The Prominence of Multiple Obligatory Identities, Identity-discrepancy, and Psychological Distress

• In Event: 282 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 03. Gender, Identity, and Sexual Behavior

Abstract

This working paper addresses how professional life and private life is causing stress for individuals. This research draws on social psychology, specifically identity theory and its extension identity-discrepancy theory, in a cross-sectional examination of individual and group wellbeing, with individual self-definition as a predictor of stress outcomes (e.g., depression, cigarette smoking, prescription pill misuse). Under investigation is the importance (i.e., prominence) of self-definition within multiple social role-identities, aspirational (wishes) and obligational (oughts) expectations related to these roles, and the impact this has on overall stress outcomes. It extends earlier identity-discrepancy theory research through an adult population web survey design.

The association between professional life roles, private life roles, and stress outcomes will be analyzed in this project as the primary examples of role-identity prominence, meeting role-identity aspirational and obligational expectations, and overall stress outcomes. This specific approach contributes to social psychology in the following novel ways: (1) reconceptualizing aspirational and obligational expectations as interacting with one another, rather than separately as previously studied, in contributing to stress, (2) researching aspirational and obligational expectations through an adult population sample, (3) positing the concept of absent-identity discrepancies as the self perceived wish and/or obligation to possess an identity, (4) positing the concept of inter-identity discrepancies as the disharmony between aspirations of one identity and obligations of another identity, (5) using identity theory to predict the stress outcomes: prescription pill misuse and cigarette smoking.

Author

• Gerard Byron, University of Massachusetts Boston