12.2: Identity Development in Context in Early Adulthood
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Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Apply Marcia’s framework to identity development in early adulthood
- Explain the concept of intersectionality as it relates to identity development
- Describe the continuing development of ethnoracial identity, gender and sexual identity, and religious identity in early adulthood
Growing up in a predominantly White community in Tennessee, Logan Eggleston had gotten used to just ignoring racist comments. She dominated as a player on both her high school basketball and volleyball teams and finished high school a year early. It wasn’t until she became a college volleyball player at the University of Texas that Logan learned to embrace her identity and voice as a Black female student athlete. With the support and mentorship of her racially diverse team, Logan became the president of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. In that role, she helped lead a student movement to have campus buildings renamed and statues replaced if they honored past racist leaders. She also worked with the UT athletic department and community members to create organizations that give back to diverse and underserved communities in Austin. In 2023, Logan was named the NCAA Woman of the Year for her achievements in academics, athletics, leadership, and community service (Kumar, 2022).
Logan’s experience reflects the significance that early adult transitions have on continued identity development after adolescence. Much like personality, our identity continues to evolve over time to adapt to changing roles and contexts.
Applying Marcia’s Identity Framework
In much the same way that personality traits may mature in the context of the development of self, early adulthood appears to be an important time for identity consolidation (McLean & Syed, 2015, p. 67), a concept consistent with Marcia’s developmental identity typology. Rather than use Erikson’s stage of identity vs. confusion, Marcia (1966) incorporated the processes Erikson described as prerequisite to identity attainment--exploration and commitment--to identify four possible statuses of identity development. These statuses (introduced in Chapter 10 Social and Emotional Development in Adolescence (Ages 12 to 18)) are moratorium, foreclosure, diffusion, and achievement.
Consistent with Erikson’s theory regarding the necessity of both exploration and commitment to identity attainment, those in the identity achieved status were considered farthest along in their identity development. Those in moratorium were on the right path, whereas those who were diffused or foreclosed were considered developmentally ill-equipped for the tasks of early adulthood (Marcia, 1967).
But even for those who enter adulthood having achieved a healthy sense of identity, part of the challenge of identity is to be able to integrate the various types of identity in a way that makes sense to the person’s sense of self. For example, how can someone reconcile career ambition by taking a job in a city far away from home, while also valuing ties to family? How might someone reconcile taking frequent flights while staying true to environmentalist principles? According to Marcia (2002), the developmental tasks of early adulthood, such as completing higher education, leaving the parental home or hometown, finding love, and pursuing a career, can cause a disruption to identity. Adults must therefore periodically reflect on and reformulate their values and goals to regain equilibrium and the status of identity achievement. This ongoing process of role change and reflection can create cycles in which young adults experience moratorium-achievement-moratorium-achievement as they consider how new roles, responsibilities, and contexts may redefine their existing identity (Stephen et al., 1992; McLean & Syed, 2015).
Given that the roles and contexts encountered in early adulthood may vary among individuals and even historically, it is not surprising that research attempting to track universal trajectories of identity development across early adulthood yields inconsistent results (Luyckx et al., 2013; Mannerström et al., 2017). For example, the number of adults with diffused identity status increases during economic recessions, when efforts to complete developmental tasks such as buying a home and finding employment may be hampered by broader economic conditions (Fadjukoff et al., 2010). And while finding employment in early adulthood does not predict consistent changes to a young adult’s overall identity status, becoming a parent does predict an increase in overall identity commitment. Researchers suggest that, instead of trying to generalize patterns of general identity development, analyzing why and when adults experience changes to identity process and status within specific identity domains provides a clearer and more nuanced understanding of this part of young adulthood (Mannerström et al., 2019).
Identity in Context
The value of considering the interactions of a person’s identity domains is reflected in the intersectional approach to psychology. Civil rights advocate Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) coined the term intersectionality as a framework for understanding the way people simultaneously experience multiple aspects of their identity and their associated privileges or discrimination. For example, a Korean American woman's life experience is different from a Biracial American woman’s, producing racial variations in the experience of womanhood.
Recognizing intersectional identity especially matters when one or more of a person’s identity domains are marginalized. Goffman (1963) asserts that people with stigmatized identities may feel burdened with the additional work of impression management, as they constantly try to offset negative stereotypes during their daily interactions. This attempt to manage other’s expectations across changing social contexts can inhibit a person’s perceived freedom of choice in their personal development and hamper their identity development (Erikson, 1968). When considered in context, identity development is just as much about who you do want to be (and be perceived as) as who you do not want to be (or be seen as) (MClean et al., 2021; Marcus & Nurius, 1986). As you read this section, consider how the domains of ethnicity and race, gender and sexuality, and religion, intersect to create varied developmental experiences for people as they begin adulthood in a variety of social contexts.
Link to Learning
Watch this TED Talk about intersectionality and its application to current events and social issues by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw.
Ethnoracial Identity
As ethnic and racial diversity within the United States increase, young adults are more likely to encounter individuals different from themselves (Menchaca et al., 2023) (Figure 12.10). Aspects of the self, such as personality and identity, help us to understand and integrate these diverse social encounters into our personal narrative or life story (McAdams, 1995). An individual’s ethnoracial identity is an umbrella term used to capture both racial and ethnic aspects of our identity. Personality psychologist Robert M. Sellers asserts that, within our developing life experiences, we often find opportunities for aspects of our ethnoracial identity to change. Some of these aspects are identity salience, meaning the relevance of our identity within a given situation, identity centrality, or the importance of our identity to our overall sense of self, and identity regard, which expresses how positively or negatively we feel about our identity (Sellers et al., 1998; Quinn & Chaudoir, 2009; Yip et al., 2019).
Ethnoracial identity is more salient for ethnic and racial minorities, who are more likely than their White counterparts to report instances of differential treatment based on their ethnoracial identity. Consequently, in emerging adulthood, those who identify with minority ethnic or racial groups are more likely to be in the identity moratorium and identity achieved statuses regarding their ethnoracial identity than White young adults, who are less likely to have explored or achieved this aspect of their identity (Syed & Juang, 2014). Compared to middle-aged and older adults, young adults in general are less likely to have explored or achieved their ethnoracial identity; they show more transition in this identity status than older adults (Maehler, 2022).
Intersections and Contexts: Exploring Black Girl Magic in First-Generation College Women
In 2021, Boston Globe columnist Jenee Osterheldt wrote: “Black women are not mythical. Nor superhuman. Our magic is in our realness, our love, and the way we rally around one another” (Osterheldt, 2021). But what happens to that magic when Black women who are first-generation college students enter predominately White college institutions?
According to researchers Qua’Asia Williams, Brittany Williams, and Lamesha Brown, the resulting experience can be one of “hyper-invisibility” in an environment where they may not have family or community connections. To make the experience of these women more visible, the researchers conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews to learn and share their stories.
Having grown up in Black communities, many of the women described experiencing an increased salience of their Black identity, both within their predominately White educational institution and back home, which caused some to code-switch (alternate between different conversational or communication styles) as they moved back and forth between the two environments. Biology major Dontavia reports: “It’s just I always have to change how I speak, so much to where I feel like I speak different, because when I go home my friends tell me I sound different. They tell me I’m talking different. To the point where it’s like I’ve become comfortable with doing it, because I’m so used to it.”
In addition to experiencing racist microaggressions, these women also intently felt the impact of their identity as first-generation college students. They recounted the risks of navigating typical college experiences, such as seeking out financial aid or internships, without the family network support that benefited many of their peers.
The researchers noted that the self-protective coping mechanisms employed by these women to combat and resist oppression requires a hypervigilance that increases their risk for anxiety and physical health problems. Williams and colleagues advocated for better campus support services to meet the needs of first-generation Black college women and concluded that, in the meantime, their persistence and resilience is “at its core, an example of Black Girl Magic” (Williams et al., 2022).
Gender and Sexual Identity
Cultural norms often blur gender identity and sexual identity, though they differ, and assume that these identities are dichotomous (meaning someone is either male or female, straight or gay). The development of gender and sexual identities is also often misunderstood as a linear process from confusion to achievement with no room to pause, question, and revisit identity as young adults encounter new roles and environments (Morgan, 2016). For many, leaving home in early adulthood prompts continued exploration of the intersection of ethnic, gender, and sexual identity. As Tai, a 21-year-old transgender man, explains: “I got to college and met other trans people who were – actually had reasonably happy lives, successful lives, and from there, that kind of clicked. So I think there was early understanding, then a period of repression, and then acceptance in college” (Hereth et al., 2020).
Adults must often grapple with ways to flexibly explore their gender and sexual identity within a cultural context that assumes these aspects of ourselves are predetermined and don’t warrant ongoing exploration. As a result, those who are straight are less likely to have explored this aspect of their identity than those who are LGBTQ+, because heterosexuality conforms to heteronormative cultural expectations (Morgan, 2016).
The development of gender and sexual identity can intersect with ethnoracial identity to produce a wide variety of developmental experiences (Figure 12.11). Scholars argue this intersection has not been adequately addressed in identity research, especially for those who occupy minority identities such as LGBTQ+ persons and ethnoracial minorities (Cerezo et al., 2020). Compared to past generations, modern LGBTQ+ young adults are more likely to have explored their sexual identity earlier in life and come out at a younger age, but they still may experience marginalization and discrimination as they approach social clock milestones of adulthood such as marriage and parenthood (Russell & Fish, 2019; Morgan, 2016).
Black and Latino sexual minorities report achieving milestones in the development of their sexual identity, such as self-realization of same-sex attraction, earlier than White sexual minorities (Bishop et al., 2020). A 2015 study of LGBTQ+ Latina women found that family support was the most important predictor of their decision to come out to others outside their family (Pastrana, 2015). These findings were replicated in a 2020 study of Black and Latina LGBTQ+ women, who reported that worries about how their gender and sexual identity would affect their relationship with their family and their family’s social standing reduced their comfort in coming out to others Cerezo et al., 2020).
Religious Identity
The most common religious affiliation in the United States is Christianity. However, the percentage of those reporting a Christian religious identity has dropped from 90 percent in the early 1970s to 63 percent in 2021. This change has been driven, in part, by adults who were raised in Christian families but no longer identify with the religion by the end of young adulthood. The number of U.S. adults raised as unaffiliated with a particular religion also increased (from 5 percent fifty years ago to 29 percent today). The percentage of adults identifying with non-Christian religions has remained relatively unchanged during this time (Pew Research Center, 2022).
So, what drives changes in religious or spiritual identity with age? During childhood and adolescence many follow the spiritual beliefs and practices of their families (Mahoney, 2021). The transition to adulthood brings new roles, social connections, and contexts that may prompt more intentional reflection on spiritual beliefs and whether they answer questions about life purpose and direction (Gale et al., 2023). When asked why they no longer identify with their family religion, many young people reported feeling out of place in a religion that did not align with their other values or priorities (Hardy & Longo, 2021). This mismatch may accompany the development of a person’s worldview as they spend more time outside the parents’ home and influence and encounter new people and perspectives.
While overall religiosity—level of interest, belief, and practice of worship—does not change for most people as they progress into early adulthood, young adults engage in a more explorative and information-seeking approach to their religious identity than adolescents do (Gurba et al., 2022). About 15 percent of adults experience a decline in religiosity during early adulthood, 10 percent an increase, and 10 percent an initial decline followed by a return to their religious beliefs during the early adulthood-middle adulthood transition.
References
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