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Forming a Personal Sense of Identity in the Contemporary World: Challenges and Difficulties

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Berzonsky M. D.

Psychologia Rozwojowa

2009

vol. 14

issue 4

This article considers some normative cultural changes that have contributed to the identity “crises” faced at least by persons living in Western cultures. Identity is conceptualized as a self-structure that provides a frame of reference for processing self-relevant information, answering questions about the meaning and purpose of one’s life, and regulating the processes that individuals use to cope and adapt in everyday life. Individuals living in the modern world characterized by accelerating technological, social, and economic changes face major challenges and problems as they attempt to form and maintain a coherent sense of personal identity. Not all people, however, deal with these identity confl icts in the same fashion. Research reveals reliable differences in how individuals negotiate or manage to avoid the tasks of constructing, maintaining, and reconstructing a sense of identity in the modern world. Three identity processing orientations are highlighted: informational, normative, and diffuse-avoidant. Although an informational processing orientation is associated with resources and skills that maximize adaptability in the modern world, those resources do not provide a set of values or frame of reference for deciding what goals people should commit to or what they should live for. Some of values used to justify identity choices in the modern world are considered.

Cognitive Processes and Identity Formation: The Mediating Role of Identity Processing Style

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Berzonsky M. D.

Psychologia Rozwojowa

2010

vol. 15

issue 4

Identity formation is conceptualized in terms of a social‐cognitive model that postulates stylistic differences in how people negotiate or manage to evade the challenge of constructing, maintaining, and/or reconstructing their sense of identity. Some people adopt an informed, refl ective orientation to identity conflicts and questions; others take a more automatic, normative approach; whereas others procrastinate and delay identity decisions until situational demands and consequences dictate how they react. The role that general rational and automatic cognitive processes and identity processing styles play in identity formation is considered. Research that has evaluated the theoretical hypothesis according to which the linkage between rational and automatic reasoning processes and measures of identity formation is mediated by identity processing style is reviewed. The fi ndings indicated that rational and automatic cognitive processes generally did account for signifi cant variance on measures of identity formation including strength of commitment, types of selfattributes within which one’s identity was grounded, and identity status. However, the fi ndings further revealed that identity processing styles at least in part mediated most of the relationships between cognitive processes and identity formation. In all of the analyses, identity processing styles explained a greater amount of the unique variation in measures of identity formation than the cognitive variables.

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2 Psychologia Rozwojowa

2 Berzonsky M. D.

1 2010

1 2009

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Forming a Personal Sense of Identity in the Contemporary World: Challenges and Difficulties

Cognitive Processes and Identity Formation: The Mediating Role of Identity Processing Style