16.1 Identity

Psychosocial development during adolescence is often understood to be a search for a consistent understanding of oneself. Self-expression and self-concept become increasingly important at puberty, as the egocentrism described in Chapter 15 illustrates. Each young person wants to know, “Who am I?”

According to Erik Erikson, life’s fifth psychosocial crisis is identity versus role confusion: The complexities of finding one’s own identity are the primary task of adolescence (Erikson, 1968). He said this crisis is resolved with identity achievement, when adolescents have reconsidered the goals and values of their parents and culture, accepting some and discarding others, forging their own identity.

The result is neither wholesale rejection nor unquestioning acceptance of social norms (Côté, 2009). With their new autonomy, teenagers maintain continuity with the past so that they can move to the future. Each person must achieve his or her own identity. Simply adopting parental norms does not work, because the social context of each generation differs, and everyone has a unique combination of genes and alleles.

Not Yet Achieved

Erikson’s insights have inspired thousands of researchers. Notable among those he influenced was James Marcia, who described and measured four specific ways young people cope with the identity crisis: (1) role confusion, (2) foreclosure, (3) moratorium, and finally (4) identity achievement (Marcia, 1966).

Over the past half-century, major psychosocial shifts have lengthened the duration of adolescence and made identity achievement more complex (Côté, 2006; Kroger et al., 2010; Meeus, 2011). However, the three waystations on the road to identity achievement still seem evident.

Role confusion is the opposite of identity achievement. It is characterized by lack of commitment to any goals or values. It is sometimes called identity diffusion to emphasize that some adolescents seem diffuse, unfocused, and unconcerned about their future (Phillips & Pittman, 2007).

No Role Confusion These are high school students in Junior ROTC training camp. For many youths who cannot afford college, the military offers a temporary identity, complete with haircut, uniform, and comrades.

© SARA CALDWELL/STAFF/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE/ZUMAPRESS.COM/ALAMY

Even usual social demands—putting away clothes, making friends, completing school assignments, and thinking about college or career—are beyond role-confused adolescents. Instead, they might sleep too much, immerse themselves in video games or television, and turn from one flirtation to another. Their thinking is disorganized, they procrastinate, and they avoid issues and actions (Côté, 2009).

Identity foreclosure occurs when, in order to avoid the confusion of not knowing who they are, young people accept traditional roles and values (Marcia, 1966; Marcia et al., 1993). They might follow customs transmitted from their parents or culture, never exploring alternatives. Or they might foreclose on an oppositional, negative identity—the direct opposite of whatever their parents want—again without thoughtful questioning. Foreclosure is comfortable. For many, it is a temporary shelter, a time for commitment to a particular identity, soon followed by more exploration (Meeus, 2011).

A more mature shelter is the moratorium, a Timeout that includes some exploration, either in breadth (trying many things) or in depth (following one path after a tentative, temporary commitment) (Meeus, 2011). In high school, a student might become focused on playing in a band, not expecting this to be a lifelong career; in the next stage, emerging adulthood, moratoria might lead to signing up for the army. Moriatoria are more common at age 19 than younger, because some maturity is required (Kroger et al., 2010).

Several aspects of the search for identity, especially sexual and vocational identity, have become more arduous than they were when Erikson described them, and establishing a personal identity is more difficult. Fifty years ago, the drive to become independent and autonomous was thought to be the “key normative psychosocial task of adolescence” (Zimmer-Gembeck & Collins, 2003, p. 177). Adolescents still begin the search for identity, but a review of longitudinal “studies among adults revealed that identity is a life-long process” (Meeus, 2011, p. 88).

Four Arenas of Identity Formation

Erikson (1968) highlighted four aspects of identity: religious, political, vocational, and sexual. Terminology and emphasis have changed for all four, as has timing. In fact, if an 18-year-old is no longer open to new possibilities in any of these four areas, that may indicate foreclosure, not achievement—and identity might shift again.

None of these four identity statuses occurs in social isolation: Parents and peers are influential, as detailed later in this chapter, and the ever-changing chronosystem (historical context) makes identity dynamic. Nonetheless, each of these four arenas remains integral to adolescence. [Lifespan Link: Discussion of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological-systems approach, which includes the chronosystem, is in Chapter 1.]

For most adolescents, their religious identity is similar to that of their parents and community. Few adolescents totally reject religion if they’ve grown up following a particular faith, especially if they have a good relationship with their parents (Kim-Spoon et al., 2012).

Past parental practices influence adolescent religious identity, although some adolescents express that identity in ways that their parents did not anticipate: A Muslim girl might start to wear a headscarf, a Catholic boy might study for the priesthood, or a Baptist teenager might join a Pentecostal youth group, each surprising their less devout parents.

Such new practices are relatively minor, not evidence of a totally new religious identity. Almost no young Muslims convert to Judaism, and almost no teenage Baptists become Hindu—although such conversions can occur in adulthood. Most adolescents question specific beliefs as their cognitive processes allow more analytic thinking, but few teenagers have a crisis of faith unless unusual circumstances propel it (King & Roeser, 2009).

Same Situation, Far Apart: Chosen, Saved, or Just Another Teenager? An Orthodox Jewish boy lighting Hanukkah candles in Israel and an evangelical Christian girl at a religious rally in Michigan are much alike, despite distance and appearance. Many teenagers express such evident religious devotion that outsiders consider them fanatics.

HANAN ISACHAR/GETTY IMAGES
JIM WEST/THE IMAGE WORKS

Rebels Not Prophets Teenagers are often on the forefront of political activism, especially if their parents have instilled values that make them want to do something dramatic to help earthquake victims, or reverse abortion laws, or, as with these Egyptians in Tahrir Square, topple a repressive regime. However, their political sentiments are not yet the product of their own identity achievement: Given the cognition of adolescence as described in Chapter 15, joining a group protest may be based more on emotion than analysis.

SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES

Parents also influence their children’s political identity. In the twenty-first century in the United States, party identification is weakening among adults, with more of them saying they are independent rather than Republican, Democratic, or some other party. Their teenage children reflect this new independence; some proudly say they do not care about politics, actually echoing their parents without realizing it. In any case, their political leanings are likely to continue in adulthood (Côté, 2009).

A word here about political terrorism and religious extremism: Those under age 30 are often on the front lines of terrorism or are converts to groups that their elders consider cults. Fanatical political and religious movements have much in common—age of new adherents is one of them (L. L. Dawson, 2010).

However, adolescents are rarely drawn to these groups unless personal loneliness or family background (such as a parent’s death caused by an opposing group) compels them. It is myth that every teenager is potentially a suicide bomber or a willing martyr. The risk-taking of extreme political or religious groups is more attractive to emerging adults than to adolescents.

Vocational identity originally meant envisioning oneself as a worker in a particular occupation. Choosing a future career made sense for teenagers a century ago, when most girls became housewives and most boys became farmers, small businessmen, or factory workers. Those few in professions were generalists (doctors did family medicine, lawyers handled all kinds of cases, teachers taught all subjects).

Obviously, early vocational identity is no longer appropriate. No teenager can be expected to choose among the tens of thousands of careers; most adults change vocations (not just employers) many times. Vocational identity takes years to establish, and most jobs demand quite specific skills and knowledge that are best learned on the job.

Although some adults hope that employment will keep teenagers out of trouble as they identify as workers, the opposite is more likely (Staff & Schulenberg, 2010). Adolescents who work more than 20 hours a week during the school year tend to quit school, fight with parents, smoke cigarettes, and hate their jobs—both when they are teenagers and when they become adults. This research controlled for SES. Typically, teenagers with a paycheck spend their wages on clothes, cars, drugs, and concerts, not on supporting their families or saving for college. Grades fall: Employment interferes with homework and school attendance (see Figure 16.1).

Don’t Think About It There was a time when high school employment correlated with lifetime success. This is no longer true. The surprise is that even wanting a full-time job (and the extra income it would bring) reduces achievement—or is it the other way around? The scores in the chart above are z-scores, or standard scores, which show the difference from the group average. A z-score of 2 is a dramatic difference; a z-score of 3 is extreme.

Source: Staff et al., 2009.

Achieving sexual identity is also a lifelong task, in part because norms of sexuality and attitudes about it keep changing (see Figure 16.2). Increasing numbers of young adults are single, gay, and cohabiting, providing teenagers with new role models and choices and thus making sexual identity more confusing.

Young and Old Everyone knows that attitudes about same-sex relationships are changing. Less well known is that cohort differences are greater than the historical shifts.

Source: Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, July 31, 2012.

A half-century ago, Erikson and other theorists thought of the two sexes as opposites (P. Y. Miller & Simon, 1980). They assumed that adolescents who were confused about sexual identity would soon adopt “proper” male or female roles (Erikson, 1968; A. Freud, 1958/2000). Adolescence was once a time for “gender intensification,” when people increasingly identified as male or female—no longer (Priess et al., 2009).

As you remember from Chapter 10, for social scientists sex and sexual refer to biological characteristics, whereas gender refers to cultural and social attributes that differentiate males and females. Erikson’s term sexual identity has been replaced by gender identity (Denny & Pittman, 2007), which refers primarily to a person’s self-definition as male or female. Gender identity often (not always) begins with the person’s biological sex and leads to a gender role that society considers appropriate.

Who and Where? As Erikson explained in 1968, the pride of self-discovery is universal for adolescents: These could be teenagers anywhere. But a closer look reveals gay teenagers in Atlanta, Georgia, where this march would not have occurred 50 years ago.

ROBIN NELSON/ZUMAPRESS.COM/NEWSCOM

Gender roles once meant that only men were employed; they were breadwinners (good providers) and women were housewives (married to their houses). As women entered the labor market, gender roles expanded but were still apparent (nurse/doctor, secretary/businessman, pink collar/blue collar). That is changing—with the degree, rate, and direction of change varying dramatically from culture to culture. There is no culture, however, that does not distinguish male and female roles.

What also has not changed is the adolescent’s experience of a strong sexual drive as hormone levels increase. As Erikson recognized, many are confused regarding when, how, and with whom to express those drives. Some adolescents foreclose by exaggerating male or female roles; others seek a moratorium by avoiding all sexual contact. If adolescents feel their gender identity is fragile, they are more likely to aspire to a gender-stereotypic vocation (Sinclair & Carlsson, 2013), which is another reason why settling on a vocational identity during adolescence may be premature.