Adolescents with stronger ethnic–racial identity commitment reported higher daily mean salience and less variability in salience 6 months later, and adolescents who reported more daily variability in salience engaged in more exploration 6 months later, suggesting that daily experiences might trigger exploration and that commitment might be consolidated in daily ethnic salience experiences. Thus, variability in micro‐processes of identity may be the underlying mechanism that marks the dynamic of identity development.

Although higher variability may be necessary for individuals to adapt and reorganize themselves effectively in response to varying contextual changes (Moskowitz & Zuroff, 2004 ), higher levels of variability might also indicate behavioral lability, or variability in behavior that is not well‐controlled or very adaptive (Charles & Pasupathi, 2003 ). So far, with the exception of Becht et al. ( 2017 ) and Wang et al. ( 2017 ), higher levels of fluctuations in identity processes have mostly been associated with poorer outcomes in several domains. Stronger fluctuations in reconsideration (but not commitment or self‐concept clarity) across days were associated with lower levels of macro‐level interpersonal and educational commitments and higher levels of reconsideration (Klimstra et al., 2010 ), as well as with later symptoms of anxiety and depression, controlling for previous levels of anxiety and depression (Schwartz et al., 2011 ). These findings suggest that reconsideration might particularly create a sense of disequilibrium and distress when this sense of uncertainty fluctuates across days, regardless of the level of reconsideration.

Thus, while these findings mostly suggest that variability in identity processes is negatively related to psychosocial functioning, stronger increases in variability in specific transitional periods may also reflect developmental changes in identity. Variability in transitional periods might be associated with poorer well‐being because individuals experience the period as stressful, resulting temporarily in declines in adjustment. To shed light on the role of fluctuations in identity processes in macro‐development of identity, future research should examine variability in identity and self‐concept clarity during transitional and nontransitional periods and link this variability to developmental processes in identity.

In sum, instead of focusing on interindividual differences, recent studies have sought to analyze identity processes at the intraindividual, micro‐level—that is, at the level where development is taking place: within the person, in here‐and‐now experiences. Knowledge of these micro‐level processes might be particularly informative for interventions in youth who struggle with identity development. For example, Blaauw et al. ( 2019 ) recently developed the u‐can‐act platform, a tool to study individual processes of identity development in the context of early school leaving and the preventative behaviors of youth’s mentors to help youth cope with their educational identity development at individual level.

IDENTITY AND PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT

Identity is quite consistently related to a broad range of psychosocial adjustment outcomes across cultures, underlining the importance of identity in adolescents’ lives. Adolescents with stable and strong identity commitments have consistently been found to report higher levels of psychosocial adjustment over time than adolescents with ongoing identity uncertainty (Crocetti et al., 2008 ; Hatano, Sugimura, & Schwartz, 2018 ; Meeus et al., 2010 ). Prior studies revealed that adolescents with a weaker sense of identity and ongoing reconsideration of identity alternatives are at increased risk for the development of aggressive behavior (Becht et al., 2016 ; Crocetti, Klimstra, Hale, Koot, & Meeus, 2013 ; Morsunbul, 2015 ), delinquent behavior (Levey, Garandeau, Meeus, & Branje, 2019 ), and substance use (de Moor, Sijtsema, Weller, & Klimstra, 2020 ). Similarly, adolescents with ongoing identity uncertainty were more likely to show increasing (school) anxiety levels over time (Becht et al., 2016 ), higher loneliness (Kaniušonytė, Truskauskaitė‐Kunevičienė, Žukauskienė, & Crocetti, 2019 ), and higher levels of depressive symptoms (van Doeselaar, Becht, et al., 2018 ; van Doeselaar, Klimstra, et al., 2018 ; Meeus et al., 2012 ).

In addition to negative psychosocial adjustment, individual differences in dual‐cycle identity processes predict positive adjustment as well. For instance, those individuals with strong and stable identity commitments report higher self‐esteem (Luyckx et al., 2013 ) and higher levels of experienced meaning in life (Negru‐Subtirica, Pop, Luyckx, Dezutter, & Steger, 2016 ). Also, adolescents with an ethnic identity profile characterized by high exploration, strong resolution (resembling commitments), and high centrality of their ethnic–racial background within their self‐concept reported higher academic engagement, life satisfaction, and self‐esteem than adolescents with an ethnic identity profile characterized by low exploration and resolution (regardless of centrality; Wantchekon & Umaña‐Taylor, 2021 ). Although ethnic–racial identity exploration did not predict civic beliefs, adolescents who reported greater increases in ethnic–racial identity resolution across 2 years of middle school did report greater increases in civic beliefs on the need to advance the well‐being of their communities (Bañales, Hoffman, Rivas‐Drake, & Jagers, 2020 ). Moreover, a meta‐analysis showed that stronger commitments and composite scores of ethnic–racial identity processes can buffer the associations of discrimination with adjustment problems, yet higher levels of exploration increased associations of discrimination with adjustment problems (Yip, Wang, Mootoo, & Mirpuri, 2019 ). Furthermore, identity processes have been linked to academic and career functioning. The development of career adaptability and vocational identity commitment are dynamically intertwined across adolescence (Negru‐Subtirica, Pop, & Crocetti, 2015 ). Identity development in college students positively affected their sense of competence and motivational beliefs to master their study (Perez, Cromley, & Kaplan, 2014 ). In contrast, higher academic achievement predicted higher levels of commitment and lower levels of reconsideration (Pop, Negru‐Subtirica, Crocetti, Opre, & Meeus, 2016 ), and school engagement positively predicted information‐oriented identity processing, while school burnout positively predicted the use of normative and diffuse‐avoidant identity styles (Erentaitė, Vosylis, Gabrialavičiūtė, & Raižienė, 2018 ).

Although evidence for the directionality of effects between identity processes and psychosocial and academic adjustment is not consistent, these findings suggest that intervening in identity processes might be an auspicious way to promote adolescents’ well‐being. Indeed, the Identity Project intervention, which was designed for delivery in high school for youth in middle adolescence to target ethnic–racial identity exploration and resolution, showed promising effects on adolescents’ identity processes and adjustment (Umaña‐Taylor, Douglass, Updegraff, & Marsiglia, 2018 ; Umaña‐Taylor et al., 2018 ). The intervention consisted of eight sessions that were designed to help adolescents understand between‐ and within‐group differences and how various groups had been marginalized throughout history, and to help adolescents engage in activities to facilitate the exploration of their ethnic–racial background. The Identity Project intervention resulted in increases in adolescents’ ethnic–racial identity exploration and, subsequently, increases in resolution or sense of clarity of their ethnic–racial identity (Umaña‐Taylor, Douglass, et al., 2018 ). In turn, these changes in exploration and resolution were related to adolescents’ higher global identity cohesion, lower depressive symptoms, higher self‐esteem, and better grades 1 year later (Umaña‐Taylor et al., 2018).

Characteristics of adolescents’ narrative identity are also linked to psychosocial adjustment. The various narrative characteristics that have been studied in relation to adjustment can be categorized in one of three broader factors (Adler, Lodi‐Smith, Philippe, & Houle, 2016 ; McLean et al., 2020 ): autobiographical reasoning (or integrative meaning), motivational and affective themes, and structure. Autobiographical reasoning refers to individuals’ ability to reflect on their past, present, and future, and link these three together into a continuous narrative (Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ; McAdams, 2001 ). The making of self‐event connections reflects individuals’ autobiographical attempts to explicitly link an event to an aspect of their self (Pasupathi, Mansour, & Brubaker, 2007 ). Adolescents with better‐developed autobiographical reasoning and more self‐event connections report higher well‐being (van Doeselaar et al., 2020 ; McLean, Breen, & Fournier, 2010 ). Initial findings further suggest that this association might vary by developmental period: Although autobiographical reasoning is related to better well‐being in late adolescence, early adolescents who engage in autobiographical reasoning reported lower well‐being than peers who do not (McLean et al., 2010 ; McLean & Mansfield, 2011 ). Moreover, different themes may be dominant in identity narratives, such as redemption (McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, & Bowman, 2001 ), agency, and communion (Adler, 2012 ; McAdams, 2001 ). Adolescents who have identity narratives high on themes of redemption, agency, and communion tend to report higher well‐being (van Doeselaar et al., 2020 ; Dunlop, Harake, Gray, Hanley, & McCoy, 2018 ; Holm, Thomsen, & Bliksted, 2018 ; McAdams & McLean, 2013 ). Finally, when comparing the structure of individuals’ narratives in clinical and population samples, narrative coherence is generally lower in clinical samples (Adler, Chin, Kolisetty, & Oltmanns, 2012 ), and individuals who write more coherent narratives report fewer psychological difficulties and greater well‐being (Reese et al., 2011 ; Waters & Fivush, 2015 ; Waters, Shallcross, & Fivush, 2013 ). This might show that identity in the initial stages of development might go together with uncertainty and lower adjustment.

In sum, there is a vast body of literature highlighting the associations between personal identity development and psychosocial outcomes, providing evidence that adolescents with a more well‐adjusted identity tend to fair better in many different areas of life. Conversely, this research underlines how adolescents with issues in their identity may be stuck in broader maladaptive development. Findings concerning the direction of effects are less consistent. Probably, different processes play a role for different groups of youth: In some, identity synthesis might result in better adjustment, in others adjustment problems might trigger identity uncertainty, and yet in others, external factors might result in a change in both identity and adjustment. More work is needed examining the direction of effects, particularly at the within‐person level, to gain a better understanding of developmental processes linking identity and adjustment and to improve interventions aimed at strengthening adolescents’ identity processes.

Within‐Person Associations of Identity and Psychosocial Adjustment

In the last decade, research has started to examine these within‐person linkages between identity development and psychosocial adjustment (Lichtwarck‐Aschoff et al., 2008 ). To this end, Becht et al. ( 2019 ) examined the intraindividual longitudinal linkages between identity and depressive symptoms in two large longitudinal Dutch and Belgian adolescent samples. In both samples, a within‐person increase in identity uncertainty predicted a within‐person increase in depressive symptoms 1 year later but not vice versa. These findings suggest a role of ongoing identity uncertainty in the development of depressive symptoms over time. Similarly, Mercer, Crocetti, Branje, van Lier, and Meeus ( 2017 ) showed bidirectional intraindividual linkages between identity and delinquency, such that increasing delinquency predicted weaker identity commitments and more identity reconsideration and vice versa. When adolescents showed an increase of in‐depth exploration, their delinquency levels decreased 1 year later. Together, these findings suggest that identity struggles might result in feelings of despair and ways of coping that help adolescents find an alternative (delinquent or negative) identity.

More generally, these findings speak to the importance of considering the content of adolescents’ identity. In some cases, youth may develop a negative identity in which they identify with roles opposed to societal expectations (Hihara, Sugimura, & Syed, 2018 ), and psychopathology or deviancy may even become the content of identity (Cruwys & Gunaseelan, 2016 ). For instance, rejection of delinquent behaviors within society may further strengthen delinquent or negative identities for some youth, as illustrated in the example of radicalization of youth (Meeus, 2015 ). Critically, the longitudinal associations between identity processes and psychosocial adjustment might depend on the content of identity. For example, adolescents with achieved but content‐wise distinct ethnic–racial identities might show different levels of adjustment on individual and group‐relevant outcomes (Umaña‐Taylor et al., 2014 ). Comparably, a recently proposed framework for understanding the associations of identity and psychopathology points out the many alternative ways in which identity and adjustment may be connected and suggests that when identity formation goes awry, psychopathology may become part of one’s identity (Klimstra & Denissen, 2017 ).

More broadly, individuals’ identities should be understood within the context in which adolescents are embedded. Syed, Juang, and Svensson ( 2018 ) provide a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding ethnic–racial identity within ethnic–racial settings, or the objective and subjective nature of group representation within an individual’s context. Similarly, identity narratives are shaped by the culture in which adolescents live (e.g., McAdams, 2001 , 2006 ). The master narrative of the culture may provide important clues to individual members about how their narrative identity is supposed to look like in terms of structure and themes (for an integrative framework, see McLean & Syed, 2016 ). This culture may also moderate the associations between young people’s narratives and their well‐being (Eriksson, McLean, & Ann Frisén, 2020 ; McLean & Syed, 2016 ). However, so far this work was situated in adult samples, and more research is needed to extend these findings toward adolescents.

IDENTITY AND RELATIONSHIPS

The development of a coherent sense of self and identity takes place in the context of close relationships, such as with family members and peers. Identity concerns not only the experience of self‐sameness and continuity of the self, but also the extent to which this experience corresponds with the sameness and continuity of one’s meaning to significant others. Interactions with family members and friends are therefore crucial. In these interactions, adolescents receive self‐relevant feedback (Grotevant & Cooper, 1985 ; Koepke & Denissen, 2012 ), which they can use to strengthen or adjust their identity commitments. Supportive relationships with family members and friends who are sensitive and responsive to adolescents’ changing need also form a secure base from which adolescents can confidently explore identity options. In interactions with close others, adolescents narrate about their life events and experiences and link these experiences to who they are and how they want to become. These interactions may help adolescents make sense of their experiences and ultimately create more coherent and meaningful identity narratives (e.g., through scaffolding behavior; Fivush, Reese, & Haden, 2006 ). For example, when young adults and their conversation partners agreed about the meaning that could be derived from the narrative they told, they were more likely to retain that meaning for a longer period (McLean & Pasupathi, 2011 ). In addition, as adolescents develop a clearer sense of identity, they are better able to engage in positive interactions with others (Swann, 2000 ; Swann, Milton, & Polzer, 2000 ).

Autonomy support is considered particularly important for identity development. As adolescents start to develop their identity, they also begin to renegotiate autonomy in their relationships with parents and peers. Parents and adolescents have to reallocate responsibilities and power in their relationships to become more egalitarian, with more reciprocity and equality in exchanges, power, and decision‐making (Branje, Laursen, & Collins, 2012 ; de Goede, Branje, & Meeus, 2009 ). Adolescents’ relationships with friends also change toward greater autonomy. Toward middle adolescence, their increased perspective‐taking skills and greater self‐certainty allow friends to respect each other’s individuality without jeopardizing their mutual sense of connectedness (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011 ; Selfhout, Branje, & Meeus, 2009 ). Friendships also become more supportive over the course of adolescence (de Goede, Branje, Delsing, et al., 2009 ). When parents are unable to release control and adapt toward a more reciprocal relationship, and when friends have difficulties accepting each other’s individuation, adolescents might be likely to develop a less optimal identity, characterized by internal conflict and feelings of alienation from one’s sense of self.

Family Relationships and Identity Processes

Indeed, several recent studies provided evidence for the role of relationships with family members in identity development. Sugimura et al. ( 2018 ) found consistent negative associations of emotional separation and positive associations of parental trust with identity consolidation across Lithuania, Italy, and Japan. Although the identity processes commitment and reconsideration were reciprocally associated with support and conflict in relationships with parents and siblings in a six‐wave study spanning from age 13 to 18 (Crocetti et al., 2017 ), commitment and in‐depth exploration were more likely to positively affect relationship quality with parents and siblings than vice versa. Reconsideration was predicted by low levels of maternal support and worsened the quality of the paternal relationship. Parental support has also been found to be related to higher levels of adolescents’ exploration of their romantic identity (Pittman, Kerpelman, Soto, & Adler‐Baeder, 2012 ). Parental psychological control had a more complex and indirect relation with romantic identity: It was related to an elevated feeling of both avoidance and anxiety in romantic relationships, and while avoidance was in turn related to less exploration of romantic identity, anxiety was related to more exploration. On the level of parent–child interactions, adolescents whose parents stimulate them in their story‐telling to derive meaning from experiences have been found to engage in more autobiographical reasoning (McLean & Jennings, 2012 ). For ethnic identity, parental ethnic socialization was positively related to adolescents’ ethnic identity exploration and resolution (Hu, Zhou, & Lee, 2017 ), and significantly predicted ethnic identity exploration and commitment 1 year later (Else‐Quest & Morse, 2015 ). Moreover, at the within‐person level, increases in family cohesion were associated with increases in ethnic belonging (Kiang et al., 2010 ). These findings confirm that adolescents’ identity development is strengthened in the context of close and supportive family relationships. In addition vice versa, adolescents who have higher commitment and in‐depth exploration also improve their relationships with their family members. Adolescents’ optimal development of identity goes together with high levels of closeness and relatedness.

In addition to parent–adolescent relationship quality and parenting characteristics, parents’ own identities might affect adolescents’ identity development (Schachter, 2018 ). Among Roma minority families, ethnic identity of both parents was strongly and positively associated with adolescent ethnic identity (Dimitrova, Ferrer‐Wreder, & Trost, 2015 ). In a longitudinal study from early‐to‐late adolescence, parental self‐concept clarity was found to unidirectionally predict adolescents’ self‐concept clarity (Crocetti, Moscatelli, et al., 2016 ). Also, caregiver identity commitment was significantly related to adolescent identity distress, over and above adolescents’ own identity commitment and exploration (Wiley & Berman, 2012 ). Therefore, parents with a more coherent identity not only provide an example for adolescents as to how they can explore self‐relevant issues, but they also are better able to provide their children with support as they explore those issues and make commitments.

Peer Relationships and Identity Processes

Although significantly less research has been conducted in this area, peer relationships are also positively related to identity development (for a review, see Ragelienė, 2016 ). In fact, a recent study found that especially support from friends, compared to support from parents, was related to relational and educational identity (de Moor et al., 2019 ). Having a high‐quality relationship with one’s best friend has also been associated with making redemption sequences and self‐event connections in one’s identity narrative (de Moor, van der Graaff, van Doeselaar, Klimstra, & Branje, 2021 ), both of which are seen as characteristics of well‐adjusted narratives. On the level of interactions, adolescents whose friends listen more actively and who stimulate meaning‐making tend to engage in greater autobiographical reasoning (McLean & Jennings, 2012 ; Pasupathi & Hoyt, 2009 ). A 4‐year study of adolescents aged 14–18 years revealed that autonomy support from friends significantly predicted adolescents' reconsideration, and was predicted by in‐depth exploration and, although less consistent, commitment (van Doeselaar, Meeus, Koot, & Branje, 2016 ). These findings suggest that higher autonomy support from a friend reduces adolescents' problematic educational reconsideration, and adaptive educational identity processes foster autonomy‐supportive interactions. A study applying within‐person cross‐lagged analyses indicated that although relationship quality with parents—and not with friends—affected subsequent self‐concept clarity, self‐concept clarity affected subsequent relationship quality with both parents and friends, although results varied across reporters (Becht et al., 2017 ). Thus, higher friendship quality facilitates identity formation, and adaptive identity processes foster supportive and high‐quality interactions.

The development of personal identity is also strongly embedded within the context of the broader peer group. Adolescents’ identification with their classmates and with their group of friends over time predicted stronger interpersonal identity commitment and exploration, as well as lower reconsideration (Albarello et al., 2018 ). These findings suggest that when adolescents are comfortable and at ease in their larger peer groups, they have a basis from which they can explore their personal identity.

Identity is not only directly related to relationship quality; it also affects how susceptible youth are to the influence of others. Adolescents with lower self‐concept clarity were more susceptible to the influence of their friends’ delinquency and subsequently showed more delinquency themselves (Levey et al., 2019 ). Similarly, in more controlling peer groups, adolescents with stronger identity commitment engaged in less risk behavior than adolescents with weaker identity commitment (Dumas, Ellis, & Wolfe, 2012 ), suggesting that identity might protect against peer pressure. A clearer identity might help adolescents compare their views of themselves and the world to those of their peers, while at the same time differentiating themselves as a separate, autonomous person. As a result, they may have greater respect for their own boundaries and be able to resist negative peer influences.

In sum, adolescents who do not experience closeness or supportiveness in their relationships with parents and peers, or adolescents whose parents and peers do not accept their individual needs, tend to experience more difficulties in developing a clear identity. In the process of discovering their own identity and negotiating their needs for autonomy, these adolescents might become overly dependent on others or, alternatively, struggle with feelings of dependence. This may especially be the case in Western cultures, because individuality is emphasized and dependence on others tends to be viewed as a sign of weakness that should be discouraged. Although most research has focused on the role of relationships with parents and friends in adolescents’ identity formation, other relationships offer an important relational context for identity development as well. For example, adolescents with avoidant or anxious attachment, who are less comfortable with romantic partners, were found to have lower relational identity commitments and a higher tendency to use a diffuse/avoidant style for identity exploration (Kerpelman et al., 2012 ), and the extent to which teachers serve as role models predicts student identity development (Rich & Schachter, 2012 ).

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

The current review discussed progress in the field of adolescent personal identity research between 2010 and 2020. Concerning mean level change, research in this decade has further confirmed that there is considerable stability in identity across adolescence and young adulthood. At the same time, there is substantial heterogeneity in identity development, and when there is developmental change, this change is in the direction of identity maturation.

Excitingly, studies have increasingly begun to go beyond the study of mean level identity change and examine the underlying mechanisms of identity development. It should be noted that many of the developments discussed in this review are emerging developments in the field of identity research, and more research is needed to replicate these findings and provide more knowledge on the robustness and strength of the findings. Nevertheless, these findings suggest identity development requires a focus on transitional periods that pose a challenge to adolescents’ personal identity, as well as a focus on the micro‐processes of identity development. Whereas theory suggests that life transitions and life events might trigger identity change, so far not much empirical support for the effect of life events on personal identity has been found. Future research should examine identity development across life transitions and compare personal identity processes before, during, and after the transition. As the most used identity measures tap into quite global aspects of identity that might not always optimally reflect the process of personal identity formation (Waterman, 2015 ), measures tapping into more concrete commitment making and exploration processes are needed. Also, a closer focus on how adolescents deal with events and integrate them into their identity may be needed to better understand the role of life events in identity. So far, results suggest that micro‐level and macro‐level identity processes tap into qualitatively different processes. To further enhance our knowledge on how micro‐level processes shape macro‐level identity development, future research needs to incorporate the assessment of micro‐level processes in long‐term longitudinal studies that assess processes at the macro‐level.

Recent findings on the associations of identity with psychosocial adjustment confirm that certainty about oneself and the direction one is going in is closely related to better functioning in multiple domains. Increased attention to the intraindividual associations between identity and adjustment (Lichtwarck‐Aschoff et al., 2008 ) shows how within‐person developmental processes in personal identity might affect future adjustment and well‐being and suggests that ongoing identity uncertainty might result in feelings of despair and less adaptive ways of coping. In future research, we need to consider the content of adolescents’ identity in addition to the process of identity formation, as psychopathology may become the content of identity when identity formation goes awry (Klimstra & Denissen, 2017 ).

Research on the social context of identity shows that identity development is closely embedded in relationships with family members and friends. Particularly, parents have an important role in shaping adolescent identity: Instead of turning away from parents, adolescents’ development of identity is fostered by high levels of closeness and relatedness to parents. In addition, parents’ own identities also affect adolescents’ identity development. Although peers seem to have a weaker influence on adolescent identity development compared to parents, a more mature identity helps adolescents establish high‐quality friendships. Identity is not only directly related to relationship quality; it also affects how susceptible youth are to the influence of peers, as adolescents with a more uncertain identity tend to be more vulnerable to negative peer influences.

Last, research is starting to empirically reunify the narrative and dual‐cycle identity approach (e.g., van Doeselaar et al., 2020 ; McLean & Pasupathi, 2012 ), showing how narrative processes may be considered one of the key mechanisms of identity change, providing information on real‐time identity processes. Excitingly, research on narrative processes has also recently started to examine factors such as developmental contexts and content of narratives that moderate the narrative identity–well‐being link. To further this work, it is important that more studies adopt an approach that examines multiple narratives by the same individual, to understand better what aspects of narrative identity are specific to certain narratives, and which are true across narratives and life domains. Although several studies already do so (e.g., Lilgendahl & McLean, 2020 ; McLean, Syed, Yoder, et al., 2016 ), broader implementation of this approach is likely to yield exciting new, robust, and generalizable discoveries. Also, future research could examine narratives of adolescents prompted to discuss the same experience, such as a school transition, to allow for greater comparability between individuals and to enable a greater focus on the actual content of the narrative. Linking such narratives to long‐term intraindividual identity formation processes will increase our understanding of the underlying real‐time mechanisms in personal identity formation and offer more concrete tools for intervention.

This work was supported by a grant from the European Research Council (ERC‐CoG INTRANSITION‐773023).

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Psychosocial Development Research in Adolescence: a Scoping Review

Original Article
Published: 01 February 2022
Volume 30 , pages 640–669, ( 2022 )

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Nuno Archer de Carvalho ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6620-0804 1 , 2 &
Feliciano Henriques Veiga ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2977-6238 1 , 2

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Erikson’s psychosocial development is a well-known and sound framework for adolescent development. However, despite its importance in scientific literature, the scarcity of literature reviews on Erikson’s theory on adolescence calls for an up-to-date systematization. Therefore, this study’s objectives are to understand the extent and nature of published research on Erikson’s psychosocial development in adolescence (10–19 years) in the last decade (2011–2020) and identify directions for meaningful research and intervention. A scoping review was conducted following Arksey and O’Malley’s framework, PRISMA-ScR guidelines, and a previous protocol, including a comprehensive search in eight databases. From 932 initial studies, 58 studies were selected. These studies highlighted the burgeoning research on Erikson’s approach, with a more significant representation of North American and European studies. The focus of most studies was on identity formation, presenting cross-cultural evidence of its importance in psychosocial development. Most of the studies used quantitative designs presenting a high number of different measures. Regarding topics and variables, studies emphasized the critical role of identity in adolescents’ development and well-being and the relevance of supporting settings in psychosocial development. However, shortcomings were found regarding the study of online and school as privileged developmental settings for adolescents. Suggestions included the need to consider the process of identity formation in the context of lifespan development and invest in supporting adolescents’ identity formation. Overall, conclusions point out Erikson’s relevance in understanding adolescents’ current challenges while offering valuable research and intervention directions to enhance adolescent growth potential.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Conceição Martins and Filomena Covas for their help in assessing methodological options and text revision and Rita Fonseca and Sandra Torres for their advice regarding English accuracy.

This work was supported by the FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, IP, within the scope of the UIDEF — Unidade de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Educação e Formação, under the reference UID/CED/04107/2020.

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de Carvalho, N.A., Veiga, F.H. Psychosocial Development Research in Adolescence: a Scoping Review. Trends in Psychol. 30 , 640–669 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-022-00143-0

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Introduction

Literature review, interview questions used in the study, interview results, synthesis of the results.

The process of identity development among individuals is rooted at infant stage, and develops significantly until it clearly emerges out at adolescence stage. It has been revealed that, the major goal of many adolescents is to achieve a specific identity in order to avoid any form of confusion in their future lives.

According to Kroger (2007), physical, cognitive and social transformations among adolescents form a strong basis for the development of their future identity in their later adulthood.

Particularly, the emergence abstract reasoning among teenagers facilitates their ultimate development of specific identities in order to make them to be focused in realizing self actualization.

More so, the physical and social environment in which an individual grows up in has been revealed quite significant in identity development among adolescents. In this study, an in-depth learning on the key contexts for identity development among adolescents will be facilitated.

To facilitate this study interviews with a boy and a girl aged 14 and 15 years respectively have been conducted. As observed in these adolescents, their anticipated future careers are largely embedded on their parental core values and practices.

Since the interviewees are in their high school educational level, their focus in developing their future careers seems clearly developed, as depicted by their subsequent specialized study patterns.

It was observed that, these interviewees had set their educational achievement goals based on the core values upheld by their close relationships including families and their peers (Clarke, 2005).

On choosing these interviewees, I considered adolescence stage as the focal point of identity development, since individuals at this stage are at verge of developing abstract reasoning skills.

More so, the adolescence stage marks the transition stage between adulthood and childhood, where individuals tend to develop key values and behaviors to identify themselves with.

By choosing a 14 year old boy and a 15 year old girl, their response will be fundamental in developing the relationship between identity development and the underlying environmental influences among individuals.

Since these interviewees at the stage of personal development where they are capable of reasoning deductively and inductively, their career development seems much embedded on their key values in their lives.

Considering that this study focuses on the relationship between identity development and environmental influences, an interview with the two adolescents seems more accurate in developing an accurate framework of ideas on how both social and physical environment impacts on individuals’ identity (Ferrer-Wreder et al, 2002).

According to Taveira & Moreno (2003), the process of identity development is a complex framework of experiences originating from adulthood to become well defined at adolescence stage.

As it has been revealed, adolescents’ main focus is to align their goals to the societal norms and values, in order to enhance coherence in their personal development. Being a multi-dimensional aspect of personality, identity involves sexuality, occupation, religion and ethical values, which an individual pursues to achieve in his/her life.

On this basis, identity is an innate and personalized ambitions among individuals to realize self-actualization. Since the social and physical environments are very influential in the development of behaviors, self actualization corresponds to social values and norms among individuals.

It is important to note that, identity development is largely determined by creativity among individuals. Creativity is a personal skill that cannot be ignored at any cost, as it determines core identity values among the people (Clarke, 2005). For a society to develop, it requires creativity by its members.

Since the society is composed of persons, each individual’s personal identities have been largely dependent on the core values and norms upheld in the society. It is hence significant for any society and individuals to think of share and play with new ideas.

This enhances the well being of the mind of the individuals and often results in material benefit which improves their lives. On this basis, the development of identity among adolescents is one of the major achievements that adolescents acquire as they pursue success in their endeavors.

As noted by Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), the ability of adolescents to think and reason abstractively facilitates the development of their core competencies in their areas of interest, which is largely influenced by the environment they grow in.

With regard to Taveira & Moreno (2003), hypothetical development of identity among individuals is based on two main steps. The first step involves adolescents breaking away from their childhood beliefs in search of new alternatives in specific areas considered as important in their areas.

The second step involves personal commitment through identifying various opportunities capable of enhancing the realization of the desired goals.

As noted by Kroger (2007), adolescents’ ambitions to achieve their desired goals and objectives may be foreclosed, a situation which may arise when such individuals get committed to achieve self actualization without proper exploration of the possible alternatives.

As a result, frustrations are subsequently experienced among such individuals, since their ambitions will be out of scope of their potential. It is important to note that, parental ideas and values are accepted automatically among individuals as they organize their strategies to identify themselves with various aspects of societal values.

According to Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), adolescents start developing an in-depth analysis of their parents’ influences through beliefs and ideas, a process referred as moratorium. At adolescence stage, individuals become active explorers of the available alternatives in their lives.

This is reflected by their tendency to start engaging in new beliefs and practices as they tryout various social opportunities. On the process of alternatives exploration, by-identity achievement is usually achieved, since at this stage individuals will be able to think and reason abstractively.

Despite that such adolescents explore various aspects of their identities; some of them may fail to achieve any significant identity development as a result of their multi-dimensional perspectives.

As a result, diffusion of values among such individuals becomes a key aspect of identity development; as such individuals tend to encompass the core values upheld in their social environment.

As held by Clarke (2005), active parental, educational and community involvement is quite important as a nurturing factor for the development of identity among adolescents. Since identity achievement is largely associated with self esteem, individuals are compelled to reason critically on their verge to choose alternatives for their identity.

It is also important to note that, the physical changes among individuals at puberty level facilitate their development in reasoning capacity in terms of moral values.

With respect to Taveira & Moreno (2003), the development of abstract thought among adolescents enhances their capacity to explore various religious matters as they seek to establish the best spiritual beliefs to associate themselves with.

According to Head (1997), about 60% of adolescents, their identification with a particular religion is a fundamental achievement in their lives. Considering the impact of social relationships among individuals, their tendency to associate themselves with religion belonging to their treasured social identities has been prevalent.

Though many adolescents have been revealed to associate themselves with childhood beliefs, the process of exploration in achieving identities in religious beliefs remains a significant for them.

As revealed by Boan & Piquette-Tomei (2009), the failure of parents to create conducive environment for children in terms of creativity inhibit the child’s potential. When the parents are not creative themselves, it usually becomes hard for the children to develop creativity, since they tend to consider their parents as the ultimate mentors for their life.

Considering that the family is the first social group that individuals interact with, much of the families’ core values and behaviors are acquired by these children. This forms a basis for individuals’ development of identity with their families or relatives.

As noted by Taveira & Moreno (2003), a family environment that inhibits the creativity of children has a diverse impact on the development of skills even beyond creativity.

For instance, parents who are extremely strict to their children may make them develop hostile behaviors, since such children will tend to identify themselves with the behavior of their parents.

Though many children have their goals and objectives that they wish to fulfill in their future lives, it is not until adolescence life that their identity becomes clearly developed. As reported by Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), many adolescents usually pursue career goals and objectives which align with their career identities.

For instance, a young girl who is fond of science related subjects may have strong desires to identify herself with careers that are related to science like astronomy, teaching career and medical practitioners among others. According to Kroger (2007), there are three main stages of career development among teenagers.

The first phase is ‘crystallization’, which is associated with tentative choosing of specific aspects related to their treasured identities. At this stage, the young adolescents may engage in pursuing a variety of career options which facilitates the identification of their core competencies in the chosen areas.

In this stage, Boan & Piquette-Tomei (2009) considers the ability of teens to choose specific subjects which they are more interested in and wish to base their future careers on them.

The second stage of career development is ‘specification’, which is associated with specific choosing or subject areas with respect to their desired careers (Taveira & Moreno, 2003).

At this stage, individuals tend to choose specified study areas in which they are most interested in, so that they can identify themselves with them in their future career life. Since this phase happens at later stage of adolescence, it forms a strong base for incorporation of the personal interests in their life careers.

On completing all the training courses relevant to the identified careers, individuals enter into the field to practice their gained skills, a phase called ‘implementation’. Implementation is the last stage which involves actual engagement of individuals in their long-desired careers or jobs with regard to personal values and desires.

At this stage, the various aspects of the chosen career become part of them and subsequently start identifying themselves with such careers.

As revealed by Clarke (2005), identity development at adolescence stage acts as one of the fundamental aspects of adulthood development among individuals. During their adolescence stage, individuals tend to use their own understanding to build foundations for constructing their future identities.

More specifically, adolescents tend to develop lifespan creations which links their identity development and the ‘adult-self’.

It is quite important to note that, ‘lifespan construct’ is an integral of past, present and future experiences and cultural practices to facilitate personal identification, which includes scenario and social aspects of identity development.

The scenario aspects include individuals’ expectations of what they will become or do in their future dates. On the other hand, the social aspect links all previous events and the future aspirations to come up with more defined identity.

Generally, identity development is a lifelong journey integrated with a variety of experiences and cultures among individuals. Though the process of identity development is similar, the overall outcome of such individuals is ultimately different since different individuals have diverse preferences and desires.

Though adolescence stage forms a basis for the development of identity among individuals, various stages have been reveled to offer opportunities for reevaluation of the desired goals and objectives.

As noted by Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), identity development is a multi-dimensional process that offers individuals with specific and focal concentration on particular aspects of culture of experiences for perfections, resulting into self actualization.

Question 1: What do you aspire to be in your future life?
Question 2: What subjects do you find the most interesting in your studies?
Question 3: What is the motivation behind your intense interest in these subjects?
Question 4: Does you parents follow up your learning studies at home?
Question 5: What are your views on your parents’ engagement in your learning? Are they significant in your career development?
Question 6: What are some of the challenges that you often face in your self actualization?
Question 7: Are teachers and peers significant in your career ambitions?
Question 8: Why do you think so?
Question 9: Among the three groups, that is parents, teachers and peers, which one do you think has influenced your thinking and reasoning patterns most?
Question 10: What are the reasons for your perception?

According to the 15 year-old girl, her future-life aspirations is to become an aviation engineer. As it was revealed, the girl’s most interesting studies are science-based, in which the most treasured subjects were physics and mathematics.

Being an adolescent, the girl’s ability to reason and think abstractively seems to have been developing effectively and efficiently. One of the main motivating agents for the girl’s aspirations in becoming an aviation engineer is largely based on her father’s encouragements to pursue aviation technology.

More so, the girl revealed how she finds it easy to understand the concepts in mathematics and physics, making her develop innate interest towards the careers related to these study areas (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

On the other hand, the 14 year-old boy revealed how he is much interested in becoming a lawyer in his future life. According to the boy, political science and constitutional affairs are the most treasured areas of specialization.

At this age of development, the boy showed a lot of interest in understanding legal matters associated with social interactions in the society. Particularly, abstract reasoning various legal proceeding associated with social interactions in this boy seemed to have developed well.

As revealed by this interviewee’s interest and motivation towards legal matters was attributed by his brother who was one of the prospective lawyers in the state. In addition, the boy revealed how his deceased father used to encourage him to follow the foot-prints of his brother.

As a result, the boy’s interest in identifying himself with lawyer career has largely been part of his aspirations and ambitions (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

As revealed by the 15 year-old girl, her parents were actively involved in her studies since her father was occasionally having a talk with her about her studies and future career.

Due to her high concern of her parents towards her education, the girl seemed quite motivated in her studies, which inherently reflected her identity development towards scientific innovations.

According to the fifteen-year old girl, her parental involvement in her studies have largely impacted her in her concentration in science subjects in order to fulfill her fathers desire oh her becoming an aviation engineer.

Particularly, the involvement of this girl’s parents in her studies has played a very significant role in determining her decision to pursue in aviation engineering for her career (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

On the other hand, the 14 year-old boy revealed how his parents have been playing significant role in the decisions he take about her studies. Though her father is deceased, this interviewee revealed how the father used to encourage him to pursue engineering career in his future life.

As a result, the boy’s interest in legal studies and political science has largely been triggered by his father’s encouragements to pursue the lawyer career. More so, the boy revealed how her mother never ceases to check over his books to see how he performs.

It is this direct parental concern over his education that has facilitated the development of high interests in legal studies in this boy.

Precisely, the impact of parental encouragements in the boy’s preferences and wishes in studies that have enhanced his deep interests in identifying himself with career in the judicial matters in his future life (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

As revealed by the 15 year-old girl, one of the main challenges that she was encountering in her self actualization is that, some of her peer group members used to discourage her a lot on her decisions to pursue on science subjects.

Since mathematics and physics are perceived as quite challenging subjects for females, the girl has greatly been finding it a bit challenging to cope with her peers’ discouragements. However, the girl revealed how her ambitions are strongly embedded on her parents’ powerful influences on her career development.

On this basis, the challenges the girl was facing in her ambitions to attain self actualization through succeeding in aviation studies have largely been countered by her parents’ strong influences on her academic life (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

Further, the 14 year-old revealed that, one of the main challenges he has been facing in his ambitions to realize self actualization is discouragements from his tutor. As the boy reported, his tutor never recommended anything positive on her performance, which makes him afraid of his competence in comprehending legal issues.

Particularly, the lack of positive remarks from his tutor has always been a challenging issue in this boy’s efforts to acquire self actualization through his success in pursuing political science and judicial studies and subsequently become a lawyer.

However, the boy has been able to counter this challenge by reflecting on his outstanding performance in subjects related to judicial matters. More so, the encouragements from his brother have been quite influential in his ambitions to develop successful identity with career in judicial matters (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

In addition, the two respondents revealed how peers and teachers have been of great influence in their desired career development. According to the 14 year-old boy, his teacher has negatively been influencing his ambitions to become a lawyer.

By being non-encouraging and absolutely not recommending any potential ability in the boy, the teacher has been acting as a strong barrier for the boy’s career development.

On the other hand, the 15 year-old girl revealed how her physics teacher has been encouraging her to pursue science related careers in her future studies, since she had the capacity to succeed in the subject area.

However, most of the girl’s peers have been quite discouraging in her ambitions to pursue science-related career. On the other hand, the 14 year-old boy revealed how his peer group members have not been of any influence on his career development (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

Among parents, teachers, and peer group members, the 14 year-old boy revealed how parental influences are the most remarkable in his preferences to become a lawyer.

Since his teacher has not been of any motivation in his ambitions in academic life, the boy revealed how his decision to pursue judicial studies for his career has largely been attributed to his parents’ encouragements.

Similarly, the 15 year-old girl reported how her parental efforts in her future career are more recommendable than her teachers’. In addition, the girl revealed how her peers are the least influential in her ambitions to identify herself with aviation technology in her career life (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

As revealed by Kail & Cavanaugh (2001), young people tend to choose their future careers with regard to special values associated with the chosen career. More precisely motivation is one of the most significant aspects facilitating the development of career among young individuals at their adolescence stage.

As noted by Germeijs & Verschueren (2006), orientation on career choice is one of the most important aspects or career development among adolescents.

With respect to the interviewee’s motivation in their specific career preferences, parental encouragements and other motivating factors have been found quite important in the adolescents’ positive attitude towards the subjects they consider as helping them build their careers on.

By having active parents’ in their education, the participants’ attitude towards the preferred careers can be attributed to external forces, rather than their own efforts.

Quite importantly, protocol is one of the most facilitators of career identity development among adolescents. With the perception of their parents influences as the most reliable and useful for their careers, the interviewees in this study can be described to be lacking the exposure to explore careers on their own.

Since self exploration is one of the major identity developments among adolescents as they advance to adulthood, there is likelihood of these two interviewees to change their careers after they get exposed to high levels of exploration.

Meanwhile, there are chances of their attachment to their career dreams in cases where they fail to get exposed much to a wider range of diverse knowledge which may sway their careers (Clarke, 2005).

According to Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), successful development of career identity requires skills needed for exploring and comparing various alternatives at their disposal. In this case, individuals who fail to be exposed to situations of self exploration to compare various alternatives emerge out as having instabilities in their future careers.

Though the development of career identity is largely controlled by the social environment among adolescents, their exposure to wider range of learning and exploration skills is quite significant.

Considering the case between the two interviewees in this study, their lack of exposure to acquire self-exploration skills may result into their careers being faced by various problems.

This is on the basis that, such individuals will come to explore other alternatives at their later career life, which may adversely affect their efficiency in such careers.

As noted by Head (1997), junior adolescents tend to identify themselves with careers which entice their most treasured people like relatives and teachers. As a result of future exploration of various alternatives, such individuals may uphold these careers or change them according to the influences they get on the course of their exploration.

As reported by Kroger (2007), the tendency of adolescents to explore the world through abstract reasoning is one of the major exploration aspects as they decide the specific careers they would like to associate themselves with.

Though at later stages adolescents are much influenced by their empirical experience with the world, much of their preferences is large embedded on their family and social-life orientations.

As it has been observed in the thirteen-year old boy, his family perceptions of judicial studies careers as the best can be attributed to his decision to pursue law in his future career.

Similarly, the fifteen-year old girl seems to be much influenced by his father to consider aviation engineering as her future career. On this basis, the impact of parental involvement in the development of career identity among adolescents remains quite remarkable among many teenagers.

As held by Taveira & Moreno (2003) adolescents at their senior stage of becoming adults become active explorers of the available alternatives in their lives, especially for their careers.

This is reflected by their tendency to start engaging in new beliefs and practices as they try out various social opportunities and alternatives at their disposal. Though most of their practices are largely controlled by their social orientations in life, many of them tend to be swayed away by new influences.

As a result, their tendency to change their previously established career-dreams may be adversely affected, resulting into them choosing new careers. Since the interviewees in this study are still in their early development stages of their adolescence, crystallization seems to dominate most of their career identity attributes.

As they advance to their late adolescence stage, much of influences from the real world experiences are expected to facilitate their career choices, as they engage in ‘specialization’.

Particularly, Boan & Piquette-Tomei (2009) considers free will of expression among adolescents as they try to associate themselves with the societal norms and values in their efforts to acquire self actualization.

As noted by Clarke (2005), the understanding of adolescent development is a key aspect of consideration when creating career planning models for teenagers. In this case, parental and teachers’ involvement plays very important roles in facilitating the development of the most effective careers capable of meeting the needs of the adolescents in their future life.

Since at the stage of adolescence individuals’ cognitive ability is high, their ability to think on their careers and their various aspects of social becomes clearly elaborated through abstract reasoning.

In this regard, the tendency of the interviewees’ parents to encourage them to get engrossed in specific careers makes sense in the way parents usually have overall understanding of their children and usually want the best for them.

Through various encouragements they get from their parents, there is high likelihood of the interviewees used in this study to strongly remain embedded in their anticipated careers.

Since career formation is essentially enhanced through continued interests, relevant tasks and discussions should be maintained among the adolescents. As Kail & Cavanaugh (2001) argues, adolescents should be engaged in more practical learning and activities which relate to their anticipated careers in order to enhance advancement of career skills as they venture to specialization.

This practice is quite important in the sense that, advanced exploration and perfection is easily achieved through practice, promoting employability among the adolescents.

As observed in this study, the ability of teachers and parents of the 15 year-old girl to encourage her and subsequently help her realize her potential in science-related subjects seems quite appropriate to enhance self exploration of the anticipated career of aviation engineering.

Since career forms one of the most fundamental aspects of self actualization, Germeijs & Verschueren (2006) reveals how career identity is significant among adolescents. As Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002) holds, many adults tend to identify themselves with their occupations, an indication of how careers are impactful among the people.

On this basis, nurturing of career identity among adolescents seems a very useful strategy, since such individuals will be able to employ the knowledge they acquire in their early life to innovate in their careers.

Particularly, when individuals realize their potential and abilities in their early life, chances of remarkable success in their future endeavors are high.

This is on the basis that, repeated usage of knowledge related to their preferred careers and subsequently engage in empirical experiences of such careers establishes strong bases for successful career development in them.

On this basis, the tendency of the two interviewees in this study to be engaged in career choosing at their early life will enhance success in their future endeavors, since they will sequentially gain exposure and experience in the filed related to their careers.

As it has been revealed, career identity development is one of fundamental aspects of personal development among adolescents, as it culminates to self actualization. With respect to the interviewed teenagers in this study, it has clearly bee exposed on how significant and influential parental and teachers impacts are on career development among the studied teenagers.

Though they are at their early age of development, their close engagement with their family members seems to be one of the core factors facilitating their specific career identity development.

Though science-related are considered as highly challenging to females, the 15 year-old girl interviewed is brought out as identifying herself with engineering career as a result of influence from her parents and teachers.

As it has been noted, cognitive development among teenagers facilitates their ability to identify themselves with various careers. In this regard, culture and social relationships in which such individuals interact with influence their career development largely.

Basically many adolescents are brought out as having the capacity to develop specific attitudes towards a particular career, in which they prefer to identify themselves with in their adulthood.

In this regard, explorations and experiences are quite significant among such adolescents, since they facilitate skills and knowledge perfection in their areas of specialization in their future careers.

Boan, S. & Piquette-Tomei, N. (2009). Adolescent Development and Career Planning in Schools. Web.

Clarke, E. (2005). Identity Development – Aspects of Identity . Web.

Ferrer-Wreder, L. et al. (2002). Promoting Identity Development in Marginalized Youth. Journal of Adolescent Research, 17: 168-187.

Germeijs, V. & Verschueren, K. (2006). High School Students’ Career Decision-Making Process: a Longitudinal Study of one Choice. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68: 189-204.

Head, J. (1997). Working With adolescents: Constructing Identity. London: Falmer Press.

Kail, R. & Cavanaugh, J. (2001). Human Development: A Lifespan View , 2nd edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishers.

Kroger, J. (2007). Identity Development: Adolescence through Adult-hood. New York: Sage Publications, Inc.

Taveira, D., & Moreno, M. (2003). Guidance theory and practice: The status of career Exploration. British Journal of Guidance and Counseling , 31(2): 189-208.

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Black Girls' STEM Identity and Persistence: Understanding Developmental Processes in Context

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Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
This dissertation explored the psychological and contextual factors that shape Black girls’ STEM identity and persistence from adolescence to emerging adulthood. Leveraging quantitative data from the High School Longitudinal Study, the first study investigated the developmental influence of Black girls’ math/science motivational beliefs in high school on aspirations and post-secondary persistence. Results also revealed the differential ways math and science identity and self-efficacy develop over time. Utilizing a qualitative design, the second study explored adolescent Black girls lived experiences, their levels of engagement in STEM, and the role of parents in their positive development. By centering Black girls’ voices, the second study illuminated how Black girls negotiate their multiple marginalized identities and how their identities are shaped by their home and school environments. Findings highlighted that Black girls are aware of the difficulties involved in going into STEM for Black girls and women, but this awareness was coupled with the parental support and resources that fueled their confidence to aspire anyway. Taken together, this dissertation advanced current knowledge of Black girls identity development, contextualized their math and science experiences, and provided tangible recommendations to strengthen family-school-community partnerships.
Black Girls
Developmental psychology
Identity Development
Parental Socialization
https://doi.org/10.17615/v0nf-hx58
Dissertation
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Cooper, Shauna M
Kurtz-Costes, Beth
Griffin, Dana
Else-Quest, Nicole
Hussong, Andrea
Telzer, Eva
Doctor of Philosophy
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School

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The Silent Symphony of Sleep: Harmonizing School Schedules with Adolescent Biology

This essay about advocating for later school start times examines the intersection of adolescent biology and education. It emphasizes the importance of aligning school schedules with the natural sleep patterns of students, citing scientific evidence of the benefits for academic performance and well-being. While logistical challenges exist, the essay highlights the potential for creative solutions and underscores the profound impact of later start times on student development. Through a metaphorical exploration of sleep as a “silent symphony,” the essay urges schools to prioritize student needs and orchestrate positive change in the educational landscape.

How it works

In the labyrinth of educational reform, one often-overlooked corridor is the timing of school bells. Yet, this seemingly mundane aspect of school life holds the key to unlocking a symphony of benefits for adolescent development and academic achievement. The crescendo of voices advocating for later school start times reverberates with scientific evidence and echoes of concern for students’ well-being. In this exploration, we embark on a journey through the labyrinth, guided by the flickering torchlight of research, to unravel the mysteries of adolescent sleep and its profound implications for education.

At the heart of the matter lies the enigmatic dance between biology and society. Adolescence is a period of metamorphosis, marked by the emergence of new identities and the evolution of internal clocks. Like nocturnal butterflies emerging from cocoons, adolescents experience a shift in their sleep patterns, gravitating towards later bedtimes and wake-up times. This phenomenon, known as the “night owl” effect, is not mere caprice but a symphony orchestrated by the delicate interplay of hormones and neural pathways. By recognizing and honoring this biological rhythm, we can compose a melody of synchronicity between school schedules and adolescent sleep needs.

The first movement in this symphony of sleep is the overture of scientific evidence. Like notes on a staff, studies have documented the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on adolescent health and academic performance. From impaired cognitive function to diminished emotional resilience, the consequences of insufficient sleep reverberate through the halls of academia. Research suggests that delaying school start times can mitigate these effects, offering students a lifeline to improved well-being and academic success. By tuning into the evidence-based melody of later start times, schools can strike a chord of harmony between biology and education.

Yet, the journey towards later start times is not without its obstacles. Like obstacles strewn along the path, logistical challenges loom large, casting shadows of doubt on the feasibility of change. Concerns about transportation, extracurricular activities, and parental schedules echo through the corridors of bureaucracy, threatening to derail progress. However, just as a skilled conductor guides an orchestra through complex compositions, strategic planning and creative solutions can navigate the logistical landscape, ensuring a smooth transition to later start times. By harmonizing the needs of students with the realities of school operations, we can conduct a symphony of change that resonates with the entire educational community.

Beyond the realm of logistics lies the crescendo of student well-being. Like a delicate melody carried on the breeze, the emotional and mental health of adolescents hangs in the balance. In the cacophony of modern life, sleep serves as a sanctuary, offering respite from the storms of stress and uncertainty. Yet, for many students, this sanctuary remains elusive, obscured by the shadows of early mornings and academic pressures. By extending the hand of compassion through later start times, schools can create a safe harbor for students, fostering resilience and nurturing holistic development. In this harmonious environment, students can flourish, their potential unfurling like petals in the dawn’s embrace.

In the grand finale of our exploration, we return to the central theme: the silent symphony of sleep. Like a conductor guiding an orchestra through a masterpiece, schools have the power to shape the rhythm of students’ lives. By embracing the melody of later start times, we can orchestrate a symphony of benefits that reverberates through the halls of education. From improved academic performance to enhanced well-being, the harmonious chords of change hold the promise of a brighter future for generations to come. As we take our final bow, let us remember the transformative power of sleep and the profound impact it holds for students, educators, and society as a whole.

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Article contents

Introduction

Erikson’s Psychosocial Orientation

Erikson’s Psychosocial Approach and Marcia’s Identity Status Model

Personality and Behavioral Correlates of the Identity Statuses

Self-Esteem

Locus of Control

Authoritarianism

Ego Development

Moral Reasoning

Additional Personality and Behavioral Variables

Relationships and the Identity Statuses

Identity Status Change from Adolescence Through Adulthood

Events Associated with Identity Status Change

Identity Development in Adulthood

What the Identity Statuses Mean

Conclusions

Further Reading

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Adolescent Identity Development: What Do We Know?

Identity Research and the Neglected 95 Percent

Globalization and Identity Development

The Limitations of Conventional Identity Development Research

Is Identity a Crisis of Adolescence?

The Future of Identity Research: The Promise of the Narrative Approach

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6.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence and Identity

Physical Changes in Adolescence

Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Social Development in Adolescence

Developing Moral Reasoning: Kohlberg’s Theory

Video Clip: People Being Interviewed About Kohlberg’s Stages

Key Takeaways

Exercises and Critical Thinking

Identity Development

Erikson’s Identity vs. Role Confusion

Marcia’s Identity Statuses

Supporting identity development

Dynamics of Identity Development in Adolescence: A Decade in Review

Elisabeth L. de Moor

INTRAINDIVIDUAL PROCESSES AND INTERINDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Beyond Mean Level Identity Development

Intraindividual associations among identity processes

Development of identity in relation to life transitions and events

Micro‐processes of identity

Daily emotions and identity processes

Narratives as micro‐processes

The role of variability in the development of the self

IDENTITY AND PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT

Within‐Person Associations of Identity and Psychosocial Adjustment

IDENTITY AND RELATIONSHIPS

Family Relationships and Identity Processes

Peer Relationships and Identity Processes

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Psychosocial Development Research in Adolescence: a Scoping Review

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Identity Development Process Essay

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Black Girls' STEM Identity and Persistence: Understanding Developmental Processes in Context

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The Silent Symphony of Sleep: Harmonizing School Schedules with Adolescent Biology