Notes for your 2nd examination - Identity Formation and Change Over the Lifespan


For your 2nd examination, you are to answer one question:
“How Did You Become Who You Are Now and How Are You Likely to Change in the Future?"
Based on your readings (Part II in your textbook) and the lecturenotes below on Identity Formation and changes over the lifespan between adolescence and old age, you are to chart your development of identity along several pathways up to the present time. Then try to project where your identity may go in later life.  Include the issues discussed in the textbook such as loss and death, changes in family relationships, grandparenthood. are all very relevant to this question, so refer to them as well in your answers.Be thorough – at least 8 pages with citations or references from the text, lecture notes and outside references..

 Notes for the question:
According to psychologist Erik Erikson, identity is a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared world image. As a quality of unself-conscious living, this can be gloriously obvious in a young person who has found himself as he has found his communality. In him we see emerge a unique unification of what is irreversibly given--that is, body type and temperament, giftedness and vulnerability, infantile models and acquired ideals--with the open choices provided in available roles, occupational possibilities, values offered, mentors met, friendships made, and first sexual encounters. (Erikson, 1970.)

Where does identity come from - what are the sources upon which a person draws information about themselves?

Self-concept or self-identity, as opposed to self-consciousness, is a "global" concept that continues to grow and evolve as a person gains experiences in life and tests themselves against the environment and other people with whom he or she interacts.  At any point in a person's development, Self-concept is the sum of a persons knowledge and understanding of himself/herself. Self-consciousness is more a matter of being aware of oneself in the moment of interaction when, for example, one becomes embarrassed or brave. Self-concept evolves through physical, cognitive and psychological development, and the interpretation of these elements as filtered through developing attitudes, values, and beliefs.

Additional concepts are relevant in a discussion of Identity or Self-Concept.. While Self-image refers to how we see ourselves and Self-esteem refers to how we feel about how we see ourselves, Identity refers to an abiding set of beliefs an individual comes to have about themselves, their capabilities, weaknesses, and strengths.

Identity can be divided up into component parts, or types of identy, such as:
Cultural Identity (a feeling of belongingness to a group or subculture which seems to share a set of characteristics. These can be as general as an age group (baby-boomers, gen-Xers, coin collectors) or as  specific as a narrowly defined group of true believers, jazz lovers, or epicurians with a taste for exotic vegetables.
Interpersonal interaction as a contributor to identity formation:
Thinking back as far as one can, at some point in life individuals begin to gather beliefs about themselves. As new beliefs are discovered or taught, the old beliefs may be modified. Sometimes this process is sudden, as when a new insight radically changes the way a person feels about themselves, but usually the process is gradual and perhaps not really perceived by the individual as it happens.

Our identity has its basic beginnings in the acquisition of language, a process of building identity by learning one's culture one concept at a time. The acquisition of language includes all the members of our social network that have a teaching function to us. First parents, siblings, and other family members point to things in the world and provide us with a vocabularly for what they are showing us.  Imagine sitting with your mother, looking at a child's picture book of letters at age 24 months:

As the child looks on, the mother says the letter, "A" as she points to the letter.  Then she says "apple" as she points to the picture. Again. "A - apple", "A - apple", "A - apple" then, she points and says "A", then points to the picture and waits ..... the child says "ah-poo", and the mother gushes, "that's right, apple" - and she squeals approval as she caresses the child approvingly, then repeats the whole process with "B - ball". An alphabet is going to be necessary later to be able to read their Family Middle and Later Years text and notes, so it is very important to get it right!

And it is not just a matter of repetitious seeing and saying, drilling. This process is the physical/cognitive equivalent of building the Eiffel Tower full scale out of matchsticks. The child has to simultaneously learn to interpret sounds as concepts then coordinate the ther own speech behavior (lungs, larnyx, tongue, teeth, brain function, eyesight) in order to emulate the lesson that is relevant to all 26 letters and millions of pictures that start with an A or a B and so on.

Because the mother and child reside in a culture rich in examples, they are bombarded with A-words every waking moment.

In a few months this teacher-pupil team will graduate to "My First Book of Animals" and have to deal with aardvarks (also known as ant-eaters, alligators (which will later be mysteriously similar to crocodiles). And each one makes a sound of its own, which the child will be encouraged to try to replicate.

And at the same time, the animals will be grouped into categories - mammals, fish, reptiles, birds ... humans. The rules are endlessly complicated and there is plenty of room for error - if dogs are furry and walk on all fours, then might not granpa be a dog sometimes, when he has a little too much to drink?

All of this teaching of the culture has a strong emotional element as well.  Children interact with their parents like this when the behavior is fun, or when they receive psychic hugs (warm fuzzies) and when the lessons have an affective reward - "That's so good! You are so smart!" Smiles, hugs, displays of affection.

Over time, categorization, identifying groups of things, comparing and contrasting things - gives way to generalization.  Once we have developed a habit of categorizing, making lists of things that are sort of alike, we can extrapolate the skill to new, uncharted areas of knowledge - like another language, or a specialized area of school.

How many ways can we say the word Peace? (http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/pace/ and http://www.peaceloveandme.com/peacelanguage.html)
Here's a whole bunch of them and these are just the ones that use our alphabet: Fridden, Der Frieden, La Paix, Achukma, Mír Bosnian, Shalom, Heiwa, Salam, La Paz, La Pace Italian, A Paz Galician, Alaáfía, Amaithi, Amaní, Aman Malay, Amniat, Ashtee, Asomdwee, Aylobaha, Bake, Barish, Béke, Boóto, Búdech, Chibanda, Däilama, Damai, Diakatra, Dodolimdag, Echnahcaton, Ets’a’an Olal, ‘Éyewi Nez, Fandriampahalemana, Filemu, Friður , Gúnnammwey, Hasîtî, Hau, Hedd, Hmethó, Hoa Bình, Ilifayka, Innaihtsi’iyi, Iri’nim Írq, Ittimokla, Kagiso, Kalilíntad, Kapayapaan, K’é, Khanhaghutyun, Khotso, Kiñuiñak, Kiba-kiba, Kunammwey, Kutula, ‘Kwam, La Paqe, La Patz, La Pau, Lapé Layéni, Li-k’ei, Linew, Lùmana, Mabuhay, Maluhia, Meleilei, Melino, Miers, Mina, Mtendere Chewa, Muka-muka, Musango, Mutenden, Nabad -Da, Nanna Ayya Ñerane’i, Nimuhóre, Nirudho, Nye, Olakamigenoka, Paçi, Paco, Pax, Pingan, Pokój , Pyong’hwa, Rahu, Rangima’arie, Rauha, Rerdamaian, Rukun, Saantim Santipap, Saq, Shîte, Shanti Bengali, Sholim, Síocháin, Sìth, Soksang, Solh Dari, Sonqo, Sulh, Taika, Tecócatú, Thayu, Tsumukikatu, Tuktuquil, Tutkiun, Udo, Ukuthula, Uvchin, Uxolo, Vrede Afrikaans, Wâki Ijiwebis-I, Wetaskiwin, Wolakota, Wôntôkóde, Wo’okeyeh.  Each of these words comes from a different language that embodies a different culture, yet all the cultures of the world have a word for Peace - even current and past enemies of our own culture.

If we aren't careful our children might start asking inappropriate questions - "If everybody has a word for peace, why is there always a war going on?"  
Words are very important precisely because they carry entire cultures with them. "Ain't no mountain high enough" might be a cool lyric to a popular song, but use "ain't no" in regular speech, especially to people outside your social network, and see if you aren't thought of as someone who is uneducated.  You can probably think of a word or phrase that would bring extreme reactions from the people who heard you say it.

And when we learn enough of our culture from our social interactions, at least two things occur to influence the development of our identities:
1. We begin to reflect on our stock of knowledge in a very fundamental way that helps us evaluate how we are doing in the world.  We use that which we've learned to evaluate our worth.
2. We begin to value the concepts we've learned to the extent that we cannot think outside that which we've learned without a lot of effort. We develop ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.

Later, with continued interpersonal interaction with people outside our social network, and by including a wider variety of people into our social network, we might become able to question and examine our assumptions about ourselves and others - as when we grow up, marry into another family and have to learn their ways and views. A little more on how this works ...

The Development of the Self and the Other through Interaction.
Symbolic Interaction Theory (from theorists such as George Herbert Mead, Charles H. Cooley, and Herbert Blumer) argues that identities are the products of social interactions, and are in fact social products.  By living in society and learning from those who care for us, we develop a remarkably similar set of identities. SI theorists believe that individuals actively, purposively and even creatively develop a sense of themselves by interaction. Inspite of the individual efforts to develop, enough of us emerge from childhood with enough of the same identities so that we ourselves can be categorized, classified, grouped and generalized about.

Mead's idea of  Learning to take the Role of the Generalized Other
The Generalized Other theory of personality development.  Those of you with a familiar reading of Piaget will find Mead interesting because, like Piaget, Mead asserts that socialization occurs through a maturational process.  Through interaction with others we pass through three stages of social and personal development (see Figure 11 below).

Figure 11. - Mead's Generalized Other

  1. Egocentric Stage 0-2yrs
    2.     The child is unaware of any other personality and behaves as though he is the center of the universe.

  2. 2. Play Stage 2-7yrs
    3.    The child moves through rapid  emulation of roles it perceives - rapid role changes (e.g., cowboy, fireman, prize  fighter, super hero, doctor,  etc.).  Through the practice of "pretending" to be others, the child begins to understand the concept of  "others".

  3. 3. Game Stage  7-80++ yrs - The maturing individual perceives  other's expectations, and self's rights,  gradually acquiring the ability to take the role of the generalized other, which is simply an amalgamation of all the socially appropriate values and behaviors exhibited by the characters we emulate in the Play Stage, and necessary for optimal social adaptation and interaction.
This acquisition of the Generalized Other Role is due to the uniquely human ability to use symbols (e.g., language, face, signs, signals, etc.), and to abstractly understand the Inner self, or the  "I".  It is the inner self that will direct and attempt to choreograph our role behavior in relationships with others. Thus, when we "play the part" of friend, lover, or professional, we are assuming the role of someone who occupies that status or position.  It isn't really us out there, it is a performance. After one comes to understand the expectations society demands, the self bifurcates into two parts - the "I", or Inner self and the "me", or transitory public self.  This accounts for the emergence of Self-image.


The Self  then gradually starts to develop in the Play stage of development and is roughly based on the philosophical device known as the Hegelian Dialectic which simply states that a beginning idea (known as a Thesis) is almost immediately met with an opposing idea (known as an Antithesis). These two ideas will compete with each other through their representatives or believers.  Through argument and interaction, they will eventually merge into a third idea (known as a Synthesis) which combines elements of each.   This Synthesis then becomes a Thesis which, given the nature of human thought and interaction, will be met with a new Antithesis.  Through argument, compromise and interaction, this ideological conflict will result in a new Synthesis, and the whole process begins again.



Imagine how a love relationship develops as each partner modifies their behavior over the initial life of the relationship.  The two individuals are growing into each other, trying to modify their behavior toward the other so that they are acceptable and desirable - all within the set of beliefs they have about each other and about themselves. It becomes important for the individual to be thought of in precise ways and held in high regard by their beloved - and the same holds true from the beloved's point of view.

Herbert Blumer asserts that individual in society behave toward others in their social networks based on the meaning that others hold for them, based on their previous interactions.  These meanings are derived from, and continually modified by, countless iterations of interactions with their socialization agents (their parents, family members, friends).  We define the world around us based on the beliefs and attitudes we've developed over time so that we almost naturally fall into defining the situation in the context of our development.  W.I. Thomas' famous quotation here is that "Things Perceived as Real will be Real in their Consequences".  If we believe we are effective, we will behave as if we are effective.  If we truly believe our grandchldren are precious gifts, we will behave toward them as if they were. This is not the same as mindlessly parroting accepted values in our society, as there are many who say the right thing while behaving to the contrary.  SI theorists assert that, while our stated values might not match what we do, our behavior doesn't lie.  Thus, if we behave as though we do not love our spouse, children, friends, grandchildren, then we do not love them.

In efforts to make our behavior consistent with your view of ourselves, we implement the device known as impression management. We actively and purposefully (and continually) modify our behavior from one situation to the next in order to maintain this consistency. The concepts of guilt, empathy, duty, pride, and even selfishness are devices we actively use to help us resolve to be consistent. 
We are as interested in external consistency (showing others that the behavior others see us perform is really us) as we are with internal consistency (proving to ourselves that we have integrity between our behavior and our beliefs.

Cooley illustrates this idea of managing impressions with his notion of the Looking Glass Self in which we imagine:

  1. how we think we are perceived by others. We imagine how we must appear to others.
  2. the judgment of others about our appearance.
  3. how we might develop/modify our “self” through our thoughts about those judgments.

Now with this in mind – think about Erikson and the idea of Identity Development.
It was Erikson who first thought about the term Identity Crisis, and was a proponent of the importance of social interaction in psychological development.  You may recall that, as a student of Freud's (who believed that most of our motivation to develop a personality came from a need to satisfy sexual impulses - a psychosexual approach),  Erikson found this approach to personality development too imprecise, and unsatisfying as an explanation for human growth and development.  Instead of sexual gratification, Erikson worked from a psychosocial point of view, noting the importance of the quality of our social relationships in the development of the self (personality).   If our socialization agents were of sufficient quality and energy, they would guide us through the stages of life from infancy to old age and death.

Erikson's Epigenetic Principle describes our journey from birth to death as eight developmental stages, each one carrying an identity crisis that has to be resolved before progress to the next stage could be adequately traversed. , believes that the identity crisis is the most important conflict human beings encounter when they go through eight developmental stages in life. According to Erikson's stages (the Epigenetic Principle), the biggest identity crisis came during adolescence. Without resolving the bulk of the individual's identity, progress to the young adult stage would be very difficult.
While he did not dwell long on the idea of identity crises spread out over the lifespan, it may be true that individuals continue to face new identity crises, although not at the degree experienced in adolescence, throughout the lifespan.

James Marcia, building on Erikson's work, particularly on adolescent psychosocial development, suggests Identity Formation to be a process that simultaneously occurs during adolescence. Erikson had suggested that the normative conflict occurring in adolescence is the opposion between identity and confusion (identity crisis). Marcia elaborated on Erikson’s proposal[1] by suggesting this stage consists neither of identity resolution nor identity confusion as Erikson claimed, but the extent to which one both has explored and committed to an identity in a variety of life domains including politics, occupation, religion, intimate relationships, friendships, and gender roles. His Theory of identity achievement states that there are two distinct parts that form adolescent identity: a crisis and a commitment. He defined a crisis as a time of upheaval where old values or choices are being reexamined. The outcome of a crisis leads to a commitment to a certain value or role.

Identity formation is the process of the development of the distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity (known as personal continuity) in a particular stage of life in which individual characteristics are possessed by which a person is recognized or known (such as the establishment of a reputation). This process defines an individual to others and themselves. Pieces of the entity's actual identity include a sense of continuity, a sense of uniqueness from others, and a sense of affiliation. Identity formation leads to a number issues of personal identity and an identity where the individual has some sort of comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate entity. This may be through individuation whereby the undifferentiated individual tends to become unique, or undergoes stages through which differentiated facets of a person's life tend toward becoming a more indivisible whole.

This brings us to James Marcia,a developmental psychologist best known for his proposed four stages of identity formation.  Taking Erikson's theory further, Marcia described the process as having four basic, recursive steps.

Identity Crises are defined as a period of identity development during which the adolescent is choosing among meaningful alternatives on a single aspect of personality
Identity Commitment is defined as the moment when adolescents show a personal investment in a personality component is chosen.


Thus, on any particular personality component, the developing adolescent can be in any one of four stages of development:

While Marcia was mainly interested in adolescent development of identity, clearly individuals will process identity crises at whatever point in life in which these are encountered. Most people encounter the death of a loved one, some early on as chldren, others much later, some not until they themselves are in mid-to-late life.  All the cognitive developmental processes that have been worked through at the time of the crisis are in play.  If a crisis is encountered before the individual is cognitively ready to fully think them through, these crises will be ignored (moratorium).

Change in Identity Beyond Adolescence - Crystallization of Discontent:
As people age, they may be come somewhat resistent to changes in identity, but they likely do not prohibit themselves, or become immune to the effects of socialization by their social network. The process simply becomes a little more complex.   Baumeister (1994) proposed the idea of ‘crystallization of discontent’ to explain how a person may change their understanding of themselves. He notes that such personality changes can come after an array of different events come togehter to form a new identity revelation.  For example, a person may ignore or explain away multiple occurances/events that run counter to what the person believes is actually true.

My own mother believed that I was incapable of hurtful behavior toward another child because she felt she taught me to be a good boy. When faced with direct evidence that my behavior, while out of her sight, was much less than good, she continued to disbelieve her own senses. I was just being a boy, the behavior wasn't serious, all boys do these things, it's just a phase. It wasn't until a policeman brought me home and explained my misdeeds in clear, unambiguous terms, that the new image of me as a rascal crystalized and I was forced to go to spiritual counseling with our pastor, Dr. Fowler. 

Thus a focal event may serve as the "tipping point" at which all other previously negative events coalesce into a sort of "big bang" realization.  A new pattern of behavior, having always existed, now is evaluated in light of newly realized meaning (thesis-anthesis-synthesis).   The new synthesis, for me, was encapsulated by my father who said, "you will have to win back her trust and it won't be easy."  I actually had to become the good boy she thought she had in the first place, which has only recently become the new thesis.

Might not this idea of Crystallization of Discontent also be a part of realizations about oneself after the loss of a family member, or a severe illness, or even becoming a grandparent?

As you read the articles in Part II of the textbook, review your response to the exam question: “How Did You Become Who You Are Now and How Are You Likely to Change in the Future?"
You may want to think about how you will change in terms of various steps along the lifecycle. From teenager to college student to married person to parent to grandparent to widowed single person.  How might your identity change if one or more of these steps are not taken, if you don't marry, don't have children, or if your children do not begin families.  This is a big question to answer so give it the time and energy it deserves.
-ddw