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Article contents

Self and identity.

• Sanaz Talaifar Sanaz Talaifar Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin
•  and  William Swann William Swann Department of Psychology, University of Texas
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.242
• Published online: 28 March 2018

Active and stored mental representations of the self include both global and specific qualities as well as conscious and nonconscious qualities. Semantic and episodic memory both contribute to a self that is not a unitary construct comprising only the individual as he or she is now, but also past and possible selves. Self-knowledge may overlap more or less with others’ views of the self. Furthermore, mental representations of the self vary whether they are positive or negative, important, certain, and stable. The origins of the self are also manifold and can be considered from developmental, biological, intrapsychic, and interpersonal perspectives. The self is connected to core motives (e.g., coherence, agency, and communion) and is manifested in the form of both personal identities and social identities. Finally, just as the self is a product of proximal and distal social forces, it is also an agent that actively shapes its environment.

• self-concept
• self-representation
• self-knowledge
• self-perception
• self-esteem
• personal identity
• social identity

Introduction

The concept of the self has beguiled—and frustrated—psychologists and philosophers alike for generations. One of the greatest challenges has been coming to terms with the nature of the self. Every individual has a self, yet no two selves are the same. Some aspects of the self create a sense of commonality with others whereas other aspects of the self set it apart. The self usually provides a sense of consistency, a sense that there is some connection between who a person was yesterday and who they are today. And yet, the self is continually changing both as an individual ages and he or she traverses different social situations. A further conundrum is that the self acts as both subject and object; it does the knowing about itself. With so many complexities, coupled with the fact that people can neither see nor touch the self, the construct may take on an air of mysticism akin to the concept of the soul (Epstein, 1973 ).

Perhaps the most pressing, and basic, question psychologists must answer regarding the self is “What is it?” For the man whom many regard as the father of modern psychology, William James, the self was a source of continuity that gave individuals a sense of “connectedness” and “unbrokenness” ( 1890 , p. 335). James distinguished between two components of the self: the “I” and the “me” ( 1910 ). The “I” is the self as agent, thinker, and knower, the executive function that experiences and reacts to the world, constructing mental representations and memories as it does so (Swann & Buhrmester, 2012 ). James was skeptical that the “I” was amenable to scientific study, which has been borne out by the fact that far more attention has been accorded to the “me.” The “me” is the individual one recognizes as the self, which for James included a material, social, and spiritual self. The material self refers to one’s physical body and one’s physical possessions. The social self refers to the various selves one may express and others may recognize depending on the social setting. The spiritual self refers to the enduring core of one’s being, including one’s values, personality, beliefs about the self, etc.

This article focuses on the “me” that will be referred to interchangeably as either the “self” or “identity.” We define the self as a multifaceted, dynamic, and temporally continuous set of mental self-representations. These representations are multifaceted in the sense that different situations may evoke different aspects of the self at different times. They are dynamic in that they are subject to change in the form of elaborations, corrections, and reevaluations (Diehl, Youngblade, Hay, & Chui, 2011 ). This is true when researchers think of the self as a sort of scientific theory in which new evidence about the self from the environment leads to adjustments to one’s self-theory (Epstein, 1973 ; Gopnick, 2003 ). It is also true when researchers consider the self as a narrative that can be rewritten and revised (McAdams, 1996 ). Finally, self-representations are temporally continuous because even though they change, most people have a sense of being the same person over time. Further, these self-representations, whether conscious or not, are essential to psychological functioning, as they organize people’s perceptions of their traits, preferences, memories, experiences, and group memberships. Importantly, representations of the self also guide an individual’s behavior.

Some psychologists (e.g., behaviorists and more recently Brubaker & Cooper, 2000 ) have questioned the need to implicate a construct as nebulous as the self to explain behavior. Certainly an individual can perform many complex actions without invoking his or her self-representations. Nevertheless, psychologists increasingly regard the self as one of the most important constructs in all of psychology. For example, the percentage of self-related studies published in the field’s leading journal, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , increased fivefold between 1972 and 2002 (Swann & Seyle, 2005 ) and has continued to grow to this day. The importance of the self becomes evident when one considers the consequences of a sense of self that is interrupted, damaged, or absent. Epstein ( 1973 ) offers a case in point with an example of a schizophrenic girl meeting her psychiatrist:

Ruth, a five year old, approached the psychiatrist with “Are you the bogey man? Are you going to fight my mother? Are you the same mother? Are you the same father? Are you going to be another mother?” and finally screaming in terror, “I am afraid I am going to be someone else.” [Bender, 1950 , p. 135]

To provide a more commonplace example, children do not display several emotions we consider uniquely human, such as empathy and embarrassment, until after they have developed a sense of self-awareness (Lewis, Sullivan, Stanger, & Weiss, 1989 ). As Darwin has argued ( 1872 / 1965 ), emotions like embarrassment exist only after one has a developed a sense of self that can be the object of others’ attention.

The self’s importance also is evident when one considers that it is a pancultural phenomenon; all individuals have a sense of self regardless of where they are born. Though the content of self-representations may vary by cultural context, the existence of the self is universal. So too is the structure of the self. One of the most basic structural dimensions of the self involves whether the knowledge is active or stored.

Forms of Self-Knowledge

Active and stored self-knowledge.

Although i ndividuals accumulate immeasurable amounts of knowledge over their lifespans, at any given moment they can access only a portion of that knowledge. The aspects of self-knowledge held in consciousness make up “active self-knowledge.” Other terms for active self-knowledge are the working self-concept (Markus & Kunda, 1986 ), the spontaneous self-concept (McGuire, McGuire, Child, & Fujioka, 1978 ), and the phenomenal self (Jones & Gerard, 1967 ). On the other hand, “stored self-knowledge” is information held in memory that one can access and retrieve but is not currently held in consciousness. Because different features of the self are active versus stored at different times depending on the demands of the situation, the self can be quite malleable without eliciting feelings of inconsistency or inauthenticity (Swann, Bosson, & Pelham, 2002 ).

Semantic and Episodic Representations of Self-Knowledge

People possess both episodic and semantic representations of themselves (Klein & Loftus, 1993 ; Tulving, 1983 ). Episodic self-representations refer to “behavioral exemplars” or relatively brief “cartoons in the head” involving one’s past life and experiences. For philosopher John Locke, the self was built of episodic memory. For some researchers interested in memory and identity, episodic memory has been of particular interest because it is thought to involve re-experiencing events from one’s past, providing a person with content through which to construct a personal narrative (see, e.g., Eakin, 2008 ; Fivush & Haden, 2003 ; Klein, 2001 ; Klein & Gangi, 2010 ). Recall of these episodic instances happens together with the conscious awareness that the events actually occurred in one’s life (e.g., Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997 ).

Episodic self-knowledge may shed light on the individual’s traits or preferences and how he or she will or should act in the future, but some aspects of self-knowledge do not require recalling any specific experiences. Semantic self-knowledge involves memories at a higher level abstraction. These self-related memories are based on either facts (e.g., I am 39 years old) or traits and do not necessitate remembering a specific event or experience (Klein & Lax, 2010 ; Klein, Robertson, Gangi, & Loftus, 2008 ). Thus, one may consider oneself intelligent (semantic self-knowledge) without recalling that he or she achieved stellar grades the previous term (episodic self-knowledge). In fact, Tulving ( 1972 ) suggested that the two types of knowledge may be structurally and functionally independent of each other. In support of this, case studies show that damage to the episodic self-knowledge system does not necessarily result in impairment of the semantic self-knowledge system. Evaluating semantic traits for self-descriptiveness is associated with activation in brain regions implicated in semantic, but not episodic, memory. In addition, priming a trait stored in semantic memory does not facilitate recall of corresponding episodic memories that exemplify the semantic self-knowledge (Klein, Loftus, Trafton, & Fuhrman, 1992 ). The tenuous relationship between episodic and semantic self-knowledge suggests that only a portion of semantic self-knowledge arises inductively from episodic self-knowledge (e.g., Kelley et al., 2002 ).

Recently some researchers have questioned the importance of memory’s role in creating a sense of identity. For example, at least when it comes to perceptions of others, people perceive a person’s identity to remain more intact after a neurodegenerative disease that affects their memory than one that affects their morality (Strohminger & Nichols, 2015 ).

Conscious and Nonconscious Self-Knowledge (Sometimes Confused With Explicit Versus Implicit)

Individuals may be conscious, or aware, of aspects of the self to varying degrees in different situations. Indeed sometimes it is adaptive to have self-awareness (Mandler, 1975 ) and other times it is not (Wegner, 2009 ). Nonconscious self-representations can influence behavior in that individuals may be unaware of the ways in which their self-representations affect their behavior (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995 ). Some researchers have even suggested that individuals can be unconscious of the contents of their self-representations (e.g., Devos & Banaji, 2003 ). It is important to remember that consciousness refers primarily to the level of awareness of a self-representation, rather than the automaticity of a given representation (i.e., whether the representation is retrieved in an unaware, unintentional, efficient, and uncontrolled manner) (Bargh, 1994 ).

A key ambiguity in recent work on implicit self-esteem is defining its criterial attributes. One view contends that the nonconscious and conscious self reflect fundamentally distinct knowledge systems that arise from different learning experiences and have independent effects on thought, emotion, and behavior (Epstein, 1994 ). Another perspective views the self as a singular construct that may nevertheless show diverging responses on direct and indirect measures of self due to factors such as the opportunity and motivation to control behavioral responses (Fazio & Twoles-Schwen, 1999 ). While indirect measures such as the Implicit Association Test do not require introspection and as a result may tap nonconscious representations, this is an assumption that should be supported with empirical evidence (Gawronski, Hofmann, & Wilbur, 2006 ).

Issues of direct and indirect measurement are a key consideration in research on the implicit and explicit self. Indirect measures of self allow researchers to infer an individual’s judgment about the self as a result of the speed or nature of their responses to stimuli that may be more or less self-related (De Houwer & Moors, 2010 ). Some researchers have argued that indirect measures of self-esteem are advantageous because they circumvent self-presentational issues (Farnham, Greenwald, & Banaji, 1999 ), but other researchers have questioned such claims (Gawronski, LeBel, & Peters, 2007 ) because self-presentational strivings can be automatized (Paulhus, 1993 ).

Recent findings have raised additional questions regarding the validity of some key assumptions regarding research inspired by interest in implicit self-esteem (for a more optimistic take on implicit self-esteem, see Dehart, Pelham, & Tennen, 2006 ). Although near-zero correlations between individuals’ scores on direct and indirect measures of self (e.g., Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000 ) are often taken to mean that nonconscious and conscious self-representations are distinct, other factors, such as measurement error and lack of conceptual correspondence, can cause these low correlations (Gawronski et al., 2007 ). Some researchers have also taken evidence of negligible associations between measures of implicit self-esteem and theoretically related outcomes to mean that such measures may not measure self-esteem at all (Buhrmester, Blanton, & Swann, 2011 ). A prudent strategy is thus to consider that indirect measures reflect an activation of associations between the self and other stimuli in memory and that these associations do not require conscious validation of the association as accurate or inaccurate (Gawronski et al., 2007 ). Direct measures, on the other hand, do require validation processes (Strack & Deutsch, 2004 ; Swann, Hixon, Stein-Seroussi, & Gilbert, 1990 ).

Global and Specific Self-Knowledge

Self-views vary in scope (Hampson, John, & Goldberg, 1987 ). Global self-representations are generalized beliefs about the self (e.g., I am a worthwhile person) while specific self-representations pertain to a narrow domain (e.g., I am a nimble tennis player). Self-views can fall anywhere on a continuum between these two extremes. Generalized self-esteem may be thought of as a global self-representation at the top of a hierarchy with individual self-concepts nested underneath in specific domains such as academic, physical, and social (Marsh, 1986 ). Individual self-concepts, measured separately, combine statistically to form a superordinate global self-esteem factor (Marsh & Hattie, 1996 ). When trying to predict behavior it is important not to use a specific self-representation to predict a global behavior or a global self-representation to predict a specific behavior (e.g., Donnellan, Trzesniewski, Robins, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2005 ; Swann, Chang-Schneider, & McClarty, 2007 ; Trzesniewski et al., 2006 ).

Actual, Possible, Ideal, and Ought Selves

The self does not just include who a person is in the present but also includes past and future iterations of the self. In addition, people tend to hold “ought” or “ideal” beliefs about the self. The former includes one’s beliefs about who they should be according to their own and others’ standards while the latter includes beliefs about who they would like to be (Higgins, 1987 ). In a related vein, possible selves are the future-oriented positive or negative aspects of the self-concept, selves that one hopes to become or fears becoming (Markus & Nurius, 1986 ). Some research has even shown that distance between one’s feared self and actual self is a stronger predictor of life satisfaction than proximity between one’s ideal self and actual self (Ogilvie, 1987 ). Possible selves vary in how far in the future they are, how detailed they are, and how likely they are to become an actual self (Oyserman & James, 2008 ). Many researchers have studied the content of possible selves, which can be as idiosyncratic as a person’s imagination is. The method used to measure possible selves (close-ended versus open-ended questions) will affect which possible selves are revealed (Lee & Oyserman, 2009 ). The content of possible selves is also socially and contextually grounded. For example, as a person ages, career-focused possible selves become less important while health-related possible selves become increasingly important (Cross & Markus, 1991 ; Frazier, Hooker, Johnson, & Kaus, 2000 ).

Researchers have been interested in not just the content but the function of possible selves. Thinking about successful possible selves is mood enhancing (King, 2001 ) because it is a reminder that the current self can be improved. In addition, possible selves may play a role in self-regulation. By linking present and future selves, they may promote desired possible selves and avoid feared possible selves. Possible selves may be in competition with each other and with a person’s actual self. For example, someone may envision one possible self as an artist and another possible self as an airline pilot, and each of these possible selves might require the person to take different actions in the present moment. Goal striving requires employing limited resources and attention, so working toward one possible self may require shifting attention and resources away from another possible self (Fishbach, Dhar, & Zhang, 2006 ). Possible selves may have other implications as well. For example, Alesina and La Ferrara ( 2005 ) show how expected future income affects a person’s preferences for economic redistribution in the present.

Accuracy of Self-Knowledge and Feelings of Authenticity

Most individuals have had at least one encounter with an individual whose self-perception seemed at odds with “reality.” Perhaps it is a friend who believes himself to be a skilled singer but cannot understand why everyone within earshot grimaces when he starts singing. Or the boss who believes herself to be an inspiring leader but cannot motivate her workers. One potential explanation for inaccurate self-views is a disjunction between episodic and semantic memories; the image of grimacing listeners (episodic memory) may be quite independent of the conviction that one is a skilled singer (semantic memory). Of course, if self-knowledge is too disjunctive with reality it ceases to be adaptive; self-views must be moderately accurate to be useful in allowing people to predict and navigate their worlds. That said, some researchers have questioned the desirability of accurate self-views. For example, Taylor and Brown ( 1988 ) have argued that positive illusions about the self promote mental health. Similarly, Von Hippel and Trivers ( 2011 ) have argued that certain kinds of optimistic biases about the self are adaptive because they allow people to display more confidence than is warranted, consequently allowing them to reap the social rewards of that confidence.

Studying the accuracy of self-knowledge is challenging because objective criteria are often scarce. Put another way, there are only two vantage points from which to assess a person: self-perception and the other’s perception of the self. This is true even of supposedly “objective” measures of the self. An IQ test is still a measure of intelligence from the vantage point of the people who developed the test. Both vantage points can be subject to error. For example, self-perceptions may be biased to protect one’s self-image or due to self-comparison to an inappropriate referent. Others’ perceptions may be biased because of a lack of cross-situational information about the person in question or lack of insight into that person’s motives. Because of the advantages and disadvantages of each vantage point, self-reports may be better for assessing some traits (e.g., those low in observability, like neuroticism) while informant reports may be better for others (such as traits high in observability, like extraversion) (Vazire, 2010 ).

Furthermore, self-perceptions and others’ perceptions of the self may overlap to varying degrees. The “Johari window” provides a useful way of thinking about this (Luft & Ingham, 1955 ). The window’s first quadrant consists of things one knows about oneself that others also know about the self (arena). The second quadrant includes knowledge one has about the self that others do not have (façade). The third quadrant consists of knowledge one does not have about the self but others do have (blindspot). The fourth quadrant consists of information about the self that is not known to oneself or to others (unknown).

Which of these quadrants contains the “true self”? If I believe myself to be kind, but others do not, who is right? Which is a reflection of the “real me”? One set of attempts to answer this question has focused on perceptions of authenticity. The authentic self (Johnson & Boyd, 1995 ) is alternatively termed the “true self” (Newman, Bloom, & Knobe, 2014 ), “real self” (Rogers, 1961 ), “intrinsic self” (Schimel, Arndt, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2001 ), “essential self” (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014 ), or “deep self” (Sripada, 2010 ). Recent research has addressed both what aspects of the self other people describe as belonging to a person’s true self and how individuals judge their own authenticity.

Though authenticity has long been the subject of philosophical thought, only recently have researchers begun addressing the topic empirically, and definitional ambiguities abound (Knoll, Meyer, Kroemer, & Schroeder-Abe, 2015 ). Some studies use unidimensional measures that equate authenticity to feeling close to one’s true self (e.g., Harter, Waters, & Whitesell, 1997 ). A more elaborate and philosophically grounded approach proposes four necessary factors for trait authenticity: awareness (the extent of one’s self-knowledge, motivation to expand it, and ability to trust in it), unbiased processing (the relative absence of interpretative distortions in processing self-relevant information), behavior (acting consistently with one’s needs, preferences, and values), and relational orientation (valuing and achieving openness in close relationships) (Kernis, 2003 ). Authenticity is related to feelings of self-alienation (Gino, Norton, & Ariely, 2010 ). Being authentic is also sometimes thought to be equivalent to low self-monitoring (Snyder & Gangestad, 1982 )— someone who does not alter his or her behavior to accommodate changing social situations (Grant, 2016 ). Authenticity and self-monitoring, however, are orthogonal constructs; being sensitive to environmental cues can be compatible with acting in line with one’s true self.

Although some have argued that the ability to behave in a way that contradicts one’s feelings and mental states is a developmental accomplishment (Harter, Marold, Whitesell, & Cobbs, 1996 ), feelings of authenticity have been associated with many positive outcomes such as positive self-esteem, positive affect, and well-being (Goldman & Kernis, 2002 ; Wood, Linley, Maltby, Baliousis, & Joseph, 2008 ). One interesting line of research examines the interaction of authenticity, power, and well-being. Power can increase feelings of authenticity in social interactions (Kraus, Chen, & Keltner, 2011 ), and that increased authenticity in turn can result in higher well-being (Kifer, Heller, Peruvonic, & Galinsky, 2013 ). Another line of research examines the relationship between beliefs about authenticity (at least in the West) and morality. Gino, Kouchaki, and Galinsky ( 2015 ) suggest that dishonesty and inauthenticity share a similar source: dishonesty involves being untrue to others while inauthenticity involves being untrue to the self.

Metacognitive Aspects of Self

Valence and importance of self-views.

Self-knowledge may be positively or negatively valenced. Having more positive self-views and fewer negative ones are associated with having higher self-esteem (Brown, 1986 ). Both bottom-up and top-down theories have been used to explain this association. The bottom-up approach posits that the valence of specific self-knowledge drives the valence of one’s global self-views (e.g., Marsh, 1990 ). In this view, someone who has more positive self-views in specific domains (e.g., I am intelligent and attractive) should be more likely to develop high self-esteem overall (e.g., I am worthwhile). In contrast, the top-down perspective holds that the valence of global self-views drive the valence of specific self-views such that someone who thinks they are a worthwhile person is more likely to view him or herself as attractive and intelligent (e.g., Brown, Dutton, & Cook, 2001 ). The reasoning is grounded in the view that global self-esteem develops quite early in life and thus determines the later development of domain-specific self-views.

A domain-specific self-view can vary not only in its valence but also in its importance. Domain-specific self-views that one believes are important are more likely to affect global self-esteem than those self-views that one considers unimportant (Pelham, 1995 ; Pelham & Swann, 1989 ). As James wrote, “I, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist, am mortified if others know much more psychology than I. But I am contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek” ( 1890 / 1950 , p. 310). Of course not all self-views matter to the same extent for all people. A professor of Greek studies is likely to place a great deal of importance on his knowledge of Greek. Furthermore, changes to features that are perceived to be more causally central than others are believed to be more disruptive to identity (Chen, Urminsky, & Bartels, 2016 ). Individuals try to protect their important self-views by, for example, surrounding themselves with people and environments who confirm those important self-views (Chen, Chen, & Shaw, 2004 ; Swann & Pelham, 2002 ) or distancing themselves from close friends who outperform them in these areas (Tesser, 1988 ).

Certainty and Clarity of Self-Views

Individuals may feel more or less certain about some self-views as compared to others. And just as they are motivated to protect important self-views, people are also motivated to protect the self-views of which they are certain. People are more likely to seek (Pelham, 1991 ) and receive (Pelham & Swann, 1994 ) feedback consistent with self-views that are highly certain than those about which they feel less certain. They also actively resist challenges to highly certain self-views (Swann & Ely, 1984 ).

Another construct related to certainty is self-concept clarity. Not only are people with high self-concept clarity confident and certain of their self-views, they also are clear, internally consistent, and stable in their convictions about who they are (Campbell et al., 1996 ). The causes of low self-concept clarity have been theorized to be due to a discrepancy between one’s current self-views and the social feedback one has received in childhood (Streamer & Seery, 2015 ). Both high self-concept certainty and self-concept clarity are associated with higher self-esteem (Campbell, 1990 ).

Stability of Self-Views

The self is constantly accommodating, assimilating, and immunizing itself against new self-relevant information (Diehl et al., 2011 ). In the end, the self may remain stable (i.e., spatio-temporally continuous; Parfit, 1971 ) in at least two ways. First, the self may be stable in one’s absolute position on a scale. Second, there may be stability in one’s rank ordering within a group of related others (Hampson & Goldberg, 2006 ).

The question of the self’s stability can only be answered in the context of a specified time horizon. For example, like personality traits, self-views may not be particularly good predictors of behavior at a given time slice (perhaps an indication of the self’s instability) but are good predictors of behavior over the long term (Epstein, 1979 ). Similarly, more than others, some people experience frequent, transient changes in state self-esteem (Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, & Harlow, 1993 ). Furthermore, there is a difference between how people perceive the stability of their self-views and the actual stability of their self-knowledge. Though previous research has explored the benefits of perceived self-esteem stability (e.g., Kernis, Paradise, Whitaker, Wheatman, & Goldman, 2000 ; Kernis, Grannemann, & Barclay, 1989 ), a recent program of research on fixed versus growth mindsets explores the benefits of the malleability of self-views in a variety of domains (Dweck, 1999 , 2006 ). For example, teaching adolescents to have a more malleable (i.e., incremental) theory of personality that “people change” led them to react less negatively to an immediate experience of social adversity, have lower overall stress and physical illness eight months later, and better academic performance over the school year (Yeager et al., 2014 ). Thus, believing that the self can be unstable can have positive effects in that one negative social interaction, or an instance of poor performance is not an indication that the self will always be that way, and this may, in turn, increase effort and persistence.

Organization of Self-Views

Though we have already touched on some aspects of the organization of self (e.g., specific self-views nested within global self-views), it is important to consider other aspects of organization including the fact that some self-views may be more assimilated within each other. Integration refers to the tendency to store both positive and negative self-views together, and is thought to promote resilience in the face of stress or adversity (Showers & Zeigler-Hill, 2007 ). Compartmentalization refers to the tendency to store positive and negative self-views separately. But both integration and compartmentalization can have positive and negative consequences and can interact with other metacognitive aspects of the self, like importance. For example, compartmentalization has been associated with higher self-esteem and less depression among people for whom positive components of the self are important (Showers, 1992 ). On the other hand, for those whose negative self-views are important, compartmentalization has been associated with lower self-esteem and higher depression.

Origins and Development of the Self

Developmental approaches.

Psychologists have long been interested in when and how infants develop a sense of self. One very basic question is whether selfhood in infancy is comparable to selfhood in adulthood. The answer depends on definitions of selfhood. For example, some researchers have measured and defined selfhood in infants as the ability to self-regulate and self-organize, which even animals can do. This definition bears little resemblance to selfhood in adulthood. Nativist and constructivist debates within developmental psychology (and language development in particular) that grapple with the problem of the origins of knowledge also have implications for understanding origins of the self. A nativist account (e.g., Chomsky, 1975 ) that considers the human mind to be innately constrained to formulate a very small set of representations would suggest that the mind is designed to develop a self. Information from the environment may form specific self-representations, but a nativist account would posit that the structure of the self is intrinsic. A constructivist account would reject the notion that there are not enough environmental stimuli to explain the development of a construct like the self unless one invokes a specific innate cognitive structure. Rather, constructivists might suggest that a child develops a theory of self in the same way scientific theories are developed (Gopnik, 2003 ).

Because infants and children cannot self-report their mental states as adults can, psychologists must use other methods to study the self in childhood. One method involves studying the development of children’s use of the personal pronouns “me,” “mine,” and “I” (Harter, 1983 ; Hobson, 1990 ). Another method that is used cross-culturally, mirror self-recognition (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979 ; Lewis & Ramsay, 2004 ), has been associated with brain maturation (Lewis, 2003 ) and myelination of the left temporal region (Carmody & Lewis, 2006 , 2010 ; Lewis & Carmody, 2008 ). Pretend play, which occurs between 15 and 24 months, is an indication that the self is developing because it requires the toddler’s ability to understand its own and others’ mental states (Lewis, 2011 ). The development of self-esteem has also historically been difficult to study due to a lack of self-esteem measures that can be used across the lifespan. Recently, psychologists have developed a lifespan self-esteem scale (Harris, Donnellan, & Trzesniewski, 2017 ) suitable for measuring global self-esteem from ages 5 to 93.

The development of theory of mind, the understanding that others have minds separate from one’s own, is also closely related to the development of the self. For example, people cannot make social comparisons until they have developed the required cognitive abilities, usually by middle childhood (Harter, 1999 ; Ruble, Boggiano, Feldman, & Loebl, 1980 ). Finally, developmental psychology is also useful in understanding the self beyond childhood and into adolescence and beyond. Adolescence is a time where goals of autonomy from parents and other adults become particularly salient (Bryan et al., 2016 ), adolescents experiment with different identities to see which fit best, and many long-term goals and personal aspirations are established (Crone & Dahl, 2012 ).

Biological Approaches

Biological approaches to understanding the origins of the self consider neurological, genetic, and hormonal underpinnings. These biological underpinnings are likely evolutionarily driven (Penke, Denissen, & Miller, 2007 ). Neuroscientists have debated the extent to which self-knowledge is “special,” or processed differently than other kinds of knowledge. What is clear is that no brain region by itself is responsible for our sense of self, but different aspects of the self-knowledge may be associated with different brain regions. Furthermore, the same region that is implicated in self-related processing can also be implicated in other types of processing (Ochsner et al., 2005 ; Saxe, Moran, Scholz, & Gabrieli, 2006 ). Specifically, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) have been associated with self-related processing (Northoff Heinzel, De Greck, Bermpohl, Dobrowolny, & Panksepp, 2006 ). But meta-analyses have found that the mPFC and PCC are recruited during the processing of both self-specific and familiar stimuli more generally (e.g., familiar others) (Qin & Northoff, 2011 ).

Twin studies of personality traits can shed light on the genetic bases of self. For example, genes account for about 40% to 60% of the population variance in self-reports of the Big Five personality factors (for a review, see Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001 ). Self-esteem levels also seem to be heritable, with 30–50% of population variance accounted for by genes (Kamakura, Ando, & Ono, 2007 ; Kendler, Gardner, & Prescott, 1998 ).

Finally, hormones are unlikely to be a cause of the self but may affect the expression of the self. For example, testosterone and cortisol levels interact with personality traits to predict different levels of aggression (Tackett et al., 2015 ). Differences in levels of and in utero exposure to certain hormones also affect gender identity (Berenbaum & Beltz, 2011 ; Reiner & Gearhart, 2004 ).

Intrapsychic Approaches

Internal processes, including self-perception and introspection, also influence the development of the self. One of the most obvious ways to develop knowledge about the self (especially when existing self-knowledge is weak) is to observe one’s own behavior across different situations and then make inferences about the aspects of the self that may have caused those behaviors (Bem, 1972 ). And just as judgments about others’ attributes are less certain when multiple possible causes exist for a given behavior, the same is true of one’s own behaviors and the amount of information they yield about the self (Kelley, 1971 ).

Conversely, introspection involves understanding the self from the inside outward rather than from the outside in. Though surprisingly little thought (only 8%) is expended on self-reflection (Csikszentmihalyi & Figurski, 1982 ), people buttress self-knowledge through introspection. For example, contemporary psychoanalysis can increase self-knowledge, even though an increase in self-knowledge on its own is unlikely to have therapeutic effects (Reppen, 2013 ). Writing is one form of introspection that does have psychological and physical therapeutic benefits (Pennebaker, 1997 ). Research shows that brief writing exercises can result in fewer physician visits (e.g., Francis & Pennebaker, 1992 ), and depressive episodes (Pennebaker, Kiecolt-Glaser, & Glaser, 1988 ), better immune function (e.g., Esterling, Kiecolt-Glaser, Bodnar, & Glaser, 1994 ), and higher grade point average (e.g., Cameron & Nicholls, 1998 ) and many other positive outcomes.

Experiencing the “subjective self” is yet another way that individuals gain self-knowledge. Unlike introspection, experiencing the subjective self involves outward engagement, a full engagement in the moment that draws attention away from the self (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ). Being attentive to one’s emotions and thoughts in the moment can reveal much about one’s preferences and values. Apparently, people rely more on their subjective experiences than on their overt behaviors when constructing self-knowledge (Andersen, 1984 ; Andersen & Ross, 1984 ).

Interpersonal Approaches

At the risk of stating the obvious, humans are social animals and thus the self is rarely cut off from others. In fact, many individuals would rather give themselves a mild electric shock than be alone with their thoughts (Wilson et al., 2014 ). The myth of finding oneself by eschewing society is dubious, and one of the most famous proponents of this tradition, transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, actually regularly entertained visitors during his supposed seclusion at Walden (Schulz, 2015 ). As early as infancy, the reactions of others can lay the foundation for one’s self-views. Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969 ; Hazan & Shaver, 1994 ) holds that children’s earliest interactions with their caregivers lead them to formulate schemas about their lovability and worth. This occurs outside of the infant’s awareness, and the schemas are based on the consistency and responsiveness of the care they receive. Highly consistent responsiveness to the infant’s needs provide the basis for the infant to develop feelings of self-worth (i.e., high global self-esteem) later in life. Though the mechanisms by which this occur are still being investigated, it may be that self-schemas developed during infancy provide the lens through which people interpret others’ reactions to them (e.g., Hazan & Shaver, 1987 ). Note, however, that early attachment relationships are in no way deterministic: 30–45% of people change their attachment style (i.e., their pattern of relating to others) across time (e.g., Cozzarelli, Karafa, Collins, & Tagler, 2003 ).

Early attachment relationships provide a working model for how an individual expects to be treated, which is associated with perceptions of self-worth. But others’ appraisals of the self are also a more direct source of self-knowledge. An extremely influential line of thought from sociology, symbolic interactionism (Cooley, 1902 ; Mead, 1934 ), emphasized the component of the self that James referred to as the social self. He wrote, “a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind” ( 1890 / 1950 , p. 294). The symbolic interactionists proposed that people come to know themselves not through introspection but rather through others’ reactions and perceptions of them. This “looking glass self” sees itself as others do (Yeung & Martin, 2003 ). People’s inferences about how others view them become internalized and guide their behavior. Thus the self is created socially and is sustained cyclically.

Research shows, however, that reflected appraisals may not tell the whole story. While it is clear that people’s self-views correlate strongly with how they believe others see them, self-views are not necessarily perfectly correlated with how people actually view them (Shrauger & Schoeneman, 1979 ). Further, people’s self-views may inform how they believe others see them rather than the other way around (Kenny & DePaulo, 1993 ). Lastly, individuals are better at knowing how people see them in general rather than knowing how specific others view them (Kenny & Albright, 1987 ).

Though others’ perceptions of the self are not an individual’s only source of self-knowledge, they are an important source, and in more than one way. For example, others’ provide a reference point for “social comparison.” According to Festinger’s social comparison theory ( 1954 ), people compare their own traits, preferences, abilities, and emotions to those of similar others, making both upward and downward comparisons. These comparisons tend to happen spontaneously and effortlessly. The direction of the comparison influences how one views and feels about the self. For example, comparing the self to someone worse off boosts self-esteem (e.g., Helgeson & Mickelson, 1995 ; Marsh & Parker, 1984 ). In addition to increasing self-knowledge, social comparisons are also motivating. For instance, those undergoing difficult or painful life events can cope better when they make downward comparisons (Wood, Taylor, & Lichtman, 1985 ). When motivated to improve the self in a given domain, however, people may make upward comparisons to idealized others (Blanton, Buunk, Gibbons, & Kuyper, 1999 ). Sometimes individuals make comparisons to inappropriate others, but they have the ability (with mental effort) to undo the changes made to the self-concept as a result of this comparison (Gilbert, Giesler, & Morris, 1995 ).

Others can influence the self not only through interactions and comparisons but also when an individual becomes very close to a significant other. In this case, according to self-expansion theory (Aron & Aron, 1996 ), as intimacy increases, people experience cognitive overlap between the self and the significant other. People can acquire novel self-knowledge as they subsume attributes of the close other into the self.

Finally, the origins and development of the self are interpersonally influenced to the extent that our identities are dependent on the social roles we occupy (e.g., as mother, student, friend, professional, etc.). This will be covered in greater detail in the section on “The Social Self.” Here it is important simply to recognize that as the social roles of an individual inevitably change over time, so too does their identity.

Cultural Approaches

Markus and Kitayama’s seminal paper ( 1991 ) on differences in expression of the self in Eastern and Western cultures spawned an incredible amount of work investigating the importance of culture on self-construals. Building on the foundational work of Triandis ( 1989 ) and others, this work proposed that people in Western cultures see themselves as autonomous individuals who value independence and uniqueness more so than connectedness and harmony with others. In contrast to this individualism, people in the East were thought to be more collectivist, valuing interdependence and fitting in. However, the theoretical relationship between self-construals and the continuous individualism-collectivism variable have been treated in several different ways in the literature. Some have described individualism and collectivism as the origins of differences in self-construals (e.g., Gudykunst et al., 1996 ; Kim, Aune, Hunter, Kim, & Kim, 2001 ; Singelis & Brown, 1995 ). Others have considered self-construals as synonymous with individualism and collectivism (Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002 ; Taras et al., 2014 ) or have used individualism-collectivism at the individual level as an analog of the variable at the cultural level (Smith, 2011 ).

However, in contrast to perspectives that treat individualism and collectivism as a unidimensional variable (e.g., Singelis, 1994 ), individualism and collectivism have also been theorized to be multifaceted “cultural syndromes” that include normative beliefs, values, and practices, as well as self-construals (Brewer & Chen, 2007 ; Triandis, 1993 ). In this view, there are many ways of being independent or collectivistic depending on the domain of functioning under consideration. For example, a person may be independent or interdependent when defining the self, experiencing the self, making decisions, looking after the self, moving between contexts, communicating with others, or dealing with conflicting interests (Vignoles et al., 2016 ). These domains of functioning are orthogonal such that being interdependent in one domain does not require being interdependent in another. This multidimensional picture of individual differences in individualism and collectivism is actually more similar to Markus and Kitayama’s ( 1991 ) initial treatment aiming to emphasize cultural diversity and contradicts the prevalent unidimensional approach to cultural differences that followed.

Recent research has pointed out other shortcomings of this dichotomous approach. There is a great deal of heterogeneity among the world’s cultures, so simplifying all culture to “Eastern” and “Western” or collectivistic versus individualistic types may be invalid. Vignoles and colleagues’ ( 2016 ) study of 16 nations supports this. They found that neither a contrast between Western and non-Western, nor between individualistic and collectivistic cultures, sufficiently captured the complexity of cross-cultural differences in selfhood. They conclude that “it is not useful to characterize any culture as ‘independent’ or ‘interdependent’ in a general sense” and rather advocate for research that identifies what kinds of independence and interdependence may be present in different contexts ( 2016 , p. 991). In addition, there is a great deal of within culture heterogeneity in self-construals For example, even within an individualistic, Western culture like the United States, working-class people and ethnic minorities tend to be more interdependent (Markus, 2017 ), tempering the geographically based generalizations one might draw about self-construals.

Another line of recent research on the self in cultural context that has explored self-construals beyond the East-West dichotomy is the study of multiculturalism and individuals who are a member of multiple cultural groups (Benet-Martinez & Hong, 2014 ). People may relate to each of the cultures to which they belong in different ways, and this may in turn have important effects. For example, categorization, which involves viewing one cultural identity as dominant over the others, is associated positively with well-being but negatively with personal growth (Yampolsky, Amiot, & de la Sablonnière, 2013 ). Integration involves cohesively connecting multiple cultures within the self while compartmentalization requires keeping one’s various cultures isolated because they are seen to be in opposition. Each of these strategies has different consequences.

Finally, the influence of religion remains significant in many parts of the world (Georgas, van de Vijver, & Berry, 2004 ; Inglehart & Baker, 2000 ), and so religion is also an important source of differences in self-construal. These religious traditions provide answers to the question of how the self should relate to others. For example, Buddhism emphasizes the interdependence of all things and thus agency does not necessarily reside in individual actors. Moreover, for Buddhists the boundaries between the self and the other are insignificant, and in fact the self is thought to be impermanent (see Garfield, Nichols, Rai, Nichols, & Strohminger, 2015 ).

Motivational Properties of the Self

Need for communion, agency, and coherence.

Understanding what motivates people is one of social psychology’s core questions, and a variety of motives have been proposed. Three motives that are particularly important to self-processes are the need for communion (belonging and interpersonal connectedness), the need for agency (autonomy and competence), and the need for coherence (patterns and regularities). The needs for communion and agency are the foundations of many aspects of social behavior (Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Wiggins & Broughton, 1991 ). Among attitude researchers, constructs similar to communion and agency (i.e., warmth and competence) represent the two basic dimensions of attitudes (e.g., Abele & Wojciszke, 2007 ; Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007 ; Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt, & Kashima, 2005 ). Of even more relevance to the self, communion and agency correspond with the dual forms of self-esteem (e.g., Franks & Marolla, 1976 ; Gecas, 1971 ). That is, self-esteem can be broken down into two components: self-liking and self-competence (Tafarodi & Swann, 2001 ). Self-competence is an evaluation of one’s ability to bring about a desired outcome while the need for communion is an evaluation of one’s goodness, worth, and lovability. Each of these dimensions of self-esteem predicts unique outcomes (e.g., Bosson & Swann, 1999 ; Tafarodi & Vu, 1997 ).

Those who do not fulfill their communion needs have poorer physical outcomes such as relatively poor physical health, weakened immune functioning, and higher mortality rates (House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988 ; Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996 ). As far as psychological outcomes, people who lack positive connections with others also experience greater loneliness (Archibald, Bartholomew, & Marx, 1995 ; Newcomb & Bentler, 1986 ), while those with rich social networks report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999 ). People’s sense of autonomy also contributes to psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989 ) and encourages people to strive for high performance in domains they care about. Autonomy strivings can also be beneficial in that they contribute to people’s need for self-growth (e.g., Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman, 2001 ; Taylor, Neter, & Wayment, 1995 ).

Finally, a great deal of support exists for the notion that people have a fundamental need for psychological coherence or the need for regularity, predictability, meaning, and control (Guidano & Liotti, 1983 ; Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006 ). Coherence is a distinct from consistency because it refers specifically to the consistency between a person’s enduring self-views and the other aspects of their psychological universe (English, Chen, & Swann, 2008 ). The coherence motive may be even more basic than the needs for communion and agency (Guidano & Liotti, 1983 ; Popper, 1963 ). That is, self-views serve as the lenses through which people perceive reality, and incoherence degrades the vision of reality that these lenses offer.

When people feel that their self-knowledge base is incoherent, they may not know how to act, and guiding action is thought to be the primary purpose of thinking in the first place (James, 1890 / 1950 ).

Self-Enhancement and Self-Verification Motives

Drawing on Prescott Lecky’s ( 1945 ) proposition that chronic self-views give people a strong sense of coherence, self-verification theory posits that people desire to be seen as they see themselves, even if their self-views are negative. Self-views can guide at least three stages of information processing: attention, recall, and interpretation. In addition, people act on the preference for self-confirmatory evaluations ensuring that their experiences reinforce their self-views. For example, just as those who see themselves as likable seek out and embrace others who evaluate them positively, so too do people who see themselves as dislikable seek out and embrace others who evaluate them negatively (e.g., Swann, Pelham, & Krull, 1989 ). The theory suggests that people both enter and leave relationships that fail to satisfy their self-verification strivings (Swann, De La Ronde, & Hixon, 1994 ), even divorcing people who they believe have overly positive appraisals of them (for a review, see Kwang & Swann, 2010 ). People may also communicate their identities visually through “identity cues” that enable others to understand and react accordingly to that identity (Gosling, 2008 ). People seek verification of their specific as well as global (self-views). They are especially inclined to seek self-verifying evaluations for self-views that are certain or important (Pelham & Swann, 1994 ; Swann & Pelham, 2002 ).

For the 70% of individuals with globally positive self-views (e.g., Diener & Diener, 1995 ), self-verification may look like self-enhancement strivings (Brown, 1986 ) in that it will compel people to seek and prefer positive feedback about the self. In fact, even people with negative self-views tend to self-enhance when they do not have the cognitive resources available to reflect on their self-views and compare it to the feedback available (Swann, Hixon, Stein-Seroussi, & Gilbert, 1990 ). In addition, people have a tendency to self-enhance before they self-verify (Swann et al., 1990 ). Other evidence for self-enhancement includes the tendency for people to view themselves as better than average, though this may be most likely for ambiguous traits that can describe a wide variety of behaviors because the evidence that people use to make self-evaluations is idiosyncratic (Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989 ).

It is important to remember in discussions of self-verification and self-enhancement that people do not seek to see themselves as they actually are but rather as they see themselves . As mentioned in the section on accuracy, this self-view may overlap to varying degrees with “reality” or others’ perceptions of the self.

The Social Self

Identity negotiation.

People’s self-views influence the kinds of relationships they will engage in, and people can take on numerous identities depending on the situation and relationship. Identity negotiation theory (Swann & Bosson, 2008 ) suggests that relationship partners establish “who is who” via ongoing, mutual, and reciprocal interactions. Once people establish a “working consensus” for what roles each person will take in the relationship (e.g., Swann & Bosson, 2008 ), their agreed-upon expectations help disconnected individuals collaborate toward common obligations and goals, with some commitment to each other. Identity negotiation processes help define relationships and serve as a foundation for organized social activity. The identities that people negotiate tend to align with their chronic self-views. People follow these identity-negotiating processes, albeit largely unintentionally, during each of several successive stages of social interaction. Identities only survive to the extent that they are nourished and confirmed by the social environment, so negotiating identities in relationships is one way an individual ensures the survival of their self-views.

Personal and Social Self-Knowledge

Researchers have historically distinguished between two types of identity: personal and social. Personal identity refers to those features of the self that distinguish us from others while social identity refers to features of the self that are a source of commonality with others, such as group memberships. Once formed, social identities have a powerful influence on thought and behavior (Tajfel, 1981 ; Tajfel & Turner, 1979 ). Social category memberships can influence a person’s self-definition as much or more than idiosyncratic personal attributes (Ray, Mackie, Rydell, & Smith, 2008 ). One version of social identity theory posits that people enter groups that they view as both positive and distinctive to bolster their self-views (e.g., Abrams & Hogg, 1988 ). Evidence shows that people display a strong ingroup bias, or tendency to favor their own group relative to outgroups (e.g., Brewer & Kramer, 1985 ; Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971 ). This bias, along with the outgroup homogeneity effect whereby people see outgroup members as more similar than ingroup members (Linville & Jones, 1980 ) facilitates people’s ability to dehumanize members of outgroups. Dehumanization, perceiving a person as lacking in human qualities, then allows for the justification and maintenance of intergroup prejudice and conflict (Cortes, Demoulin, Rodriguez, Rodriguez, & Leyens, 2005 ; Vaes, Paladino, Castelli, Leyens, & Giovanazzi, 2003 ).

Self-categorization theory, in contrast to emphasizing motivation as in social identity theory, stresses the perceptual processes that lead humans to categorize the world into “us” and “them” (Turner, 1985 ; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987 ). Other approaches argue that social identities reduce uncertainty (e.g., Hogg, 2007 , 2012 ), make the world more coherent (e.g., Ellemers & Van Knippenberg, 1997 ), or protect people from the fear of death (Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, & Sacchi, 2002 ). Though these approaches emphasize cognitive aspects of group membership, group-related emotions are also an important component of social identity. For instance, intergroup emotions theory proposes that a person’s emotional reactions toward other social groups can change in response to situationally induced shifts in self-categorization (Mackie, Maitner, & Smith, 2009 ).

Whatever the nature of the motive that causes people to identify with groups, although group memberships are critical for survival, they can also place people in grave danger when they motivate extreme action on behalf of the group. Research on identity fusion, which occurs when the boundaries between one’s personal and social identities become porous, shows how strong alignment with a group can lead to fighting and dying for that group at great personal cost (Whitehouse, McQuinn, Buhrmester, & Swann, 2014 ). This occurs when people come to view members of their social group as family (Swann et al., 2014 ).

Some research has investigated how personal and social identities are cognitively structured (Reid & Deaux, 1996 ). The segregation model of identity assumes that social and personal attributes are distinct (Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991 ) while the integration model suggests that identities and attributes coexist in a limited set of cognitive structures. Deaux, Reid, Mizrahi, and Cotting ( 1999 ) suggest that what constitutes social versus personal identity should not be determined by the attribute itself but rather the function it is serving (i.e., connecting the self to other people or distinguishing the self from other people). Similarly, optimal distinctiveness theory (Brewer, 1991 ) argues that individuals have an inherent drive to identity with groups but an equally important drive to maintain their individuality. To cope, they strive to find a balance between these opposing forces by finding an identity that supports both the individual’s need for autonomy and affiliation.

For most people, gender and ethnicity are important social identities, and there is variation in the strength of people’s identification with these groups (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992 ). In terms of how gender affects the expression of the self, girls are often socialized to prioritize the qualities that align them to others, while boys are taught to prioritize the qualities that distinguish and differentiate them from others (e.g., Spence, Deaux, & Helmreich, 1985 ). Moreover, women’s self-esteem tends to be connected more to their relational qualities, while men’s self-esteem is linked to their independent qualities (Josephs, Markus, & Tafarodi, 1992 ).

Though society has made great strides in allowing men and women to embrace identities of their own choosing (e.g., Cotter, Hermsen, & Vanneman, 2004 ), traditional social expectations about what it means to be a man or a women persist. For example, gender stereotypes have remained constant over the past thirty years even as women have made significant professional and political gains (Haines, Deaux, & Lofaro, 2016 ). These stereotypes remain entrenched for men as well. England ( 2010 ) argues that for the gender revolution to be complete, not only should traditionally male professions and domains be open to women but traditionally female domains should be increasingly occupied by men. This would help move society closer to attaining gender equality while signaling that traditionally female-dominated roles are equally valued.

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Self-Image, Self-Concept

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Identity encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that create one’s sense of self. This amalgamation creates a steady sense of who one is over time, even as new facets are developed and incorporated into one's identity.

• What Is Identity?
• How to Be Authentic
• Theories of Identity

Everyone struggles with existential questions such as, “Who am I?” and “Who do I want my future self to be?” One reason why may be that the answer is so complex.

Identity includes the many relationships people cultivate, such as their identity as a child, friend, partner, and parent. It involves external characteristics over which a person has little or no control, such as height, race, or socioeconomic class. Identity also encompasses political opinions, moral attitudes, and religious beliefs, all of which guide the choices one makes on a daily basis.

People who are overly concerned with the impression they make, or who feel a core aspect of themselves, such as gender or sexuality , is not being expressed, can struggle acutely with their identity. Reflecting on the discrepancy between who one is and who one wants to be can be a powerful catalyst for change.

Identity encompasses the values people hold, which dictate the choices they make. An identity contains multiple roles—such as a mother, teacher, and U.S. citizen—and each role holds meaning and expectations that are internalized into one’s identity. Identity continues to evolve over the course of an individual’s life.

Identity formation involves three key tasks: Discovering and developing one’s potential, choosing one’s purpose in life, and finding opportunities to exercise that potential and purpose. Identity is also influenced by parents and peers during childhood and experimentation in adolescence .

Every individual has a goal of nurturing values and making choices that are consistent with their true self. Some internalize the values of their families or culture, even though they don’t align with their authentic self. This conflict can drive dissatisfaction and uncertainty. Reflecting on one’s values can spark change and a more fulfilling life.

The idea of an identity crisis emerged from psychologist Erik Erikson, who delineated eight stages of crises and development, a concept later expanded upon by others. Although not a clinical term, an identity crisis refers to facing a challenge to one’s sense of self, which may center around politics , religion, career choices, or gender roles.

Adolescence is a time in which children develop an authentic sense of self, distinct from their parents, in order to become an independent adult. Experimentation is an important part of the process: As teens try on different identities—in terms of friends, hobbies, appearance, gender, and sexuality—they come to understand who they are and who they want to be.

Features of identity can highlight similarities or differences between people—through race, gender, or profession—which can function to either unite or divide. People who view themselves as members of a larger overarching group tend to have stronger kinship with other people, animals, and nature.

A hunger for authenticity guides us in every age and aspect of life. It drives our explorations of work, relationships, play, and prayer. Teens and twentysomethings try out friends, fashions, hobbies, jobs, lovers, locations, and living arrangements to see what fits and what's "just not me." Midlifers deepen commitments to career, community, faith, and family that match their self-images, or feel trapped in existences that seem not their own. Elders regard life choices with regret or satisfaction based largely on whether they were "true" to themselves.

Authenticity is also a cornerstone of mental health. It’s correlated with many aspects of psychological well-being, including vitality, self-esteem , and coping skills. Acting in accordance with one's core self—a trait called self-determination—is ranked by some experts as one of three basic psychological needs, along with competence and a sense of relatedness.

Everyone subconsciously internalizes conventions and expectations that dictate how they believe they should think or behave. The decision to examine or challenge those assumptions, even though it’s difficult, is the first step to living more authentically. This set of 20 steps can guide you through that process.

There can be tension between being wholly yourself and operating successfully in your relationships and career. No one should be completely deceitful or completely forthright; a guiding principle to achieve a balance is that as long as you’re not forced to act in opposition to your values or personality , a little self-monitoring can be warranted.

Relationships can come under threat when there’s a disconnect between expressing yourself freely and taking your partner’s feelings into account. The Authenticity in Relationships scale —which measures this construct through statements such as “I am fully aware of when to insist on myself and when to compromise”—can initiate discussion and help couples cultivate a healthy balance.

As so much of the world has shifted online, discrepancies have emerged between one’s virtual self and real self. People may cultivate their online avatar more and more carefully over time, and the virtual self can influence the perception of the real self. Therefore, it can be valuable to reflect on whether the virtual self is really authentic .

One of the most enduring theories of development was proposed by psychologist Erik Erikson. Erikson divided the lifecycle into eight stages that each contained a conflict, with the resolution of those conflicts leading to the development of personality. The conflict that occurs during adolescence, Erikson believed, is “identity versus role confusion.”

Adolescents grapple with so many different aspects of identity, from choosing a career path to cultivating moral and political beliefs to becoming a friend or partner. Role confusion pertains to the inability to commit to one path. Adolescents then go through a period of experimentation before committing, reconciling the pieces of their identity, and emerging into adulthood.

Identity formation is most acute during adolescence, but the process doesn’t stop after the teen years. Taking on a new role, such as becoming a parent, can make self-definition a lifelong process.

As a person grows older, the overall trend is toward identity achievement. But major life upheavals, such as divorce , retirement , or the death of a loved one, often lead people to explore and redefine their identities.

According to Freud’s psychoanalytic framework, the mind was composed of the id, driven by instinct and desire, the superego, driven by morality and values, and the ego which moderates the two and creates one’s identity. Many features contribute to ego functioning, including insight, agency, empathy, and purpose.

Erik Erikson’s proposed a theory of development based on different stages of life. He also coined the term “ego identity,” which he conceived as an enduring and continuous sense of who a person is. The ego identity helps to merge all the different versions of oneself (the parent self, the career self, the sexual self) into one cohesive whole, so that if disaster strikes, there's a stable sense of self.

Social psychologist Henri Tajfel conducted pioneering research on prejudice , revealing that people favor those in their own groups, even when those groups are designated randomly, such as by people’s preferences for artwork. This research was the basis for Social Identity Theory—that self-esteem is in part derived from group membership, which provides pride and social identity.

AI-generated selfies blur reality, reshaping identity and challenging our grasp of authenticity in the digital age.

A Personal Perspective: My psychiatrist calls psychosis lost time. But when a friend asked me to describe my ten-month bout of psychosis, all I could say was, "I f*ck*ng saw God."

A Personal Perspective: Focusing on wellness behaviors throughout our working lives may lessen the emotional challenges of retirement.

Understanding links between social media and mental health conditions is not straightforward and requires an understanding of what mental health diagnoses involve.

What is courage? Is courage defined differently for men and women? Is courage socially conditioned, innate, or some mixture of nature and nurture? Can courage be learned?

New documentary chronicles singer-songwriter Dory Previn's experience with hearing voices The voices, Previn contends, evolved from tormentors to collaborators.

Within the film "Moonlight," stages of early identity development are observed through life-shaping experiences.

Diversity, belonging and inclusion are highly personal matters that can separate or connect us with the suffering of others and guide our actions for peace and justice.

Personal Perspective: We’re born knowing we exist and deserve to. And while experiences can damage self-love, nothing takes away the relationship with ourself like brain injury.

Regional culture is an often overlooked aspect of identity that impacts athletes' experiences. Sports ecosystems should discuss athletes' regional identities.

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What perspectives underlie ‘researcher identity’? A review of two decades of empirical studies

• Open access
• Published: 23 June 2020
• Volume 81 , pages 567–590, ( 2021 )

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• Montserrat Castelló   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1757-9795 1 , 2 ,
• Lynn McAlpine 3 , 4 ,
• Anna Sala-Bubaré 1 ,
• Kelsey Inouye 3 &
• Isabelle Skakni 5  

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Over the past two decades, identity has emerged as a concept framing studies of early career researcher experience. Yet, identity is an amorphous concept, understood and used in a range of ways. This systematic review aimed to unpack the underpinnings of the notion of researcher identity. The final sample consisted of 38 empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals in the last 20 years. Analyses focused on (a) identifying the dimensions used to define researcher identity, and (b) characterising the meta-theories—the underlying assumptions of the research—in relation to these dimensions. We identified four different stances towards researcher identity (clusters), based on variation on the identity dimensions in relation to the meta-theories. We characterised these as (1) transitioning among identities, (2) balancing identity continuity and change, (3) personal identity development through time and (4) personal and stable identity. These stances incorporate thought-provoking nuances and complex conceptualisations of the notion of researcher identity, for instance, that meta-theory was insufficient to characterise researcher identity stance. The contribution of the study is first to be able to differentiate four characterizations of researcher identity—important given that many studies had not clearly expressed a stance. The second is the potential of the four dimensions to help characterise identity, in past as well as future research—thus a useful tool for those working in this area. Many questions remain, but perhaps the biggest is to what extent and under what conditions is identity a productive notion for understanding early career researcher experience?

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Introduction

Today, in many parts of our lives, ‘identity’ is a recurrent concept, that although frequently contested, is often used to frame human activity in various domains, such as digital, social or genre identity. Increasingly, the concept of ‘identity’ has been invoked over the past two decades in the higher education literature, including that of early career researchers (PhD and post-PhD researchers). Studies frequently claim identity as a central aspect of early career researcher development and the extent to which they manage to develop a sound identity as researchers is crucial to their professional success (Alvesson, Ashcraft and Thomas 2008; Castelló et al. 2015 ). However, we Footnote 1 argue the representations of identity in such empirical studies are rarely challenged, instead being largely presented as a start- or end-point for examining early researcher career experiences. For instance, studies on doctoral students often include reference to Green’s ( 2005 ) notion of the PhD as identity work in their introductions, but do not usually define what it means in the context of the study (Baker and Lattuca 2010 ).

In other words, identity is not a straightforward notion and has multiple embedded meanings. Still, it can be a useful device since it is ‘a tool to think about sameness and difference both in terms of individual continuity and change over time and social categorization or group affiliation’ (Hammack 2015 , p. 11). So, if ‘identity’ is to be useful and meaningful as a concept that can advance research into early career researcher experience, we need to fully understand the assumptions behind the view of identity taken in any particular study, since such assumptions will drive the research and colour the resulting interpretations (Mac Naughton, Rolfe and Siraj-Blatchford 2001). As several authors have argued, it is not possible—nor appropriate—to provide a single, overarching definition of identity. Rather, we need to start with the theoretical underpinnings underlying each particular definition or study (Hall 1992; Strauss 2017 ; Hammack 2015 ). In this systematic review (Kennedy 2007 ), we critically analysed the empirical literature on researcher identity in order to ‘unpack’ the varied theoretical underpinnings of identity—and concurrently, our own respective definitions and assumptions (Grant and Booth 2009 ).

Analysing the underlying dimensions of researcher identity is especially necessary today. In the last decade, institutions, stakeholders and policies around the world have called for a new researcher profile able to develop responsible research and innovation to make possible science with and for society (SWAFS, Horizon 2020 ). To understand what might be implied in the development of this researcher profile, we should reflect on how researcher identity has been defined and empirically addressed and discuss the theoretical assumptions guiding researcher profile definition. Further, in undertaking this analysis, we recognized that identity has over time been under empirical and theoretical debate, particularly in organizational studies (Alvesson et al. 2008 ; Atewologun et al. 2017 ). We were attentive to these conversations in our study, acknowledging debates in specific domains, such as researcher identity, are influenced by and can modify discourses on identity in other domains.

Framing the study

In establishing a useful framework for the study, we started by looking at previous reviews on identity, both in general and specific domains other than the researcher identity domain and higher education field—largely teacher, professional, mentoring or management identity (Epitropaki et al. 2017 ; Holck et al. 2016 ; Palmer et al. 2015 ;Trede et al. 2012 ; Van Lankveld et al. 2017 ). This first reading of the existing reviews revealed ‘identity’ in studies has often been ill-defined—not explicitly stated but implicit—and varied in its apparent focus. This fuzziness was largely evident only through a careful interpretive reading as noted by others (Alvesson et al. 2008 ; Atewologun et al. 2017 ; Brown 2017 ; Pifer and Baker 2013 ). This initial evidence was integrated with (a) our own experience as researchers in the field of early career researcher identity development (Castelló et al. 2015 ; McAlpine et al. 2013 ) and (b) a series of iterative readings of the articles included in this review. Two principles emerged as a result of combining these different sources of evidence which were central to how we approached the review: (a) research on identity can be framed across a range of meta-theories and (b) we can examine the manifestations of different meta-theories through different dimensions of identity. Both meta-theories and dimensions are defined as follows and elaborated in the ‘Method’ section.

• Meta-theories

As individuals, we each draw on different epistemological and ontological perspectives or ways of viewing the world, with our views providing a framework through which to understand human experience (Kuhn 1962 ). A meta-theory, an analytic lens Footnote 2 , provides ‘a loose collection of logically related assumptions, concepts, or propositions that orient thinking and research’ (Bogdan and Biklen 1998 p.22): more specifically, (a) a belief about the nature of knowledge, (b) a methodology and (c) criteria for validity (MacNaughton et al. 2001 ). Each meta-theory represents the philosophical intent or motivation for undertaking a study (Cohen et al. 2002 ).

Understood in this way, meta-theories act as knowledge-claims guiding decisions regarding research questions, conceptual frameworks and methodological decisions in empirical studies. Further, they are defined differently depending on disciplinary traditions. Thus, since research on identity has developed transversally from a varied range of disciplines, we did not expect or seek a shared, standard way to understand and classify the influence of different meta-theories on studies of identity (Atewologun et al. 2017 ). To capture this variation and organise the studies reviewed, the analytical structure that we developed integrated authors and traditions from sociology, psychology and education, the three main traditions that account for the variability of the studies included in this review (Bogdan and Biklen 1998 ; Kuhn 1962 ; Neuman 2000 ; Sousa 2010 ).

Our view is that meta-theories can be represented on a continuum. The continuum allows for a range of positions between two extremes as to what is considered valid knowledge. In other words, the continuum avoids suggesting discrete perspectives, but rather proposes overlaps and grey zones as to epistemological assumptions. In this continuum, we distinguished two distinctive end-points, and along the continuum variants that we refer to as meta-theories, which depending on the disciplinary traditions might have different names. At one end of the continuum, we situated positivism—reality is directly observable and scientific knowledge is exclusively valid, with objectivity not only possible but also desirable in developing scientific work. Related meta-theories considered in different disciplinary traditions include cognitivism and behaviourism or associationism.

The other end of the continuum is represented by post-positivism. Here, there is a great diversity of meta-theories but the major claim is that reality cannot be understood without taking into account the social context; thus, reality is subjective, and, to some extent, knowledge and scientific interpretations are situated within the experiences of the participants and researchers. Meta-theories move from more realistic and individual to more sociocultural and contextual premises and explanations of people, activity and concepts. Common meta-theories include constructivism/interpretivism, transformative and critical realism.

Constructivism assumes reality is different depending on who interprets a specific situation or individual, which in turn, results in a spectrum of individually to more socially based explanations, theories and related notions. Agency and the notion of mental representation are usually related to the former while references to socio-historical and cultural mediation as well as to communities as tools for development are used by the later. Transformative aims to use research and derived interpretations to promote social change, given core notions of power relationships, justice or emancipation. A final emerging meta-theory is critical realism, which assumes many of the constructivist statements but claims ontological realism restricts the range of plausible interpretations.

These different meta-theories represent the underlying assumptions researchers use in planning, conducting and interpreting research, though they often remain implicit (Atewologun et al. 2017 ) and may or may not be used coherently. Moreover, meta-theories are constantly reframed and reinterpreted due to the implications of empirical findings, disciplinary cultures and constraints. However, meta-theories are not particular to the concept of identity; rather, they characterise a general way to understand research and related concepts. So, they were unlikely on their own to be productive in achieving our goal of differentiating stances towards identity. We needed a more fine-grained analytic tool.

Dimensions of identity

We needed a concept-specific approach to evoke the underlying dimensions relevant to capturing the variability in how identity was used empirically. We chose to derive the specifics of these dimensions abductively since they needed to be distinctive enough to explain variability, an approach consistent with previous reviews from different disciplinary areas (Alvesson et al. 2008 ; Atewologun et al. 2017 ). Collectively, the application of these dimensions would provide a unique portrait of the characterization of identity for any one study—and potentially be related to the meta-theories—though we could not assume in what way. Our assumption was that the integrated assessment of the dimensions for each study would enable us to differentiate the studies’ views as to the mechanisms claimed to explain the use of the concept of identity, relate these mechanisms with the meta-theories and, in turn, better understand the underlying assumptions of each study.

Based on results and considerations of previously mentioned reviews, theoretical frames of identity and the emergent characteristics of the articles included in our sample, we distinguished four emergent dimensions, with each understood as representing a continuum.

The first dimension addresses the degree to which the view of identity varies in terms of its emphasis on the individual (Hermans 2001 ) through the social (Ivanič 1998 ; Zucchermaglio and Talamo 2000 ; Wenger 1999 ; Butler 1999 ).

Dimension two highlights variation in the view of identity as stable through dynamic (Elliott 2005 ; Hermans 2001 ).

Dimension three, in contrast, focuses on variation from a view of identity as singular (Ricoeur 1991 ) through to multiple identities held by one individual (Knez 2016 ).

The last dimension emphasizes the variation in focus from thinking (Archer 2000 ) through action in characterising identity (Vandenberghe 2007 ).

The four dimensions echo theoretical discussions around the notion of identity in varied disciplinary traditions in the last twenty years. In other words, the cultural, situational or psychological nature of identity has consistently encompassed monolithic through dualistic understandings of the self and boundaries of reality as physical through mental constructions (Hermans and Dimaggio 2007 ; Hammack 2015 ; Ibarra and Barbulescu 2010 ; Strauss 2017 ).

Aim of review

As noted earlier, we wanted to unpack the underpinnings of the notion of researcher identity, given its increasing, but unexamined, use in research (and policy). Such studies, if published, legitimate the conclusions and the uses of the research-based knowledge and thus, implicitly inform readers’ understanding of researcher identity. This, in turn, has implications for future research, and for others using the research for policy or pedagogical purposes.

Our underlying assumption was that meta-theoretical assumptions (often implicit) guide both empirical research design and interpretation of findings (Bogdan and Biklan 1998)—further, that we needed to incorporate dimensions of identity to generate a more fine-grained characterization of the varied stances to researcher identity. By making clear the underlying dimensions of identity in these studies, and assessing them as regards the relative weight given to the different meta-theories, we could identify variation and any gaps.

To unpack the theoretical underpinnings of researcher identity, we asked:

What is the range of ways in which ‘researcher’ identity is understood and used in empirical studies? Specifically,

What dimensions are used to define researcher identity?

How can we characterise the underlying meta-theories in relation to these dimensions?

What are the implications of this for our understanding of identity and future research?

Scope of the review

The review included peer-reviewed journal articles in English, French and Spanish Footnote 3 that were published from 1997 to 2017 and explored the identity of researchers at any stage of their career (e.g. doctoral students, senior researchers, etc.). The twenty-year window allowed for a comprehensive overview of the literature, while including papers in multiple languages extended the review to encompass multiple research cultures.

Inclusion criteria focused on articles addressing ‘researcher identity,’ but also other keywords such as ‘disciplinary identity’ or ‘academic identity’ as long as the main focus met our interest in researchers.

Search terms and article filtering

Web of Knowledge and SCOPUS were chosen as the two online databases underpinning our literature search. We began with the primary keyword, ‘identity,’ and its two synonyms, ‘self-concept’ and ‘self-perception,’ and then identified additional 13 secondary keywords meant to capture our interest in researcher identity development: scholarly, academic, trajectory, development, journey, researcher, junior researcher, early career researcher*, PhD, doctorate, doctoral, postdoc*, and masters. Results of the searches were input into Mendeley, and once duplicates were removed, yielded 554 articles (details of the search string can be found at the online resource 1_ ESM_ 4 .pdf)

Given our aim, to explore how researcher identity specifically is conceptualized in empirical studies, we excluded the following:

Those without a clear focus on researcher identity;

Those with a focus only on specific socio-demographic characteristics in particular pre-defined groups, such as race and gender, since, after reading them, since they did not address researcher identity;

Non-empirical articles such as reviews and position papers as the aim was to analyse how evidence was linked to the approaches adopted by empirical research;

Those that studied other identities, e.g. teacher; and

Those that were interventions, since the focus was on evaluating programs rather than understanding identity.

After reviewing the abstracts, a significant number of articles were excluded: 342 were unrelated to researcher identity (e.g. papers from history or medical fields, studies on teacher education, etc.) and 98 focused on identities of specific groups, not on researcher identity (e.g. Chinese socialisation in US universities, scientific visibility of Mexican researchers, gender and academic socialisation). The remaining 114 papers were downloaded, and the complete text for each was read to assess its alignment with the inclusion and exclusion criteria and the objectives of this review. After careful examination, 41 articles were rejected because, although they mentioned researcher identity in the abstract, and upon reading the papers, it became clear that this was not the focus of the study (e.g. research paradigms, researcher health, otherness, researcher interactions, etc.), and 10 more were excluded because they were theoretical or position papers.

As well, 14 studies exploring writer, teacher or student identity, but not researcher identity were excluded. Finally, those articles assessing interventions aimed at promoting researcher identity were also excluded ( n = 11). After applying these criteria, 38 articles were in the final selection and analysed in more depth (see Fig. 1 ).

Flow chart of the article filtering process

An interesting part of co-authoring this literature review was that, although we shared a keen interest in researcher identity, our stance as to its various dimensions varied. As suggested by Gough et al. ( 2017 ), keeping this in mind eventually helped us to develop and fine-tune comprehensive definitions of researcher identity dimensions. We adopted an iterative procedure in which each of us read, coded and classified the selected set of articles individually. We then compared our results and reconciled them. The same process was subsequently conducted in pairs. To ensure that we shared the same definitions, and maintained consistency, we followed every round of analysis with thorough discussions about how the dimensions of researcher identity were represented in each article. Specifically, we reviewed any disagreements or different opinions and modified our definitions accordingly.

The analysis took place in four steps, conducted by all the researchers as described in Teamwork.

First, the final selected sample of articles was read iteratively, and the following characteristics were documented in an excel spreadsheet: Author(s), year, definition of identity, keywords, aims of the study, design and results. For each study, relevant concepts related to conceptual approach, methodological approach, and significance were identified and entered in the spreadsheet. This first phase was non-inferential since the words and concepts identified were the same used in the articles.

Second, to assign an article to a particular meta-theory, we relied on the initial analysis of concepts and keywords involved in the analysed articles, thus keeping a low inferential level. Discussions focused on how these concepts and keywords were related to the four broad meta-theories defined previously: each sustaining different purposes and notions involved (see Table 1 for a description of this analytical tool). In other words, once we agreed regarding the relationships between key notions and meta-theories, we applied the first analytical tool situating the articles along the continuum of meta-theories. Each researcher individually coded each of the 38 articles. To guarantee reliability among coders, a series of paired analysis using Kappa’s Cohen index were calculated. Results indicated agreement among researchers ranged from high to acceptable (0.79–0.88). The meta-theories provided an overview regarding how the study of identity as a whole was addressed.

Third, we developed a second analytical tool to provide a more nuanced picture of the results. Since the previous tool focused on the underlying assumptions of the study, not the specifics of how ‘identity’ was conceived, this tool differentiated variability as to how identity was either elaborated in the studies or represented in the description of the findings. It identified (a) those distinctive dimensions in defining identity, and (b) the continuum of characteristics or values differentiated in each dimension.

Dimensions and their values were defined and redefined until they covered all the variation regarding the range of interpretations of identity we found in the empirical studies reviewed (Table 2 ). Five successive rounds of analysis were performed in which all the researchers independently analysed a small group of articles (6, 6, 9, 9, 12) and individual results were discussed until consensus was reached, either to introduce some modifications into the tool or to classify the article. Once consensus was reached regarding the meaning of each of the dimensions and their values, all the papers were analysed again independently by the researchers—with reliability assessed. To do this analysis, we first looked for key notions mainly in the introduction section. When not explicit, other related aspects, explanatory statements in the rest of the article, including results and discussion, were also reviewed. Finally, the whole article was checked to guarantee the validity of categories. The level of agreement ranged between 0.81 and 0.92 depending on the dimension and the coders, which is considered high for this type of analysis (Cohen et al. 2002 ).

Finally, we looked for relationships and correlations (a) among the dimensions and (b) the dimensions and the meta-theories. This final analysis enabled us to assess (a) differences in how these articles characterised identity along the dimensions, and (b) to what extent there was a relationship between the understanding of identity, and (c) the meta-theory framing the study The final step in this analysis was to characterise qualitative clusters based on the identified regularities and consistent patterns. Clusters were primarily based on the correlations among the dimensions whereas secondary analysis looked for their relationship with meta-theories.

Descriptive characteristics of the studies

Although our literature search covered the last 20 years, those articles fulfilling the inclusion criteria ranged from 2004 to 2017 and numbers tended to increase with time, especially from 2012 (see Annex 1). Regarding the journals, the scattering of the results is revealing 23% ( n = 6) of the studies were published in Studies of Higher Education; 15% ( n = 4) in Studies in Continuing Education; 11.5% ( n = 3) in Innovations in Education and Teaching International and 7.7% ( n = 2) in the International Journal of Doctoral Studies and Teaching in Higher Education. The rest of the journals ( n = 9, 35.1%) have one single article published on the topic of researcher identity in the analysed period. Slightly more than half of the studies (58%) were exclusively devoted to the development of researcher identity in doctoral students, with the remainder focusing on early career researchers (28%) and experienced researchers (14%).

Meta-theoretical frameworks of studies

Studies were distributed among three of the four considered meta-theories. Three quarters (76%, n = 29) of the articles were classified as interpretative/constructivist. Of the remaining studies, 18.5% ( n = 7) were classified as critical realism and only 5.5% ( n = 2) as transformative. There were no examples of positivism (e.g. cognitivism).

Constructivist studies tended to situate themselves within a variety of theories noted earlier, which range from what can be broadly termed the sociocultural perspective of learning and development to other more sociological-related approaches. In all cases, historical and context-related issues are crucial to defining identity, typically understood as dynamic and a developmental process.

Studies representative of the critical realism framework were less diverse and relied on the idea of identity as a dynamic biographical process grounded in a history, with pre-existing personal understandings, which in turn influences the present interpretations and future learning (McAlpine et al. 2013 ). The notions of agency and trajectory are central to understand identity within this framework, which provide a means to balance unity and change.

The transformative framework is characterised by studies in which, in these cases, a feminist approach is used to characterise identity as dynamic, multidimensional, complex and socially developed (Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. 2017 ).

Dimensions to define identity

Within the four dimensions and their emergent values, we found a diverse distribution explaining the variation of all the articles included in this review (see Table 3 ).

Individual versus social

Most of the studies assumed that identity is socially constructed (71%, n = 27) (located to the right end of the continuum, positions 4 and 5) and though individual’s experiences are acknowledged, the role that authors attribute to them is diverse. In some cases, identity is considered relational and individuals are claimed to position—and be positioned by others—differently in particular changing scenarios (Castelló et al. 2013 ; Cotterall 2015 ; Murakami-Ramalho et al. 2013 ). In other cases, the emphasis is placed entirely on the role of sociocultural, historical and political contexts in which situational identities are negotiated and lived in and through activity (Gunasekara 2007 ; Remich et al. 2016 ).

Studies that assumed identity is mainly individually based, thus located close to the left end of the grid continuum, were less frequent (19%, n = 7, position 2). They emphasised the role of individuals, and especially their agency in the development of identity, without denying the importance of context and the situated nature of this development (Gardner and Willey 2018 ; Inouye and McAlpine 2017 ; McAlpine et al. 2014 ). These studies (position 2) mostly represented critical realism, except two (Buss et al. 2014 ; Pifer and Baker 2016 ), which, despite adopting a constructivist perspective, considered the construction of the self, through notions as ‘salience’ or ‘learned mind’ and ‘perceptions of the self’ respectively, as a matter of individuals rather than a social issue.

Finally, only 4 studies were situated in the middle of the continuum (3), meaning that identity resulted from balancing individual agency and social influence. These studies defined identity by using expressions such ‘a set representation built by individuals in sociocultural contexts’ (González et al. 2014 ) or ‘the core sense of the self’ (Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. 2017 ).

Stability versus dynamism

Most of the studies (73%, n = 28) considered dynamism a crucial dimension of researcher identity, rather than understanding identity as a stable characteristic of individuals (positions 4 and 5 of the continuum). Most of them ( n = 21) focused on identity development, and thus, looked for changes through time. In some cases, development is understood explicitly as constant negotiation-re-negotiation of past, present and future identity experiences, within the notion of identity-trajectory (McAlpine et al. 2014 ; Inouye and McAlpine 2017 ); development is a relevant heuristic to characterise dynamism in the continuous negotiation between stability and change through time. The other seven studies, which consider researcher identity as a dynamic construct, were situated at the end of the continuum and thus made more explicit claims about identity being constantly changing, or even fluid (Gunasekara 2007 ; Rayner et al. 2015 ). This stance requires authors to focus on processes instead on outputs.

Almost a third (27%, n = 10) of the studies took a balanced position on this dimension namely they focused on transitioning from one identity to another (Dison 2004 ; González et al. 2014 ; Holley 2015 ) or modifying a particular identity. In these cases, the process of change is expected to end, whereas this is not the case for the rest.

Unity versus multiplicity

Around a quarter of the studies (24%, n = 9) explicitly stated individuals have one single identity, though it might integrate several roles (positions 1 and 2). When combined with the notion of identity-trajectory, unity is the result of the continuous negotiation between stability and change that characterised the former dimension (Gardner and Willey 2018 ; Inouye and McAlpine 2017 ; McAlpine et al. 2014 ; McAlpine and Amundsen 2009 ).

More than one third of the studies (34%, n = 13) referred to two identities and focused on moving from one to another. Transitioning from a student to a researcher identity is one common topic within this set of studies, as well as from teacher to researcher identity (Baker and Pifer 2011 ). Consequently, although time is important, what is expected and looked for is the end of the process of identity change (González et al. 2014 ; Holley 2015 ). However, several studies included in this group did not provide an explicit definition of identity except for describing the transition situation in which students (or professionals) have to develop their identity as researchers (Araújo 2009 ; Baker and Pifer 2011 ; Heinrich 2005 ; Murakami-Ramalho et al. 2013 ; Rayner et al. 2015 ).

Finally, the largest set of studies (42%, n = 16) accepted, more or less explicitly, a landscape of different identities not necessarily restricted to two (positions 4 and 5). Within this set, almost half of the studies ( n = 7) focused on contradictions and conflicts that arise when individuals negotiate particular identities related to their participation in different contexts. In such cases, their stances and activities are not compatible with the research identity they are developing (Castelló et al. 2013 ; Cotterall 2015 ; Mewburn 2011 ). The focus is on relationships between these identities, or identity dimensions (Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. 2017 ), roles (Merolla and Serpe 2013 ; Pifer and Baker 2016 ) or identity positions (Castelló et al. 2013 ). The aim is to elucidate why, when and how conflicts are solved; norms and practices are adopted, ignored or resisted (Hökkä, Eteläpelto and Rasku-Puttonen 2012); and how multiple trajectories are linked to varying membership positions in multiple communities (Smith and Boyd 2012 ; Zambo et al. 2015 ). The rest of the studies ( n = 8) were more situated at position 5 of the continuum and assume identities are not only multiple because they are situational (Guerin 2013 ; Gunasekara 2007 ) but they are also disjointed (Costa, 2015 ).

Thinking versus action

Studies located in positions 1 and 2 of this continuum assumed that thinking, thus ideas, representations, conceptions or perceptions, prevails in defining identity. This means that, although practices and experiences are acknowledged as highly relevant, the way in which individuals perceive and interpret these experiences is also crucial to explain how identity is developed and shaped. These few studies ( n = 4, 6%) emphasised the role of self-reflection and critical thinking (Alexander et al. 2014 ; Leibowitz et al. 2014 ) as well as the thoughts, ideas or representations of oneself, which are constructed in social contexts (Buss et al. 2014 ; González et al. 2014 ).

A slightly higher number of studies ( n = 6, 15%) took an intermediate stance regarding the role of thinking and action in constituting identity. They assumed some inner processes filter or mediate the activity and contextual factors that, in turn, influence the self-perceptions of identities and the relationships between each. These instances ranged from meaning-making mechanisms (Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. 2017 ), self-definition and personal history (McGregor et al. 2010; Schulze 2014 ), writing and self-narratives (Cotterall 2015 ) to individuals’ internal expectations useful to make sense of themselves (Hökkä et al. 2012 ).

Finally, the majority of studies were situated in the action end of the continuum (positions 4 and 5), thus assuming that thinking and action are relevant but placed more emphasis on action (50%, n = 19), or that action prevails in defining and shaping identity (13%, n = 5). In these studies, identity is shaped or enacted by participation in different contexts (Castelló et al. 2013 ; Gardner and Willey 2016; Inouye and McAlpine 2017 ; McAlpine et al. 2013 , 2014 ; McAlpine and Lucas 2011 ; Merolla and Serpe 2013 ; Wegener et al. 2016 ). Another view is that activity or behaviour comes first, and researcher identity is developed by—and visible in—how one speaks, reads, writes or behaves (Baker and Pifer 2011 ; Guerin 2013 ; Thompson et al. 2016 ). Some of these studies adopted the notion of participatory social practices (Lave and Wenger 1991 ; Wenger 1999 ) in which identity is shaped by Communities of Practice (Boyd and Smith 2016 ; Dison 2004 ; Lassig et al. 2013 ). There were four articles (10%) (Araújo 2009 ; Costa 2015 ; Gunasekara 2007 ; Pifer and Baker 2016 ) that could not be classified in regards to this dimension since they did not offer any explanation regarding this dimension.

Relationship among dimensions and meta-theoretical frameworks in the researcher identity studies

In looking at relationships among the dimensions and between the dimensions and the meta-theoretical approaches, one finding predominated. Two dimensions moved consistently together: the second, stability vs dynamism, and the third, unity vs multiplicity. After collapsing the data from the rubric into three values, (1) low (levels 1 and 2 of the former classification), (2) medium (former level 3) and (3) high (former levels 4 and 5), this consistency was remarkable (see Table 4 ). Four different clusters were identified based on the primary commonalities in the dimensions of stability vs dynamism and unity vs multiplicity and related variation on the rest of the dimensions defining identity. We provide both qualitative and quantitative characterizations for each cluster.

The dimensions are key to understand the distinctiveness of each cluster, but they alone do not provide information about the prevalence of the different clusters or the prevailing stance within each cluster—essential if one is to understand how the construct is being empirically used in the field, which was obtained by looking at the meta-theoretical approaches distribution across clusters.

Cluster 1. Transitioning among identities

The fourteen papers included in this cluster are characterised by understanding identity as socially constructed and dynamic and accept, though not always explicitly, the existence of more than one identity, even multiple identities, which in some cases, can be disjointed. The notion of transitioning among different, often competing, identities is discussed as both a theoretical assumption and a focus for the empirical data collection and analysis. Moreover, identity is mainly socially constructed and developed, except for Pifer and Baker ( 2016 ) who emphasised individual characteristics as the focus to define identity, and Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. ( 2017 ) who were located in the middle, thus valuing both the individual (self) and contextual influences in identity development. More than half of the papers included in this cluster considered both thinking and action as relevant but placed more emphasis on action in defining and shaping identity. Of the remaining, only four took an intermediate stance, thus claiming that both thinking and action are relevant to define identity. The remaining three did not reveal a clear stance on this dimension.

Interestingly, all papers in this cluster were constructivist in approach. The articles in this cluster were also quite recent, all published in the last seven years (the first one is from 2011).

Cluster 2. Balancing identity continuity and change

Six papers that, as in the first cluster, considered identity as socially constructed and highly dynamic shape the second cluster. The main difference from the previous group relates to their stance towards unity in identity definition. Most of the papers in this cluster only referred to one single identity (Araújo 2009 ) or to moving from one identity to another (Lassig et al. 2013 ). In this latter case, the process is sequential, and no multiple identities are considered simultaneously except for some specific transition moments (Alexander et al. 2014 ). However, transitions were rarely the explicit focus of the studies included in this group. Despite the consistency of identity as socially constructed and dynamic, there is great variability regarding whether thought or action prevails in defining identity. Half the papers felt action and participatory practices prevail in shaping and defining identity, whereas, within the other half, two mentioned representations and individual thoughts in identity definition and the last provided no information regarding this dimension (see Table 4 ).

All the papers included in this cluster were in the post-positivist meta-theoretical approaches. However, they were theoretically highly variable with all three meta-theoretical approaches represented. Publication year ranged from 2005 to 2015.

Cluster 3. Personal identity development through time

The eight papers gathered in this cluster were highly consistent in defining identity as dynamic and mainly individually driven, thus a developmental and agentive process—while acknowledging the interaction with not only social contexts but also physical contexts (McAlpine and Lucas 2011 ). Only in two cases (Boyd and Smith 2016 ; Wegener et al. 2016 ) did social characteristics prevail. All of them also defined identity as unique and driven by action and participation on social events.

As regards their meta-theoretical stance, the majority shared critical realism, with only the two favouring social characteristics located in the constructivist. Years of publication range from 2009 to 2017.

Cluster 4. Personal and stable identity

The last cluster gathers seven papers defining identity as mainly unique and stable, though some changes can be inferred in transitions. They viewed social characteristics as crucial or important in defining identity. Still, there was greater variability observed regarding the role of action. Four considered identity as mainly shaped through action and participatory practices; two claimed that thinking and action are both equally relevant to define identity (Klenowski et al. 2011 ; Murakami-Ramalho et al. 2013 ) and the last (González et al. 2014 ) situated thinking and the notion of conceptions, strategies and feelings as predominant.

All the studies in this cluster shared the constructivist framework and were published between 2010 and 2015.

Finally, we were unable to locate three studies in any cluster since they did not display any regularities related to the dimensions we applied in this review. Two of them display a balanced position regarding the dimension of stability and change but claim for multiple identities: Barnacle and Mewburn ( 2010 ) argue the social nature of identity and the relevance of action; Buss et al. ( 2014 ) that identity is individually based and guided by personal thoughts and mental representations. The last defines identity as unique and stable but shaped through social and action (Thompson et al. 2016 ).

Emerging patterns across clusters

Perspectives on dynamism.

Using the dimensions to define identity revealed that most papers looked at dynamism and movement of identities, consistent with the constant changes researchers face nowadays. This dynamism related to three different characteristics: transitions, development and fluidity.

In the papers interested in transitions, dynamism is restricted to changes among identities or roles. Thus, it is expected to end, usually when the new identity replaces a former one. Contradictions may be considered, especially when the focus is transitions, with a single changed identity conceived as ensuring self-coherence and stability. In contrast, in those papers focusing on identity development, no ending or replacement of one identity by another is expected. In these cases, time plays a crucial role to explain how and why specific identity characteristics are characterised. Here, dynamism constitutes constant change, with identity understood as fluid, and may include the notion of multiple identities, even disjointed. Regardless, in both cases, longitudinal designs and trajectories are valued.

Perspectives on action

Papers also displayed alternative understandings of the role of action in shaping identity: whether related to activity or the community. Those papers that related action to activity considered the development of identity linked to the individual’s appropriation of the specific characteristics of a particular type of activity (writing, talking, behaving). In contrast, other papers assumed that the characteristics of a particular community and its practices shape identity. This difference is not minor since results show a relationship between the notion of action and the nature of identity as social or individual. Papers exploring particular contexts of researcher identity development (e.g. engineering researchers) were those that more frequently attributed the individual a substantial role in defining its identity (or at least equated the role of the individual with the social). In contrast, those studies assuming that communities of practice shape identity defined identity mainly as socially constructed.

Interaction of dimensions and meta-theories

The four clusters identified illustrate interesting relationships among and between the dimensions and the meta-theoretical approaches displayed by the reviewed studies. Looking at the results, the consideration of identity as unique or multiple is the main difference between the two first clusters (transitioning among identities and balancing continuity and change); thus, papers included in both agree that researcher identity is socially constructed and dynamic. However, papers in the first cluster, claiming multiple identities, were the most frequent and recent ones, and were mainly situated in socio-cultural constructivist approaches.

Differences in the remaining clusters related to both dynamism and the social or individual nature of identity. Papers in the third cluster (personal identity development through time) claim that changes and dynamism are linked to the notion of identity development; at the same time, they situate the self and agency as key terms to explain changes through time. Theoretical consistency is high in this group, which leads us to conclude that when it comes to researcher identity, the critical realism meta-theory assumes identity as a personal developmental process, mainly individual.

In contrast, those in the fourth cluster (personal and stable identity) considered identity as mainly stable and personal and, though the influence of social characteristics in its development is not denied, the role attributed to the social and its theoretical understanding may vary significantly in this group. Theoretically, this group represents the more individually based explanations within the constructivist meta-theory, assuming agency and situated mental representations as crucial in researcher identity.

We conducted this review to unpack the underpinnings of ‘researcher identity,’ a notion used and debated in different disciplinary fields (e.g. educational and social psychology, organizational studies), particularly in higher education and faculty or academic identity development (Alvesson et al. 2008 ; Atewologun et al. 2017 ; Brown 2017 ). While we had presumed that studies focusing on a specific notion—such as researcher identity—would clarify their epistemological and theoretical assumptions, this proved not to be the case.

Thus, we used an analysis that integrated meta-theories of scientific knowledge with dimensions of identity to interpret the studies. We identified four stances towards researcher identity. These stances incorporate intriguing nuances and complex characterizations; particularly highlighting difference perspectives on (a) dynamism, (b) action and (c) the interaction of dimensions and meta-theories—with implications for both our understanding of researcher identity and future research.

Important nuances emerged when analysing how each paper explained those characteristics and dimensions defining researcher identity. The results as a whole revealed the prevalence of meta-theories towards the post-positivist end of the continuum with the premises linked to constructivist meta-theoretical approaches prevailing across the papers. Further, all four stances incorporated papers with a constructivist approach. Thus, while the meta-theory was necessary to understand the approach to the study, it was insufficient to characterise the researcher identity stance. Notably, none of the analysed papers adopted a positivist stance—presumably because a positivist stance does not engage with the subjectivity of the researcher, and thus, the notion of identity has no value or interest per se.

As regards the four characterizations of researcher identity, their value lies in two directions. The first is to enable fine-grained comparisons of already-published empirical studies: to judge and contest the ways in which different stances may provide different perspectives (and blind-spots) on researcher identity. The second is the valuable tool that the four dimensions represent for future research. Researchers can use them to characterise and report their own stance. Further, if this were done consistently, over time, we would generate a collective empirical understanding of researcher identity that would be much more nuanced, complex and comprehensive.

Three further considerations emerge that have implications for our current understanding and future research on researcher identity. First, given the limited number of authors that appear more than once in the final articles, we wonder if some authors delve into identity as an explanation of other areas of interest rather than as an intrinsic interest, i.e. identity as peripheral rather than central. In other words, what exactly is being looked at when the notion of researcher identity is used? Related subjects, such as PhD programs, attrition, professional development or career changes, were at the core of some of the reviewed studies. In these cases, identity was used as a way to interpret the results or even as a heuristic to conceptually frame those research subjects. The theoretical approaches assumed by those papers appeared to come from disciplinary research fields not always consistent with the researcher identity definition they claimed. This might explain why authors used some theoretically grounded notions that were in opposition (e.g. ‘identities’ in plural alongside ‘transition’), or researchers might avoid the term identity totally given the difficulty of clarifying it in an empirical paper. A final explanation for this lack of clarity might be theoretical shifts in researcher identity that cannot be detailed in an empirical paper.

Second, we suggest current and future researchers of identity can use the dimensions to clarify their underlying assumptions and the implications for their empirical designs and methods. For instance, reflecting on our understanding of stability and change helps decide how to address development in defining identity. Further, clarifying to what extent identity is individual or socially constructed forces us to consider notions of structure and agency. Focusing on the thought-action dimension implies taking a stance on how and when change occurs as well as how the concept of action is related to individual and communities. Finally, reflection on whether identity is unique or multiple forces us to relate researcher identity to roles and spheres of activity. We argue that using such an approach would legitimate the conclusions and uses of the research-based knowledge and better inform readers’ understanding of researcher identity. This particularly has implications for others using the research such as developers, curriculum designers and policy makers.

Third, others, regardless of social science discipline, could use the same systematic analytic procedure—dimensions and meta-theoretical approaches—to characterise the representation of more abstract concepts in empirical studies.

Limitations

Some decisions we made entailed limitations. Restricting the review to the notion of researcher identity could have biased some results, especially as regards the notion of the multiple identities since this decision may have excluded some pertinent papers. However, we did not consider using the broader search term ‘identity’ without any secondary keyword, because this would have broadened the scope and focus of the review too much.

We also excluded articles focused on the identity of specific groups but not on researcher identity. While this could have resulted in missing articles, based on the initial reading, this was not the case for any of the discarded articles. Still, the final sample included four papers addressing early career researcher identity as intersecting with other factors like gender. Though we acknowledge discussing intersectionality might have resulted in more nuanced researcher identity explanations in those four cases, examining this issue in sufficient depth would reframe the focus of the paper.

Readers might also wonder whether some form of selection bias contributed to the prominence of social constructivism with less than a quarter representing other meta-theories. We believe this finding stems from the predominant use of social constructivism in the general literature on early career researchers.

Another aspect of selection bias that the final articles reviewed were all English may reflect the databases used. Van Leeuwen ( 2013 ) argues that WoS and Scopus do not consistently incorporate the literature in the social sciences and humanities and have a bias towards English studies. Further, powerful cultural/linguistic differences may lead to different ways of understanding early career researcher experience. These limitations can be explored in future reviews.

Finally, a further limitation stemmed from our decision to not discuss the relationships between methodologies, theoretical stances and framings of identity, as those elements are often intimately interrelated. Such a discussion might have enhanced the contribution of this study, but we felt it was beyond the scope of the review’s focus on the framing of identity.

Future research

Many questions still remain: To what extent is the interpretation of data influenced by the researcher identity stance, whether or not explicit? What are we not seeing when interpreting data through our own stance only? Are we clear on why we are adopting one stance and not another and for what goal? What influence might data collection and analysis be having on our understanding of identity; recall that those incorporating dynamism often used longitudinal designs. Perhaps the biggest: To what extent and under what conditions is identity a productive notion for understanding early career researcher experience? For researchers in this field (like us), these questions provoke considerable thought since if we do not answer them, our use of the notion of research identity may not prove as productive as it might.

We began this paper noting that identity is a frequently used and contested concept. The results from the review make clear why this may be the case, given the range of different perspectives on identity in the studies analysed. Interestingly, we noted few attempts to contrast the stance taken with other studies, yet such comparison is important if we are truly to make sense of empirical findings.

Further, the unique results from this review clarify how particular understandings of researcher identity relate to a set of underlying conceptual dimensions and theoretical stances. Through the analytical tools used, we drew out the nuances and complex conceptualisations when studies address researcher identity empirically. Given that many studies had not clearly expressed a stance towards identity, a major contribution of our analysis was to clarify not only the specific ways in which identity was understood in each study, but also to characterise how identity was generally conceived in the researcher identity literature. In the process, we created a discourse for articulating stances towards identity. We hope the analysis and the discourse lead to fruitful debates among researcher identity scholars.

An international team of five researchers researching PhD and post-PhD identity development with various disciplinary backgrounds (psychology, education and sociology)

Alternative terms with a similar meaning include ‘knowledge claims’ (Creswell and Poth 2017 ); epistemology and ontology (Neuman 2000 ).

We initially chose these languages because we did not want to restrict the search to only English published research, and these were the languages the authors could read. Neither French nor Spanish published papers remained in the final review.

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Why Identity Matters and How It Shapes Us

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

Verywell / Zoe Hansen

Defining Identity

• What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

Identity Development Across the Lifespan

The importance of identity, tips for reflecting on your identity.

Your identity is a set of physical, mental, emotional, social, and interpersonal characteristics that are unique to you.

It encapsulates your core personal values and your beliefs about the world, says Asfia Qaadir , DO, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at PrairieCare.

In this article, we explore the concept of identity, its importance, factors that contribute to its development , and some strategies that can help you reflect upon your identity.

Your identity gives you your sense of self. It is a set of traits that distinguishes you from other people, because while you might have some things in common with others, no one else has the exact same combination of traits as you.

Your identity also gives you a sense of continuity, i.e. the feeling that you are the same person you were two years ago and you will be the same person two days from now.

Asfia Qaadir, DO, Psychiatrist

Your identity plays an important role in how you treat others and how you carry yourself in the world.

What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

These are some of the factors that can contribute to your identity:

• Physical appearance
• Physical sensations
• Emotional traits
• Life experiences
• Genetics 
• Health conditions
• Nationality
• Race  
• Social community 
• Peer group 
• Political environment
• Spirituality
• Sexuality 
• Personality
• Beliefs 
• Finances 

We all have layers and dimensions that contribute to who we are and how we express our identity.

All of these factors interact together and influence you in unique and complex ways, shaping who you are. Identity formation is a subjective and deeply personal experience.

Identity development is a lifelong process that begins in childhood, starts to solidify in adolescence, and continues through adulthood.

Childhood is when we first start to develop a self-concept and form an identity.

As children, we are highly dependent on our families for our physical and emotional needs. Our early interactions with family members play a critical role in the formation of our identities.

During this stage, we learn about our families and communities, and what values are important to them, says Dr. Qaadir. 

The information and values we absorb in childhood are like little seeds that are planted years before we can really intentionally reflect upon them as adults, says Dr. Qaadir.

Traumatic or abusive experiences during childhood can disrupt identity formation and have lasting effects on the psyche.

Adolescence

Adolescence is a critical period of identity formation.

As teenagers, we start to intentionally develop a sense of self based on how the values we’re learning show up in our relationships with ourselves, our friends, family members, and in different scenarios that challenge us, Dr. Qaadir explains.

Adolescence is a time of discovering ourselves, learning to express ourselves, figuring out where we fit in socially (and where we don’t), developing relationships, and pursuing interests, says Dr. Qaadir.

This is the period where we start to become independent and form life goals. It can also be a period of storm and stress , as we experience mood disruptions, challenge authority figures, and take risks as we try to work out who we are.

As adults, we begin building our public or professional identities and deepen our personal relationships, says Dr. Qaadir.

These stages are not set in stone, rather they are fluid, and we get the rest of our lives to continue experiencing life and evolving our identities, says Dr. Qaadir.

Having a strong sense of identity is important because it:

• Creates self-awareness: A strong sense of identity can give you a deep sense of awareness of who you are as a person. It can help you understand your likes, dislikes, actions, motivations, and relationships.
• Provides direction and motivation: Having a strong sense of identity can give you a clear understanding of your values and interests, which can help provide clarity, direction, and motivation when it comes to setting goals and working toward them.
• Enables healthy relationships: When you know and accept yourself, you can form meaningful connections with people who appreciate and respect you for who you are. A strong sense of identity also helps you communicate effectively, establish healthy boundaries, and engage in authentic and fulfilling interactions.
• Keeps you grounded: Our identities give us roots when things around us feel chaotic or uncertain, says Dr. Qaadir. “Our roots keep us grounded and help us remember what truly matters at the end of the day.”
• Improves decision-making: Understanding yourself well can help you make choices that are consistent with your values, beliefs, and long-term goals. This clarity reduces confusion, indecision, and the tendency to conform to others' expectations, which may lead to poor decision-making .
• Fosters community participation: Identity is often shaped by cultural, social, political, spiritual, and historical contexts. Having a strong sense of identity allows you to understand, appreciate, and take pride in your cultural heritage. This can empower you to participate actively in society, express your unique perspective, and contribute to positive societal change.

On the other hand, a weak sense of identity can make it more difficult to ground yourself emotionally in times of stress and more confusing when you’re trying to navigate major life decisions, says Dr. Qaadir.

Dr. Qaadir suggests some strategies that can help you reflect on your identity:

• Art: Art is an incredible medium that can help you process and reflect on your identity. It can help you express yourself in creative and unique ways.
• Reading: Reading peoples’ stories through narrative is an excellent way to broaden your horizons, determine how you feel about the world around you, and reflect on your place in it.
• Journaling: Journaling can also be very useful for self-reflection . It can help you understand your feelings and motivations better.
• Conversation: Conversations with people can expose you to diverse perspectives, and help you form and represent your own.
• Nature: Being in nature can give you a chance to reflect undisturbed. Spending time in nature often has a way of putting things in perspective.
• Relationships: You can especially strengthen your sense of identity through the relationships around you. It is valuable to surround yourself with people who reflect your core values but may be different from you in other aspects of identity such as personality styles, cultural backgrounds, passions, professions, or spiritual paths because that provides perspective and learning from others.

American Psychological Association. Identity .

Pfeifer JH, Berkman ET. The development of self and identity in adolescence: neural evidence and implications for a value-based choice perspective on motivated behavior . Child Dev Perspect . 2018;12(3):158-164. doi:10.1111/cdep.12279

Hasanah U, Susanti H, Panjaitan RU. Family experience in facilitating adolescents during self-identity development . BMC Nurs . 2019;18(Suppl 1):35. doi:10.1186/s12912-019-0358-7

Dereboy Ç, Şahin Demirkapı E, et al. The relationship between childhood traumas, identity development, difficulties in emotion regulation and psychopathology . Turk Psikiyatri Derg . 2018;29(4):269-278.

Branje S, de Moor EL, Spitzer J, Becht AI. Dynamics of identity development in adolescence: a decade in review . J Res Adolesc . 2021;31(4):908-927. doi:10.1111/jora.12678

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By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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• Published: 10 November 2022

Identity effects in social media

• Sean J. Taylor   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7436-1656 1 ,
• Lev Muchnik   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5011-8336 2 , 3 ,
• Madhav Kumar 4 &
• Sinan Aral   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2762-058X 4  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  7 ,  pages 27–37 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Business and management
• Information systems and information technology
• Science, technology and society

Identity cues appear ubiquitously alongside content in social media today. Some also suggest universal identification, with names and other cues, as a useful deterrent to harmful behaviours online. Unfortunately, we know little about the effects of identity cues on opinions and online behaviours. Here we used a large-scale longitudinal field experiment to estimate the extent to which identity cues affect how people form opinions about and interact with content online. We randomly assigned content produced on a social news aggregation website to ‘identified’ and ‘anonymous’ conditions to estimate the causal effect of identity cues on how viewers vote and reply to content. The effects of identity cues were significant and heterogeneous, accounting for between 28% and 61% of the variation in voting associated with commenters’ production, reputation and reciprocity. Our results also showed that identity cues cause people to vote on content faster (consistent with heuristic processing) and to vote according to content producers’ reputations, production history and reciprocal votes with content viewers. These results provide evidence that rich-get-richer dynamics and inequality in social content evaluation are mediated by identity cues. They also provide insights into the evolution of status in online communities. From a practical perspective, we show via simulation that social platforms may improve content quality by including votes on anonymized content as a ranking signal.

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Data availability

An anonymized version of the data supporting this study is retained indefinitely for reproducibility. The data can be accessed from the authors by signing a non-disclosure agreement available at the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/seanjtaylor/identify_effects_in_social_media . The NDA requires that researchers provide their affiliation and attest that they will only use the data for reproduction and that no attempt will be made to re-engineer the identities of users or the platform.

Code availability

The code supporting this study is available at the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/seanjtaylor/identify_effects_in_social_media .

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Acknowledgements

We thank members of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy for valuable feedback. L.M. acknowledges support from the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 2566/21) and the David Goldman Data-Driven Innovation Research Centre for supporting this research. The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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Gender identity development in children and young people: A systematic review of longitudinal studies

Affiliations.

• 1 Research and Development Unit, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
• 2 Gender Identity Development Service, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
• 3 Division of Psychiatry, University College London, UK.
• 4 Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, UK.
• PMID: 33827265
• DOI: 10.1177/13591045211002620

Background: Children are presenting in greater numbers to gender clinics around the world. Prospective longitudinal research is important to better understand outcomes and trajectories for these children. This systematic review aims to identify, describe and critically evaluate longitudinal studies in the field.

Method: Five electronic databases were systematically searched from January 2000 to February 2020. Peer-reviewed articles assessing gender identity and psychosocial outcomes for children and young people (<18 years) with gender diverse identification were included.

Results: Nine articles from seven longitudinal studies were identified. The majority were assessed as being of moderate quality. Four studies were undertaken in the Netherlands, two in North America and one in the UK. The majority of studies had small samples, with only two studies including more than 100 participants and attrition was moderate to high, due to participants lost to follow-up. Outcomes of interest focused predominantly on gender identity over time and emotional and behavioural functioning.

Conclusions: Larger scale and higher quality longitudinal research on gender identity development in children is needed. Some externally funded longitudinal studies are currently in progress internationally. Findings from these studies will enhance understanding of outcomes over time in relation to gender identity development in children and young people.

Keywords: Gender identity; children and young people; gender dysphoria; longitudinal; outcomes; prospective.

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• Systematic Review
• Gender Identity*
• Longitudinal Studies
• Netherlands
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The order your siblings were born in may play a role in identity and sexuality

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It's National Siblings Day ! To mark the occasion, guest host Selena Simmons-Duffin is exploring a detail very personal to her: How the number of older brothers a person has can influence their sexuality.

Scientific research on sexuality has a dark history, with long-lasting harmful effects on queer communities. Much of the early research has also been debunked over time. But not this "fraternal birth order effect." The fact that a person's likelihood of being gay increases with each older brother has been found all over the world – from Turkey to North America, Brazil, the Netherlands and beyond. Today, Selena gets into all the details: What this effect is, how it's been studied and what it can (and can't) explain about sexuality.

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The Cass review: an opportunity to unite behind evidence informed care in gender medicine

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At the heart of Hilary Cass’s review of gender identity services in the NHS is a concern for the welfare of “children and young people” (doi: 10.1136/bmj.q820 ). 1 Her stated ambition is to ensure that those experiencing gender dysphoria receive a high standard of care. This will be disputed, of course, by people and lobbying groups angered by her recommendations, but it is a theme running through the review. Cass, a past president of the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, seeks to provide better care for children and adolescents on one of the defining issues of our age. Her conclusion is alarming for anybody who genuinely cares for child welfare: gender medicine is “built on shaky foundations” (doi: 10.1136/bmj.q814 ). 2

That verdict is supported by a series of review papers published in Archives of Disease in Childhood , a journal published by BMJ and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2023-326669 doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2023-326670 doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2023-326499 doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2023-326500 ). 3 4 5 6 The evidence base for interventions in gender medicine is threadbare, whichever research question you wish to consider—from social transition to hormone treatment.

For example, of more than 100 studies examining the role of puberty blockers and hormone treatment for gender transition only two were of passable quality. To be clear, intervention studies—particularly of drug and surgical interventions—should include an appropriate control group, ideally be randomised, ensure concealment of treatment allocation (although open label studies are sometimes acceptable), and be designed to evaluate relevant outcomes with adequate follow-up.

One emerging criticism of the Cass review is that it set the methodological bar too high for research to be included in its analysis and discarded too many studies on the basis of quality. In fact, the reality is different: studies in gender medicine fall woefully short in terms of methodological rigour; the methodological bar for gender medicine studies was set too low, generating research findings that are therefore hard to interpret. The methodological quality of research matters because a drug efficacy study in humans with an inappropriate or no control group is a potential breach of research ethics. Offering treatments without an adequate understanding of benefits and harms is unethical. All of this matters even more when the treatments are not trivial; puberty blockers and hormone therapies are major, life altering interventions. Yet this inconclusive and unacceptable evidence base was used to inform influential clinical guidelines, such as those of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which themselves were cascaded into the development of subsequent guidelines internationally (doi: 10.1136/bmj.q794 ). 7

The Cass review attempted to work with the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) and the NHS adult gender services to “fill some of the gaps in follow-up data for the approximately 9000 young people who have been through GIDS to develop a stronger evidence base.” However, despite encouragement from NHS England, “the necessary cooperation was not forthcoming.” Professionals withholding data from a national inquiry seems hard to imagine, but it is what happened.

A spiralling interventionist approach, in the context of an evidence void, amounted to overmedicalising care for vulnerable young people. A too narrow focus on gender dysphoria, says Cass, neglected other presenting features and failed to provide a holistic model of care. Gender care became superspecialised when a more general, multidisciplinary approach was required. In a broader sense, this failure is indicative of a societal failure in child and adolescent health (doi: 10.1136/bmj.q802 doi: 10.1136/bmj-2022-073448 ). 8 9 The review’s recommendations, which include confining prescription of puberty blockers and hormonal treatments to a research setting (doi: 10.1136/bmj.q660 ), now place the NHS firmly in line with emerging practice internationally, such as in Scandinavia (doi: 10.1136/bmj.p553 ). 10 11

Cass proposes a future model of regional multidisciplinary centres that provide better access and, importantly, standardised care for gender dysphoria, including a smoother transition between adolescent and adult services. Staff will need training. All children and young people embarking on a care pathway will be included in research to begin to rectify the problems with the evidence base, with long term outcomes being an important area of focus. An already stretched workforce will need to extend itself further (doi: 10.1136/bmj.q795 doi: 10.1136/bmj-2024-079474 ). 12 13 In the meantime, some children and young people will turn to the private sector or online providers to meet their needs. The dangers in this moment of service transition are apparent.

But it’s also a moment of opportunity. Families, carers, advocates, and clinicians—acting in the best interests of children and adolescents—face a clear choice whether to allow the Cass review to deepen division or use it as a driver of better care. The message from the evidence reviews in Archives of Disease in Childhood is as unequivocal as it could be. Cass’s review is independent and listened to people with lived experience. Without doubt, the advocacy and clinical practice for medical treatment of gender dysphoria had moved ahead of the evidence—a recipe for harm.

People who are gender non-conforming experience stigmatisation, marginalisation, and harassment in every society. They are vulnerable, particularly during childhood and adolescence. The best way to support them, however, is not with advocacy and activism based on substandard evidence. The Cass review is an opportunity to pause, recalibrate, and place evidence informed care at the heart of gender medicine. It is an opportunity not to be missed for the sake of the health of children and young people. It is an opportunity for unity.

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Women are held back at work due to 30 biases out of their control, says new study: 'They were never quite right'

Gender bias and discrimination have held women back in the workplace for generations, but new research indicates gender-based judgments barely scratch the surface of ways professional women are criticized throughout their careers.

In a recent study of 913 women who answered open-ended questions, researchers found 30 common personality traits and identity-based characteristics that women say were used against them at work, according to a research summary published in Fast Company .

The women included in the study work in four female-dominated industries in the U.S. (higher education, faith-based nonprofits, law and healthcare), and responded to questions including:

• What additional identity factors do you feel have influenced your experiences at work?
• Other than gender bias, what types of biases have you encountered at work?

"The summary point that we came to was that it didn't matter what the women were, they were never quite right," Amy Diehl, a researcher on the report alongside Leanne Dzubinski and Amber Stephenson, tells CNBC Make It.

For example, age is a consistent challenge for women leaders: Some say they were told they were too young to lead, while others were deemed too old. There's also a double-standard by gender, as one physician noted: "I am middle-aged, and men my age are seen as mature leaders and women my age as old."

Women receiving this criticism may interpret it as a personal failing or to suppress their career ambitions. As Diehl puts it, a woman who's been told she's too young to be promoted may think, "I just need to wait until I'm older; then I'll be ready to lead."

The 30 characteristics that women say were used against them in the workplace include:

• Attractiveness
• Communication style
• Cultural identity
• Dietary restrictions
• Employment history
• Gender conformance
• Intellectual ability
• Marital status
• Nationality
• Occupational position
• Parental status
• Personality traits
• Physical ability
• Political preferences
• Residential location
• Sexual orientation
• Veteran status

Critiques over age, parental status, others are 'red herrings' for underlying gender bias

Another major point of criticism is parental status, and women can't win whether they have kids or not: One single, divorced lawyer and mother of pre-schoolers says she was passed up for career opportunities "due to a perception by my male bosses that I cannot or should not handle [larger matters]." Meanwhile, a child-free physician was expected to work harder and accomplish more than other female colleagues with child-care responsibilities, according to the study.

Bias based on race, ethnicity, color and nationality came up in a number of ways. Women of color were targets of microaggressions in the workplace, like a Black faith-based leader who described being regularly talked over by white men, and a Filipina physician who's regularly mistaken for a nurse.

There was even a double-standard in terms of how men and women were treated based on their health conditions. One physician developed ovarian cancer while serving as an officer in the public health service and responded to the study that "the plan was to discharge me ... even though men with prostate cancer didn't have to go through that."

Researchers say these identity-based criticisms are often a "red herring" for gender bias.

"It didn't matter the characteristic, they were just being criticized for this and that and the other thing," Diehl says. "We realized it wasn't because of that particular [issue]" but rather "the underlying gender bias was the cause, and the criticisms are really just excuses the women were given."

What it'll take to support women in leadership

Businesses have a financial interest in ensuring greater gender equity and diversity: Organizations that are diverse across race and gender, especially at senior leadership levels, perform better than those that aren't, according to McKinsey research .

Researchers say there are a number of concrete ways businesses can better address their bias against women to support and promote them in their careers.

One "simple and powerful tool" is to use the "flip it to test it" method, says Stephenson — "Could you ever imagine this being said about a man?" Using the 900-plus comments from women in their study, "the answer was always no," she tells CNBC Make It.

Managers can also make sure they bake in constructive feedback for women professionals, who are more likely than men to receive negative feedback that's subjective rather than objective, and feedback that's too vague to be improved upon. Researchers say a lot of feedback directed toward women focuses on more team-based skills like being cooperative or coping with politics, while men are often encouraged to develop leadership skills like setting a vision, leveraging power and being assertive.

Leaders should encourage employees of all genders to develop both sets of skills.

Finally, researchers say it's important that women in these positions do not internalize identity-based criticisms. Instead, consider whether feedback is objective, constructive and warranted — and recognize that identity-based criticisms are part of a larger pattern of bias against women.

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Advice for the Unmotivated

• Robin Abrahams
• Boris Groysberg

How to reignite your enthusiasm for work

Employee disengagement is rampant in the workplace. We’ve all experienced it as customers encountering unhelpful retail clerks and as colleagues dealing with apathetic teammates. But what happens when you yourself feel dead at work?

This article describes what you as an individual can do to sustain your motivation or recover it, even in the most stultifying of jobs. After synthesizing research on this challenge and experimenting with various strategies, the authors have developed a process for recharging yourself called DEAR.

The first step is to detach and objectively analyze your situation so that you can make wise choices about it, instead of reacting in a fight-or-flight way. At day’s end, review what went well at your job and then mentally disconnect from it to give yourself a break. Meditation and exercise can help you do that and will improve your mood and cognitive function. Next, show empathy. Practice self-care, make friends, recognize the accomplishments of others, seek their views, and help them. Research shows that this combats burnout. Third, take action: achieve small wins, invest in rewarding outside activities, redefine your responsibilities, and turn uninteresting tasks into games. Ask yourself how someone you admire would behave in your situation, and dress in a way that projects confidence. Last, reframe your thinking: Focus on the informal roles you enjoy at work, your job’s higher-order purpose, and how others benefit from your work. All these techniques will improve your mental health and increase the energy you bring to your job—even if it is not what you’d like it to be.

In virtually everyone’s career, there comes a time when motivation and interest vanish. The usual tasks feel tedious. It’s hard to muster the energy for new projects. Though we go through the motions of being good employees or managers, we’re not really “there.” We become ghosts or zombies: the working dead.

• Robin Abrahams is a research associate at Harvard Business School.
• BG Boris Groysberg is a professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate at the school’s Race, Gender & Equity Initiative. He is the coauthor, with Colleen Ammerman, of Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). bgroysberg

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Thousands of children unsure of gender identity ‘let down by NHS’, report finds

Leading consultant paediatrician says unproven treatments and ‘toxicity’ of trans debate damaging outcomes

• Key findings

Thousands of vulnerable children questioning their gender identity have been let down by the NHS providing unproven treatments and by the “toxicity” of the trans debate, a landmark report has found.

The UK’s only NHS gender identity development service used puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, which masculinise or feminise people’s appearances, despite “remarkably weak evidence” that they improve the wellbeing of young people and concern they may harm health, Dr Hilary Cass said.

Cass, a leading consultant paediatrician, stressed that her findings were not intended to undermine the validity of trans identities or challenge people’s right to transition, but rather to improve the care of the fast-growing number of children and young people with gender-related distress.

But she said this care was made even more difficult to provide by the polarised public debate, and the way in which opposing sides had “pointed to research to justify a position, regardless of the quality of the studies”.

“There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop.”

NHS England commissioned her inquiry in 2020 amid rising concern over the care provided by the Tavistock and Portman NHS mental health trust’s gender identity development services (Gids). It treated about 9,000 children and young people, with an average age at referral of 14, during 2009-2020.

Her inquiry has already led to NHS England shutting Gids, banning puberty blockers and switching to a new “holistic” model of care in which under-18s experiencing confusion about their gender identity will routinely receive psychological support rather than medical intervention.

“For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress. For those young people for whom a medical pathway is clinically indicated, it is not enough to provide this without also addressing wider mental health and/or psychosocially challenging problems,” said Cass, an ex-president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health .

The report recommends that all such young people should be screened to detect neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, and there should be an assessment of their mental health, because many who seek help with their gender identity also have anxiety or depression, for example.

Some transgender adults “are leading positive and successful lives, and feeling empowered by having made the decision to transition”, Cass said. However, “I have spoken to people who have detransitioned, some of whom deeply regret their earlier decisions”, she added.

“While some young people may feel an urgency to transition, young adults looking at their younger selves would often advise slowing down,” the report says.

“Some of the young adults said to us they wished they’d known when they were younger that there were more ways of being trans than just a binary medical transition,” Cass told the Guardian.

In her report, she outlines how the Tavistock trust began prescribing puberty blockers much more widely in 2014, despite a lack of evidence that they helped.

In an interview with the Guardian, Cass said that gender-questioning children have been “let down” by the NHS, health professionals and a “woeful” lack of evidence about what treatment works.

“One of the things that has let them down is that the toxicity of the debate has been so great that people have become afraid to work in this area.

“A majority of people have been so afraid, because of the lack of guidance, lack of research, and how polarised this is that they’ve passed [patients] straight on to Gids.”

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Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said: “Today’s report must provide a watershed moment for the NHS’s gender identity services. Children’s healthcare should always be led by evidence and children’s welfare, free from culture wars. Clinicians and parents alike want the best for children at this crucial developmental stage. This report provides an evidence-led framework to deliver that.”

Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at University College London, said that Cass’s report “has laid bare the worrying lack of evidence to support the treatments that were prescribed by NHS clinicians to children with gender distress for over a decade.

“These treatments inflicted significant harm on some of the most vulnerable children in our society.

“Exceptionalism often lies at the heart of medical scandals when services go rogue and start to operate outside the normal parameters of clinical practice.”

However, Dr Aidan Kelly, a clinical psychologist specialising in gender who left the Tavistock in 2021, said the NHS was struggling to recruit skilled and experienced people to run the planned eight clinics that will provide the new, broader model of care.

“Although Gids wasn’t perfect, we had a service with a history and expertise. There were things that needed to change but at least holding on to the knowledge that was accrued over time would have made sense to me,” he said.

Disputing many of Cass’s findings he said that a recent German review had found that puberty blockers were safe and effective. NHS England’s switch to a wholly different way of treating young people confused about their gender identity has left England “out of step with the rest of the world”, he added.

Cass disclosed in the report that six of the NHS’s seven specialist gender services in England for adults had “thwarted” an attempt by the University of York, at her request, to obtain and analyse the health outcomes of people who had been treated by Gids in order to improve future care.

This refusal to cooperate “was coordinated”, she told the Guardian. “It seemed to me to be ideologically-driven.”. Clinicians caring for those with gender-related distress are very divided on how best to do that, she acknowledges in the report.

It also documents how Gids experienced both an explosion in demand for its service from 2010, and also a huge increase in the number of birth-registered females, in a reversal of the pattern of referrals.

Cass said that “online influencers” had played a key role in fuelling confusion among young people about their gender identity and what they needed to do to change it.

“We haven’t done a comprehensive search but certainly when we were told about particular influencers I followed some of those up. Some of them give them very unbalanced information.

“And some of them [young people] were told that parents would not understand so that they had to actively separate from their parents or distance their parents. All the evidence shows that family support is really key to people’s well being. So there was really some dangerous influencing going on,” she said.

Rishi Sunak said: “We simply do not know the long-term impacts of medical treatment or social transitioning on them, and we should therefore exercise extreme caution.

“We acted swiftly on Dr Cass’s interim report to make changes in schools and our NHS, providing comprehensive guidance for schools and stopping the routine use of puberty blockers, and we will continue to ensure we take the right steps to protect young people.”

This article was amended on 10 April 2024 to refer to ADHD as a neurodevelopmental condition.

• Transgender

More on this story

Veteran trans campaigner: ‘Cass review has potential for positive change’

Cass review must be used as ‘watershed moment’ for NHS gender services, says Streeting

‘This isn’t how good scientific debate happens’: academics on culture of fear in gender medicine research

Five thousand children with gender-related distress awaiting NHS care in England

Ban on children’s puberty blockers to be enforced in private sector in England

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Identity Fraud Cost Americans $43 Billion in 2023

Victims are losing more money to these crimes, a new aarp-backed report finds.

Christina Ianzito,

American adults lost a total of $43 billion to identity fraud in 2023, according to a new report cosponsored by AARP.

That includes $23 billion lost to traditional identity fraud, which affected about the same number of people—15 million—as in 2022 (when the number was 15.4 million). But total losses grew by 13 percent last year, according to the report, “Resolving the Shattered Identity Crisis,” produced by Javelin Strategy & Research. 

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Scams orchestrated by criminals resulted in just over $20 billion in fraud losses to victims.

The increased per capita losses suggest that criminals are “aiming for larger payouts once unauthorized access to a consumer’s new or existing account has been achieved,” the report surmises. And those losses — determined through an online survey of 5,000 Americans 18 and older — are likely just a fraction of the true cost of identity fraud, because these crimes are notoriously underreported.

“We know that there is always going to be a certain number of victims who don’t report it, and it has a lot to do with the stigma against fraud and scams,” says Suzanne Sando, Javelin’s senior analyst in fraud and security and the author of the report. “We need to have better support from the right entities so victims feel comfortable and safe coming forward.... There should be no shame or embarrassment with this.”

Traditional identity fraud occurs when someone obtains someone else’s personal information, such as a Social Security number, home address, date of birth or bank account data, and uses it for fraud or other illicit purposes. A criminal may use your information to access your bank account, for instance, use your credit card for purchases or pretend to be you in order to open up a new credit card or bank account.

The problems of account takeovers and new-account fraud, where criminals use a victim’s personal information to open fraudulent new accounts, are growing, Javelin reports. Account takeover fraud resulted in nearly $13 billion in losses in 2023 (up from $11 billion in 2022). New-account fraud reached $5.3 billion (compared with $3.9 billion in 2022). The Javelin report notes that consumers’ online presence on social media and other platforms “is putting them at increased risk of having multiple accounts taken over by a criminal.”

How identity fraud occurs

There are different ways that criminals can access your personal information. They include identity fraud scams, where criminals influence a consumer to expose sensitive data, often by misrepresenting themselves. They may do so through phishing attempts, where scammers send emails “fishing” for personally identifying information and/or including links containing malware that can infect your device and steal data. These commonly are in the form of impersonation scams, where you’ll receive calls, emails or texts spoofing a government agency, law enforcement, a delivery service or your bank , for example; the impostor will attempt to elicit your Social Security number, account number or other sensitive information they can use to perpetrate fraud.

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The report warns that social media has become fertile ground for scammers as well.

And while older people are less likely to become scam victims, they lose more money to scams than their younger counterparts: an average of $803 for victims in their 70s compared to $460 for those in their 30s, based on reports to the Federal Trade Commission .

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There’s also more straightforward identity theft — unauthorized access to personal information — which can occur without a scam or identity fraud. It’s commonly carried out through large-scale data breaches of online platforms, where cybercriminals hack into company’s systems and steal sensitive consumer data. Sometimes they will encrypt the captured data and request a ransom for its unencryption and release.

The Identity Theft Resource Center found that the number of data compromises soared last year to 3,205, compared to 1,801 in 2022. They are most frequently due to cyberattacks like the one experienced by Change Healthcare earlier this year (where a ransomware attack threatened to compromise sensitive healthcare data of UnitedHealth Group patients), as well as AT&T ’s recent announcement that 73 million current and former customers’ personal information (including Social Security numbers) had been discovered on the dark web. 

Identity theft can lead to identity fraud when criminals take that stolen information and put it to malicious use.  

Victims’ perspective

Experiencing identity fraud can be devastating , says James E. Lee, chief operating officer of the Identity Theft Resource Center. He notes that the organization has seen a dramatic increase in the percentage of fraud victims they speak with — some of whom have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars — who say they’ve contemplated suicide because of the crime. Twenty-five years ago, two or three percent said they’d considered it, according to Lee, but in 2023, 16 percent of identity fraud victims said they’d thought about ending their lives.

Victims have to go through what’s often an arduous process to secure their accounts. The Javelin survey found that resolving a case of identity fraud is now more difficult — or at least more time-consuming — than ever. Researchers found that consumers spent an average of 10 hours resolving identity fraud, up from just six hours in 2022.

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“That’s a massive increase,” says Sando. “ I think it goes back to the fact that we have so many accounts. That certainly plays into this increase in resolution time.”​  

In addition to the losses victims experience directly from the identity theft, the report found it costs them an average of $202 out of pocket during the fraud resolution process. That includes “legal fees, postage or covering fraudulent debts not reimbursed by a financial institution or a merchant, etc.”

How to protect yourself from identity fraud

You can’t prevent a data breach at a big company that holds your information, notes Lee, “but what we can do is make that [stolen] information less useful.” 

Be more aware of what information you’re sharing and where you’re sharing it. Ask: How do you protect my personal information? Why do you need this information? “It’s an automatic reflex,” says Lee, referring to our instincts to provide our phone number or address when filling out forms, for instance. “Don’t be afraid to say no,” he adds.

Freeze your credit. This restricts access to your credit history and makes it harder for identity thieves to open new accounts in your name. ( This story explains when and how to freeze your credit.)

Use different passwords for every account. “[Criminals] know that most people use the same password on all their accounts,” Lee notes. A password manager can help you keep track of them all.

  Use multifactor identification: “Make sure you’re not solely relying on passwords” for financial accounts, says Sando. Many financial institutions will allow you to also use facial recognition or a one-time passcode sent to your phone, as an extra layer of security.

Find support

​AARP Fraud Watch Network has a toll-free helpline (877-908-3360), where trained volunteers provide fraud victims and family members support and guidance on what to do next.

The VOA ReST (Resilience, Strength and Time) program, a collaboration between AARP and Volunteers of America, offers free online facilitated emotional support sessions for fraud victims. You can attend as many sessions as you’d like; just register in advance online.​

​Christina Ianzito covers scams and fraud, and is the books editor for aarp.org and AARP The Magazine . Also a longtime travel writer and editor, she received a 2020 Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.​

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Examining Multiracial Pride, Identity-based Challenges, and Discrimination: An Exploratory Investigation among Biracial Emerging Adults

N. keita christophe.

1 The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Annabelle L. Atkin

2 Arizona State University

Gabriela L. Stein

Michele chan, associated data.

Data, material, and code for this study are not publicly available

This study investigated the main and interactive effects of identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride on psychological distress in Biracial emerging adults. Additionally, we examined whether these associations may differ by Biracial sub-group (e.g., Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority) given their unique racial experiences. Participants were 326 Biracial emerging adults ( M age = 19.57 years old; 75.2% female) recruited from three public universities in the United States for an online survey. For all Biracial groups, identity-based challenges were associated with greater psychological distress. After testing a series of competing multi-group regression models, results indicated that the relations between distress and our predictors: identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride do indeed differ across Biracial sub-group. The most apparent and unique differences were displayed by the Black-White Biracial sub-group. These findings highlight identity-based challenges as a unique risk in the Biracial population and suggest that a principled comparison between Biracial sub-groups is necessary to tease apart group-specific associations between these constructs and psychological distress.

The Multiracial 1 population in the United States is vastly growing, with growth between 2014 and 2060 estimated at 226% ( Colby & Ortman, 2015 ). With changes in how individuals can classify themselves in the recent U.S. censuses (i.e., being able to check multiple boxes for race in 2000 and 2010) and subsequent changes in research demographic questionnaires, individuals who were typically categorized as monoracial may now elect to endorse a better fitting Biracial/Multiracial ethnic-racial label ( Jones & Bullock, 2013 ). These trends of increased public salience and representation are allowing this previously hidden population to come out of the shadows and have coincided with numerous scholarly articles on ethnic-racial socialization ( Atkin & Yoo, 2019 ), ethnic-racial identity ( Yip et al., 2019 ), and discrimination ( Seaton et al., 2018 ) urging scholars to begin to understand this increasingly visible, quickly growing, yet poorly-understood population. Unfortunately, there is currently a dearth of research on the cultural assets this group draws upon to exhibit resilience in the face of racialized stressors.

According to Critical Multiracial Theory, or MultiCrit ( Harris, 2016 ), Biracial emerging adults, defined as those with monoracial biological parents of different racial groups, are uniquely marginalized in the context of the U.S. due to the monoracial paradigm that governs a monocentric society in which race is constructed in immutable and rigid categories. The monoracial paradigm presents unique risks to Biracial emerging adults that have important implications for their mental health outcomes. Specifically, monocentricity privileges single race identities as the norm and pathologizes Multiraciality as abnormal and exotic ( Jackson & Samuels, 2019 ), which could lead to identity-based challenges, or the internal struggles Multiracial individuals face in developing a strong ethnic-racial identity and sense of racial belonging ( Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ). Despite living in and inherently being affected by the U.S.’s monoracial paradigm of race, Multiracial people have agency and the ability to build resiliency in the face of these risk factors. In particular, we suggest that Multiracial pride is a factor that may be promotive of mental health and protective in the face of risks, thereby warranting further study.

Aspects of identity such as identity-based challenges and Multiracial pride may be particularly important to understand during the period of emerging adulthood, as this developmental stage is characterized by increasing complexity in one’s racial identity development (see Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014 for review), from greater integration of racial identity with other forms of social identity ( Erikson, 1968 ) to an expansion of the salience and relevance of racial identity across domains (e.g., selection of a major in college; Syed, 2010 ). Indeed, relative to earlier periods in development, many sociocognitive abilities are well-developed in emerging adulthood ( Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014 ) allowing for a deeper understanding of one’s identity in context that may also be fueled by factors such as discrimination ( Branscombe et al., 1999 ). Despite a broad understanding of emerging adulthood as an important time for the study of discrimination and identity in racially/ethnically marginalized emerging adults, very little quantitative scholarship has focused on the effect of these factors, and the potential interactions between these factors, on the psychological functioning of Multiracial emerging adults. Given the limited research in this population, this study examines the direct effects and interactions among identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride in relation to psychological distress among Biracial emerging adults. Additionally, because few studies have attended to potential differences between Biracial sub-groups, each of which have uniquely racialized experiences due to their different racial-ethnic heritages, this study takes a data-driven, comparative approach in examining how these associations may differ between Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx 2 -White, and minority-minority Biracials 3 .

Across the various theoretical approaches to Multiracial identity, a number of ‘ideal’ identity outcomes have been asserted, including identification with a monoracial group, assertion of an integrated Multiracial identity, or adoption of context-specific and fluid identity ( Rockquemore et al., 2009 ). Yet, whatever the content of their ultimate identity, the process of identity formation for Multiracials may be additionally complex in US society due to multiple contextual and societal factors including a monoracial paradigm that forces individuals into false racial categories (e.g., the “one-drop” rule) and racialized social hierarchies that privilege some groups versus others ( Harris, 2016 ). Because of these societal factors, the process of identity formation for Multiracials may include some type of identity-based challenges. Identity-based challenges may be defined as the internal pressures and difficulties conforming to societies conception of race and difficulties in forming a strong racial identity ( Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ). As Multiracial emerging adults contend with these societal limitations to their identity and authentic selves, these struggles can potentially place them at risk for negative psychological outcomes ( Franco & O’Brien, 2018 ).

While there has been much theoretical work on Biracial identity throughout the last 60 years ( Rockquemore et al., 2009 ) there has been much less empirical work, especially quantitative work, on the relations between identity processes and psychological functioning in Multiracial populations. Nonetheless, there is growing evidence that factors such as identity-based challenges indeed pose a risk to the psychological wellbeing and functioning of Multiracial individuals. For instance, two recent studies have found that identity-based challenges are significantly associated with greater depressive symptoms – an important component of psychological distress ( Kessler et al., 2002 ) – and low self-esteem in diverse Multiracial adult samples ( Franco & McElroy-Heltzel, 2019 ; Franco & O’Brien, 2018 ). Another quantitative study asked Black-White Biracial adults to rank the level of pressure they felt from society, peers, and family to identify as monoracial, finding that they ranked pressure from society the highest, followed by pressure from peers, with relatively low pressure from family ( Coleman & Carter, 2007 ). While this pressure was not associated with depressive symptoms in their sample, pressure from peers was significantly related to social anxiety. Collectively this highlights that Biracial individuals’ identity-based challenges seem to be linked to negative mental health outcomes. However, it is important to note that despite facing unique risks in a monocentric society, Biracials do not have more psychological problems than monoracial peers ( Jackson et al., 2012 ), and differences may exist between different Biracial sub-groups. This study will expand upon previous research by examining these processes in a young adult sample, investigating how identity-based challenges, discrimination, Biracial pride, and their nuanced interactions may impact psychological distress, and exploring how these relations may vary based on Biracial sub-group.

Discrimination and Biracial Populations

Racial/ethnic discrimination is a pernicious risk factor faced by all minoritized populations that involves being treated negatively or unfairly based on race or ethnicity and has been robustly associated with negative mental health ( Benner, 2017 ; Benner et al., 2018 ). Biracial populations may face numerous forms of racial/ethnic discrimination, such as negative treatment based on assumed racial/ethnic group membership inferred from their phenotype (i.e., identity-incongruent discrimination; Franco & Franco, 2016 ), unfair treatment targeted at the actual racial/ethnic group or groups to which they belong, and monoracism , or discrimination that targets individuals of more than one race because they do not fit into the discrete monoracial categories posited by societies monoracial paradigm ( Johnston & Nadal, 2010 ) 4 . Monoracism may be observed through invalidation of a Multiracial person’s identity, objectification or exclusion based on an individual’s membership in multiple racial groups, and pressuring individuals to identify with only one race and/or to act and look a certain way to be recognized as a member of one of their monoracial groups ( Harris, 2016 ). Because all of these aforementioned actions, including acts of monoracism, can be considered unfair, negative treatment on the basis of membership in one or more racial/ethnic groups, we subsequently use the umbrella term “discrimination” to refer to these harmful ( Benner et al., 2018 ) and pervasive ( Harris, 2016 ; Johnston & Nadal, 2010 ) experiences.

The limited number of studies examining the impact of racial/ethnic discrimination in Biracial and Multiracial samples suggest that discrimination is, as among monoracial groups, associated with worse psychological functioning. For instance, Jackson et al. (2012) observed that Multiracial discrimination (i.e., discrimination attributed to participants’ Multiracial background) was associated with greater levels of psychological distress and negative affect; this effect was only partially reduced for those who perceived little conflict between their various monoracial identities. In another study of Multiracial adults, Multiracial discrimination was directly associated with decreased life satisfaction, and this association was partly mediated by participants seeing themselves as more similar to other Multiracial people (i.e., self-stereotyping) after exposure to discrimination ( Giamo et al., 2012 ). In two measurement validation studies, subscales relating to discrimination faced by Multiracial people were associated with negative psychological outcomes such a greater depression ( Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ; Yoo et al., 2016 ) as well as greater anxiety and stress ( Yoo et al., 2016 ). A small but growing body of research has, therefore, begun to document the harmful effects of discrimination on the psychological functioning of Multiracial individuals; these findings largely align with what has been demonstrated in meta-analyses of studies with primarily monoracial populations ( Benner et al., 2018 ). These studies, however, have not considered whether and how the effects of discrimination may potentiate internal difficulties forming a strong racial identity and make these identity-based challenges even more predictive of negative outcomes such as psychological distress.

Identity-based challenges and racial/ethnic discrimination can be both considered racialized stressors that impact mental health, yet there are important conceptual distinctions that are important to acknowledge. While discrimination consists of external experiences of mistreatment due to race or ethnicity, identity-based challenges for Biracials are internal experiences related to difficulties forming a strong racial identity ( Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ). Logically, discrimination and identity-based challenges may fuel each other; external invalidation and discrimination against one or all of an individual’s racial groups may exacerbate existing challenges with racial belonging and understanding what race means to that person’s identity – and vice-versa. Therefore, these two risk factors may interact to predict greater distress than either factor would in isolation.

In sum, it is important to understand the impact of one’s external experiences (i.e., discrimination) and internal experiences at integrating and formulating their identity (i.e., identity-based challenges) when attempting to understand risks for psychological distress in this population. Developmentally, identity-based challenges and discrimination may be particularly important to study in adolescence and young adulthood, as the rapid ethnic-racial identity development that occurs during this time ( Umaña-Taylor, 2018 ) may be ‘steered off course’ by the development of significant identity-based challenges. Finally, given that discrimination often exists in conjunction with identity-based challenges – both serving as risks for negative psychological outcomes – it is of paramount importance to understand if resilience factors such as Multiracial pride buffer against these two risk factors.

Multiracial pride has been conceptualized as the positive feelings associated with being a Multiracial person ( Cheng & Lee, 2009 ; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ). These positive feelings associated with racial group membership have been studied with constructs such as positive racial affect ( Rivas-Drake et al., 2014 ), private regard ( Sellers et al., 1998 ), and ethnic-racial affirmation ( Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014 ); overall, these constructs share an underlying focus on the affective component of racial identity, which we and others have broadly referred to using the term pride. In a meta-analysis of diverse racially/ethnically minoritized youth, pride was found to be related to numerous adaptive psychological outcomes as a main effect ( Rivas-Drake et al., 2014 ). Examining Multiracial pride specifically, a small body of literature similarly points to pride being positively related to different metrics of psychological functioning. For instance, Multiracial pride has been shown to be positively correlated with desirable outcomes such as self-esteem ( r = .22) and social connectedness ( r = .35; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ). Moreover, pride has been shown to mediate the link between caregiver’s cultural humility orientation and Multiracial adults’ depressive symptoms, where pride was linked to fewer depressive symptoms ( Franco & McElroy-Heltzel, 2019 ). When recalling positive experiences of being Biracial and Multiracial, individuals expressed greater identity integration ( Cheng & Lee, 2009 ), or greater harmony between one’s different monoracial group identities. This suggests pride is a key part of identity for Biracial and Multiracial people and may be associated with desirable psychological outcomes as a main effect. However, these previously cited studies on Multiracials and Rivas-Drake et al.’s (2014) meta-analysis pointing to main effects of pride do not consider the impact of risk factors such as identity-based challenges and discrimination. When considering these risk factors, it is possible that Multiracial pride may continue to serve a promotive function (i.e., functions the same regardless of risk factor level), but it is also possible the pride may serve as a protective factor in this context (i.e., functions when risk is high/‘interacts’ with a risk factor; Masten et al., 2009 ).

While racial affect and pride have been shown to be promotive, or associated with positive mental health as a main effect ( Rivas-Drake et al., 2014 ), a recent meta-analysis by Yip and colleagues (2019) suggests that, across diverse samples of minority youth, neither racial affect, nor any other specific dimension of ethnic-racial identity (ERI) has consistently protected against the negative impact of discrimination (i.e., functioned as a moderator where high levels nullify the harmful association between discrimination and mental health). However, positive racial affect may still function as a protective factor against other notable risks faced by the Biracial population, namely identity-based challenges. Furthermore, accounting for both discrimination and identity-based challenges concurrently may help tease apart the conditions under which Multiracial pride is protective. Indeed, individuals who are able to develop Multiracial pride in the context of societal messages that perpetuate monoracism may not experience strong internal identity-based challenges. Meta-analytic work by Yip and colleagues (2019) suggests that private regard, a dimension of ERI synonymous with pride pertaining to positive feelings about one’s racial/ethnic group membership ( Rivas-Drake et al., 2014 ), does not moderate the link between discrimination and negative mental health outcomes such as psychological distress. However, it is possible that accounting for Biracials’ internal identity-based challenges in addition to discrimination may help parse out when, how, and if pride may be protective as a moderator versus promotive, or predictive of desirable outcomes as a main effect (see Rivas-Drake et al., 2014 ). Based on the Biracial sub-group, the specific identity-based challenges individuals face, and the specific discrimination they are exposed to, there may be conditions where pride is necessary to reduce the impact of identity-based challenges and discrimination on psychological distress. Conversely, there may be other conditions where discrimination may interact and strengthen the association between identity-based challenges and distress regardless of pride. These conditions have not been addressed in a quantitative manner; therefore, the main purpose of this study is to examine the potentially complex associations between these variables psychological distress across four distinct groups of Biracial college students. We examine psychological distress as an outcome variable because (1) discrimination has been more strongly linked to psychological distress and negative mental health outcomes than other domains of functioning such as positive mental health (e.g., well-being, self-esteem, etc.; Paradies et al., 2015 ) and (2) because identity-based challenges are specifically conceptualized by Salahuddin and O’Brien (2011) to be linked to feelings of distress.

Biracial is an inclusive term which, for the purposes of this study, covers all those with monoracial biological parents of two different racial groups. The Biracial population is, thus, very diverse, including those with minority-minority heritage (e.g., Latinx-Asian) as well as those with White heritage (e.g., Asian-White). Some Biracial individuals, depending on phenotype, may even be able to ‘pass’ as White and benefit from the White privilege not afforded to members of minoritized groups. Biracial people of different racial compositions also come from groups with very different sociopolitical histories in the U.S., face many different barriers, and ultimately may have very varied lived experiences ( Harris, 2016 ). For instance, Asian-White and especially Latinx-White individuals may face discrimination where their ‘American-ness’ is questioned as a function of phenotype, especially if they are darker-skinned and/or less phenotypically White. Moreover, there may be more cultural authenticity policing in these two groups which are more likely to have immigrant family members, whereby not knowing the culture or language of their Asian or Latinx ethnic group may invite criticism and rejection from their respective Asian and Latinx communities ( Romo, 2017 ). In addition, though the one-drop rule has largely led to acceptance of Biracial Black individuals in Black communities, Asian and Latinx communities are less likely to apply this rule ( Gullickson & Morning 2011 ). While there is privilege in the ability of some Asian-White and Latinx-White individuals to have more freedom in how they identify by not being subjected to the one-drop rule, there may also be other sociopolitical and cultural factors that make it more difficult for Asian-White and Latinx-White to identify with their racial minority group. For example, some Asian countries privilege the idea of an ethnically homogeneous society, and mixed Asian children have historically been associated with war, resulting in the rejection of Biracial Asian children in Asian families and society ( Root, 1997 ). Thus, the identity-based challenges and discrimination experiences of Asian-White and Latinx-White individuals may be rooted in not having the cultural knowledge to be accepted by their racial minority communities, or biases from extended family and community members rooted in historical trauma.

While little quantitative scholarship has focused on discrimination, identity-based challenges, and psychological functioning in minority-minority Biracials, it is likely that the associations between these factors may be different than in other Biracial sub-groups, as minority-minority Biracials have no claim to privileged White identity. Examining the effects of identity denial, or the action of someone telling a Biracial person how they should identify ( Albuja et al., 2019 ), among two samples of minority-minority Biracial adults, Albuja et al. (2020) observed that greater exposure to identity denial was associated with participants feeling Biracial people were devalued by society. These feelings (i.e., lower Biracial public regard) were then associated with less belonging, greater conflict between one’s racial identities, and less perceived freedom to choose an identity ( Albuja et al., 2020 ). While identity denial demonstrated similar associations with identity integration conflict and autonomy to choose an identity in Biracial adults with White heritage ( Albuja et al., 2019 ), the fact remains that the discrimination and identity development experiences of minority-minority Biracials are likely unique due to individual’s membership in multiple low-status groups. Building upon this prior work, we examine whether the associations between discrimination, identity-based challenges, Multiracial pride and feelings of psychological distress differ between minority-minority Biracial emerging adults and those with White heritage.

Black-White Biracials may struggle with identity-based challenges attempting to come to terms with being part of the dominant group that has historically enslaved and systematically oppressed the other group they also have heritage from. This legacy of oppression has perpetuated, ‘one-drop rule’ thinking in today’s society and has resulted in Black-White Biracials being frequently assumed to be and treated as monoracial Black ( Franco & Franco, 2016 ); Black-White Biracials are subsequently more likely to self-identify as Black ( Rockquemore et al., 2009 ). Given this discrimination and invalidation of identity options, along with a social chasm between the lived experiences of Blacks and Whites in the U.S. ( Rockquemore et al., 2009 ), the ways in which discrimination, internal challenges with racial identity, and pride in being Biracial impact psychological distress may indeed be different for Black-White Biracials.

In summary, there are many reasons why identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride may differentially impact Biracials’ distress levels depending on their specific racial composition. Relative to other Biracial sub-groups, unique associations between these variables and distress his may be especially salient among Black-White Biracials who have membership in the most historically disadvantaged racial group in the U.S., as well as minority-minority Biracials, who, unlike other Biracial sub-groups, have no White heritage and, thus, no claim to a racial group privileged in U.S. society ( Albuja et al., 2020 ). This study intends to assess these potential differences by comparing how the aforementioned factors may differ in their associations with psychological distress based on Biracial sub-group.

In the absence of significant quantitative literature and theoretical work that would propose specific Biracial sub-group differences with respect to our study variables, this study examines how two risk factors, identity-based challenges and discrimination, and a proposed protective factor: Multiracial pride ( Cheng & Lee, 2009 ; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ), are associated with psychological distress in Biracial emerging adults. Furthermore, we employed a multi-group approach to examine if and how these relations differed between Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority Biracial college students. psychological distress was chosen as our outcome of interest based on consistent linkages between discrimination and psychological distress in past meta-analytic work ( Benner et al., 2018 ). Harris (2016) introduced the MultiCrit framework to better conceptualized the unique racialized experiences of Multiracial college students, highlighting their disproportionate exposure to discrimination relative to monoracial students and the various experiences on college campuses that affirm and, more frequently, deny their ability to express a Multiracial identity. Therefore, we assert that discrimination and identity – both challenges forming a strong racial identity and pride in one’s identity – may be particularly relevant to study in a sample of Biracial college students.

We hypothesized that (1) identity-based challenges and discrimination would be associated with greater psychological distress across our Biracial sample, whereas pride would promote less distress as a main effect based on meta-analytic work by Rivas-Drake and colleagues (2014) . Secondly, we hypothesized that, given the history of slavery and unique social position of Black Americans in the U.S. and given that minority-minority Biracials do not have any claims to ‘whiteness’ or ‘White privilege’ (2) Black-White and minority-minority Biracials will endorse the highest number of unique associations, or associations different in significance magnitude, and/or direction that are not observed among other Biracial sub-groups. While we hypothesized that identity-based challenges would interact with discrimination and pride to interact with these two risk factors in complex ways, given the absence of quantitative literature examining these interactions and examining these interactions between sub-groups, we posited no specific hypotheses as to the nature of the interactions for each group and regarded these analyses as exploratory.

Participants

Participants were 326 Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority Biracial college students (75.2% female, 7.7% foreign-born) recruited as part of the LOVING Project, a three-site cross-sectional study at large, public universities in the Southeast (32.2% of the sample), Southwest (45.1%), and upper Midwest (22.7%) regions of the United States focused on socialization, identity, and mental health in Biracial and Multiracial college students. Biracial participants (M age = 19.57, SD = 1.80, range=18 - 25), defined as having monoracial biological parents of different racial groups mostly self-identified as part of the middle class (85.5%), with fewer participants identifying themselves as ‘poor’ (2.5%) or ‘affluent’ (1.8%). Although there were data collected on an additional 30 Biracial participants, they belonged to groups that did not produce a large enough sample size to make reliable cross-group comparisons (e.g., Native American-Middle Eastern/North African). These participants were therefore not included in our 326-person Biracial sample.

Each study site obtained individual approval from each of their respective Institutional Review Boards. After IRB approval, participants were recruited through university psychology pools and targeted on-campus advertisements, including placing announcements on the university homepage, posting flyers around campus, contacting past study participants, and targeting student organizations and courses related to the study of race and culture. Participants then completed online surveys through Qualtrics broadly assessing socialization, identity, discrimination, family functioning, and psychosocial functioning. Participants at the southeastern and midwestern universities received research credits for their participation, while participants from the southwestern university were financially compensated for their participation.

Identity-based challenges.

Identity-based challenges were assessed using the 5-item Challenges with Racial Identity subscale of the MCRS ( Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ). Participants were presented with the item stem, “Based on your experiences as a Multiracial person, please indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with the following statements” and were then asked to respond to sample items such as “I hide parts of myself when interacting with some friends” and “I feel the need to prove my racial identity to others.” Participants responded using a 1 ( Strongly Disagree ) to 6 ( Strongly Agree ) scale, with higher scores indicating greater identity-based challenges. Reliability was adequate (α = .777) and comparable to reliabilities of .67 and .68 found in past work ( Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ).

Discrimination.

Discrimination was assessed using the 3-item Brief Perceived Discrimination Scale ( Armenta et al., 2013 ). Items were rated on a 1 ( Never ) to 4 ( 5 or more times ) scale with greater scores indicating more frequent discrimination within the past year. Sample items included how frequently one has been “rejected by others because of your ethnicity/race” or been “treated unfairly or rudely by strangers because of your ethnicity/race”. Reliability was .819 in our Biracial sample.

Multiracial pride.

Multiracial pride was assessed using the 5-item Multiracial pride subscale of the MCRS ( Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ). Using the same Multiracial-specific item stem presented before the identity-based challenges items, participants rated the degree to which they agree with statements such as “I am proud that I am Multiracial” and “I love being Multiracial” on a 1 ( Strongly Disagree ) to 6 ( Strongly Agree ) scale, with higher scores indicating greater levels of Multiracial pride. Similar to reliabilities in past work (α = .80; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ), reliability in our sample was .802. Despite using the term ‘Multiracial’ pride, this construct has been studied among Biracial and Multiracial populations ( Cheng & Lee, 2009 ; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011 ).

Psychological distress.

Psychological distress was assessed using the Kessler 6 ( Kessler et al., 2002 ), a 6-item scale asking participants how often they have felt things such as “anxious,” “worthless,” “hopeless,” “so depressed that nothing could cheer you up,” on a 1 ( None of the time ) to 5 ( All of the time ) scale. Greater scores indicate greater levels of psychological distress. The Kessler 6 has demonstrated good reliability in a nationally representative sample of American adults (α = .89; Kessler et al., 2002 ), and produced a reliability of .880 in our sample.

Data Analytic Plan and Model Fit

All analyses were conducted using multi-group multiple regressions in Mplus 8.4. Missing data were addressed using Full Information Maximum Likelihood. The maximum amount of missingness among all study variables was 9.8% missingness for our measure of Multiracial pride. Identity-based challenges, discrimination, Multiracial pride, and all potential interactions between these variables were entered as predictors of psychological distress. Predictors were mean centered before creating interaction terms. An initial multiple regression was conducted using the whole sample to get a sense of how these variables predicted distress among a diverse Biracial sample. Then, the sample was split into 4 Biracial sub-groups (Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority) and 4 multiple regressions were run simultaneously allowing paths to be estimated freely for each group. A series of data-driven analyses were then conducted to determine if constraining paths across groups to equality (e.g., testing if the relation between discrimination and psychological distress was equal for Latinx-White and Asian-White Biracials) increased model parsimony without leading to significant decrements in model fit. This approach mirrors similar approaches by Albuja and colleagues (2019) who tested whether path analysis models may be constrained to equality between Biracial and Bicultural individuals (i.e., testing whether the entire model differs by Biracial/Bicultural status). We were, however, interested in going beyond whether the entire model differs by subgroup to examining which parts of the model, or which regression paths between Biracial sub-groups, can and cannot be stated to be equal across Biracial sub-groups. For those familiar with the study of measurement invariance, this approach is similar to establishing partial measurement invariance; when establishing partial measurement invariance, some items (or regression paths in our case) may be constrained to be equal across groups, while others cannot (van de Schoot et al., 2012).

We first conducted a principled analysis of competing analytical models before interpreting paths for our final analytical model in-depth. Because results and interpretations remained consistent without gender in the models, gender was excluded for model parsimony. Age and site were also excluded for greater parsimony 5 , as they were not associated with distress level and results did not differ by age nor site. In sum, variables that remained in our regression model were our three predictors (identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride), all two-way interactions, their 3-way interaction, and our outcome: psychological distress.

Descriptive statistics.

Means for each Biracial sub-group and means and correlations for the whole sample are included in Table 1 . Examining correlations for the full sample, identity-based challenges were positively correlated with psychological distress ( r = .347, p < .001) and discrimination ( r = .238, p < .001), but negatively correlated with Multiracial pride ( r = −.208, p < .001). Multiracial pride was associated with neither psychological distress ( r = −.047, p = .398) nor discrimination ( r = −.088, p = .113).

Means and correlations.

Bl-Wh = Black-White. As-Wh = Asian-White. Lat-Wh = Latinx-White. Min-min = minority-minority.

Findings among the full sample.

Associations among Multiracial pride, identity-based challenges, and discrimination were first examined among the whole sample to understand how results would appear in the absence of a multi-group comparison. Multiple regression indicated that, for the full sample, only identity-based challenges emerged as a significant predictor, predicting greater psychological distress ( b = .327, p < .001). Neither discrimination ( b = .083, p = .144), Multiracial pride ( b = .023, p = .686), nor any interactions were predictive of distress symptoms. However, given that identity and discrimination may vary widely based on the racial groups to which Biracial individuals belong, we were also interested in examining whether and how these associations varied by Biracial sub-group.

Choosing a model.

We conducted a principled comparison of competing models with the aim of examining the relations between our variables of interest across groups in a well-fitting, but parsimonious model. Good model fit was determined by a non-significant chi-square, a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .05, a Comparative Fit Index ≥ .95, and a Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .08 ( Hu & Bentler, 1999 ). Models were compared based on likelihood ratio tests, where a non-significant chi-square indicates that a more parsimonious model fits equally well as a less restrictive, less parsimonious model. Therefore, a minimally-restrictive first model was estimated where all regression paths for Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority Biracials were freely estimated. Given the lack of restrictions placed on the data, this model fit the data well ( χ 2 (21) = 9.788, p = .9815, RMSEA = .000, CFI = 1, SRMR = .028). This fully-free model was compared to a highly restricted model where regression paths were constrained to be equal across all 4 groups. This highly restrictive model led to a significant decrement in model fit (Δ χ 2 (21) = 46.219, p = .0012), so constraining associations to be equal across groups (essentially assuming differences between groups do not exist) while parsimonious, was deemed to be an inappropriate representation of the data (see Table 2 fit of all models and for comparisons).

Comparison of competing models.

To increase parsimony while not introducing model misfit, we examined the patterns of significant and non-significant regression paths for each group and reasoned that if a path was non-significant and thus not different from zero across at least two sub-groups, it could reasonably be constrained to equality between groups. Table 3 illustrates the regression paths that were constrained to equality when estimating Model 3 with a *. For instance, discrimination was non-significant for Black-White, Asian-White, and minority-minority Biracials and was thus constrained to equality across these groups but not among Latinx-White Biracials for whom discrimination significantly predicted distress. Compared to the fully-free model, this third model provided an equally-good fit to the data (Δ χ 2 (12) = 16.012, p = .1908), meaning that this approach does indeed increase parsimony without producing a significant decrement in model fit. Examining the remaining paths, we observed that the positive association between identity-based challenges and psychological distress was significant (i.e., non-zero) across all four Biracial sub-groups, which was both consistent with Hypothesis 1. To test whether this significant effect was equal in magnitude across groups, we compared the fit of model 3 against a fourth model where this path was constrained to equality across all sub-groups. Compared to the previous model, this 4 th model provided an equivalent fit to the data (Δ χ 2 (3) = 2.783, p = .4263) and was, thus, selected as our final analytical model ( χ 2 (36) = 28.583, p = .8058, RMSEA = .000, CFI = 1, SRMR = .047). This final model, where the only paths that are freely estimated among our four Biracial sub-groups are those that are unique to one specific sub-group, provides the most parsimonious and restrictive model that still facilitates comparison across groups without erroneously introducing model misfit (e.g., misfit arose in the highly restrictive second model because paths were constrained to equality that were not truly equal). Stated differently, this process allowed the data to show us which paths could be assumed to be equivalent across groups and which paths were unique to specific Biracial sub-groups.

Standardized beta coefficients across groups.

Significant paths have been bolded .

ID = identity, Disc = Discrimination, MR = Multiracial.

Paths for final model.

Results are presented starting with the Biracial sub-group that displayed the fewest differences relative to the three other groups. Contrary to Hypothesis 2, the sub-group that displayed the fewest differences was the minority-minority Biracial group (N = 72). In our process of selecting a model, all regression paths for the minority-minority group were constrained to be equal to paths from at least one other Biracial sub-group. This occurred because no predictors in this group produced non-zero (i.e., significant) associations with psychological distress, save for identity-based challenges, which was significant but could be constrained to equality with all other sub-groups for increased parsimony without a significant decrement in model fit (see Table 3 for all regression coefficients). Among minority-minority Biracials, only identity-based challenges, not discrimination, pride nor any of their 2 and 3-way interactions, were predictive of psychological distress ( b = .305, p < .001). Among Latinx-White Biracials (N = 86), identity-based challenges were associated with greater distress ( b = .351, p < .001) as was discrimination ( b = .208, p = .038).

Examining regression paths among Asian-White Biracials (N = 93), over and above the impact of identity-based challenges ( b = .294, p < .001), there was a significant interaction between identity-based challenges and discrimination ( b = −.301, p = .003). When probing interactions, significant unstandardized beta coefficients indicated whether simple slopes were significantly different from 0, whereas a significant Wald test ( W ) indicated that simple slopes were significantly different from each other. While demonstrated with a t-test, which is similar to a Wald test, Robinson and colleagues (2013) demonstrate that testing the difference in magnitude between simple slopes is a slightly more powerful test than a test of significance for an interaction term. This test also maintains equivalent Type I error rates as does the test of an interaction term despite having higher power ( Robinson et al., 2013 ). Interactions were probed at low (−1 SD ), medium (mean), and high (+1 SD ) levels of the interaction term.

Probing the significant interaction between identity-based challenges and discrimination revealed that, for Asian-White Biracials, associations between identity-based challenges and psychological distress at low ( B = .214, p < .001), mean ( B = .247, p < .001) and high levels of discrimination ( B = .279, p < .001) were positive and significantly different from zero, but not significantly different from each other ( W high-low (1) = .353, p = .553). Although initial examinations suggested the existence of a significant interaction, we assert that identity based challenges are best regarded as being associated with greater psychological distress for Asian-White participants as a main effect because the strength of the identity-based challenges psychological distress relation does not differ based on levels of discrimination exposure (see Figure S1 in the Supplemental Materials for simple slopes plot) 6 .

Finally, we examined regression paths among Black-White Biracials (N = 75). Partially consistent with Hypothesis 2, this group displayed the most differences relative to other Biracial sub-groups. Specifically, while identity-based challenges ( b = .296, p < .001) and Multiracial pride ( b = −.236, p = .023) emerged as main effects, a significant 3-way interaction was observed between identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride ( b = .478, p < .001). This complex 3-way interaction was probed using Mplus code from Stride and colleagues (2015). Of the 9 simple slopes (see Table 4 for all unstandardized coefficients and Figure 1 for a simple slopes plot), only one was non-significant: the relation between identity-based challenges when Black-White emerging adults were low in discrimination and relatively low in pride ( B = .183, p = .141; −1 SD in pride = 3.735 out of 6). To summarize the magnitude of the simple slopes, when Black-White emerging adults have high levels of Multiracial pride, the relations between psychological distress and identity-based challenges are equally strong for those who face low levels of discrimination and those who face high levels of discrimination ( W (1) = .207, p = .6489). The same pattern across levels of discrimination emerged when Black-White emerging adults endorsed mean ( W (1) = .353, p = .5526) and low ( W (1) = .289, p = .5910) levels of Multiracial pride. Although the association between identity-based challenges and psychological distress seems to be intensifying as discrimination becomes more frequent, Multiracial pride seems to be working to stabilize these associations. Stated differently, discrimination generally interacts with and potentiates the effect of identity-based challenges, but one’s Multiracial pride may dampen that potentiating effect of discrimination. Unlike what was observed among Asian-White Biracials, this is not evidence for a ‘false’ interaction, but rather a complex one where one variable intensifies an association while the other reduces it; the net influence of these factors largely cancel each other out (as evidenced by non-significant Wald tests comparing across levels of discrimination while holding constant pride) but the association between identity-based challenges and psychological distress is, nonetheless, conditional on both those variables.

Three-way interaction predicting psychological distress observed among Black-White Biracial participants.

Note. All simple slopes are statistically different than zero unless otherwise indicated by ‘ ns ’.

Unstandardized beta coefficients for simple slopes of 3-way interaction among Black-White Biracials.

Post-hoc power analysis.

To examine our power to detect significant main effects and interactions in this study, post-hoc power was assessed by conducting Monte Carlo simulations in Mplus. Using the parameter estimates we obtained in our analyses as the tentatively proposed ‘population’ values, we ran 1,000 simulations, each with the same number of observations as in our study, and reported the number of times out of 1,000 that each parameter was observed to be significantly different from zero (i.e., the definition of power). As expected, results from our power analysis revealed that we were underpowered to detect many significant effects across our four Biracial sub-groups (see Table 5 for power estimates and estimates of power if our sample size were doubled). However, because of their large effects, we had adequate power to detect identity-based challenges’ impact on psychological distress across all sub-groups. We also had adequate power (1 - β = .976) to detect the most nuanced and interesting effect we tested for, the 3-way interaction between identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride observed among our sample of Black-White Biracial participants. This implies that, even with the small sample used in the current study, the interaction between these variables had a strong enough effect on psychological distress that this effect can be reliably detected in a small sample of Black-White Biracials. Although there are concerns of biased estimates when assessing post-hoc power (see Yuan & Maxwell, 2005 ), there we no similar published studies using these variables to use to accurately compute a-priori power or to more accurately create population estimates when assessing post-hoc power.

Post-Hoc power estimates from Monte Carlo Simulations.

Note . Paths with power > .8 have been bolded .

Given the dearth of quantitative scholarship in this field and the lack of data from which to craft accurate population estimates, we contend that our analysis of a-priori power is appropriate despite the limitations of the technique. Additionally, rather than asserting that these exact relations between variables hold for entire populations of Biracial college students, we intend this study to function as am early foray into this area that illustrates a novel way of examining between Biracial group differences, and presents tentative findings that will require subsequent replication in independent samples by independent research teams.

Biracial individuals are a rapidly growing ( Colby & Ortman, 2015 ) but largely understudied population (see Seaton et al., 2018 for call to action). One key to understanding this population is understanding the unique risks they face, such as experiencing internal identity-based challenges in addition to external stressors such as discrimination ( Jackson et al., 2012 ; Yoo et al., 2016 ). More important, however, is understanding the assets they employ in effectively combating these risks. The primary goals of the current study were, therefore, (1) to examine how identity-based challenges, Multiracial pride – an important aspect of identity, and discrimination individually and interactively influence psychological distress among Biracial emerging adults and (2) to explore whether these associations differed by Biracial sub-group.

Qualitatively, our diverse sample of Biracial emerging adults endorsed relatively high levels of pride (4.330 on a 6-point scale) and moderate levels of identity-based challenges (3.106 on a 6-point scale), suggesting that they are proud to be Biracial despite endorsing some underlying struggles with their racial identity. Even at low levels of endorsement, these identity-based challenges had a notable impact on emerging adults’ well-being as, consistent with Hypothesis 1, identity-based challenges predicted greater psychological distress across all Biracial sub-groups whilst controlling for discrimination. This finding aligns with past research showing positive relations between depression and identity-based challenges ( Franco & McElroy-Heltzel, 2019 ; Franco & O’Brien, 2018 ), and provides additional evidence for the utility of examining how Biracial emerging adults internally struggle with their racial identity. As MultiCrit would predict, society’s perpetuation of a monoracial paradigm continually invalidates the racialized experience of Multiracial individuals ( Harris, 2016 ); this form of discrimination serves as a risk to healthy identity development and our study shows that it also serves as a risk for greater psychological distress.

Partially consistent with Hypothesis 2, we found the greatest number of unique regression paths among Black-White Biracials, but no unique paths (i.e., paths that were not be constrained to be equal with those of other sub-groups) arose for minority-minority Biracials. Specifically, only identity-based challenges arose as a significant predictor of psychological distress among minority-minority Biracials, who were different combinations of Black, Latinx, and Asian. The multitude of different Biracial combinations in the minority-minority Biracial sub-group makes it exceptionally difficult to identify the specific ways in which these different variables and their interactions impact levels of distress. Overall, these differences may be highly nuanced and future work should examine these processes in a larger samples of minority-minority Biracials that are more homogenous in terms of their racial/ethnic background.

Historically, the existing literature on Biracial and Multiracial individuals has overwhelmingly focused on those with some White heritage. In a review of 125 articles on Biracials and Multiracials published from 1990 to 2009, Charmaraman and colleagues (2014) , found that only 30% of studies even sampled minority-minority Biracials. Conceptually, this sub-group, because they do not have White ancestry, may be different in the discrimination group members face and the challenges they may have with racial identity. However, the lack of unique associations displayed by our minority-minority Biracials relative to White Biracial groups calls this claim into question. Ultimately, far more research is needed to tease apart when and why specific minority-minority Biracial groups may be similar or different from other Biracial subgroups (see Jackson et al., 2017 for an example of studying ethnic-racial socialization and identity in Latinx Multiracials with and without White heritage).

Interestingly, in addition to finding a main effect for Multiracial pride, which is consistent with work finding the promotive effects of pride on internalizing symptoms ( Rivas-Drake et al., 2014 ), we found evidence for a significant 3-way interaction between identity-based challenges, discrimination, and pride predicting psychological distress among Black-White Biracials. Probing this interaction revealed that Biracial pride offsets the degree to which discrimination strengthens the relation between identity-based challenges and distress symptoms. This was most apparent when emerging adults endorsed high pride and low levels of discrimination; for these Black-White emerging adults, identity-based challenges were no longer associated with psychological distress. While meta-analytic work that has, thus far, failed to find that ERI dimensions such as pride protect against the negative impact of discrimination on psychological distress ( Yip et al., 2019 ), this, at least in Multiracial populations, may be due to an important but previously unaccounted for variable such as identity-based challenges that may be interacting these variables in nuanced ways. By accounting for identity-based challenges, we did indeed find the additive effect of discrimination on the relation between identity-based challenges and distress symptoms is attenuated by Multiracial pride– at least for Black-White Biracials. Given that Multiracial pride is, by definition, the positive affect associated with Biracial group membership, it may be a factor that is particularly well positioned to mitigate the negative affect that is characteristic of psychological distress. Related to this notion is the finding that positive affect has, in part, been shown to predict fewer depressive symptoms ( Watson et al., 1988 ). Additionally, the main effect of pride and its importance in preventing discrimination from strengthening the relation between identity-based challenges and psychological distress suggests that pride plays a key role in promoting wellbeing among Black-White Biracials.

Equally interesting as the specific nature of this three-way interaction is the fact that it was only observed among our Black-White sub-group. While, to our knowledge, there is little quantitative scholarship that would directly imply this type of association, this unique association may be due to the stark Black-White divide in the U.S.; the effects of this divide may be particularly felt by those who have to work to navigate being a member of both these racial groups. Multiracial pride may be particularly important for this population when faced with discrimination or when experiencing identity-based challenges because of the perceived conflict and distance between these two racial groups ( Cheng & Lee, 2009 ). Indeed, this deep divide has spurred scholarship on identity typologies in this population ( Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002 ) and continuation of one-drop rule thinking when categorizing Black-White faces (see Kawakami, Amodio, & Hugenberg, 2017 for brief review). Additionally, scholarly work has suggested that discrimination and invalidation that Black Biracials receive from monoracial Blacks is particularly harmful and associated with greater identity-based challenges and greater cultural homelessness ( Franco & Franco, 2016 ). Our measure of discrimination did not specify the race the perpetrator was and what identity status they were targeting with their discriminatory behaviors. It is possible that Black-White Biracials in our sample faced this particularly harmful form of discrimination, further necessitating Multiracial pride to disrupt and protect against the harmful associations between discrimination, identity-based challenges, and psychological distress. Ultimately, the unique sociocultural experiences that arise from having Black and White ancestry in the U.S. may underlie unique associations between our observed risk and protective factors relative to other Biracial subgroups.

Finally, we found evidence for one unique association among the Latinx-White sub-group. Among Latinx-White Biracials, both identity-based challenges and discrimination predicted greater distress as main effects. In Asian-White Biracials, we observed a false interaction where identity-based challenges were associated with greater psychological distress; this relation did not change in magnitude or direction across levels of discrimination in spite of a significant interaction term. For Latinx-White Biracials, these findings imply that external poor treatment in the form of discrimination and internal challenges in forming a cohesive racial identity contribute to psychological distress in these groups. Due to the current sociopolitical climate, those assumed to be Latinx, whether they are of full Latinx origin or Latinx-White individuals who cannot pass as White, have been subjected to increasing discrimination and foreigner objectification ( Kiang et al., 2019 ). Among Latinx populations, both of these factors have been shown to lead to depression ( Armenta et al., 2013 ), a factor related to psychological distress. Above and beyond its contribution to identity-based challenges, Latinx-White Biracials are likely to personally know or be part of communities where undocumented individuals and mixed-status families face fear of deportation and ICE raids. This systematic oppression has been shown to affect the Latinx community at large and has been shown to lead to increases in depressive and anxiety symptoms among this population ( Stafford et al., 2019 ). Further, within Latinx groups, colorism and racism interact to favor lighter-skinned individuals leading to skin-tone discrimination so skin tone may also contribute to the relation between discrimination, identity-based challenges, and distress in this population. Overall, these findings point to both identity-based challenges and discrimination as independent predictors of psychological distress in this sub-group that should be further explored.

For Asian-White Biracials, while discrimination appears to increase the impact of identity-based challenges on psychological distress, this interaction did not hold because the strength of this association was the same at low, mean, and high levels of discrimination. Despite producing a significant product term, there was no difference in strength for the identity-based challenges – psychological distress association based on the moderator, discrimination. Therefore, in light of these mixed findings, we contend that this is a false moderation, as the definition of a moderation is a “variable that affects the direction and/or strength of the relation between an independent or predictor variable and a dependent or criterion variable” ( Baron & Kenny, 1986 ). Because the magnitude of the effect is statistically equivalent across levels of the moderator, we assert identity-based challenges are best regarded as impacting psychological distress as a main effect among Asian-White Biracials. Interestingly, this finding aligns with past work examining different clusters of identity and mental health outcomes among Asian-White Biracials ( Chong & Kuo, 2015 ). Specifically, after finding evidence of an Asian-Dominant, a White-Dominant, and an Asian-White integrated cluster, Chong and Kuo (2015) found that Asian-Dominant individuals endorsed the highest levels of psychological distress, while White-Dominant individuals endorsed the highest levels of internalized oppression. This implies that challenges with racial identity, which may take the form of internal difficulties forming an Asian-White integrated identity versus accepting one dominant identity, may be associated with distress or feelings of shame related to being of Asian heritage.

In summary, our findings indicate that identity-based challenges are associated with psychological distress across the sample, whereas discrimination and pride come on-line in unique ways depending on Multiracial sub-group. Ultimately, associations between discrimination, identity, and adjustment are likely highly nuanced; Biracials may understand and experience these factors differently from each other and from monoracial emerging adults and ( Shih & Sanchez, 2005 ). Nonetheless these initial findings add to the small body of quantitative literature by providing initial evidence for how these associations vary by Biracial sub-group.

Limitations

Despite its novel findings, this study is not without its limitations. First, our cross-sectional study design prevents us from illustrating the process by which Multiracial pride and identity-based challenges develop over time, how that development is impacted by discrimination, and how these three factors together influence trajectories of distress over time. Indeed, it is possible that internal identity-based challenges may arise after a discriminatory event, thus functioning as a potential mediator of the positive association between discrimination and psychological distress. For other youth, overcoming identity-based challenges may foster increases in Multiracial pride, and increased pride and salience in one’s Multiracial group membership may then prompt increases in perception and frequency of discrimination ( Gonzalez-Backen et al., 2018 ). Again, although we have conceptualized discrimination as exacerbating identity-based challenges’ impact on psychological distress and that relationship potentially being buffered by pride, our cross-sectional design prevents us from comparing alternative models, as these models are statistically equivalent in a cross-sectional design. Given the strong theoretical focus on identity development in this population ( Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002 ; Root & Kelley, 2003 ), future work should examine the function, process, and impact of Multiracial pride, identity-based challenges, and discrimination across development and over time to better untangle these likely bidirectional associations.

Second, although we were able to find a significant three-way interaction for our Black-White Biracial sub-group, our choice to split our Biracial sample into 4 sub-groups limits our statistical power, as clearly indicated in our post-hoc power analyses. With a greater sample size, we would have been better positioned to both detect sources of model misfit in selecting our final model and to uncover potential significant interactions that varied across groups. However, as shown by our estimation of power when doubling our sample size, power to detect effects that are very weak in the population will continue to be low until sample sizes approach extremely high numbers. As the first study to examine main effects and interactions between these variables among sub-groups of Biracial college students, we assert that the discovery of large and significant effects (i.e., the effect of identity-based challenges on psychological distress and the 3-way interaction) makes a contribution to this nascent field even if we were underpowered to detect smaller and more subtle effects. Nonetheless, future work may benefit from more targeted recruitment strategies that allow researchers to collect larger samples of specific Biracial sub-groups. These more targeted collection will result in bigger sample sizes and greater power to detects the weaker effects that this study was not sufficiently powered to detect. Given that the aims of this study were to conduct a principled but data-driven examination of these associations between groups, results should be treated with caution and replicated by independent research teams.

Thirdly, participants in our study come from a convenience sample of Multiracial college students recruited from three public universities across the United States. While our multi-site sampling design increases the geographic representativeness of this sample of Biracial college students, we are not aware of the specific response rates relative to the total Multiracial/Biracial population at each university and the experiences of these college students may, more broadly, not generalize to the broader Biracial emerging adult population. Additionally, our sample of Biracial emerging adults were relatively average and homogenous in terms of SES. Recent scholarship has pointed to the unique effects of discrimination experiences on both low and high-SES (and upwardly socially mobile) minoritized youth ( Assari et al., 2018 ). Future work should aspire towards a more balanced sample of Biracial emerging adults from across the SES spectrum.

Additionally, our measure of discrimination assessed the general ethnic-racial discrimination faced by our sample of Biracial emerging adults, but it is not sensitive to the source of discrimination. As has been demonstrated in a sample of Black Multiracial adults, identity invalidation (a form of discrimination) was most often perpetrated by Black individuals, and identity invalidation that came from Black individuals was particularly strongly associated with participants identity-based challenges and feelings of not having a cultural home ( Franco & Franco, 2016 ). Identity invalidation may also be related to Multiracial identification, as Norman and Chen (2020) observed that general discrimination from ingroup members was associated with greater Multiracial identification, while discrimination from outgroup members was associated with weaker Multiracial identification. Similarly, discrimination against Multiracial people may be incongruent with the actual racial groups to which they belong, and this identity-incongruent discrimination may have implications for identity development as well ( Franco et al., 2019 ). These studies demonstrate that discrimination may take many forms and may have differential effects on identity and, potentially, functioning depending on discrimination type and the race of perpetrator. Future work should more fully consider perpetrator race and different forms of discrimination, especially when the aim is to understand potential mechanisms behind differences between Biracial and Multiracial groups.

Finally, our study examines one domain of Multiracial identity, Multiracial pride, and does not examine pride in tandem with other domains. One domain of identity, racial centrality, or how important racial group membership is to one’s self-concept ( Sellers, Smith, Shelton, Rowley, & Chavous, 1998 ), has been found to operate as a ‘double-edged sword’ among monoracial emerging adults by leading to positive adjustment outcomes whilst also intensifying the negative impact discrimination has on mental health ( Yip, 2018 ). As evidence of this, in a model accounting for general discrimination, centrality has shown to be negatively associated with life satisfaction in a sample of Multiracial adults ( Giamo et al., 2012 ). Given these mixed findings, future work with Multiracial populations should attempt to unpack the impact of racial centrality whilst also examining how other ERI domains may be protective given high levels of centrality. In addition, not all Biracial individuals identify as Multiracial, so there is a possibility that they do feel pride in their racial identity in different ways, such as in relation to both of their monoracial groups. These differences in identification may also have direct implications for psychological functioning, as Binning et al. (2009) observed that Multiracial adolescents who identified with multiple groups instead of solely a ‘low-status’ (Black or Latinx) or high-status (White) group reported greater positive affect, lower levels of stress, and less alienation in school. Future studies could assess pride in both monoracial and Multiracial identities to capture these different dimensions of identity, their potentially differential relations based on racial composition to other aspects of identity such as pride, and their relations to outcomes such as psychological distress.

Implications and Conclusions

This study has implications for clinical intervention in this quickly-growing but poorly-understood population. Firstly, this study implies that, in addition to understanding the sociocultural history of a Biracial client’s groups and how it may impact their sense of self, counselors should specifically probe for identity-based challenges. These challenges may interfere with the development of a strong racial identity and act as an additional risk for greater psychological distress regardless of Biracial racial composition. While scholarly work suggests that an integrated Biracial identity is associated with the fewest negative psychological symptoms ( Cheng & Lee, 2009 ; Chong & Kuo, 2015 ) identity development is a highly individualized developmental process. Counselors and interventionists may be most useful in facilitating identity exploration to help these individuals start to resolve what their identity means to them ( Umaña-Taylor, 2018 ). Additionally, while we only found interactive effects of pride emerging among Black-White individuals, positive racial-ethnic pride has broadly been associated with numerous positive psychosocial outcomes among minoritized individuals more broadly ( Rivas-Drake et al., 2014 ). Assessing and facilitating Multiracial pride may work to combat identity-based challenges that may arise throughout development. Generally, understanding the unique risk and resilience factors displayed by this population is paramount in delivering effective, culturally-informed treatment and supporting the positive psychosocial development of Biracial youth in diverse college settings.

In conclusion, this study makes a contribution to the field by illustrating how associations between Multiracial pride, internal identity-based challenges, and discrimination among college students may impact psychological distress across four Biracial sub-groups. By outlining initial associations between these constructs across groups in the absence of significant past quantitative scholarship, future scholars may build upon this work by delving more deeply into the mechanisms that underlie these group differences, as well as testing how identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride operate together across time and development.

Supplementary Material

Funding source:.

This work was supported in part by a predoctoral fellowship provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD07376) through the Carolina Consortium on Human Development, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to N. Keita Christophe

Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to report

1 In this study Biracial and Multiracial are capitalized as proper nouns to recognize these individuals to challenge the monoracial paradigm of race ( Harris, 2016 ) that has historically placed Biracial and Multiracial people in subordinate positions relative to monoracial groups. This subordinate positioning is, partly, perpetuated through recommendations by meaningful guides such as the 7th Edition APA Publication Manual (2020) that tell scholars to capitalize the names of monoracial groups (i.e., White, Asian, etc.) while using lower case letters when writing Biracial and Multiracial.

2 We recognize the inherent Multiraciality of the Latinx population and that Latinx people may endorse many different ethnicities and races. However, we also highlight the common trend for Latinx individuals to select ‘other’ when not able to select Hispanic/Latino/a as a racial category on forms such as the U.S. Census ( Humes et al., 2011 ), and the fact that Latinxs, particularly those that are darker-skinned, are racialized ( Omi & Winant, 2015 ) through their experiences with discrimination ( Bonilla-Silva, 2004 ). For the purposes of this study, we choose to conceptualize Latinx as a distinct racial group. However, we acknowledge that Latinx may also identify as Black or White in addition to ‘some other race’ and that these classifications are complicated and may change over time.

3 In line with our efforts to challenge the monoracial paradigm of race ( Harris, 2016 ) and place Biracials and Multiracials on par with monoracial groups, we defend the use of ‘Biracials’ and ‘Multiracials’ in the same way the use of the terms ‘Whites’, ‘Asians’, or ‘Pacific Islanders’ is commonplace and deemed socially acceptable.

4 ‘Multiracial discrimination’ has also been used to refer to discrimination specifically targeted at people because of their membership in multiple racial/ethnic groups (see Yoo et al., 2016 ). We highlight the term ‘monoracism’ because it speaks to the underlying reason behind this form of discrimination, a dislike/lack of acceptance of individuals who do not fit into society’s notion of discrete racial categories ( Harris, 2016 ).

5 Because our primary analyses involve multi-group regression models with four distinct groups, excluding these variables greatly simplifies our already complex regression models. For instance, keeping just one of these covariates in our multi-group model involves the estimation of up to 32 additional parameters across the four groups.

6 By definition, the association between a predictor and outcome must differ in strength and/or direction at different levels of a moderator variable ( Barron & Kenny, 1986 ). If the direction and strength of an association does not depend on the level of a third variable, that third variable is not a moderator.

Availability of data, material, and code:

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