Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research (Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, 10) [1st ed. 2023] 3031329856, 9783031329852

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Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10 Series Editor: Richard T. Serpe

Jan E. Stets Ashley V. Reichelmann K. Jill Kiecolt   Editors

Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research

Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research Volume 10

Series Editor Richard T. Serpe, Department of Sociology, Kent University, Kent, OH, USA

Frontiers of Sociology and Social Research is a cutting-edge social science book series focusing on new directions in sociological and broader social science research. These new directions could be novel theoretical paradigms, developing topical areas of research, innovative methodologies, and/or substantive findings that exemplify and anticipate trends in subfields. The series is predicated on the observation that any field of knowledge in contemporary times is a dynamic rapidly changing body of perspectives and understanding that continuously builds upon the foundation of extant scholarship. The series encourages manuscript submissions from both new and established scholars of sociology, anthropology, social policy, and other allied disciplines.

Jan E. Stets • Ashley V. Reichelmann • K. Jill Kiecolt Editors

Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research

Editors Jan E. Stets Social Psychology Research Laboratory University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA, USA

Ashley V. Reichelmann Department of Sociology Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA, USA

K. Jill Kiecolt Department of Sociology Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA, USA

ISSN 2523-3424 ISSN 2523-3432 (electronic) Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research ISBN 978-3-031-32985-2 ISBN 978-3-031-32986-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Fourth Biennial Conference on Identity Theory and Research, Roanoke, Virginia, 2021

Top photo, left to right: Ashley V. Reichelmann, Tracy L. Reed, Trenton D. Mize, Helen Rosenberg, Kelly L. Markowski, Anne Statham, Timothy R. Rose, Philip S. Brenner, Laura Aufderheide Brashears, Richard T. Serpe, Michael Hughes, Brennan J. Miller, Eric E. Sevareid Bottom photo, left to right: Lonnie M. Schaible, Long Doan, Whitney Hayes, Peter J. Burke, Jan E. Stets, Daniel Nolan, Robin Stryker, Vasundhara Kaul, Kelcie L. Vercel, Michael M. Harrod, K. Jill Kiecolt, Hans Momplaisir

Contents

Part I 1

Introduction to Advancing Theory, Measurement, and Research in Identity Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan E. Stets, Ashley V. Reichelmann, and K. Jill Kiecolt

Part II 2

Introduction 3

Theory and Measurement

Conceptualizing Identity Prominence, Salience, and Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter J. Burke

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The Importance of Where: The Role of Place in Identity Theory . . Timothy R. Rose and Kelly L. Markowski

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Assessing and Improving Measures of Identity Salience . . . . . . . . . Philip S. Brenner, Richard T. Serpe, and Tracy L. Reed

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Exploring Current Gender Meanings: Creating a New Gender Identity Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan E. Stets, Melanie Kushida, Phoenicia Fares, and Monica M. Whitham

Part III

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Research: Individual Processes and Outcomes

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The Mental Health Consequences of Sexual Identity Discrepancies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Trenton D. Mize and Long Doan

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Nonverification of the Attractiveness Identity from Adolescent Dating Partners on Mastery, Anxiety, and Apprehension . . . . . . . . 135 Eric E. Sevareid, Monica A. Longmore, Peggy C. Giordano, and Wendy D. Manning vii

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The Materiality of Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Kelcie L. Vercel

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Identity Theory and Pleasure: Understanding Sexual Selves Through a Pleasure–Identity Lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Shae D. Miller

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Normative, Counter-Normative, and Temporary Identities, Proximal Social Structure, Identity Prominence, and Self-Esteem . . 199 Michael M. Harrod and Richard T. Serpe

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Multiple Identities: The Parent Identity, Gender Identity, and Happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 K. Jill Kiecolt, Michael Hughes, and Hans Momplaisir

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Student, Mexican American Student, or White Student? The Relative Influence of Identity Prominence on Academic Performance, Educational Aspirations, and Academic Self-Esteem . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Laura Aufderheide Brashears

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Black/Latinx Scientist or Black/Latinx and Scientist? Multiple Identities, Threat, and Self-Esteem Among Minority STEM Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Brennan J. Miller and Kelly L. Markowski

Part IV

Research: Group Processes and Outcomes

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Ethnic Identity Achievement, Identity Verification, Group-Specific Self-Worth, and Intergroup Attitudes Among Latinos . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Matthew Grindal

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The Structure of Racial Identity: Comparing Non-Hispanic White and Black Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Matthew O. Hunt and Ashley V. Reichelmann

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“Calling Out Our Own for Political Incivility? Identity and Shared Versus Oppositional Partisanship in Perceptions of Name-Calling and Deception” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Robin Stryker, Vasundhara Kaul, and Bethany Anne Conway

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Please Don’t Go: How Group Identity and Endorsement Affect Retention in a Reciprocal Exchange Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 Scott V. Savage and David Melamed

Contributors

Laura Aufderheide Brashears University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA Philip S. Brenner Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands Peter J. Burke University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA Bethany Anne Conway California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA Long Doan University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA Phoenicia Fares University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA Peggy C. Giordano Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA Matthew Grindal University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA Michael M. Harrod Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA, USA Michael Hughes Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA Matthew O. Hunt Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA Vasundhara Kaul Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA K. Jill Kiecolt Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA Melanie Kushida University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA Monica A. Longmore Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA Wendy D. Manning Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA

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Kelly L. Markowski Ohio Colleges of Medicine Government Resource Center, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA David Melamed The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA Brennan J. Miller University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Shae D. Miller California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA Trenton D. Mize Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Hans Momplaisir Trinity Washington University, Washington, DC, USA Tracy L. Reed University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA Ashley V. Reichelmann Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA Timothy R. Rose Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA Richard T. Serpe Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA Eric E. Sevareid Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA Jan E. Stets University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA Robin Stryker Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Kelcie L. Vercel Augustana University, Sioux Falls, SD, USA Monica M. Whitham Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction to Advancing Theory, Measurement, and Research in Identity Theory Jan E. Stets, Ashley V. Reichelmann, and K. Jill Kiecolt

For more than 50 years, social psychologists have been investigating a central aspect of the self: one’s identity. This volume presents recent advances in identity theory, a prominent and active theory in sociological social psychology. Identity theory has proven to be a versatile framework for explaining the sources of identities, and how identities develop and operate within individuals and groups, including their influence on thoughts, feelings, and behavior (Burke & Stets, 2022; Serpe & Stryker, 2011). Not coincidentally, researchers in other areas in sociology draw on identity theory when studying emotions (Stets & Trettevik, 2014), mental health (Marcussen et al., 2021), social movements (Stryker et al., 2000), the environment (Stets & Biga, 2003), family (Stets et al., 2022), and criminology (Asencio & Burke, 2011). Scholars in other disciplines also study identities, including psychology, political science, economics, social work, education, communications, and philosophy, among others, making identity theory widely applicable to many fields. This book is organized around new theoretical developments, measurement techniques, and lines of research. Theoretical developments covered in the volume sharpen, reframe, and expand fundamental concepts in identity theory. New techniques for measuring identities assess, refine, and update existing measures. New empirical research in the volume addresses both individual processes and group identity processes as well as their outcomes. Research on individual identity processes highlights identity verification. Research on individual outcomes emphasizes the myriad ways that various types J. E. Stets (✉) University of California, Riverside, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. V. Reichelmann · K. J. Kiecolt Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_1

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of identities (for example, counter-normative identities), identity processes (such as verification) and identity aspects (for instance, prominence and salience) affect different facets of well-being, such as pleasure, self-esteem, and happiness. Research on group processes and outcomes illuminates how group identities operate differently across racial and ethnic lines, how group identities foster positive bias of ingroup members and negative bias of outgroup members, and how group identities can even keep individuals in networks in which they are disadvantaged. The chapters showcase the wide applicability of identity theory to a host of identities, such as religious, gender, sexual, attractiveness, racial, ethnic, parent, student, and political identities. The volume includes 32 scholars from 20 American higher education institutions. These scholars’ contributions demonstrate both the sustained legacy of identity theory as well as its bright future, with 10 senior scholars, 6 mid-career scholars, 11 junior scholars, and 5 graduate students. All the papers in this volume were presented and discussed at some length at the Fourth Biennial Conference on Identity Theory and Research held in 2021 in Roanoke, Virginia. The conference was sponsored by Virginia Tech, including the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, the Department of Sociology, the Graduate School, the Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. After the conference the papers went through several rounds of revision, incorporating the helpful feedback from the community of identity scholars. What results is an excellent collection of chapters that develops a deeper and richer understanding of identities. We provide an overview of this collection. Part II of the volume focuses on theory and measurement development. In Chap. 2, Burke offers new theorizing on the identity characteristics of prominence, salience, and commitment. Rather than seeing prominence as an internal judgment of importance (Brenner et al., 2014), Burke suggests that we see prominence as the number of identities that share meanings with other identities. Shared meanings across more identities would entail having a higher number of prominent identities, with the most prominent identity sharing meanings across the most identities, and the least prominent identity sharing meanings across the least number of identities. This implies that in more prominent identities, people will work harder to verify their identities since more identities are at stake. Further, verification (or the lack thereof) has more consequences for those in more prominent identities because more shared identities are implicated. When more prominent identities are verified, people will feel strong positive emotions, but when they are not verified, people will feel strong negative emotions. Rather than conceptualizing salience as the probability that an identity is invoked in a situation (Stryker, [1980] 2002), Burke argues for seeing salience as the proportion of time spent over some period (for example, a 24-hour period) in carrying out the behaviors of an activated identity. Thus, salience is reconceptualized as the length of time an identity is enacted rather than the number of times an identity is activated or turned on. An identity may be turned on several times each day but only briefly, such as a few minutes. Alternatively, an identity may be turned on once each day but stay on for several hours that day. Clearly, an identity that stays on

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longer will have a greater impact on the individual than one that is very brief and that hardly engages identity processes, such as perceptual control and verification. Finally, Burke suggests that we think of commitment as person-to-person ties that are strengthened through the verification process. When an identity is activated, the identities of others to whom one is connected through an identity also are activated. When one’s identity is verified, others verify their identities as well. This is mutual verification. It not only makes those involved feel good, but also builds bonds between them, thereby increasing commitment. Thus, commitment leads to greater mutual verification, which leads to greater commitment. Burke’s theoretical advances help us better understand some of the identity characteristics that scholars often leverage in their empirical work. In Chap. 3, in another theoretical contribution to this volume, Rose and Markowski analyze how place (a bounded location in the physical world) can enter identity processes. They examine two place concepts: place centrality (how frequently people visit a location), and place attachment (emotional bonds to a location). They investigate whether these aspects of place positively relate (either directly or indirectly) to identity prominence and identity behavior. Essentially, Rose and Markowski bring the physical context into identity theory in a way that others have not. The researchers examine place in connection with the religious identity. Utilizing survey data on nearly 1000 religious persons, they find that frequently visiting one’s primary place of worship and feeling emotionally tied to it are positively associated with religious identity prominence and religious behavior. More generally, Rose and Markowski’s research reveals how the external, physical world helps shape the internal world of one’s identity. Chapters in this section also address some measurement issues in identity theory. In Chap. 4, Brenner, Serpe, and Reed examine the problems associated with measures of identity salience. Salience measures often have people think about a hypothetical first meeting in which they are introduced to another person, such as a friend of a friend or a new coworker (Stryker & Serpe, 1994). Respondents indicate the likelihood that they would call up an identity that describes themselves in that initial meeting. The identity mentioned presumably reflects a salient identity. However, asking people to respond to a hypothetical situation often introduces measurement error. Brenner and associates examine the measurement error that may emerge in a typical identity salience question through a technique known as cognitive interviewing. After individuals respond to an identity salience question, a series of probes or follow up questions are asked to discover what they were thinking at the time. Using an adult convenience sample, Brenner and his colleagues conduct cognitive interviews following questions on the salience of respondents’ religious identity. They find that their religious salience measure had problems, resulting in the acknowledgement of four issues with salience measures like the one they used. First, people may be reticent to claim a salient identity if it does not receive wide support in society, so identities that are marginalized or stigmatized might not be disclosed in conversations. Second, the context in which an identity is brought up matters. If matters related to an identity emerge naturally in a conversation, the

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identity is more likely to be mentioned. Further, if individuals experience comfort and connection with their conversational partner, they are more likely to discuss an identity rather than omit it from the conversation. Finally, people indicate that rather than verbalizing their identity in a conversation, they may rely on non-verbal devices, such as how they dress, to express their identity. To better measure identity salience, Brenner and associates suggest using vignettes that manipulate multiple contextual factors across respondents. They also see Burke’s idea of salience as the proportion of time spent in an identity as a viable alternative measure. Brenner and associates demonstrate how refining identity measures allows identity theory to continue to strengthen and evolve. In Chap. 5, Stets and her colleagues create an updated measure of gender identity. In prior work, gender meanings were measured by administering the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) or the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Wood & Eagly, 2015). The PAQ and BSRI, created over 40 years ago and based on college students’ responses, operationalized the different meanings of being a male or female in the U.S. Stets, Kushida, Fares, and Whitham gather data on contemporary meanings of men and women from a sample of over 900 young, racially diverse students at two major U.S. universities. Through this data, they obtain new meanings that better reflect current cultural views of men and women and construct a new gender identity scale. Stets and associates follow a two-step procedure for measuring gender identity. In step one, respondents identify the characteristics that describe men and women in an open-ended question. These meanings are compared with those of the PAQ and BSRI. The results reveal that many of the PAQ and BSRI meanings from 40 years ago no longer differentiate between men and women. The new gender meanings are then grouped into categories that previous research indicates distinguishes men from women. The findings indicate that men still are seen as more agentic than women, and women still are viewed as more communal than men. Today, however, women, but not men, tend to be seen as competent, and men are described more negatively than women. In step two for measuring gender identity, the meanings on which men and women differ are used to create three new gender identity semantic differential scales: a masculine, feminine, and masculine—feminine scale. In total, 40 adjective pairs are created that have contrasting meanings on either end of each of the scales. These bi-polar scales reflect the identity theory idea that meaning can only be understood in relation to its opposite (Burke & Tully, 1977). This revised measure of gender identity may improve predictions of how men and women will behave because it more accurately reflects how they see themselves. The remaining parts of the volume comprise empirical work that focuses on identity processes and outcomes at the individual level (Part III) and the group level (Part IV). Three chapters on individual identity processes focus on identity verification—a central process in identity theory. In Chap. 6, Mize and Doan bring identity theory to sexualities studies by addressing identity discrepancies or identity nonverification in the sexual identity. Using several waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), they examine how

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a discrepancy between individuals’ sexual identity and their sexual behavior is associated with poorer mental health. Sexual identity is an expressed sexual orientation. It is measured on a scale in which the end points are completely heterosexual and completely gay, with bisexual in the middle of the scale. Sexual behavior refers to people’s sexual practices or romantic relations, which involve opposite gender partners, same gender partners, or both. Sexual identity discrepancy occurs when one’s sexual behavior does not match one’s sexual orientation. The mental health outcomes they study include stress, selfesteem, and depression. The discrepancy that Mize and Doan examine is only a proxy for an identity nonverification. In identity theory, nonverification occurs when there is a discrepancy between individuals’ identity standard meanings and the meanings of how they are perceived in a situation (Burke & Stets, 2022). Mize and Doan do not have this information, so they use one’s sexual orientation and sexual behavior as proxies for identity standard meanings and self-in-situation meanings. Nevertheless, their proxies are not too far removed from what we would want, and their results are consistent with predictions from identity theory when an identity is not verified. They find that a sexual identity–behavior inconsistency is related to greater perceived stress, lower self-esteem, and higher depression. Unexpectedly, they also find that being a closeted gay/lesbian is more stressful and depressing than identifying as heterosexual but having same-gender partners. They speculate that this difference might be due to the marginalization of sexual minority identities in society. Overall, Mize and Doan demonstrate that identity theory is useful in explicating sexual identity processes, representing the applicability of the theory for a range of understudied processes. In Chap. 7, Sevareid, Longmore, Giordano, and Manning bring identity theory to the study of youth’s romantic relationships by studying nonverification of the attractiveness identity. They investigate whether nonverification of the attractiveness identity relates to stress-induced outcomes such as lower mastery and greater anxiety. They also study whether nonverification of the attractiveness identity is positively related to apprehension about future interactions with one’s dating partner. They analyze data from just over 600 respondents from three waves of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study. Nonverification is measured as a discrepancy between respondents’ perceptions of how physically attractive they are relative to others their age (their attractiveness identity standard) and their perceptions of how attractive their romantic partner thinks they are (reflected appraisals from their partner). They find that nonverification of the attractiveness identity is associated with lower mastery and higher anxiety. However, there are no effects for apprehension. More generally, Sevareid and associates demonstrate the relevance of identity theory processes for youth romantic involvements, and by extension how it informs our understanding of intimate interactions. In Chap. 8, Vercel reminds us that people can express their identity meanings through material and cultural objects. Vercel studies tattoos. She focuses on how tattoos can assume unanticipated material qualities (when tattoo artists design

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something unexpected to the tattooee), and how tattoos can take on different interpretations (by the tattooee and others). Both can disrupt the verification process that tattoos are intended to produce. Experiencing identity nonverification from tattoos can lead tattooes to feel regret, and they might respond by initiating tattoo removal. Essentially, Vercel examines how tattooees may view their tattoo as a problem if they lose control over its interpretation, and how they attempt to manage the ensuing identity nonverification. Vercel’s analysis is based on postings on the social media and news platform, Reddit, in which a community of people share their experiences of tattoo removal. She collects postings that reference regret from a 45-day period. Her sample is 210 individuals who average about 3 comments during the 45-day window. From the postings, she develops themes that capture aspects of tattoo regret. For example, she uses the lens of cultural entropy to understand how tattooees manage their distress when their tattoos do not signal their intended meaning, that is, when they experience identity nonverification. Cultural entropy captures the various ways the intended meanings of cultural objects like tattoos change. Tattoo designs may emerge not in the way the tattooees expected, or tattooees may change over time and feel their tattoo now reflects a “not-me” (McCall, 2003). Tattoo removal is one way to manage the stress of nonverification. Vercel’s study reveals how the unpredictable material properties of tattoos can give off nonverifying meanings, thereby allowing the reader to see the different ways in which the nonverification process might show itself in everyday life. The remaning five chapters in Part III center on identity outcomes at the individual level. In Chap. 9, Miller examines the sexual identity through a pleasure–identity lens. In identity theory, emotions typically have been understood as a response to the verification process: Positive emotions follow from verification and negative emotions follow from nonverification. Recently, it has been argued that emotions carry their own meanings. When they combine with the meanings in an identity standard, they can modify behavioral and cognitive responses to identity nonverification (Burke & Stets, 2022). This means that what behavior is expressed following nonverification depends on the emotion that is felt. For example, fear might encourage individuals to flee a situation, while anger might influence them to work harder to show who they are in the situation. Emotions also can influence how individuals responds cognitively. For example, persons who feel guilt might blame themselves for the nonverification, while people who feel ashamed might blame others. Miller analyzes data from interviews with 53 LGBTQA+ undergraduates at a major university in the American southwest. They discuss how pleasure influences the cognitive and behavioral aspects of people’s sexual identity. Cognitively, Miller shows how pleasure influences self-perceptions by shaping and verifying one’s sexual identity. Behaviorally, they show how through pleasurable sexual experiences with same-gender partners, people achieve their desires while also verifying their sexual identity. Also important is that Miller shows how pleasure and one’s sexual identity influence each other at the micro, meso, and macro levels of social reality. At the micro level, people experience pleasure when they choose a sexual identity that fits

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their self-view, and they engage in behavior consistent with their sexual identity. At the meso level, pleasure can emerge when people participate in sexual communities where their identity is appreciated, and where they find it is supported and verified. At the macro level, individuals find pleasure when they can disrupt or redefine macro level stereotypes associated with their sexual identity. Miller’s analysis shows that individuals can experience deep pleasure from their sexual identity, that pleasure helps to form as well as maintain one’s sexual identity, and that pleasure is experienced at all levels of social reality. In Chap. 10, Harrod and Serpe study how counter-normative identities compare with normative and temporary identities in affecting self-esteem. Identity researchers have primarily examined normative identities, such as parent (Cast, 2004), spouse (Burke & Harrod, 2005; Cast & Cantwell, 2007), friend, worker, and student (Stets & Harrod, 2004). Only recently have they begun to examine counter-normative or non-normative identities (Markowski & Serpe, 2021; Stets et al., 2022). Harrod and Serpe conceptualize normative and counter-normative identities as endpoints on a continuum. Individuals on each end have a clear sense of the meanings of their identity. Temporary identities lie between these two poles, with individuals exploring meanings in the direction of a normative or counter-normative identity. The authors study the proximal social structure, operationalized as the frequency with which one’s interactants may share a respondent’s identity, and its association with identity prominence and the three bases of self-esteem (authenticity, efficacy, and worth-based esteem) across normative, temporary, and counter-normative identities. Using a sample of over 3000 U.S. adults, they examine the three identity types with respect to relationship status (married [normative], temporarily single [temporary], and ever-single [counter-normative]) and parental status (parent [normative], temporarily childless [temporary], and child-free [counter-normative]). Regardless of the identity examined, the proximal social structure of similar identities is positively associated with identity prominence. Further, as anticipated, identity prominence positively relates to the different bases of self-esteem, but primarily for the normative and counter-normative identities. The more prominent the identity, the more individuals experience authenticity-based, efficacy-based, and worth-based esteem. The findings for the temporary identity are not as definitive as they are for normative and counter-normative identities. Harrod and Serpe speculate that the lack of clear identity meanings of temporary identities may help explain the inconsistent findings, indicating that more research is needed on non-normative identities. The remaining papers in Part III add to research on multiple identities. Prior work has primarily investigated single identities, with some exceptions (Burke, 2003; Serpe et al., 2019; Stets & Harrod, 2004). While the chapters in this section involve normative identities, future research will want to study non-normative identities. In Chap. 11, Kiecolt, Hughes, and Momplaisir examine how gender identity, a higherlevel identity in the hierarchical system of perceptual control (Burke & Stets, 2022), relates to the parent identity, a lower-level identity in the perceptual control system. They expect the higher- and lower-level identities to be related, as they likely share meanings. For example, a person might define herself as nurturant, both as a woman and mother. Another might define himself as dominant, both as a man and

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father. Given these shared meanings, Kiecolt and associates investigate whether the gender identity aspects of prominence, salience, verification, and pride positively relate to the parent identity aspects of prominence, salience, verification, and pride. They also study whether the corresponding aspects of the two identities positively relate to overall happiness. Finally, because gender identity and the parent identity have different meanings for men and women, they test for gender differences in how the two identities relate to happiness. The researchers analyze data on over 950 respondents from the 2014 General Social Survey Identity Module, a national probability sample of adults 18 and older in the U.S., which ask questions about several identities, including the gender and parent identities. The results show that each aspect of the parent identity (prominence, salience, verification, and pride) is positively related to the corresponding aspect of gender identity. However, the different identity aspects do not relate to happiness in the same way for the gender and parent identities. Further, the effects vary by gender. For example, greater verification of the parent identity is related to happiness for men and women, but greater verification of the gender identity is related to happiness only for men. Additionally, parent identity prominence is positively related to happiness for men but not women. The researchers point out that cultural views about gender and parenting in our society may help explain these gender differences. For example, men are held in higher regard than women, which may explain the greater happiness from gender identity verification for men compared to women. Women do more of the stressful work of parenting, which may explain the greater happiness from parental prominence for men compared to women. Kiecolt and associates make evident the relationship between higher- and lower-order identities, and the need to understand how gender inequality figures in the continued pervasiveness of gender identity and in identity processes. In Chap. 12, Brashears studies two identities at the same level in the hierarchical system of perceptual control. She examines the prominence of individuals’ ethnoracial categorical identity, their student role identity, and their combined categorical–role identity or ethnoracial–student identity. She examines how the relative prominence of these identities is associated with students’ academic performance, educational aspirations, and academic self-esteem. Drawing on a sample of just over 70 Mexican American and slightly over 200 White high school students, she explores whether these groups have different prominence hierarchies regarding their student identity, ethnoracial identity, and ethnoracial–student identity, and whether these differences affect their educational outcomes. Brashears finds that White students rank their student identity higher than their ethnoracial (White) identity and ethnoracial–student (White–student) identity. Mexican Americans also rank their student identity higher than their other identities, but their Mexican identity and Mexican American–student identities are significantly more important to them than the corresponding identities for White students. Thus, White and Mexican American students have internalized different identities. Brashears also finds that higher prominence of the student identity and ethnoracial–student identity has positive effects on educational aspirations and

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academic self-esteem, but not academic performance for Whites and Mexican Americans. The prominence of the ethnoracial identity has a negative effect on educational aspirations for Whites and Mexican Americans. Fortunately, very few Whites and Mexican Americans viewed their ethnoracial categorical identity as most important to them. More generally, Brashears’ findings reveal that categorical identities can be activated alongside role identities and may be more important to less advantaged groups than more advantaged groups. In Chap. 13, the last paper in this section, Miller and Markowski also focus on individuals’ ethnoracial categorical identity and student role identity, specifically Black and Latinx students’ racial/ethnic and student identities in the context of STEM fields. They examine how shared meanings of individuals’ racial/ethnic and student identities affect their self-esteem, and how this effect is moderated by stereotype threat. Two identities may share meanings such as being “intelligent” and “hardworking” as a Black or Latinx person and as a student. When one identity is verified, the other is, too, raising one’s self-esteem. However, Miller and Markowski propose that stereotype threat may counteract this effect. Stereotype threat occurs when individuals fear that a negative stereotype about their group will be confirmed. For STEM students, a negative stereotype is that minority groups cannot be successful scientists. They essentially perceive nonverifying information concerning their racial/ethnic identity (i.e., stereotype threat) as putting their racial and student identities in conflict, and thus reducing the self-esteem gained from identity verification. To examine stereotype threat on the simultaneous verification of individuals’ racial/ethnic and student identities, Miller and Markowski use a 2009 sample of over 400 minority students in STEM fields across 50 U.S. colleges. Students are asked about shared meanings on racial/ethnic and student identities, self-esteem, and experiences of stereotype threat. The results reveal that self-esteem is highest when identities share many meanings and stereotype threat is low. Self-esteem is lower when stereotype threat is high. Finally, when identities share few meanings, students have low self-esteem at all levels of stereotype threat. The results highlight how social structural arrangements are needed to counteract the impacts of negative stereotypes among racially and ethnically marginalized students. Miller and Markowski provide insight into how negative stereotypes disrupt the identity process that otherwise produces positive outcomes for shared, overlapping identities. Research in Part IV of the volume concentrates on identity processes and outcomes at the group level. In Chap. 14, Grindal examines the relationship between ethnic identity achievement and ingroup and outgroup attitudes by introducing ethnic identity verification and group specific self-worth as mediating factors. Prior research has revealed a positive relationship between ethnic identity achievement and ingroup attitudes, and ethnic identity achievement and outgroup attitudes. Grindal asks whether these positive relationships are due to those with high ethnic identity achievement establishing ties with others who share their ethnic identity meanings, which increases the likelihood of experiencing identity verification, group-specific self-worth, positive attitudes toward one’s group, and less negative attitudes toward one’s outgroups.

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Relying on a sample of about 800 Latino college students at a major university in the southwest U.S., Grindal finds evidence for the mediating effects of identity verification and group-specific self-worth. In this way, he integrates identity theory processes with the developmental models of ethnic identity achievement among racial minority groups to help explain why ethnic identity is associated with ingroup and outgroup attitudes. The results suggest that repeated identity verification provides a reservoir of positive energy through greater group-specific self-worth. It may mitigate the adverse impacts of discrimination and prejudice and thus diminish negative attitudes towards one’s own ethnic group and ethnic outgroups. In Chap. 15, Hunt and Reichelmann focus on racial identity rather than ethnic identity. They compare White and Black Americans on the underlying structure of their racial identity in terms of five characteristics: identity prominence (importance), salience (identity enactment), verification, public self-regard (feeling respected) and private self-regard (feeling proud). They also compare Whites and Blacks on their racial identity by their position in the social structure. Using data from the 2014 General Social Survey Identity Module, they create a racial identity index based on the five characteristics and find that Black Americans score higher on the racial identity index than Whites. Thus, Blacks more strongly identify with their racial group than Whites. People’s position in the social structure also is associated with different levels of racial identity. Black Millennials show a higher racial identity compared to those of a later (Post Civil Rights) cohort. The opposite effects occur for Whites, with later cohort members showing a higher racial identity than younger cohort members. Black women have a lower racial identity than Black men, but White women have a higher racial identity than White men. Black Americans in urban areas and in the South report a lower racial identity compared to living in other regions, while Whites living in the South report a higher racial identity than in other regions. Finally, Blacks who identify more with the Democratic Party display a higher racial identity, but Whites who identify more with the Republican Party display a higher racial identity. More generally, Hunt and Reichelmann offer a springboard for future research on racial identity in identity theory, including whether the meaning of racial identity differs across racial groups, and whether racial meanings generate different psychological, economic, and political outcomes for the different racial groups. In Chap. 16, Stryker, Kaul, and Conway study partisan-based reasoning and political incivility from an identity perspective. Political polarization is commonplace today. Stryker and associates present well over 2500 individuals with hypothetical situations in which a Democrat or Republican violates a norm by being deceptive or engaging in name calling. Norm violations on deception either involve deliberately lying (disinformation) or carelessness (misinformation). Disinformation is a higher level of deception than misinformation. Name calling can involve an egregious insult (high) or mild insult (low). Whether individuals are Republican or Democrat, and whether they perceive deception or name calling, they see more incivility when the source is a political opponent rather than a fellow partisan and when the norm violation is high rather than low.

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Stryker and associates discuss how partisan-based reasoning and incivility may emerge from two kinds of identity dynamics, both implicating identity verification. First, being a group member may require verifying fellow members no matter what. Thus, irrespective of whether group members’ behavior signals civility or incivility, other group members should verify them. Second, many meanings may comprise group membership. Positive meanings predominate over negative meanings since individuals want to see their ingroup more positively than the outgroup. When group members are not civil, other group members may downplay the meanings of their behavior so they can continue to perceive group members as having more positive than negative characteristics. Again, this leads to verifying group members, by preserving the perception of them as good rather than bad. Future research will need to identify the actual meanings that people associate with their political groups, but the findings are consistent with identity theorizing. Stryker and associates offer a unique way to consider political incivility at a moment when it is rampant. In Chap. 17, the final chapter in the volume, Savage and Melamed investigate why individuals who are disadvantaged in a group might remain in the group even if they have an opportunity to leave it. The authors turn to group identity meanings of attachment, belonging, and obligation as reasons for staying. Using data from a laboratory experiment in which individuals engage in reciprocal exchanges, Savage and Melamed detail how a process of staying in a group may unfold, through a series of hypotheses. The more frequently individuals exchange with each other, the more personal attraction they feel toward their exchange partner, even disadvantaged actors exchanging with an advantaged actor. The more attracted disadvantaged actors are to advantaged actors, the stronger the group identity meanings of attachment, obligation, and belonging are after receiving an opportunity to leave the exchange relation for an alternative network. Stronger group identity meanings will keep disadvantaged actors interested in staying in the current network, and they will choose to stay. Electing to stay will be positively influenced by others’ endorsing the disadvantaged actor’s staying. And, if individuals know that an alternative network is like their existing network, they will be more likely to stay than if they know nothing about the alternative network. Savage and Melamed’s findings support all these hypotheses. What is especially telling is the finding that group identity meanings can lead disadvantaged actors to forego opportunities to improve their situation. They often decline to exit networks that work against them. Savage and Melamed find that person-to-person ties become positive and quite powerful in sustaining a structure of inequality. The rich array of empirical research, and the advances in theory and measurement that this volume showcases further illustrate the breadth of identity theory. The theory can guide us in understanding a wide range of social issues, such as ethnic, racial, gender, and political tensions, as well as individual concerns surrounding intimate matters such as sexuality, self-esteem, and happiness. Identity theory offers a powerful way of addressing many questions about the human condition. We think the reader will find this to be true in the pages that follow.

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References Asencio, E. K., & Burke, P. J. (2011). Does incarceration change the criminal identity? A synthesis of labeling and identity theory perspectives on identity change. Sociological Perspectives, 54(2), 163–182. Brenner, P. S., Serpe, R. T., & Stryker, S. (2014). The causal ordering of prominence and salience in identity theory: An empirical examination. Social Psychology Quarterly, 77(3), 231–252. Burke, P. J. (2003). Relationships among multiple identities. In P. J. Burke, T. J. Owens, R. T. Serpe, & P. A. Thoits (Eds.), Advances in identity theory and research (pp. 195–214). Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Burke, P. J., & Harrod, M. M. (2005). Too much of a good thing? Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(4), 359–374. Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2023). Identity theory: Revised and expanded (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Burke, P. J., & Tully, J. C. (1977). The measurement of role identity. Social Forces, 55(4), 881–897. Cast, A. D. (2004). Well-being and the transition to parenthood: An identity theory approach. Sociological Perspectives, 47(1), 55–78. Cast, A. D., & Cantwell, A. M. (2007). Identity change in newly married couples: Effects of positive and negative feedback. Social Psychology Quarterly, 70(2), 172–185. Marcussen, K., Gary, K. M., & Serpe, R. T. (2021). Meaning matters: Measuring the mental illness identity. Social Science Research, 100, 102617. Markowski, K. L., & Serpe, R. T. (2021). Prominence-salience combinations and self-esteem: Do magnitude and congruity matter? Social Psychology Quarterly, 84(4), 353–375. McCall, G. J. (2003). The me and the not-me: Positive and negative poles of identity. In P. J. Burke, T. J. Owens, R. T. Serpe, & P. A. Thoits (Eds.), Advances in identity theory and research (pp. 11–25). Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Serpe, R. T., & Stryker, S. (2011). The symbolic interactionist perspective and identity theory. In S. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research (pp. 225–248). Springer. Serpe, R. T., Yarrison, F., Stets, J. E., & Stryker, S. (2019). Multiple identities and self-esteem. In J. E. Stets & R. T. Serpe (Eds.), Identities in everyday life (pp. 53–71). Oxford University Press. Stets, J. E., & Biga, C. F. (2003). Bringing identity theory into environmental sociology. Sociological Theory, 21(4), 398–423. Stets, J. E., Fares, P., Kushida, M., Bloom, Q., & Lee, J. (2022). The role of family arrangements and identity verification on happiness, 108, 102771. Stets, J. E., & Harrod, M. M. (2004). Verification across multiple identities: The role of status. Social Psychology Quarterly, 67(2), 155–171. Stets, J. E., & Trettevik, R. (2014). Emotions in identity theory. In J. E. Stets & J. H. Turner (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of emotions (Vol. ii, pp. 33–49). Springer. Stryker, S. ([1980] 2002). Symbolic interactionism: A social structural version. Blackburn Press. Stryker, S., Owens, T. J., & White, R. W. (Eds.). (2000). Self, identity, and social movements. University of Minnesota Press. Stryker, S., & Serpe, R. T. (1994). Identity salience and psychological centrality: Equivalent, overlapping, or complementary concepts. Social Psychology Quarterly, 57(1), 16–35. Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2015). Two traditions of research on gender identity. Sex Roles, 73, 461–473.

Part II

Theory and Measurement

Chapter 2

Conceptualizing Identity Prominence, Salience, and Commitment Peter J. Burke

2.1

Introduction

In reviewing the progress of work in identity theory since the early 1970s, Stryker and Burke (2000) discussed the two “strands” of identity theory, which their work embodied. Both strands were understood to reflect a single theory that emanated from the work of Mead (1934). The first strand emphasized the relationship between social structures and identities with concepts like identity prominence, salience, and commitment (Stryker et al., 2005). The second strand emphasized the internal subjective processes within the minds of human beings with concepts like identity meanings and verification (Burke & Stets, 2023). Stryker and Burke took great pains to point out that although identity theory may have two “strands,” there is only one identity theory, which is, in fact, fully integrated (Burke & Stryker, 2016). To make the unity of identity theory clear, the present paper slightly recasts the identity concepts of prominence, salience, and commitment from the point of view of active, functioning identities, that is, from the point of view of what identities do rather than what they are. In doing this I show that the concepts of prominence, salience, and commitment, which are often viewed as more relevant to the “social structure and identity” strand of identity theory, are very much tied to the “internal workings of an identity.” Identity theory is a single, unified theory that can only be understood when all the “strands” are taken together. A fuller understanding of the concepts of prominence, salience, and commitment, which develop through the functioning of identities, requires an understanding of the internal, subjective processes occurring within the minds of persons as they engage their identities. Thus, any separation of internal and external identity processes is a false separation.

P. J. Burke (✉) University of California, Riverside, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_2

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Identity Processes

I first outline the parts and processes of identities, including their internal functioning. I then discuss the identity characteristics of prominence, salience, and commitment to show how they are tied to the internal functioning of identities as identities are performed. I begin with the concept of “meaning,” which is at the heart of the symbolic interaction tradition and identity theory within that tradition. Indeed, the multiple identities that constitute the self are defined as sets of meanings. The concept of meaning as defined by Osgood and his associates (Osgood et al., 1957) is a response to a stimulus. They indicate that meaning is not a characteristic of an object or stimulus in a situation. Rather, meaning is an internal, mediational, response to a stimulus. This internal response is mediational in the sense that it lies between the perceived stimulus and one’s ultimate response to that stimulus. It mediates and interprets the stimulus. It is the meaning of the stimulus that becomes an internal stimulus, resulting in action. Mead distinguishes two types of such stimuli which he terms signs: natural signs (or just signs) and conventional signs (or symbols). The meanings attached to symbols (such as words and gestures) are shared in the culture; meanings attached to signs (such as a pointer on a dial, or the position of a tape measure on a board, or an arrangement of objects in a room) are learned by direct experience and are not necessarily shared but may be. It is through the meanings of symbols that we communicate, and through the meanings of signs that we control objects and resources (Burke & Stets, 2015, 2023; Freese & Burke, 1994). Identities as self-meanings are the reflexive responses of the self to itself (Burke, 1980; Burke & Tully, 1977). These meanings are shared in society and define individuals in terms of the roles they play, the groups or social categories to which they belong, and the individual characteristics that define them as unique persons. These three, person identity, role identity, and social identity (group or social category) are the three bases of identities (Burke & Stets, 2023). The identities are defined, that is, in terms of what it means to be, for example, a mother (a role identity) perhaps as “nurturing,” a woman (a social identity) perhaps as “interdependent,” (as opposed to dependent or independent) a dominant individual (a person identity) perhaps as “controlling.” The meanings that apply to a role identity are derived from broader meanings associated with the role position including the things that must be accomplished by the role. These meanings are expressed in behaviors that come to be expected for persons in that role. Similarly, for group or categorical identities, the meanings for these identities are derived from the meanings associated with the group or social category and are expressed in behaviors that come to be expected for persons in that group or category. Person identity meanings are derived from the shared general culture, but apply to the person as an individual, distinct from other individuals. As these meanings are shared within a culture, people have common understandings of being a mother, a woman, or a dominant person. But not all the meanings of being a mother, for example, are shared with others. For Mary, being a mother may

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Identity Standard 1

Comparator 1

Identity Standard 3

Discrepancy

Identity Standard 2

Identity 1

Comparator 3

Comparator 2 Discrepancy

Perceptions

Perceptions Emotion

Emotion

Identity 2

Identity 3

Input Function

Output Function Self, Reflected, & Actual Appraisals

Social Behavior

Input Function Self, Reflected, & Actual Appraisals

Meanings in the Environment Disturbances

Fig. 2.1 Hierarchical identity perceptual control system

mean supporting her children, whatever they do. For Jane, being a mother may mean supporting her children only if they do the “right” things. Thus, the identity of mother is somewhat different for different people, and each engages in behaviors that reflect both the common meanings and the different meanings that each holds for herself. The meanings that define an identity are held in what is called an identity standard. In addition to the identity standard, the identity contains an input of perceived meanings (perceptions) from the situation that are relevant to the identity that is activated. The identity standard serves as a reference for comparison with perceived identity-relevant meanings in a perceptual control process (Powers, 1973) as outlined in Identity 2 of Fig. 2.1. There also is a comparator that compares the perceived input meanings and the identity standard meanings. Finally, there is an output of the difference between the input and identity standard meanings, often called the identity discrepancy. The person responds with distress and negative emotion to positive or negative discrepancies. The person also uses the output to control meanings in the situation in order to make the perceived input meanings match the identity standard meanings thus making the discrepancy zero, indicating the identity is verified (Burke & Stets, 2023).1 Figure 2.1 also shows two other identities in the hierarchical control system. Identity 1 is a higher-level source of the

1 A fuller and more detailed description of the identity model, including its hierarchical structure, is available in (Burke & Stets, 2023).

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identity standards for Identity 2 and Identity 3. The hierarchical character of the control system will be discussed more fully later. As an example of the identity perceptual control process, a person with a student identity (perhaps Identity 2 in Fig. 2.1) may hold, among other meanings, the meaning of being “studious” at a level of 80 (on a 100-point scale). As a result, this student would act in ways that display meanings of 80 on the “studiousness” scale. If the student perceives (perceptions) that others in the situation see her as being very studious, say 87 points, then the output (discrepancy or difference between the perception and the identity standard) is +7 points. Others see her as more “studious” than her identity, and her identity is not being verified. Given the nonverification, the student will be upset or distressed (emotion) and will change her behavior to reduce her perceived level of studiousness. Perhaps she will join others at a party (rather than studying) to bring the perceptions down to match her identity setting of 80. Similarly, if she perceived others saw her as less studious than her identity of 80, say as a 75, the discrepancy or nonverification would be -5, and she would also be upset. She would act to increase her studiousness to match her identity. Through this process of controlling perceptions to match the identity standard, the student would act in ways that maintain her perceived studiousness close to her identity standard of 80. Persons have multiple identities that are activated when the meanings within a situation are relevant to an identity. A person in a classroom would likely have her student identity activated. Activation means that the identity is no longer latent but begins to perceive identity-relevant meanings in the situation and engage in the perceptual control process. By engaging in the perceptual control process, the meanings that are held in the identity standard are maintained in the situation, role behaviors are engaged in, and through this, groups are maintained, all of which contribute to the preservation of the overall social structure. As the situation becomes redefined or a person moves to another situation, another identity will be activated, and appropriate behavior will maintain the meanings in that situation. Essentially, as individuals move from one situation to another, they will activate one identity, then another. In this sense, groups, organizations, and social categories are made up of the interacting identities. Identities are important for society because of what they do when activated. However, it is important to remember that identities as parts of the self are not only embedded in society; they also are embedded in the individuals, i.e., the bio-social beings who carry out the behavior dictated by the identities. It is the individuals who have the perceptions, with their senses, and who have the emotions and motivations, and who can engage in the required behaviors and communications that are necessary to maintain identities, individuals, and society. Identities, acting through persons, maintain all the levels of social structure from friendship dyads to large scale organizations. This is what identities do. By doing what they do, identities acquire characteristics that influence and are influenced by their operation. Three important characteristics that identity theorists have studied are prominence, salience, and commitment (Brenner et al., 2014; Stryker, 1968; Stryker & Serpe, 1982, 1994). In what follows, I discuss each of these characteristics

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to show how they are tied to the internal processes of functioning (activated) identities, and how failure to recognize these ties has resulted in some problems and inconsistencies in identity theory. By identifying and resolving these issues, identity theory evolves and grows. I begin with a discussion of identity prominence.

2.3

Identity Prominence

Identity prominence is sometimes referred to as importance or centrality (Stets & Serpe, 2013). The prominence of an identity is understood to be a motivator in the sense that the higher the prominence of an identity, the more individuals will work to control perceived meanings to match those in the identity standard. They work harder to make things be the way they are supposed to be (matching perceived meanings to identity standard meanings). Prominent identities also will be more likely to be selected when there is a choice of possible identities that may be activated. An identity is important because its verification is important. That is, the consequences to self and others of properly enacting the identity are important. People thus work harder to verify prominent identities, and they react more strongly, becoming more upset, when the identity is not verified (Burke & Stets, 2023). However, the prominence of an identity is a puzzle because the idea of importance seems to involve a judgment (Brenner et al., 2014). Is this identity more important or less important than some other identity? To answer this question, it seems a judgment must be made. But who or what is making this judgment? To say “I” make this judgement only pushes the problem back one level—what is the “I” that makes this judgement? This is the problem of the homunculus (little person within a person). The judgment deciding the importance of an identity appears to be made by a “little person” inside the person whose identities are being judged. But there is no little person within that is making this judgment and such a little person would only push the problem back another level. Such a concept is not scientific. The importance or prominence of an identity cannot be understood as the result of a judgment but must be defined in other ways. I propose that the prominence of an identity is a function of the number of identities that share meanings with other identities held by the person. Meanings that are evoked when I think of myself as a spouse (caring) may also be evoked when I think of myself as a parent or as a friend. Thus, each of these three identities share at least one meaning (caring). Identities become related to each other because they share meanings. The more other identities that share meanings with a given identity, the greater is the prominence of all the identities that share meanings. When a meaning in one identity is not verified, the person, as holder of the identity and as actor on behalf of the identity, becomes upset. If that meaning is

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shared with other identities, those other identities also are not verified.2 The person becomes even more upset because all identities that share that meaning are not verified. On the other hand, if that meaning is verified in one identity, it is verified in the other identities, and that makes the person feel especially good (Stets, 1995). Sharing meanings with other identities is what makes an identity “important” in the sense of the person having strong reactions to its verification or nonverification and being motivated to engage the identity because other identities that share its meanings also are at stake. Being important or prominent is what makes emotional reactions to the verification or nonverification particularly strong (Ellestad & Stets, 1998; Stryker, 1980, p. 121; Thoits, 1991). The idea that shared meanings among identities is what makes people react strongly to the verification or nonverification of that identity is not a new idea. Linville’s self-complexity theory (1985) posits the same mechanism, though her focus was not on what increases emotional reactions, but on what reduces the volatility of a response to nonverification. She noted that persons whose identities did not share meanings (the identities were independent of each other, which is her definition of a complex self) did not react strongly when their identity was not verified. Complex selves seemed to provide a certain amount of buffering against distress. On the other hand, when meanings were shared across identities, research showed there was a cascading of negative reactions across all the identities through the meanings that were shared.3 These results have been generally confirmed across a series of research experiments (Linville, 1987; Rafaeli-Mor et al., 1999). There is one important difference between Linville’s idea of complex selves and identity theory’s idea of shared meanings. While persons with selves that were low in complexity reacted strongly to nonverification, there appeared to be no further implications. In identity theory, identities have agency. When they are not verified, they motivate persons to do something about it. People thus work more strongly to counteract the disturbance, and they are motivated to activate identities with shared meanings more frequently. In addition to different identities having a common meaning, for example, being supportive may be a meaning for one’s mother identity and for one’s friend identity, there is another way in the identity model in which meanings are shared. This has to do with hierarchical structure of the identities in the perceptual control system (Burke & Stets, 2023; Powers, 1973). Perceptions, on the identity input side, go through a series of levels beginning at the lowest level with sensations on nerve

2

This assumes that the meaning, which is shared across identities, for example caring, is held at the same level in each of the identities. This makes sense if it is the meaning that is controlled, not the identity. The activation of an identity focuses our attention to the meanings that need to be controlled. 3 Linville’s terminology was different than that of identity theory. Rather than “identities” she used the term “aspects of the self,” but her examples were very much in the tradition of identities (Linville, 1985, p. 96). Additionally, rather than “shared meanings,” she discussed the “degree of relatedness” of the identities. Again, her examples were much akin to shared meanings (Linville, 1985, pp. 98–99).

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receptors. They move upward through several levels, with patterned aggregations of increasing complexity, up to the levels at which identities exist. Control, on the output side, occurs through the output of identities. This output provides the standards for identities at the next lower level in the control system, continuing down through all the levels, to finally become the standards for small muscle control used to control behavior and communication to change meanings in the situation. In terms of shared meanings, I focus on the several layers in the control system at which identities operate, with some identities higher up (more abstract) having outputs that serve as the standards for identities lower down (more concrete) (Tsushima & Burke, 1999). Two levels are illustrated in Fig. 2.1 above. Burke and Stets (2023) have suggested that person identities, with self-meanings that distinguish one person from others, are among the most frequently activated because they are relevant across most situations. Person identities are, therefore, likely higher in the control hierarchy than role identities, which are activated only within the role (Burke & Stets, 2023; Stets & Burke, 2014; Tsushima & Burke, 1999). In this way, the identity meanings in lower-level role identities (such as a worker identity or a spouse identity) are shared with identity meanings in higherlevel person identities (such as a moral identity) because the higher-level identity contributes to the standard of the lower-level identities. The morality of the spouse and worker identities are set by the higher order moral identity. In general, identities that are higher in the control hierarchy control the standards for many identities lower in the control hierarchy and would thus share more meanings with other identities than would identities lower in the control hierarchy. Consequently, the higher-level identities, like person identities, would generally be more prominent. Defining prominence as having a greater number of shared meanings with other identities makes the definition free of the infinite regress problem of the homunculus. It is simply a condition or characteristic of an identity, though one that has important consequences for the person. In principle, the prominence of an identity can be measured by objectively counting the number of meanings that are shared with other identities (though the procedures for counting shared meanings have not yet been developed). Prominence, then, rather than being a characteristic of an identity that is independent of the internal meanings and processes of the identity, is now defined by those internal meanings and processes. Meanings shared by identities link these identities in the verification process. The verification (and non-verification) of prominent identities has a greater effect on the person because the meanings in a greater number of identities are (or are not) maintained close to their identity standard settings, and this will have greater emotional consequences of the individual (compared to the verification of less prominent identities). Because of the varying strengths of the emotional consequences for the individual of the verification process across identities that vary in prominence, individuals come to associate the different levels of verification impact with different identities. That is, individuals come to learn which identities lead to stronger or weaker emotional responses during the verification process. It may be possible to use this learning to measure which identities are more and which identities are less impactful for an individual, with an understanding that the more impactful identities are more

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prominent. However, it would be important to test the assumption that people equate a more impactful identity with a more important identity.

2.4

Identity Salience

I turn now to a discussion of the second characteristic of identities, salience. Identity salience always has been defined as the probability that an identity will be activated or invoked in a situation (Stryker, 1968). Stryker also suggested that salience could be used to compare the different identities an individual might have, with one identity being more (or less) salient than another in what he termed a hierarchy of salience. He often thought of salience in terms of this hierarchy as an organizing principle, but the nature of this organization was never developed beyond a simple ordering of identities from high to low salience (Stryker, 1968, p. 560). He certainly did not suggest that a hierarchy of identities meant that more salient identities in the hierarchy controlled or influenced less salient identities in the hierarchy as common understandings of a hierarchy suggest. Thus, an overall ordering or ranking best reflects his idea as far as he developed it. As a probability, the characteristic of salience is strictly descriptive; it has no motivational implications, though many writers, including Stryker, have added motivations to the concept of salience, often using the term to mean importance (Morris, 2013; Serpe, 1987; Serpe & Stryker, 1987; Stryker, 1980; Stryker & Serpe, 1982, 1994; Thoits, 1992). Serpe and Stryker (1987), for example, suggest that the salience of one identity relative to another may come into play when a person chooses which identity to activate in a situation.4 The act of choosing an identity, however, is motivational and not descriptive, while salience as a probability is descriptive, not motivational. The problem is exacerbated by the term salience itself, which often has the connotation of importance to most people. Indeed Stryker and Serpe (1994) raise the question of whether salience and prominence are the same thing.5 Perhaps it was thought that an identity that has a high probability of being activated must be important. But probability is in the definition, not importance. And it would seem less redundant overall in the theory to let the prominence of an identity motivate choosing (activating) one identity over another, not its probability or salience which is the result of activating. Because this is a question of theoretical definition, empirical investigation cannot provide the answer (Brenner et al., 2014). Indeed, 4

Stryker’s original discussion of this (1968, p. 560) does not always involve a person choosing among identities as a function of the salience of the identities. He also suggests the relative salience of an identity allows the researcher to predict a higher probability that one rather than another identity will be invoked without referring to any motivation on the part of the actor. 5 Indeed, Serpe and Stryker (1987) asked which of several identities was more characteristic of how respondents thought of themselves, while in other writings (Stryker & Serpe, 1982) they asked which identity they would tell someone about first.

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the theoretical question must be answered before any procedure for measuring the concepts can be designed. Further complicating the situation is the fact that the idea of salience as a probability has never been clearly spelled out. The abstract notion of probability as a likelihood of some outcome is most often used in mathematics or games of chance where outcomes occur as a random process. But the activation of an identity is not a random process. Identities are activated when there are perceived meanings in the situation that identities control through the perceptual control process (Burke & Stets, 2023). Activation is also influenced by structural forces that put us into jobs, or into the educational system, or into families and dictate how and when these identities are engaged. If activation of an identity is not a random process, then what is the nature of the probability? There are two different ways to consider this query. One is the probability of choosing one identity over another when an identity needs to be chosen. This focuses only on the point at which an identity is activated and ignores the situational or structural factors that play an important role in activating an identity. It also is the most frequent way in which probability has been interpreted motivationally: as something (homunculus?) that chooses one identity over another in a situation. However, the act of invoking an identity is not important and has seldom, if ever, been studied. Identities are important for what they do, not for being turned on, although they cannot do anything without being activated. Most existing research on identities either begins by assuming or ascertaining a person has some identity and then proceeds to ask about that identity, or puts a person in the laboratory that activates a particular identity and studies what happens, i.e., what the identity does (Burke & Stets, 2023). Focusing on the point of activation of an identity misses the fact that some identities, once invoked, are maintained for long periods of time, such as the worker identity, a friend identity, or family identity. Other identities, such as customer in a store, may be frequently invoked but only briefly maintained in any instance of activation. The second way of understanding salience as a probability is to look, over some period, at the proportion of that time spent in carrying out the behaviors of an already activated identity (Brenner, 2011; Brenner & DeLamater, 2016). Stryker and Serpe (1994) called this time in role. So, for example, if a day is the unit of analysis, a person is in the worker identity for 8 h in a day, its salience would be about .33 (8 out of 24 h in the day) while if the person were in the father role for 1 h during the day, its salience would be about .04.6 These numbers represent the probability that at any point in time we would encounter the person with that identity already activated. We are not accustomed to thinking of salience in numbers (such as .33 or .04), but rather in vague terms like high or low, or in comparative terms like higher or lower. 6

Different numbers would be obtained if one used the week as a unit of analysis. In that case, a person who works a 40-hour week, their salience for the worker identity would be about 24 rather than 33. Choosing the proper unit of time for the baseline in measurement is important. If the timeframe is too long, the salience of the identity may change during the time. If it is too short, we may not have an accurate measurement for the saliences of all the identities a person holds.

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However, with actual numbers, we get a clearer understanding of salience and how different identities compare in terms of salience. From this perspective, salience is the proportion of time during which an identity is doing its work of maintaining the social structure by manipulating sign and symbol meanings to be in accord with those in the identity standard. There is another confusion of salience as a probability that needs clarification. Consider a worker identity with a salience of .33 as in the above example. During the day, for most people, the probability of being in the worker identity is closer to 1.0, and during the night it is likely close to 0. Does this mean that the salience of the identity changes over the course of a day? Salience has never been understood as varying over the course of a day. It is assumed to be relatively stable, on the order of weeks if not months. A running average over the time frame of a week may make the most sense, so the probability remains stable over that longer period of time (Brenner, 2011). Such a running average would allow changes to be slowly incorporated into the measure as they occur. Reconceptualizing salience as the proportion of time each identity is activated rather than the number of times an identity is activated makes most sense because the amount of time one is in the identity can have much stronger consequences than the number of times the identity is activated. Activation is a brief event compared to the length of time in which an identity is engaged in the perceptual control and verification processes while it is activated. “Time in role” has many consequences because it is during that time that the internal processes of an identity are active. During the time an identity is activated, all the signs and symbols (meanings) that are maintained by the identity are actively being controlled. All the counter-identities of others in the situation are also activated. Through the mutual verification process, relationships are being formed, developed, and maintained. Feelings and emotions are being generated. Groups and organizations are being formed and maintained. Resources are being transformed and transferred (Freese & Burke, 1994). Skills and knowledge are being developed. Under this clarification of the definition, a more salient identity does more of this because it is activated for longer times. With more time performing the identity, the person also becomes practiced and efficient. The person also is likely to discover additional meanings that need to be controlled to be efficient and accomplished in that identity. With more meanings being controlled, it is likely that these additional meanings are shared with other identities, resulting in increased prominence for the high salience identity. With this longer time during which the identity is activated, the links to role partners have a chance to become stronger, and there is a greater chance of becoming involved with additional interactants while the identity is activated. These two outcomes of longer activation (i.e., more, and stronger connections) lead to greater identity commitment (discussed below). Thus, while salience itself is not a motivational concept in this conceptualization, it is strongly linked through the process of perceptual control and verification to concepts that do involve motivation: prominence and commitment.

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Defining salience, then, as the proportion of time the identity is engaged in the perceptual control process, maintaining verification, maintaining situational sign and symbol meanings, and through that, maintaining society, makes clear again the link of the important structural characteristics of identities like salience to the internal identity processes.

2.5

Identity Commitment

I turn now to the third important characteristic of identities. Commitment has been defined in terms of ties or connections to others that occur through and because of the identities that the person holds. Commitment would apply to role, group, and social category identities that involve positional connections between people. It would not apply to person identities as they do not directly involve positional connections to others.7 Stryker (1968) noted that commitment has two dimensions: the number of ties to others one has because of an identity (extensive or instrumental commitment) and the strength of these ties (intensive or affective commitment). Both more ties and stronger ties to others through the identity mean greater commitment. And, while research using the concept of commitment has often combined both parts into a single index, Stryker realized that the two dimensions may not be equal or uniform in their impact, and that people may vary in the degree to which each dimension is influential (Stryker, 1968, p. 561). In Stryker’s formulation, commitment, while it is a characteristic of an identity (each identity can be characterized by a level of commitment), has a reference that is external to the self. Its reference is to the others to whom one is connected while engaging in the identity. Commitment, both extensive and intensive, is taken to be external, representing society or the social structure in Stryker’s view (1968). Salience and prominence, on the other hand, while also characteristics of identities, are internal and represent the self in the link between self and society (Stryker, 1980). Thus, commitment (external, society) is linked to salience and prominence (internal, the self). Although the nature of the connection between others (external) and an identity (internal) has not been specified in identity theory, it is important that we

7

This is not to say that people do not select others with whom to associate based on their person identity meanings. For example, highly moral people may choose to associate with others who are also highly moral (Stets et al., 2021). Stets and her colleagues argue that homophilous relationships emerge when people share identity meanings on the same (or complementary) location of meaning. They also argue that person identities such as moral meanings may have a greater influence on homophily than role or group identities. Further, they maintain that identity verification increases homophily and strengthens the prominence and salience of identities. Of course, if relationships based on shared meanings of person identities, such as being moral, move to a friendship, then commitment would be a characteristic of the friend role identity that may have been initiated because of a shared sense of morality.

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understand it. The nature of commitment lies in the persons, not the identities. The identity-based connections are between persons as persons who hold the identities, who can act, and who have feelings, both about themselves and each other.8 The identity is the basis for the person-to-person connection (through role and counterrole). The identity thus figures crucially into the link between persons. The connection between people, because of an identity, is made during the time the identity is activated, and more salient identities, by definition, have more time during which they are activated than less salient identities. Partly this connection of salience and commitment is because identities with more connections to others consequently afford more opportunities for the relevant identity to be activated, thus further increasing its salience. In addition, an identity that is activated for longer periods of time affords the person opportunities (time) to make more contacts and develop relationships with others in the performance of the identity. But there is more. The strength of the ties to others is a function of the operation of identities. We know that when an identity is being verified in the perceptual control process, people feel good; distress is lowered (Burke, 1991; Burke & Harrod, 2005). The idea of commitment broadens this consequence of verification. When an identity is activated, the identities of the others to whom one is connected through an identity (commitment) also are activated, and the entire set of identities work together to control the meanings held in all those identities. The verification of one identity helps others to verify their identities. This is what we have called mutual verification, which not only makes all the people involved feel good, but it builds up bonds between persons and can be a process for group formation (Burke & Stets, 1999; Stets et al., 2018). Mutual verification builds stronger ties to others who are connected through the identity. This is stronger commitment, part of the person-toperson connection. Thus, commitment leads to greater mutual verification, which in turn leads to greater commitment through mutual verification. The person-to-person ties of commitment become important because the people who hold identities experience the emotions brought out by mutual verification as identities operate to maintain the meanings in those identities. Identities themselves do not experience emotion, but the persons who hold the identities do. Recall that people are containers for identities. And it is through the emotions generated by identities that the behavior of persons is hijacked by identities to accomplish the goals of the identities. It is the physical and emotional energy of persons that accomplish the necessary control of perceptions. People form bonds that facilitate social organization in response to the mutual verification that occurs when many identities cooperate in groups or organizations to maintain those groups or organizations. 8 There is another distinction that should be made among the persons to whom one is connected through an identity. On the one hand, there are the persons one interacts with in carrying out the identity. For a student, this may be the professor, other students, etc. On the other hand, there are persons who know one is a student but who do not interact with the student as a student. These latter persons have no stake in the student identity or dependence on the student identity. In measuring commitment as the number of ties, such persons should not be counted.

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Commitment, as the social structural component of the interaction process, affords opportunity for identity activation as a self-process. The concept of commitment recognizes the person-to-person ties through which identities operate and by which the identities are motivated. And the mutual verification that occurs through person-to-person connections builds and strengthens those connections into networks, groups, and organizations. Commitment is the strength of those connections; without commitment those connections will disintegrate. Burke and Reitzes earlier defined commitment in terms of the strength of the forces to verify an identity, arguing that being attached to more people because of an identity provided more pressure to fulfill the meanings contained in the identity as did being more strongly attached to those people (Burke & Reitzes, 1991). But the argument went further, maintaining that in addition to the number and strength of connections to others, all the forces toward verification should be added together, including the rewards one would get, and the punishments one would avoid, by verifying the identity. It is now clear this conception failed to recognize the sociological aspects of commitment making the concept more psychological and internal to the person. It was also too broad because it included in the definition of commitment many factors across different forces that should be kept and analyzed separately. Empirically, Burke and Reitzes found that the social ties to others were the major source of commitment and its effects. Rewards and costs did have effects but were undifferentiatingly included in the concept of commitment at the time. We now recognize that merging these factors together because they have similar effects is not appropriate. The mechanisms by which each of these different factors, ties to others as well as rewards and costs, do have the effect of strengthening the drive toward verification of the identity, but the mechanisms involved are likely different, so these factors are not a unified construct though they each have some of the same outcomes. By the same token, extensive and intensive commitment, as acknowledged from the beginning by Stryker (1968) may operate independently and differentially thus warranting them not being lumped into a single construct of commitment. It makes sense to investigate separately intensive commitment and extensive commitment to understand the contributions of each but to remove from our understanding of commitment ideas of rewards and costs involved in the playing out of identities. In sum, we see that both dimensions of identity commitment, extensive and intensive, provide the link between individuals and social structure, yet they are intimately linked to the internal perceptual control and verification processes that bind together the people within whom the identities reside. The people are bound into the networks, groups, and organizations by feelings of love, trust, admiration, and respect that develop out of the mutual verification of the linked identities. In that binding process, people create and maintain the groups, networks, and organizations, as well as the social categories that make up society.

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Discussion

I reiterate, identities are important for what they do when activated. Prominence, salience, and commitment are all properties of identities that emerge and develop when identities are activated. An identity is a set of sign and symbol meanings applied to the self that define what it means to be who one is in a role (role identity), a group or social category (social identity) or as a unique individual (person identity) (Burke & Stets, 2023). Identities are an answer to the question “Who am I?” Identities are important for what they accomplish when activated. Identities, acting through the persons that hold them, make things be the way they are supposed to be. Delivery truck drivers drive trucks, but they also maintain the trucks’ fuel and oil levels, they supervise the loading and unloading of the trucks, they interact with the dispatcher, maintain records, and many other tasks. They may also be tough or outgoing or conscientious. Students may be studious, but they also get to their classes, have pens and notebooks, take notes, participate in discussion groups, study the textbook, and many other tasks. They also may be likable or funny or outgoing. Being a delivery truck driver or a student means being and doing the things that delivery truck drivers and students do. This is what identities accomplish, and in that functioning, they acquire the characteristics of prominence, salience, and commitment. To illustrate the new understanding of these identity characteristics, consider Tom, who is a part-time college student and a three-quarter-time delivery truck driver, as he switches between these identities (as well as others). What he accomplishes as a student is important to himself in meeting his aspirations to become a professor and it is important to maintaining the college. What he accomplishes as a truck driver is important to himself to earn money to attend school and to maintaining the trucking firm. These identities of Tom vary in prominence (the degree to which the identity shares meanings with his other identities), salience (the relative amount of time Tom is in the identity), and both extensive and intensive commitment (the number of others to whom Tom is connected as a student or as a delivery truck driver, and the strength of his ties to those others). Tom spends most time in the truck driver identity, working overtime to earn money that he uses in the student identity, attending classes, studying, and interacting with other students. Thus, the truck driver identity is more salient than the student identity. Tom interacts with more persons as a student than as a truck driver, spending most of his time alone in the truck, so the student identity has more commitment than the truck driver identity. Finally, Tom, with person identities of being intellectual and open-minded, finds that the college student identity shares more meanings with his other identities than does the truck driver identity. For him, the college student identity is more prominent. With the student identity more prominent, we expect that Tom is likely to be more upset when his student identity is not verified as opposed to having his truck driver identity not verified, and he likely works harder to verify his student identity than his truck driver identity. This latter should result in more verification of the student identity and likely more mutual

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verification among those with whom he interacts as a student. The greater mutual verification should also bring stronger bonds among those he interacts with as a student, perhaps leading to more friendships with those persons as well as increasing his intensive commitment to the student identity. Thus, we conclude that the identity characteristics of prominence, salience, and commitment all derive their levels or degrees (low, medium, and high) from the internal perceptual control and verification processes of the identities they characterize. Prominence, salience, and commitment of an identity are linked together because they are dependent upon the functioning of those internal identity process when the identity is activated. Since the prominence, salience, and commitment of identities are a function of the execution of activated identities, they cannot be separated from that execution. Thus, the two strands of identity theory are inextricably enmeshed with each other in a single theory of many parts (Burke & Stryker, 2016; Stryker & Burke, 2000). While research has examined the relationship among prominence, salience, and commitment, there has been little theoretical discussion of the concepts themselves. This paper has begun the needed discussion to clarify these concepts, remove ambiguities, and set them on a more firm and scientifically valid foundation than before. I have stayed within the structural symbolic interaction framework that identity theory has always maintained. Meanings and interaction are the bedrock. What has become clear from our exploration of these concepts and their reframed interpretations is that there has been a tendency to reify them—to make them more real than they are, to see causal connections between them rather than seeing them as correlated because they share the consequences of the underlying identity processes (Brenner et al., 2014; Serpe, 1987). The connections exist because identities that are high in prominence also tend to be high in salience. Not because prominence causes salience or the reverse, but because identities that are activated for extended periods of time have a chance to acquire more meanings that may be shared with other identities, thus making salient identities more prominent. A similar argument can be made about the connection between salient identities and identities with higher commitment. There is time during the activation of a salient identity to become friends with more role partners, assuming the identity is verified, and that mutual verification takes place. We thus see how the characteristics of prominence, salience, and both extensive and intensive commitment tend to vary together. Identities that are activated more tend to be more important, and to involve more role partners, and stronger attachments to them. But they do not always and necessarily go together. For example, the salience of an identity is often dictated by structural considerations. People need jobs, and jobs need time spent doing them which means that job identities tend to have high salience. The jobs that people can get, however, are not always those that are particularly meaningful to them, i.e., the job meanings may not be shared with the meanings of other identities. Thus, a salient (job) identity may not be prominent, as in our example of Tom. Second, some jobs may have little contact with others, making a salient (job) identity not high in commitment.

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When this happens, people may put in only the minimum amount of time and effort needed to maintain a job identity that is not particularly prominent nor high in commitment. Other identities may become more prominent, such as a family identity or an identity associated with a hobby or a sport. Commitment and prominence may increase in such other identities as more time is spent in them (salience), and they are verified. These expectations have been derived from the new ways of thinking about prominence, salience, and commitment as growing out of the operation of identities, thus making clear the unity of the two strands of identity theory outlined by Stryker and Burke (Burke & Stryker, 2016; Stryker & Burke, 2000). This new approach can be expanded and advanced in many ways to further develop identity theory and research.

References Brenner, P. S. (2011). Exceptional behavior or exceptional identity? Public Opinion Quarterly, 75(1), 19–41. Brenner, P. S., & DeLamater, J. (2016). Lies, damned lies, and survey self-reports? Identity as a cause of measurement bias. Social Psychology Quarterly, 79(4), 333–354. Brenner, P. S., Serpe, R. T., & Stryker, S. (2014). The causal ordering of prominence and salience in identity theory: An empirical examination. Social Psychology Quarterly, 77(3), 231–252. Burke, P. J. (1980). The self: Measurement requirements from an interactionist perspective. Social Psychology Quarterly, 43(1), 18–29. Burke, P. J. (1991). Identity processes and social stress. American Sociological Review, 56(6), 836–849. Burke, P. J., & Harrod, M. M. (2005). Too much of a good thing? Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(4), 359–374. Burke, P. J., & Reitzes, D. C. (1991). An identity theory approach to commitment. Social Psychology Quarterly, 54(3), 239–251. Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (1999). Trust and commitment through self-verification. Social Psychology Quarterly, 62(4), 347–366. Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2015). Identity verification and the social order. In E. J. Lawler, S. R. Thye, & J. Yoon (Eds.), Order on the edge of chaos: Social psychology and the problem of social order (pp. 145–164). Cambridge. Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2023). Identity theory: Revised and expanded (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Burke, P. J., & Stryker, S. (2016). Identity theory: Progress in relating the two strands. In J. E. Stets & R. T. Serpe (Eds.), New directions in identity theory and research (pp. 567–682). Oxford University Press. Burke, P. J., & Tully, J. C. (1977). The measurement of role identity. Social Forces, 55(4), 881–897. Ellestad, J., & Stets, J. E. (1998). Jealousy and parenting: Predicting emotions from identity theory. Sociological Perspectives, 41(3), 639–668. Freese, L., & Burke, P. J. (1994). Persons, identities, and social interaction. Advances in Group Processes, 11, 1–24. Linville, P. (1985). Self-complexity and affective extremity: Don't put all of your eggs in one cognitive basket. Social Cognition, 3(1), 94–120.

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Linville, P. (1987). Self-complexity as a cognitive buffer against stress-related illness and depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(4), 663–676. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. University of Chicago Press. Morris, R. C. (2013). Identity salience and identity importance in identity theory. Current Research in Social Psychology, 21(8), 23–36. Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. University of Illinois Press. Powers, W. T. (1973). Behavior: The control of perception. Aldine Transaction. Rafaeli-Mor, E., Gotlib, I. H., & Revelle, W. (1999). The meaning and measurement of selfcomplexity. Personality and Individual Differences, 27(2), 341–356. Serpe, R. T. (1987). Stability and change in self: A structural symbolic interactionist explanation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50(1), 44–55. Serpe, R. T., & Stryker, S. (1987). The construction of self and reconstruction of social relationships. Advances in Group Processes, 4, 41–66. Stets, J. E. (1995). Role identities and person identities: Gender identity, mastery identity, and controlling one's partner. Sociological Perspectives, 38(2), 129–150. Stets, J. E., Aldecoa, J., Bloom, Q., & Winegar, J. (2021). Using identity theory to understand homophily in groups. In P. S. Brenner, J. E. Stets, & R. T. Serpe (Eds.), Identities in action: Developments in identity theory (pp. 285–302). Springer. Stets, J. E., & Burke, P. J. (2014). Self-esteem and identities. Sociological Perspectives, 57(4), 409–433. Stets, J. E., Burke, P. J., & Savage, S. V. (2018). Exchange, identity verification, and social bonds. Social Psychology Quarterly, 81(3), 207–227. Stets, J. E., & Serpe, R. T. (2013). Identity theory. In J. DeLamater & A. Ward (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (pp. 31–60). Springer. Stryker, S. (1968). Identity salience and role performance. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 30(4), 558–564. Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic interactionism: A social structural version. Benjamin Cummings. Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The past, present, and future of an identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297. Stryker, S., & Serpe, R. T. (1982). Commitment, identity salience, and role behavior: A theory and research example. In W. Ickes & E. S. Knowles (Eds.), Personality, roles, and social behavior (pp. 199–218). Springer. Stryker, S., & Serpe, R. T. (1994). Identity salience and psychological centrality: Equivalent, overlapping, or complementary concepts. Social Psychology Quarterly, 57(1), 16–35. Stryker, S., Serpe, R. T., & Hunt, M. O. (2005). Making good on a promise: The impact of larger social structures on commitments. Advances in Group Processes, 22, 93–123. Thoits, P. A. (1991). On merging identity theory and stress research. Social Psychology Quarterly, 54(2), 101–112. Thoits, P. A. (1992). Identity structures and psychological well-being: Gender and marital status comparisons. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55(3), 236–256. Tsushima, T., & Burke, P. J. (1999). Levels, agency, and control in the parent identity. Social Psychology Quarterly, 62(2), 173–189.

Chapter 3

The Importance of Where: The Role of Place in Identity Theory Timothy R. Rose and Kelly L. Markowski

3.1

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a myriad of hardships nationally and globally. In an effort to slow disease spread, many countries including the United States instituted lockdown procedures by prohibiting or at least significantly restricting social activities. Despite the public health emergency, many citizens openly defied these mandates. For example, during Easter of 2020, many churches still held in-person services. During this time, the media was replete with examples of individuals who gathered in congregations to pray.1 Though adherence (or lack thereof) to health mandates relates to several other factors, such as political ideology (Kerr et al., 2021), a social psychological approach calls attention to the self. As a key part of the self, identities influence behavior in ways that may explain religious social engagement, including patterns seen during a global pandemic as well as solitary religious behaviors more generally. For example, broadly speaking, the more important, or prominent, an identity is to an individual, the more likely they are to engage in behaviors related to that identity (Stryker &

1

See, e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/us/louisiana-pastor-coronavirus/index.html, https:// www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/04/12/solid-rock-church-defies-ohios-stay-home-order-eas ter-service/2978498001/, and https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-responsetrump/2020/4/12/21218126/why-some-churches-are-holding-in-person-easter-services-in-defi ance-of-federal-guidelines

T. R. Rose (✉) Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. L. Markowski The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_3

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Serpe, 1994; Yarrison, 2016). However, identity prominence is itself the product of broader influences, like proximate social structure, or the smallest, most immediate social contexts, like friend groups, in which individuals maintain social relationships and enact identities (Merolla et al., 2012; Stryker et al., 2005). This is because proximate social structures reinforce shared meanings and expectations, which then heighten the importance of those meanings for how a person sees herself (Yarrison, 2016). Though important, this recent work notably emphasizes structural features of the social world, like social groups, because identities and identity processes are social in nature (Burke, 1991; Burke & Stets, 2009; McCall & Simmons, 1978; Stryker, 1968, 1980, 1987). However, humans are embodied beings who take up physical space (Mead, 1934). Thus, social interactions and identity processes manifest themselves in the physical world by happening in places with tangible objects (and people) that take up space. Identity work does theorize about physical realities. For example, identity scholars argue that signs and resources in the physical environment help support identities and identity verification in interaction (Burke, 2003; Burke & Stets, 2009, 2015; Stets, 2021). However, most identity work tends to overlook physical contexts by not including this dimension in analyses of identity. This is important to address because humans are always somewhere in the physical world. Thus, social interactions and identity processes—even those that take place digitally2—are, too. In this chapter, we build on the work in identity theory that theorizes about the physical world and begins to empirically examine how it influences identity processes (see, e.g., Rose & Brenner, 2021). We do so by examining places. Places are bounded locations in the physical world that house material objects and serve as discrete physical sites where individuals can interact with others and forge emotional attachments that influence how they think about themselves and behave (Gieryn, 2000, 2018; Lewicka, 2011). We use two place-related concepts from the literature on human geography and environmental psychology. Place centrality3 refers to the degree to which an individual’s experience of the physical world occurs within a specific place (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021; Knitter & Nakoinz, 2018). Place attachment refers to the emotional bonds one has to a specific place (Hidalgo, 2013; Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001; Lewicka, 2011; Brown et al., 2015). In our analysis, we examine place centrality and place attachment in the context of the religious identity. We start with the acknowledgement that social relationships and identities should relate to religious behavior, including behavior that is not place-dependent and can occur inside as well as outside of churches. Then, we argue that the centrality of one’s primary church relates to the social relationships one has and that emotional attachments to one’s church relates to how individuals

2

Humans still take up physical space somewhere when interacting with technology. Identity theorists tend to avoid using the word “centrality” due to the long history of scholars using the terms “psychological centrality” and “identity prominence” interchangeably. However, to be consistent with other work on place, we opt to retain this terminology here. 3

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feel about their identities. Below, we present an overview of identity theory before arguing the importance of “where”—or the role of place—for identity processes.

3.2

Background

Identity theory has generated a well-tested body of empirical research since its inception over five decades ago (Burke, 1991; Burke & Stets, 2009; McCall & Simmons, 1978; Stryker, 1968, 1980). Identities refer to the internalized meanings that individuals associate with who they are as people who enact roles, as members in groups or social categories, and as unique persons (Burke & Stets, 2009). Identity theory is derived from structural symbolic interactionism, a perspective that asserts a reciprocal relationship between “society,” the “self,” and “interaction” (Serpe & Stryker, 2011). Identity theory starts from this premise, further specifying these concepts in the context of identities to generate testable propositions (Stryker, 1968, 1980). For example, identities can be described according to properties like commitment and prominence. Commitment is defined as the number of social contacts one has because of an identity as well as the emotional bonds one shares with these contacts (Hays, 2017; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). Prominence is defined as how important an identity is to how a person sees herself (McCall & Simmons, 1978). One of identity theory’s foundational propositions was that stronger commitments strengthen identity properties, which predict the frequency of behavior associated with the identity. Indeed, much work demonstrates that these links hold, as stronger commitments relate to greater identity prominence, which relates to more frequently enacted identity behaviors (Serpe & Stryker, 1987; Stryker & Serpe, 1982, 1994). Over the past two decades, identity theorists have shifted attention to the role of social structures in identity processes. Social structure refers to morphologically stable factors external to the individual that ultimately facilitate or constrain behavior (Merton, 1957; Serpe & Stryker, 1987). Three levels of social structure have been proposed: large, intermediate, and proximate (Burke & Stets, 2009; Merolla et al., 2012; Stets & Serpe, 2013; Stryker et al., 2005). Large social structures are systems of stratification, or patterned ways of classifying and dividing people into groups. Examples of large social structures include demographic factors, such as race/ ethnicity or gender. Large social structures influence intermediate social structures, which are smaller units of association that organize social life and that are often bound to physical locations. Examples of intermediate social structures include units like neighborhoods. Large social structures influence intermediate social structures by facilitating or constraining certain groups’ access to or membership in these smaller units. For example, neighborhoods are often racially and ethnically homogenous, and patterns of access to resources often make it more difficult for racial/ ethnic minorities to move to predominantly White neighborhoods (De la Roca et al., 2014).

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Intermediate social structures, in turn, influence proximate social structures. Proximate social structures are the smallest, most immediate social contexts, like groups, in which individuals maintain social relationships and enact identities. Examples of proximate social structures include families or friend cliques. Intermediate social structures influence proximate social structures by facilitating or constraining access or membership in these small units. For example, racial residential segregation yields neighborhoods stratified by race/ethnicity, producing situations where people are most likely to come into contact with members of their own racial/ethnic groups. This, in part, influences the marriage market and composition of family units by promoting racial homogamy (Kalmijn, 1998). Recent identity theory work has focused on proximate social structures. For example, Markowski (2021) assessed proximate social units as an important social context for identity processes, because they provide opportunities and resources that can be used in interaction. She examined density, or the interconnectedness of social ties indicative of social support, within one’s friend group. Density buffered negative outcomes associated with non-verification, or perceptions that others viewed the individual differently than she viewed herself. Yarrison (2016) assessed homogeneity, or the degree to which the contacts in one’s social group have the same identity as oneself. Homogeneity was positively related to prominence. Advances provided by this work illustrate the important role of social context in identity processes, confirming that properties of groups interact with and influence individuals’ identity experiences. Though important, this recent work overlooks a key aspect of reality: features of the physical world that influence day-to-day experiences at the micro-level (Stets, 2021). Humans are embodied beings; they take up physical space. Thus, social interactions and identity processes always happen someplace in the physical world. Identity work does discuss physical realities, theorizing how signs and other tangible objects can serve as resources used in interaction to maintain identities (Burke, 2003; Burke & Stets, 2009, 2015). However, this work tends to emphasize how people use material objects to support identity processes, paying less attention to where these objects are located, and how their location relates to how people develop social relationships and behave. We are aware of one study that empirically addresses physical realities in identity theory in this way. Rose and Brenner (2021) focused on the configuration of the physical world, theorizing that space, or the distance between objects or places (Logan, 2012), serves as an index of intermediate social structure. They argued that space influences social relationships. Specifically, they found that the more resources people must expend to traverse space and reach their primary church, the less religiously homogeneous their social contacts were and the less likely they were to enact their religious identities outside of church. In other words, spatial realities such as the location of churches facilitated (or constrained) the ability to interact with individuals who also have religious identities. In turn, behavior was affected. Implicit but not specifically examined in Rose and Brenner’s (2021) work are theplaces between which there is space that one must use resources to traverse

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The Importance of Where: The Role of Place in Identity Theory

39

(Brenner, 2017; Miller, 2005; Kwan, 1998). Places are bounded locations within the physical world (Gieryn, 2000; Lewicka, 2011). They can be large in scope, such as neighborhoods, cities, and states, or they can be small in scope, such as a building, structure, or room. Places often house material objects. They also have shared meanings associated with them, often serving as discrete physical sites designed for certain activities or interactions (Gieryn, 2018). Without places, one cannot assess space because space is inherently concerned with the location of places relative to one another. Thus, place is a critical aspect of the physical world that always underlies social interactions and identity processes.

Place Centrality and Place Attachment In this paper, we center the concept of place in identity theory. In the vast literature on place, scholars discuss place in several ways. For example, places can be described in architectural terms according to size, person capacity, physical layout, amenities, etc. (Gieryn, 2000). However, places can also be described according to the functions they serve and the reasons they were created (Lofland, 1973). In the human geography literature, places are described according to the social activities they facilitate, such as the exchange of goods and services (Knitter & Nakoinz, 2018). For example, a church is a physical location designed for people to congregate around shared religious beliefs, history, and iconography (Thiessen & McAlpine, 2013). Congregants gather to listen to sermons, read sacred text, engage in collective prayer, socialize with other congregants, and otherwise reinforce shared meanings surrounding religiosity in everyday life (Brenneman & Miller, 2020). However, churches may also serve as wedding ceremony venues, sites for soup kitchens, or venues for other (potentially non-religious) community events (Greeley, 1997; Greenberg, 2000; Campbell et al., 2000). The more purposes a place serves, the more central the place is to the routine functioning of the community. This idea is termed place centrality (Knitter & Nakoinz, 2018). On an individual level, place centrality can also refer to the degree to which an individual’s experience of the physical world occurs within a place (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021). For example, places may be more central for individuals the more they frequent them and the more time they spend in them compared to the numerous other places within which the individual could otherwise be (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021; Lewicka, 2011). In this sense, centrality assesses where individuals spend time in the physical world, voluntarily or not. Since individuals are always somewhere, place centrality provides information about which places individuals occupy most. In addition, places can be characterized according to one’s assessments of them. A large portion of the environmental psychology literature examines place in this way (Giuliani & Scopelliti, 2009). A common type of evaluation is place attachment,

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or the emotional bond one has to a specific place4 (Fried, 2000; Hidalgo, 2013; Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001; Lewicka, 2011; Brown et al., 2015). Individuals may develop attachments to a place based on its physical as well as its social dimensions. For example, individuals may develop attachments to places based on aesthetic factors they like, such as architectural design and decorative features. They also may develop attachments to places through their associations with people, social interactions, activities, or memorable events that happen therein (Lewicka, 2011). In either case, the attachment in question is primarily to the physical place as a location that one associates with the experience of positive affect (Gieryn, 2000).

Current Study and Hypotheses How might place, conceptualized through place centrality and place attachment, specifically relate to identity processes? First, we consider the relationship between place centrality and place attachment. We argue that a positive association is likely to exist: the more time one spends in a place, the more opportunity one has to develop positive emotional bonds to the place; at the same time, the more emotionally bonded one is to a place, the more time they will likely desire to spend there. Indeed, some work finds that the length of time spent in one’s community positively relates to community attachment (Rollero & De Piccoli, 2010; Raymond et al., 2010; Dunaetz et al., 2018). In this paper, we are interested in the relationship between place and identity in the context of the religious identity. We predict: H1: Place centrality of one’s primary church will be positively associated with place attachment to one’s primary church. Second, we consider identity processes, focusing on the links between proximate social structure, identity properties, and behavior. Specifically, we build upon Yarrison’s (2016) work. Yarrison examined religious homogeneity, or the degree to which the contacts in one’s social group are religious. He found that homogeneity was positively related to prominence, which positively related to religious behaviors enacted in daily life outside of church (e.g., solitary prayer, individual study of religious texts). Here, we also examine homogeneity, prominence, and behavior in the context of the religious identity, expecting the same positive relationships. This is because homogeneity reinforces shared meanings and expectations, which heighten the importance of those meanings for how a person sees herself (Yarrison, 2016). Thus, we predict: H2: Religious homogeneity will be positively associated with religious identity prominence. 4

In the place attachment literature, emotional bonds are discussed in positive terms, implying that greater attachments refer to more positive emotional bonds. When places are associated with negative emotions, place attachment is assumed to be weaker.

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H3: Religious identity prominence will be positively associated with religious behaviors. To build upon Yarrison’s (2016) work, we also examine place centrality and place attachment as indexes for the physical world underlying identity processes. In the context of the religious identity, places of worship serve as a dominant location for religious activity (Proshansky, 1978; Lalli, 1992). Thus, place centrality here would refer to the degree to which an individual’s experience of the physical world occurs within a place of worship. Broadly speaking, the more time one spends in a place of worship, the more time one spends with other religious individuals in that location. In situations like this, individuals have the opportunity to develop social ties with individuals who are also religious. Indeed, research supports that individuals often capitalize on such opportunities, retaining church-based contacts as voluntary social ties that extend outside the church setting (Ellison & George, 1994; Cerhan & Wallace, 1997). This may be because places of worship serve as settings of mutual verification, which may increase homophily in social groups (Stets et al., 2021). Thus, we expect place centrality and homogeneity to be positively related. Formally: H4: Place centrality of one’s primary church will be positively associated with religious homogeneity. However, we also expect a positive association between place attachment and prominence. The more emotionally bonded people are to a place of worship, the more they will associate the positive affect with the identities they enact there, such that the religious identity becomes more important to how people see themselves (Hernandez et al., 2007). Thus, we predict: H5: Place attachment to one’s primary church will be positively associated with religious identity prominence. Several relationships described above are likely to be reciprocal, including the one between place centrality and place attachment as well as between place attachment and prominence. We know of no work that has empirically examined the relationships between identity processes as well as place centrality and place attachment. Thus, we rely on theorizing and empirical work in identity theory and other literature to conceptually organize these relationships into a testable model. Figure 3.1 shows our conceptual model. Starting with identity processes, our model organizes homogeneity as a predictor of prominence, with prominence as a predictor of behavior. This follows Yarrison’s (2016) work as well as general theorizing in identity theory: homogeneity, as a descriptive property of proximate social structures, serves as social structural context in which identity processes unfold (Merolla et al., 2012; Stryker et al., 2005), and descriptive properties of identity, like prominence, guide how individuals behave (Stryker & Serpe, 1994; Yarrison, 2016). Second, our model organizes place centrality as a predictor of place attachment. Though we acknowledge that the relationship is likely reciprocal over time, we argue that individuals must first visit a place before they can develop an attachment to it (Feldman, 1990; Cross, 2015; Counted, 2016).

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Fig. 3.1 Model of religious behavior

Third, our model organizes place centrality as a predictor of homogeneity. This is because churches often regularly bring groups of people together, after which, social ties may extend across places. Research supports the idea that individuals develop friend networks from spending time in places like church and that individuals then interact with these social ties in other settings (Ellison & George, 1994; Cerhan & Wallace, 1997). Fourth, our model organizes place attachment as a predictor of prominence. Though individuals may more readily develop attachments to the places where they can enact important identities, place attachment encapsulates emotional bonds, partially from social interactional processes happening within the place (Lewicka, 2011), that influence how individuals see themselves (Hernandez et al., 2007). This argument reflects foundational theorizing in identity theory (Burke & Stets, 2009; Stets & Serpe, 2013; Stryker, 1968, 1980). Thus far, we have presented and discussed only indirect effects that link together place centrality, place attachment, and homogeneity to behavior. Specifically, each variable is expected to relate to behavior through identity variables. However, theorizing also supports direct effects that we predict and test here. That is, we expect that behavior will directly relate to place centrality, place attachment, and homogeneity. This is because the more time one spends in a church, the more individuals learn and are socialized about how religious individuals act on a daily basis (including outside of church settings); additionally, the more emotionally bonded people are to their church, the more likely they are to accept these norms, enacting them in their own daily life outside of church (Martin et al., 2003; Sherkat, 2003; Merino, 2012). Furthermore, the more religious homogeneity that exists in one’s network, the more likely individuals are to be influenced by the behaviors of their peers (Lewis et al., 2013). Thus, we also predict: H6: Place centrality of one’s primary church will be positively associated with religious behaviors. H7: Place attachment to one’s primary church will be positively associated with religious behaviors. H8: Religious homogeneity will be positively associated with religious behaviors. On a final note, other links may exist, like between prominence and place centrality. The more important the religious identity is to how individuals see themselves, the

3

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more often they may seek out places where they can enact their identities. This process unfolds particularly during times of change involving physical relocation—for example, when students transition into the college setting potentially far away from their hometowns—when individuals reconstruct social relationships, possibly by visiting certain places that support identities that they highly value (Serpe & Stryker, 1987; Serpe & Stryker, 1987). However, we do not specifically examine instances of physical relocation and instead are interested in processes in daily life reflecting physical stability. Thus, we retain our conceptual model.

3.3

Method

Data and Sample The data for this study come from an electronic survey, administered in the winter of 2018 to members of a non-probability panel hosted by Qualtrics. A non-probability panel is composed of respondents who self-select into a pool of potential survey respondents maintained by the sampling provider, who then sends invitations to surveys that the respondent qualifies for in exchange for compensation. As respondents were not randomly drawn into the sample from the full population under investigation, panel members may differ systematically from the larger population. However, generalizability is not a prerequisite for investigating general processes and mechanisms, like those detailed in identity theory (Adams, 2020; Markowski & Serpe, 2018; Yarrison, 2016). Thus, our analysis contributes to work that examines relationships among identity concepts and may reflect similar estimates from probability panels (see, e.g., Simmons & Bobo, 2015), though this should be verified in future work. Panelists were eligible to participate in this study if they: identified as Christian, were at least 18 years old, reported that they attend a place of worship more than once a year on average, and had attended a place of worship at least once in the last 12 months.5 Eligibility was further limited to panelists living in communities consisting of 20,000 or fewer residents in three states: Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Consistent with goals that are outside the scope of this study, only communities that were at least one mile away from neighboring communities or larger metropolitan areas were included (see Rose, 2019). Communities were identified

5

Church attendance criteria were necessary for this study because individuals cannot report assessments about place and place attachment if they do not have a primary church that they have visited and to which they can refer. Future research can build upon this analysis by examining how prominence may differ for individuals who do not have a stable, socially recognized place they visit that is associated with their religious identity.

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according to 2010 Census classifications. The final valid sample consisted of 1216 respondents. The analytic sample consisted of 973 respondents.6

Measures Place In this study, place was operationalized as a location of worship. Participants were first asked to specify the name of the primary church they attended within the past 12 months, followed by the option to list any other churches they attended. Subsequent items related to place referenced the primary place of worship, and the name was automatically inserted into question wording throughout the rest of the survey.

Place centrality Place centrality refers to the degree to which an individual’s experience of the physical world occurs within a specific place (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021). It indexes the amount of time spent in a place compared to the numerous other places within which the individual could otherwise be (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021; Lewicka, 2011). In this study, place centrality was assessed through one item where participants indicated how often they visited their primary place of worship within the past 12 months. Response options were: (1) Once a year or less frequently, (2) Several times a year, (3) At least once every two months, (4) About once a month, (5) Two or three times a month, (6) Once a week, and (7) More than once a week.7 This measurement of place centrality differs from proposed measurements in other work. For example, recent theorizing on place centrality in the physical geography literature suggests measuring the number of functions (e.g., goods and services) that a place serves for the wider community (Knitter & Nakoinz, 2018). However, such a measurement would not be appropriate here because it reflects the community instead of the individual. Cleaner parallels may be drawn between our

6

In the analysis, we used a maximum likelihood approach. This excluded 243 participants due to missing responses on one or more key measures. Results were comparable when these cases were preserved using a full-information maximum likelihood approach. However, for parsimony, we only report the results from participants with complete data. 7 This measure differs from identity salience. Identity salience refers to the likelihood that an individual will enact an identity. It is typically assessed by asking participants to indicate how likely they would be to tell different types of people that they hold a specific identity. Though people are likely to enact their religious identity when visiting their primary place of worship, churches may serve as sites of other social activity that are not related to worship (e.g., wedding venue, soup kitchen, etc.). In these instances, identities other than one’s religious identity may be invoked. Thus, this measure is agnostic to assumptions about the identities that may be enacted therein; it involves how much an individual experiences the physical world in a specific place.

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context and this suggestion with assessments that measure the number of identities or identity-relevant activities that are enacted in a place. However, our assessment is also useful, because visit frequency is related to time spent. Though engaging in more activities or enacting more identities in a place might suggest more time spent in the place, directly assessing frequency of visiting may be a better indicator to describe where, out of all places, individuals exist in the physical world (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021; Lewicka, 2011).

Place attachment Place attachment refers to the emotional bonds one has to a physical place (Lewicka, 2011; Brown et al., 2015). Here, place attachment was assessed using six items where participants indicated how they felt emotionally about their primary place of worship (Lewicka, 2011; Brown et al., 2015). Items included: (1) “[Church] means a lot to me,” (2) “I am very attached to “[Church],” (3) “I have fond memories about [Church],” (4) “[Church] is very special to me,” (5) “I identify strongly with [Church],” and (6) “I feel [Church] is a part of me.” In all statements, “[Church]” was replaced with the name participants’ specified as their primary place of worship. Response options reflected degree of agreement, ranging from Strongly agree (1) to Strongly disagree (4). Internal consistency across the six items was very good (α = .96).

Religious Homogeneity Homogeneity refers to how similar social contacts are to an individual. Here, homogeneity was assessed using two items where participants indicated the approximate proportion of their voluntary social contacts that also held a religious identity (Brenner, Serpe, Stryker, 2014; Merolla et al., 2012; Yarrison, 2016). Participants separately indicated how many friends (“people you know and do things with”) and how many close friends (“people you know and can count on”) were also religious. Response options were: (1) Almost none, (2) Less than half, (3) About half, (4) More than half, and 5 = Almost all. Across the two items, nearly 70% of respondents indicated identical answers. Thus, for the analysis, responses for both items were averaged into a religious homogeneity score.

Prominence Prominence refers to the importance of an identity to an individual. Prominence was assessed using four items adapted from previous research (Merolla et al., 2012; Stets et al., 2017) to ask participants how important the religious identity was to them (Yarrison, 2016). Items were: (1) “Being religious is an important part of my self-image,” (2) “Being religious is an important reflection of who I am,” (3) “I

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have come to think of myself as a religious person,” and (4) “I have a strong sense of belonging to the community of religious people.” Response options reflected degree of agreement, ranging from Strongly agree (1) to Strongly disagree (4). Items were reverse coded prior to analysis. Internal consistency across the four items was good (α = .88). Religious behaviors. Religious behaviors were assessed by asking participants to indicate how often they “read the bible, Quran, Torah, or other sacred text,8” “pray or meditate outside of religious services,” and “ask someone to pray for you.” Response options were: (1) Never, (2) Less than once a year, (3) A few times a year, (4) A few times a month—1 to 3 times, (5) At least once a week—1 to 3 times, and (6) Nearly every day—4 or more times a week. In the analysis, we examine each item separately. This is for two reasons. First, internal consistency across these items (α = .64) did not meet or exceed conventional threshold. However, second, we were interested in assessing any differences across these items, since they may be enacted differently in a day-to-day setting. For example, asking someone to pray for them is an activity that necessarily involves another person, while the other two items could be done in isolation. Additionally, only one item asked about a behavior with the specification of that behavior occurring outside of a place of worship. Correlation coefficients for these items are discussed further below.

Background Variables Background variables included in the analysis were age, gender, education, household income, and congregation size. Age was included because some research finds that religiosity increases with age (Argue et al., 1999). Gender was included due to evidence suggesting that women are more religious than men (Argue et al., 1999; Miller & Stark, 2002). Education was included because research finds that religiosity decreases with greater education (Schwadel, 2015). Household income was included because recent research finds that religious behavior decreases with greater income (Silveus & Stoddard, 2020). Congregation size was included because larger congregations provide more opportunities to gain voluntary friend ties that also are religious. Though race was captured in the survey, over 90% of participants identified as White; thus, race was unable to be included as a background variable. Age was measured by asking participants to indicate how old they were in years. Gender was measured by asking participants to indicate whether they were “Female,” “Male,” or “Some other gender.” Given the small number of participants that indicated “Some other gender,” this variable was dichotomized (1, female, or 0, male).9 Household income was measured by asking participants to indicate their total annual income of their household last year before taxes. Response options were

8

This standardized question language was adopted from previous work studying religious behavior, even though all respondents in the sample identified as Christian. 9 Respondents who indicated “Some other gender” were excluded from the analysis.

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nine categories whose end points were Less than $14,999 to $250,000 or more. Education was measured by asking participants to indicate which option described them best. Response options were: (1) Less than high school, (2) High school diploma or GED, (3) Some college, but no degree, (4) Associate’s degree, (5) Bachelor’s degree, (6) Graduate degree (M.A., M.S.), and (7) Professional degree (Ph.D., M.D., J.D.). Finally, congregation size was measured by asking participants to indicate the average size of the congregation, not including infants. Response options were: (1) Less than 25, (2)25–75, (3) 76–150, (4) 151–250, and (5) More than 250. Following other research, we dichotomized this variable at the national congregation size median, as 151 or more (1) or 150 or less (0) (Chaves & Anderson, 2014).

Analysis To test our hypotheses, we employ structural equation modeling. The model includes a measurement model and a structural model. For the measurement model, both place attachment and identity prominence were included as latent constructs; all other variables were observed. All background variables were estimated as exogenous predictors on all other variables. Several error covariances were also estimated. For parsimony, these are not reported here but are available upon request.

3.4

Results

Descriptive Statistics Table 3.1 presents descriptive statistics for all variables included in the analysis. The average age was about 45 years old. Just over half the sample (58%) was female. Median education level was some college but no degree. Median household income was between $45,000 and $59,999. Just under half (47%) reported that their primary place of worship had, on average, more than 150 people in attendance. Regarding the main variables of interest, individuals reported praying outside of religious services frequently on average (M = 5.24), followed by reading sacred text (M = 4.21) and asking someone to pray for them (M = 3.36). Religious homogeneity of friend ties was moderate on average (M = 3.61), and prominence of the religious identity was moderately high on average (M = 3.28). Finally, centrality of one’s primary church was moderate on average (M = 4.75), and attachment to one’s primary church was moderately high on average (M = 4.30).

48 Table 3.1 Descriptive statistics (N = 973)

T. R. Rose and K. L. Markowski Variable Age Female Education Income Large congregation Read sacred texts Pray outside religious services Ask someone to pray for you Homogeneity Prominence Place centrality Place attachment

M 45.12 0.00 3.65 4.75 0.47 4.21 5.24 3.36 3.61 3.28 4.75 4.30

SD 15.30 0.49 1.45 2.23 0.50 1.43 1.17 1.42 1.09 0.40 1.84 0.78

Range 18–91 0–1 1–7 1–11 0–1 1–6 1–6 1–6 1–5 1–4 1–7 1–5

Correlations Table 3.2 presents the correlations across all variables in the model. Importantly, all the key variables of interest are significantly and positively related to one another. This includes all possible pairings between reading sacred text, praying outside of religious services, asking others to pray for them, religious identity prominence, religious homogeneity among one’s friends, place attachment, and place centrality. Though these bivariate relationships are important, we now turn our attention to the multivariate relationships used to test our hypotheses.

Structural Equation Model Standardized measurement model results are presented in Table 3.3. Concerning the latent variables, all prominence indicators load onto the prominence construct, and all place attachment indicators load onto the place attachment construct. Results for the structural model are presented in Table 3.4. Coefficients can be interpreted as the standard deviation unit change associated with a one standard deviation unit increase in the predictor. First, we predicted a positive relationship between the place variables—specifically, that the place centrality of one’s primary church would be positively associated with attachment to one’s primary church. Place centrality shows a significant and positive effect on place attachment (β = .36), supporting Hypothesis 1. Second, we predicted relationships that are consistent with past work between homogeneity, prominence, and behavior. Homogeneity has a significant and positive effect on prominence (β = .34), and prominence shows significant and positive effects on all behaviors: reading (β = .28), praying (β = .27), and asking others pray for them (β = .29). These findings support Hypotheses 2 and 3. Third, we predicted a positive

.40*** .44*** .25*** .41*** .48*** .28*** .05 –.01 –.01 –.02 –.09**

1

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001

1) Read 2) Pray 3) Others pray 4) Homogeneity 5) Prominence 6) Place centrality 7) Place attachment 8) Age 9) Female 10) Education 11) Income 12) Congregation

Table 3.2 Correlations (N = 973)

.29*** .18*** .30*** .25*** .16*** .06 .15*** .01 .04 –.06

2

.18*** .33*** .23*** .22*** –.10** .14*** –.06 –.09** –.06*

3

.37*** .24*** .20*** .02 .14*** .12*** .12*** .12***

4

.33*** .39*** .02 .00 .01 .05 .01

5

.33*** .12*** –.01 .03 .06 .01

6

–.02 .06 –.11*** –.07* .02

7

–.13*** .12*** .09*** .08*

8

–.10*** –.14*** .01

9

.38*** .15***

10

.17***

11

3 The Importance of Where: The Role of Place in Identity Theory 49

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T. R. Rose and K. L. Markowski

Table 3.3 Standardized measurement model of prominence and place attachment Item Being religious is an important part of my self-image. Being religious is an important reflection of who I am. I have come to think of myself as a religious person. I have a strong sense of belonging to the community of religious people. Item [Church] means a lot to me I am very attached to [church] I have fond memories about [church] [Church] is very special to me I identify strongly with [church] I feel [church] is a part of me

Prominence 0.71 0.71 0.68 0.85 Place attachment 0.86 0.89 0.77 0.91 0.88 0.89

relationship between place centrality and religious homogeneity. Place centrality is positively related to homogeneity (β = .24), supporting Hypothesis 4. Fourth, as we predicted in Hypothesis 5, place attachment and religious identity prominence are positively related (β = .39). We also predicted in Hypotheses 6–8 that place centrality, place attachment, and homogeneity would positively relate to behavior. Only place centrality has a significant and positive effect on the three behaviors (β = .37 for reading, β = .15 for praying, and β = .14 for asking others to pray), supporting Hypothesis 6 but not Hypotheses 7 or 8. Though the direct effects between place attachment and homogeneity with behavior are not significant, many indirect effects are significant. Place attachment shows a significant and positive indirect effect on the behaviors (β = .11, p < .001; β = .10, p < .001; and β = .11, p < .001), as does homogeneity (β = .09, p < .001; β = .09, p < .001; and β = .10, p < .001). Furthermore, centrality shows a significant and positive indirect effect on prominence (β = .07, p < .001) as well as the behaviors (β = .09, p < .001; β = .06, p < .001; and β = .08, p < .001). Several other relationships are worth mentioning. Being female is significantly and positively associated with two out of three religious behaviors (β = .17, p < .001 for praying and β = .11, p < .001 for asking others to pray), while age is negatively related to asking others to pray for them (β = -.10, p < .01), as is income (β = -.09, p < .01). Additionally, having one’s primary church consist of more than 150 people is negatively related to reading sacred text (β = -.08, p < .01) and praying outside of church (β = -.07, p < .05). Last, age is positively related to place centrality (β = .12, p < .001). On a final note, the model provides a good fit for the data. Though the chi-square statistic is significant (X2 [109] = 281.43, p < .001), this statistic is biased by sample size, often producing a significant coefficient for an otherwise good-fitting model (Finch et al., 2016; Kline, 2016). Thus, we examine other indices of fit. The

→Place Attachment

–0.04 0.04 –0.10** –0.06 0.04

→Place Centrality

0.12*** 0.01 –0.00 0.05 –0.01

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001

Item Place centrality Place attachment Homogeneity Prominence Age Female Education Income Large congregation –0.02 0.16*** 0.09** 0.08* 0.09**

→Homogeneity 0.36***

Table 3.4 Standardized structural equation model estimates (N = 973)

0.01 –0.02 0.01 –0.06 –0.09

→Prominence 0.24*** 0.39*** 0.34***

→Read 0.37*** 0.03 0.07* 0.28*** 0.04 –0.00 0.02 –0.07 –0.08**

→Pray 0.15*** –0.01 0.02 0.27*** 0.05 0.17*** 0.01 0.04 –0.07*

→Ask to PrayPlace Centrality 0.14*** 0.03 0.02 0.29*** –0.10** 0.11*** –0.01 –0.09** –0.04

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CFI is above .95 (CFI = .982) and the RMSEA and SRMR are both below .05 (RMSEA = .040, SRMR = .035), suggesting good model fit.10

3.5

Discussion

In this paper, our goal was to center the concept of place and to show how it can inform identity theory. To do so, we drew upon the literature in human geography and environmental psychology to introduce two place-based concepts. We argued that place centrality, or the degree to which an individual’s experience of the physical world occurs within a place (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021; Knitter & Nakoinz, 2018), and place attachment, or the emotional bond one has with a specific place (Lewicka, 2011; Brown et al., 2015), are useful because they provide context about the physical world that is often overlooked in identity research. We proposed a conceptual model linking place to identity processes involving proximate social structure (via homogeneity), descriptive properties of identity (prominence), and behavior in the context of the religious identity. Using cross-sectional data from 973 U.S. adults in three states to test these ideas, all proposed relationships were supported. There are several implications of these results. First, and perhaps most obviously, this work explicitly bridges the study of aspects of the physical world with identity theory. To date, only some identity work has theorized about physical realities, such as how signs and resources support interaction (Burke, 2003; Burke & Stets, 2009, 2015; Stets, 2021). However, the majority of identity work overlooks physical context. We know of one study in identity theory that has examined how the spatial configuration of the physical world influences social relationships (Rose & Brenner, 2021). Here, we built upon this work by specifically considering a specific type of place that exists in spatial configuration. Place is an important concept because humans are always somewhere in the physical world. Thus, social interactions and identity processes are always happening somewhere, meaning that identity processes may be influenced by physical contexts in ways that most identity research does not explicitly consider. By explicitly considering place, including frequency of spending time at a place and how individuals feel about it, our study contributes to knowledge of how physical factors relate to identity processes. Second, our work incorporates two place-based concepts from human geography and environmental psychology into identity theory. This both extends identity theory and demonstrates its utility for related research in other disciplines. Especially with respect to the latter, other bodies of work on place may benefit from identity theory’s strong theoretical and empirical foundation, clear conceptualization of identity, and

10

Several alternative models were tested that reversed the directions of several key relationships, such as place centrality and place attachment as well as place attachment and prominence. The model presented here provided a better fit for the data. Those results are available upon request.

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ever-improving measurements. For example, a related body of work in the place literature describes place-identity, which has been described as “a sub-structure of the self-identity of a person consisting of, broadly conceived, cognitions about the physical world in which the individual lives” (Proshansky et al., 1983, p. 77). From an identity theory perspective, this definition is unclear. Anchoring this idea to the identity theory concepts of group, social, role, and person identities may help clarify the concept, including when place is a distinct identity in and of itself (e.g., thinking of oneself as a resident of a city or town). This work also provides common ground for connecting bodies of work on place to established identity processes, such as verification (Burke, 1991, 2006; Burke & Stets, 1999). For example, frequently experiencing verification in a place may contribute to one’s attachment to the place, which may contribute to one’s subjective assessment of how important the place is to their experience of the physical world (as opposed to solely how frequently they experience the physical world in that location). Other fruitful avenues may explore how larger events, such as changes to the physical world like urbanization and gentrification, may inhibit verification of place-related identities, perhaps by decreasing access to places or changing the meanings attached to places (Kaymaz, 2013). Third, this work offers a new way to think about and incorporate emotions in identity theory. A strong history exists where emotions are examined as a product of, but also social force to, identity processes (Burke & Stets, 2009). Across this work, emotions have been examined both in general as well as in the context of a specific identity (Leveto, 2016; Stets, 2005; Stets & Burke, 2014). In the present work, we examined emotion in the context of a place, since place attachment refers to the strength of an emotional bond to a location. Here, we found that a stronger emotional bond to a church related to evaluations of an identity likely enacted in the place. Examining emotion through place attachment opens the door to several new questions. For example, if people are attached to or feel positively (or negatively) about a place, to what extent might these feelings color their evaluations of the interactions they have or the identities they enact there? How might it shape situated verification experiences and subsequent behavior? Questions like these bridge into larger questions related to situated perceptions of context, some of which may be unconscious or implicit. These questions may meaningfully be examined with the religious identity—often, a morally-charged identity—or other identities that are strongly tied to places, like students or teachers in the classroom and employers and employees in the workplace. This work is not without its limitations. First, data examined here were collected to examine the identity process of non-urban residents, necessitating the use of a web-based non-probability sample. This reduces the external validity of conclusions drawn from these data. Future work may find it fruitful to examine individuals in towns or cities of varying sizes across the U.S. and to verify if similar findings hold in representative samples outside of the Midwest. Second, the data in this study are cross-sectional, and we were not able to test the causal direction of influence between variables. Some relationships are likely reciprocal; longitudinal data will help shed further light on the conceptual model tested here.

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Third, we only examined a small number of identity variables in relation to place, including proximate social structure (via homogeneity), prominence, and behavior. Other identity variables are likely to relate to physical concepts like place, such as commitment, salience, and verification. To what extent does the range of identities enacted in a place relate to place attachment, and how do prominence and salience relate to social relationships that may be restricted to (or extend outside of) a place? Addressing questions like these would help more concretely bring place and physical context into the strong theoretical work in identity theory. Fourth, our measure of place centrality could be improved. We used a single indicator about how frequently one visited a primary place of worship. Assessments that directly measure time spent in the location (relative to time spent in other locations) would be ideal to capture the concept of place centrality (Farajollahzadeh & Salehinia, 2021; Lewicka, 2011), but alternative operationalizations might also be useful. For example, the number of identities or identity-relevant activities that are enacted in a place may also describe one’s experience of place. Future work should seek to further develop this idea as it relates to identities and the individual-level as opposed to the community-level or economic context (Knitter & Nakoinz, 2018). Finally, our measure of place attachment could be improved. Though much research in the place literature has evaluated and validated this measurement (see Hidalgo, 2013; Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001), it is unclear how much of the measure captures emotions tied to people one interacts with in the place. This is important because identity theory theorizes about attachments to people through the concept of commitment (Hays, 2017; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). Delineating attachments to people in places compared to attachments to physical aspects of place would thus be useful (Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001). Despite these limitations, this research contributes to the body of work on identity theory. It is easy to take place (and space) for granted in our daily lives and in our research on self and social processes. We hope this work encourages more research in identity theory that considers how the physical world underlies and influences how we interact with others and think about ourselves.

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Chapter 4

Assessing and Improving Measures of Identity Salience Philip S. Brenner, Richard T. Serpe, and Tracy L. Reed

4.1

Introduction

Imagine meeting a friend of a close friend for the first time. How likely would you be to tell this person about your identity as a religious (or irreligious) person? Several things may come to mind as you go about answering this question. You might recall similar events from the recent past, such as the last time you met a friend of a close friend and what you talked about with that person, or you might recall the circumstances of your introduction to other new acquaintances. You might also consider other types of information, such as how important your identity as a religious or irreligious person is to you and to how you see yourself. Perhaps you would think about all the people you know through that identity, including the friend making the introduction, and the strength of the connection you feel to them. You may also use your assessment of the survey interviewer who asked you this question in your answer. You might observe what they look like, what they are wearing, or what they sound like, and factor this information or some other verbal or non-verbal information into your answer. In short, answering this ostensibly simple question may be quite a complex process indeed.

P. S. Brenner (✉) Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] R. T. Serpe Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. L. Reed University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_4

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Questions like the one above measure identity salience, defined as the propensity of enacting an identity across situations (Stryker, 1980). The wording is typical of questions asked on surveys and used in recent research (Brenner et al., 2014, 2018; Markowski & Serpe, 2018, 2021; Merolla et al., 2012). To measure the situational component of the concept, a battery of survey questions typically present a series of initial meetings, like the one above, varying whom one is meeting and in what context. It may be the friend of a close friend, a friend of a family member, a new co-worker, or someone else. These situations, in which one may or may not disclose or discuss an identity, operationalize identity salience. In sum, these measures attempt to tap into the individual’s propensity to invoke the identity across situations (Brenner et al., 2014, 2018; Markowski & Serpe, 2018, 2021; Merolla et al., 2012). But how well do these questions get at what the individual would actually do in the situations presented? To what extent is telling others about an identity a reasonable operationalization of identity salience across situations? That is, are these valid, unbiased measures of identity salience, and how do we know? These measurement questions motivate this study. We assess commonly used measures of identity salience, focusing on the religious identity as a case for study. Although religiosity can be a contentious topic in today’s polarized political environment, the religious identity is still instructive for study. It is a commonly held and frequently enacted identity for many Americans and it is the focus of prior methodological research (Brenner, 2011a; Hadaway et al., 1993, 1998; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). We assess a battery of religious identity salience measures using a technique called cognitive interviewing. This technique is commonly used by survey methodologists during the questionnaire design and evaluation stage, after a questionnaire has been drafted but before it has been moved into production with a probabilitybased sample (Willis, 2005, 2015). Cognitive interviewing uses flexible probing techniques and follow-up questions to uncover potentially problematic question wordings and context. By identifying questions that respondents may misinterpret and those that encourage inadequate answering strategies, survey researchers can avoid measurement errors (Beatty & Willis, 2007). Thus, we conduct cognitive interviews with a convenience sample of English-speaking adults, focusing on how they interpret and respond to a battery of religious identity salience questions. We use our findings to suggest how researchers may alter these questions to improve measurement validity and reduce measurement bias.

4.2

Background

Identity salience, a key construct in Stryker’s original conceptualization of the identity process, remains an important one in identity theory. Identity salience has been defined in two overlapping ways: as the propensity of an identity to be situationally invoked or to recognize a situation as one that is relevant for an identity

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to be invoked (Stryker, 1968, 1980; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). These definitions take slightly different perspectives, but each focuses on the main function of identity salience as a key predictor of situational behavior (Stets et al., 2020). Identity salience provides a context for the numerous identities within the self (Serpe & Stryker, 1987; Smith-Lovin, 2003), each according to its likelihood of being situationally invoked. From this perspective, the self is a kaleidoscope of identities that reflect an individual’s roles, associations, and group memberships (James, 1890; Mead, 1934; Stryker, 1980). Each identity has a different propensity of being situationally invoked. Taken together, each identity’s relative propensity of invocation comprises the salience hierarchy. Essentially, this is a set of ratings that reflect each identity’s likelihood that it will be seen as situationally relevant and called to the fore for enactment. The higher an identity’s place in the salience hierarchy, the more likely the individual will see it as relevant for performance in a situation, or the more likely a situation will be deemed as relevant for the identity (Stryker, 1980). Some highly salient identities are readily or even continuously invoked. For instance, individuals with a highly salient religious identity see a wide variety of situations as opportunities to perform that identity. These include clearly relevant situations, such as Sunday mornings for worship services (for most Christians) and mealtimes for saying grace, as well as more ambiguous situations, such as viewing a trip to the grocery store or an airplane flight as opportunities to proselytize to fellow grocery shoppers or airplane passengers. Other identities may be low on the salience hierarchy and relatively unlikely to be deemed situationally relevant. Indeed, conceptualizing the link between identity salience and situational behavior is a key purpose of identity theory. Posing Stryker’s (1968) original motivating question, why does one person use a free weekend day to go golfing with work friends while another person spends that time with their family at the zoo? In this question, the situation is the free Saturday or Sunday and at least two identities are being set into competition for enactment: one’s identity as a coworker, friend, or golfer, and one’s identity as a family member, parent, and spouse. According to the theory, the identity placed higher in the salience hierarchy—be it golfer, co-worker, friend, parent or spouse—will likely take priority and be enacted. Survey measures of identity salience typically put one or more focal identities into a set of realistic, hypothetical situational contexts, like the golfing example. Stryker’s original conceptualization of salience implies situational competition to reflect how identity enactment occurs in daily life. Some early measures asked respondents to choose between all possible pairs of identities in a set (Serpe, 1987, 1991). A subsequent approach asked respondents to imagine meeting someone new in a particular situation and to rank which of a small number of identities they would likely tell their new acquaintance about first, second, and so on. This approach yielded a ranking that reflects the salience hierarchy (Stryker & Serpe, 1994). Other measures use a 4-point rating scale to assess the propensity to tell a new acquaintance about an identity, from “almost certainly would not” to “almost certainly would” (Stryker & Serpe, 1982). The identity of the hypothetical new acquaintance mentioned in the question is manipulated by altering their characteristics and

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connection to the respondent, such as being the friend of a family member or a new co-worker. This manipulation is intended to introduce some context to the measurement of salience. The most common measures of identity salience in use today extend this approach by using 7-point to 11-point bipolar response scales with extreme endpoints labeled “certain would not tell” and “certain would tell” to capture more variation in the concept being measured, especially for highly normative and counter-normative identities (Brenner et al., 2014, 2018; Markowski & Serpe, 2018, 2021; Merolla et al., 2012). The most recent measurement innovation expands the type and amount of contextual information presented. These measures add detail to the characteristics of the hypothetical conversational partner and context to better situate measurement. Extensions include adding information about conversational order, such as the conversational partner initiating talk about an identity by asking about or disclosing that they themselves claim the identity (Yarrison, 2017). Related work focusing on disclosure of sexual identity has refocused on the relevance of the identity to one’s relationship with the conversational partner, from highly relevant, such as one’s primary care physician, to irrelevant, such as a seat mate on an airplane (BulgarMedina, 2018). Like previous research, these studies contextualize measurement with realistic but hypothetical situations and conversation partners. However, asking about hypothetical others in hypothetical situations may harm measurement validity and reliability (Converse & Presser, 1986). Survey respondents may not know how likely they are to tell others about various identities. Whether respondents are asked to rate their likelihood of telling others about single identities or multiple identities one at a time, or asked to rank a set of identities, each form of measurement of salience implies an assumption. According to Stryker and Serpe, “Clearly, we must assume that subjects’ estimates of what they would do in given circumstances reasonably reflect what they have done in the past or what they would do in the future should those circumstances arise” (1994, p. 26). This assumption may not be justified for some types of identities and in some measurement contexts. Respondents presented with a question—such as, would you spend time with your family or go golfing with work friends on a free weekend day? —may not have access to the true value of the salience of a particular identity. Therefore, they may not know which alternative they would perform in a real-life situation. Without access to this information, they may rely on other types of information when answering the question. Respondents may see the question as one that involves social norms or understandings about what is socially desirable (Tourangeau & Yan, 2007). In this case, being a good parent and spouse may be seen as a more socially desirable identity. This perception may motivate respondents to errantly report that they would use the free day to spend time with their family. Thus, pairwise comparison questions are no longer used for this reason, and designs that employ hypothetical situations may yield responses with little or no validity. However, a respondent need not consider impression management or the interviewer’s appraisal to cause response error (Brenner, 2021). Identity prominence, the extent to which individuals are attached to and value given identities and see

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themselves in terms of these identities, also may contribute error. Identity prominence is similarly arranged in a prominence hierarchy with the most strongly valued identities at the top (McCall & Simmons, 1978). Identity prominence positively influences identity salience as individuals tend to call up and enact the identities that they most value (Brenner et al., 2014, 2018). Identity prominence also may artificially influence the measurement of identity salience (Brenner, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). Survey measures may encourage respondents to reflect not only on their likelihood of invoking and performing an identity but also on the value they place on the identity. Once respondents’ attention is drawn to an identity, its prominence may influence the measurement of its salience (Stryker & Serpe, 1994). This is especially problematic for normative identities, which are typically highly valued (Markowski & Serpe, 2021). Observational and experimental research has repeatedly demonstrated that survey respondents focused on a normative identity under study tend to inflate their likelihood of performing that identity (Brenner & DeLamater, 2016a, 2014; Brenner, 2017a). Moreover, when respondents are made aware of the identity under study, they may change their behavior to be consistent with their reported salience, in contrast with respondents kept unaware of the focus of the research (Brenner & DeLamater, 2016b). In sum, if survey respondents value an identity and it is directly measured with self-reports, they may overestimate their likelihood of invoking and performing that identity. Thus, survey measurement of identity salience for those identities that are highly valued by the individual and society, such as the religious identity, athlete identity, and citizen/voter identity, may include substantial measurement bias (Brenner, 2012b; Brenner & DeLamater, 2016a, 2014). Commonly used measures of salience that ask about hypothetical situations may exacerbate the potential for bias. These types of survey questions, which ask respondents to report their probable reactions to hypothetical situations, fail to account for the situational constraints that may influence invocation of identities in everyday circumstances (Burke, 1980). Consequently, the identity they say they would enact may differ from their actual behavioral propensities in context. For instance, a question asking about the likelihood of enacting one’s religious identity by attending services or performing devotional activity does not consider the constraints of enacting the identity in one’s daily life, such as time pressure from everything else one needs and wants to accomplish on already overburdened evenings and weekends (Brenner, 2016). Although one may be relatively unlikely to invoke and perform the religious identity during a typical busy weekend, they could easily report a high level of religious identity salience to a survey question about a hypothetical situation. In so doing, the respondent adjusts their report of salience to conform with the high prominence of that identity (Stryker & Serpe, 1994). Surreptitious and nondirective measurement techniques, including time diaries and other chronological measurement methods, avoid drawing respondents’ attention to the focus of the research by foregoing direct questions about specific identities and behaviors. As a result, these techniques avoid conflating prominence and salience, and thereby avoid error (Brenner, 2011b; Brenner & DeLamater,

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2016a, 2016b). However, these measurement techniques can be difficult to employ in large surveys given their expense and time-intensiveness. Given these barriers, the usefulness of time diaries and other chronological measurement procedures in most production survey designs is limited. Recent research using intensive interviews challenges the view that direct selfreport measures of normative behaviors alone promote self-reflection, which causes the conflation of prominence and salience. Drawing out themes from a series of intensive interviews with cardiac patients conducted by former patients, Thoits (2020) argues that unexplained variation in the relationship between prominence and salience in prior survey research findings is attributable to measurement context. She argues that the norms that guide conversation in everyday contexts, such as only offering relevant or requested information, also influence the measurement of identity prominence and salience. These norms guide what individuals say and do not say within the context of everyday conversation and may prevent individuals from invoking even prominent and salient identities. However, context differs substantially between intensive interviews, like those used by Thoits, and survey interviews which are more commonly used in identity theory research. Intensive interviews are typically flexible, allowing participants a great deal of agency to guide interview topics and move the direction of the conversation. In contrast, survey interviews are standardized, and interview respondents are limited to answering questions using only provided response options, thereby fundamentally altering conversational norms (Schaeffer, 2004). The differences in situational context between these two methods may change the way identities are invoked thus influencing measurement. To better understand how context influences survey respondents’ answers, we turn to a method commonly used to evaluate survey questions: cognitive interviewing. We employ cognitive interviewing to assess commonly used self-reported survey measures of identity salience. In cognitive interviewing, each standardized survey question is asked of the respondent and their answer is recorded. These answers are then verbally probed. Probes use techniques such as “think-alouds” during which the respondent is asked to explain how they arrived at the answer, either retrospectively, after the answer is reported, or concurrently, during the initial asking-and-answering of the question. Probes also may take the form of flexible follow-up questions to better understand how the respondent understood the question and response options, recalled relevant information, chose from the response options presented, and offered a response. The goal of cognitive interviewing, as it is typically employed during the question evaluation stage of questionnaire construction, is to assess the potential of measurement error. Each respondent’s comprehension of the question and its response scale is compared to the meaning intended by the researcher (Beatty & Willis, 2007; Willis, 2005). Here we use cognitive interviewing to examine existing measures of identity salience to assess the sources of and potential for error. In addition, we assess the potential for a new set of measures. We ask, what would a new measure of salience, one that avoids these sources of error, look like? How might we revise these

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questions or construct new questions to validly and reliably measure identity salience for the religious identity as well as other identities?

4.3

Method

We recruited 14 adults from a Facebook group to cognitively test a series of questions for another research study on patient experiences with knee and hip replacement surgery. This small nonprobability sample was relatively homogenous: predominantly white, female, and between 40 and 70 years of age. The sample was, however, fairly evenly distributed across educational levels and household income categories. Nevertheless, small nonprobability samples such as ours can still be effectively used to discover potential problems with survey questions (Willis & Schechter, 1997). Each participant was offered a $40 Amazon gift code as an incentive, to be emailed at the conclusion of the interview. All interviews were conducted by telephone from January to March 2021. Interviews were recorded and professionally transcribed. Each transcription was then reviewed by the authors who compared it to the original audio recording and edited as necessary. Five questions on religious identity were included at the end of the interviews, which otherwise asked about health care and patient experiences. We cognitively tested commonly used measures of identity salience (Stryker & Serpe, 1994). These questions asked respondents to assess their likelihood of telling a series of new acquaintances about their religious identity. Responses were on an 11-point bipolar scale labeled only at the endpoints: 0 = Certain I would not and 10 = Certain I would. How certain would you be to tell a person you are meeting for the first time that you are religious? Think about meeting a coworker for the first time. How certain is it that you would tell this person that you are religious? Think about meeting a person of the opposite sex for the first time. How certain is it that you would tell this person that you are religious? Think about meeting a friend of a close friend for the first time. How certain is it that you would tell this person that you are religious? Think about meeting a friend of a family member for the first time. How certain is it that you would tell this person that you are religious? Using the 11-point scale for the religious identity salience measures, only one respondent chose the highest value, 10, denoting that she certainly would tell others she was just meeting for the first time about her religious identity. No other respondent chose a category above the midpoint, 5, a point implying indecision (may or may not tell). Indeed, most respondents chose certain I would not tell (0) on all or nearly all five questions. After their initial answers were reported and recorded,

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respondents were verbally probed to understand how they arrived at their answers and why they chose one point on the scale over another. For this analysis, we focus on answers to these questions and follow-up probes. Cognitive probes were used after the initial asking and answering of the survey questions at the discretion of the cognitive interviewer. Not every answer to these questions was probed, although every respondent was probed on two or more of these questions. Probes included retrospective think-a-loud (“Can you tell me how you chose that answer?”), follow-up questions to clarify inadequate, hedged, or multiple responses, and other tailored questions to help respondents explain how they understood and answered the question and why they chose the answer that they did. We sorted answers iteratively, looking for common responses and understandings in respondents’ narratives. First, we color-coded responses to cognitive probes to help us identify similar statements made by multiple respondents and common patterns of responses across respondents. We then sorted these into common themes that emerged between respondents. Four key themes emerged: (1) an initial reticence to talk about the religious identity, (2) the role of context and flow of the conversation, (3) respondents’ connection to and comfort with their interactional partners, and (4) the use of non-verbal communication to convey the religious identity in lieu of talking.

4.4

Results

Theme 1: (Ostensibly) Unequivocal Reticence Respondents reported that they would be unlikely to bring up their religious identities in conversation with people they were just meeting for the first time. After reporting that she certainly would not tell any new acquaintances about her religious identity, Hannah clearly stated her feelings on the matter in response to a probe: “I wouldn’t like bring something like that up in conversation.” However, most “certain I would not” or “zero” answers were even more succinct: Oscar: “Zero.” Irene: “No, not at all.” Charles: “I doubt it. Zero.” Fiona: “Nope, none.” This reticence to talk about their religious identity cut across various types of new acquaintances. Respondents’ comments generally suggest that they would hesitate to talk about their religious identity regardless of the type of new acquaintance mentioned in the question, that is, whether they are the friend of a close friend, a friend of a family member, and so on. Their reticence appeared to stem from implicit norms that topics such as religion and politics are to be avoided in casual conversational contexts.

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Hannah made clear what a number of other respondents also suggested or implied; that religion is a private matter and, like politics, not something to be brought up in polite conversation. “I kind of think religion is a very personal thing. I believe [one’s new acquaintances] have their own belief, so I would never say— it’s like politics. I wouldn’t ever bring that kind of thing up in a conversation because people can be very touchy about it.” Brenda also noted that her religious identity is a private matter: “No, because I have people of all different religions or no religion [in my social network], and that’s fine. I find my religious belief a personal thing.”

Theme 2: Conversational Context For each participant, however, the decision to mention or not mention their religious identity was not as absolute as it first appeared to be. Rather, their decision appeared to depend on the situational and interactional context. Respondents suggested that the context of the conversation primarily determined whether they would bring up their religious identity. Oscar defined context as a function of who, where, and when. “All these [answers to the survey questions] have caveats. Where do you meet this friend? Do you meet this friend of a family member at a funeral because they’re coming to comfort my sibling or are you at a graduation for one of my nieces or nephews?” For Oscar, some contexts are appropriate for disclosing and discussing one’s religious identity, and others are not. Many of the other respondents described the conversational context as a natural flow of the interaction. Hannah summed up her feelings on the topic by noting that she may be willing to talk about religion if, “something in the conversation kind of naturally brought it into the conversation. So otherwise, I wouldn’t mention it” (emphasis added). Thus, if the natural conversational flow were to churn up the topic of religion by happenstance, then Hannah and others would be willing to talk about it. But how does the conversational flow come about? Who determines or adjusts its course? For the topic of religious identity, the respondents agreed that responsibility lies with their conversational partner. Deborah, who originally responded that she would not mention her religious identity, opened the door slightly to adjusting that likelihood, depending on interactional circumstances: “Depending on the conversation, I don’t know, I mean, what, would I be very likely? Chances are, you’re not going to meet someone for the first time and they’re going to start talking about that kind of thing. So, I would say probably not very likely that I would bring that up, meeting for the first time” (emphasis added). Melissa, who also reported that she certainly would not talk about her religious identity, noted that she would only discuss the topic once it was broached by the other person. “I probably would not initiate it. . .other than if it came up in conversation like the efforts that this group, this church is doing. Right now, in justice for

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all and the movements, they’re very passionate about and no one’s left behind. And so, if that comes up in conversation I very proudly talk about this church and connect them, if they’re interested, then I would probably start talking about it, but I wouldn’t just [bring it up]” (emphasis added). Annie, who earlier in her interview noted that she sees herself as “very outspoken” and “a fighter” also suggested that, “If it came up in conversation, you know, it just depended on the circumstance of what we were meeting for, what we were talking about. I don’t swing everything around to be make it Christian, a Christianity question. But if it did come up, I have no problem at all [talking about my religious identity].” The only respondent reporting that she would certainly mention her religious identity when meeting a new person for the first time also amended her answer to reflect her dependence on conversational context. Ellen, who describes herself as “a pretty open book,” said she “wouldn’t have any problem telling [someone she’s meeting for the first time] that at all.” But she added that the context of the conversation is key. “Yes, if it came up in conversation. I’m not going to introduce this, ‘Hey. My name is Ellen and I’m Catholic’. . .I wouldn’t introduce myself that way, but I’m open” (emphasis added). Respondents described themselves as unwilling or unable to determine the course of their conversations with hypothetical new acquaintances when it comes to talking about their religious identities. They saw their own ability to bring up the topic of religious identity as low, restrained by themselves or constrained by others or social norms. Yet, each of these quotes indicates that respondents appear to be more willing to talk about their religious identity than their initial survey response indicated. However, this willingness only applies in the right circumstances. How do these circumstances come about?

Theme 3: Comfort and Connections Many respondents, even those who initially stated that they would certainly not mention their religious identity to new acquaintances, hedged their original survey responses in reaction to cognitive probes. Many implied that their initial zero-answer referred to bringing up the topic themselves, but if it came up “naturally” during the conversation, they would be comfortable or even glad to discuss it. But how do conversations arrive at these topics? What conversational or interactional context would lend itself to bringing up one’s religious identity? Respondents mentioned the importance of connections numerous times: either the pre-existing relationship with a friend or relative who engineered the hypothetical meeting of the acquaintance in the question or the burgeoning relationship with the new acquaintance. Ginny noted that her likelihood of bringing up her religious identity in a conversation with a friend of a close friend would “depend on the close [friend] circumstances” or the nature of her relationship with the “close friend”

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making the introduction. When probed on those circumstances, she clarified: “If I had a relationship with [the close friend] that had a basis in, that was faith-based or similarities, then I would.” The same would be true, she added, for a friend of a family member or others. According to Janice, her decision would depend on her comfort with her conversational partner, implying that her decision would be based on her assessment of how the disclosure would be perceived. She began by expressing reticence to share her religious identity: “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily share. I just think I’m more comfortable with people who have the same morals or whatever.” The need to feel comfortable disclosing one’s religious identity with a new acquaintance is one that was echoed by other respondents, including Fiona. “I’d love to be able to figure it out immediately, who shares my values and who doesn’t. So, I would know who I could trust and maybe who I couldn’t. But it takes a while to get there. If I’m meeting somebody for the first time, I’m not going to go, ‘Hey, I’m Greek Orthodox. How about you?’” She added, “I’ve got to feel pretty comfortable with the person before I bring up being a Christian, [and] what that means.” For Fiona to be comfortable talking about her religion, her conversational partner would need to bring it up first, because she would not risk bringing it up: “In this day and age, you never know who you might offend just by being Christian.” Comfort with disclosing one’s religious identity, however, has multiple facets, including the individual’s comfort with talking about their religious identity, the anticipated comfort or discomfort of the other person hearing about it, and the individual’s comfort with any potential response. While explicitly noting that she was contradicting what she said about being unlikely to bring up her religious identity, Melissa pointed to one particularly important contemporary context: social media. “You know, I have done it. In fact, I announced [church social justice activities] on Facebook, which I normally don’t do that kind of stuff, because I was so proud. . .So, yeah. So, I did, I guess, bring it up.” Melissa, who previously had responded that she was “certain she would not” bring up her religious identity, temporarily shifted her answer to the top of the scale to an “8 or 9,” because she remembered that she had posted the information on Facebook. Upon further reflection, she again reduced her likelihood of sharing her religious identity back down to the bottom of the scale. She then clarified that she was not talking about her religious identity on Facebook but rather the social justice work of her church. Melissa closed the topic by returning to her prior answer: “Honestly, I don’t have enough education on Christianity. I mean, I’m a believer and all of that, but I wouldn’t say that I can tell you things in the Bible, so I don’t feel like I know enough to carry a conversation.” And with that further consideration, she dialed her response back to zero: certain she would not. Melissa’s final comment on her lack of knowledge suggests that she felt unable to defend her religious identity if her conversational partner were to become defensive or aggressive in the conversation.

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Theme 4: Non-Verbal Identity Enactment Brenda encapsulated many of the prior respondents’ ideas in a single statement, re-emphasizing that she would be unlikely to talk about her religious identity until she developed a relationship with her new acquaintance. “No, I wouldn’t think, I think it would be zero. . . until you get to know a person. If the subject came up, that would be totally different, but sort of, I wouldn’t volunteer any information. I don’t think it’s needed.” Notably, Brenda concluded her statement with a sentiment shared by other respondents: she does not need to tell because her interactional partners will know anyway. “They would get an impression of me and based, I guess, based that on their impression of me, whether I’m a good person or not.” Janice, too, said that she, “usually wouldn’t [have] a reason to need to do that. I would like them to see it in my personality more than I have to verbalize it.” Charles expressed a similar opinion. While his original answer was that he “certainly would not” tell, he was relatively confident that his new acquaintance would know anyway. “At the end of the day, people are judged by character and your character is going to define that. So, I don’t need to tell. . .”. In these and other interviews (Brenner, 2017b), cognitive interview respondents verbally conflate cause (being a religious person) and effect (being a “good person” or a moral person). They believe their religion, per se, is not visible, but it is revealed in how they comport themselves. Many respondents noted that they could successfully enact a religious identity without directly saying “I’m a Catholic” or “I’m a Baptist.” As Annie explained, “I guess it would come out but not [by] me saying I’m a Christian. It would come out in other ways.” Thus, telling others about her religious identity is unnecessary for Annie and the others because their new acquaintances would see their religious identities in their self-presentation. But Annie took her response about non-verbal enactment of her religious identity a step further. “I definitely don’t hide it. I wear shirts and clothes and stuff to say, you know like, ‘I stand for the flag and I kneel for the cross.’ And I wear crosses. So, I’m not going to hide from it but then again, I don’t run around saying, ‘Do you believe in Christ? Do you believe in Christ?’” Thus, numerous respondents discounted the need to verbally communicate their religious identity to their new acquaintances. Instead, they believe that they signal their religious identity to others via non-verbal channels, such as behaviors, clothing, and jewelry. Like verbal communication, these non-verbal channels are used to transmit identity-relevant information about who the individuals are and which identities they value. In sum, respondents may opt for a “certain I would not tell” answer not because they do not want to tell, or do not value their religious identities, but because they know they are conveying their religious identities in other ways. In summary, respondents reported initially that they would be reticent to talk about their religious identities with new acquaintances. Yet, their hesitation would be overcome if the topic came up naturally in the conversation, typically as a result of the interactional partner bringing it up. Importantly, the respondents noted that they would only proceed down this conversational route if they felt comfortable

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enough to share their religious identity, given what they know about the other person. They added, however, that their new acquaintance would probably already know, having gleaned their religious identity from their nonverbal identity enactment. Taken together, these findings call into question whether the religious identity salience measures commonly used today validly reflect their construct. Helpfully, these findings also point toward ways to improve conventional salience measures.

4.5

Discussion

To return to the original research question: what have we learned from these cognitive interviews that will help us to improve measures of identity salience in general and religious identity salience in particular? Four highly interconnected themes emerged from the analysis of respondent narratives: (1) ostensible reticence to disclose one’s religious identity, (2) the function of conversational context and (3) comfort with and connection to the conversational partner in encouraging identity disclosure, and (4) non-verbal identity enactment that can make identity disclosure unnecessary. Taken together, these themes suggest ways to improve current measures of identity salience. The first theme, ostensibly unequivocal reticence, suggests that salience measures do not validly reflect their construct. Respondents were unambiguous in their initial answers, nearly all indicating that they were highly unlikely to tell a new acquaintance about their religious identity. However, after further consideration, respondents were not as unlikely to disclose as they initially stated. Depending on the context, they are willing, some even eager, to talk about their religious identity. Oscar put it succinctly: “I won’t bring it up but I won’t not bring it up.” Expressed reticence may be a function of the religious identity given current societal polarization. Respondents repeatedly suggested that they perceive the religious identity as counter-normative, viewed negatively by others in society in general. Respondents anticipated disapproval, hostility, or rejection from their hypothetical acquaintances. These negative reactions may reflect a “persecution complex” found in the teachings and beliefs of some Christian churches as congregants feel increasingly unwelcome in a secularizing country and world (Braunstein, n.d.; Castelli, 2017; Jones et al., 2017). Similarly, some individuals with sexual or gender minority identities express a reticence to mention their identity in a variety of contexts for fear of reprisal or harm, especially for those living in rural areas and southern states (Bulgar-Medina, 2018). Yet, unlike some people with counternormative identities, our respondents expressed that they and others in their proximate social structure, which includes one’s immediate family and close friends, strongly value their religious identity, even if it is one that is disdained by society in general (Long, 2017). The second theme that emerged from the analysis of the narratives was the context of the conversation. Respondents used nearly identical explanations of what must happen in their conversation with a hypothetical new acquaintance for

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them to disclose their religious identity. Despite being adamant that they would not bring up the topic, respondents noted that they would be willing or even glad to discuss their religious identity if it “came up naturally in the conversation.” When probed further, respondents were unable or unwilling to guide these hypothetical conversations, noting that their new acquaintance would have to raise religion as a topic. Yet, it is likely that some number of these respondents would be willing to guide conversations in more normal interactional situations toward religious topics and their own religious identities. Recent research has begun to further integrate context into measures of salience, adding information about conversational order (who brought up the topic and how) and the relevance of telling the conversational partner about the identity (BulgarMedina, 2018; Yarrison, 2017). These newly developed contextual measures add additional detail, but still omit other contextual factors for which respondents must make their own assumptions to fill in the missing information, thus allowing for idiosyncratic understandings. Yarrison finds that additional detail encourages respondents with relatively religiously homogenous social networks to respond that they would disclose their religious identity. In research on sexual identity salience, Bulgar-Medina (2018) found the opposite, that respondents who initially reported freely disclosing their sexual identity became more reticent when context was added in subsequent questions and cognitive probes. A feeling of comfort with and connection to their conversational partner was the third theme. Respondents expressed that they would become more likely to talk about their religious identity with their hypothetical new acquaintance as the conversation develops and their level of comfort with that person grows. Thus, a measure that explicitly mentions or manipulates conversation duration could account for time spent getting to know the new acquaintance. Respondents also noted that disclosure of the identity would be hastened if they suspected their conversation partner shared it. Clearly, these themes of reticence, context, comfort, and connection are intertwined in multiple ways. Individuals will likely experience less reticence, more comfort, and a greater connection or rapport with someone like themselves. Indeed, individuals may be likely to share multiple commonalities with others already connected within their social networks through second-degree connections, such as friends of close friends or family members (McPherson et al., 2001; Stets et al., 2021). The context of the location also matters for comfort and reticence. Oscar referred to the specific location of the conversation in terms of an event (“a funeral . . . or a graduation”) or physical space as being important for his decision. Community context, however, is likely just as important as the situational location (Rose & Brenner, 2021). For example, bringing up one’s religious or sexual identity in conversation with a new acquaintance at a small gathering in the Bible Belt is different from doing so at a similar function in San Francisco. The context of place matters for the comfort of disclosing and discussing these identities, and likely others. Finally, respondents suggested that they do not need to rely on “telling” others about their religious identity to make an identity claim. Rather, they use non-verbal

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communication, the fourth theme, to let their new acquaintance know about their religious identity without the use of words. Recent work has begun to detail how non-verbal identity salience can be measured, including self-reported measures about self-presentation of sexual identity via clothing, jewelry, mannerisms, and so on (Bulgar-Medina, 2018). The religious identity could be similarly conveyed using items appropriate for one’s religious tradition (e.g., wearing a cross, yarmulke, or hijab). Taken together, these findings suggest that the current measures that focus on verbal telling, and intentional disclosure may be incomplete for measuring identity salience in general or religious identity salience, in particular.

Potential Revisions to the Measure These findings strongly suggest the need for revised identity salience questions that can address these themes to the extent that they contribute to measurement error. Respondents answered the initial questions unequivocally although with substantial error, initially reporting a much lower salience than emerged in their narratives. Indeed, some of our respondents arguably have religious identities with very high salience even though our survey measures of religious identity salience have failed to measure it well. This measurement error focused on the conversational context and on the respondent’s connection to and comfort with their new acquaintance. Findings on conversational context identify the limitations of the contextual factors that are currently used in current measures of identity salience. Simply mentioning the respondent’s connection to a conversational partner (e.g., a friend of a close friend) does not provide enough contextual information achieve valid and reliable measurement. Instead, respondents need more detailed information about their connection to the individual making the introduction to their new acquaintance, common characteristics, and other situational details that would give the respondent an adequate amount of information to make a valid and reliable judgment about their comfort in the situation. Finally, any newly developed or revised questions should also take non-verbal communication into consideration. These forms of identity enactment are important, given the wide variety of options and their common use, such as clothing, jewelry, mannerisms, physical appearance, grooming, and so on. Vignettes offer a potentially better measure of identity salience, allowing the inclusion and situational manipulation of multiple contextual factors. A question measuring the likelihood of disclosing an identity to a friend of a close friend would include multiple pieces of the situation which would be manipulated in a factorial design. Included factors would be determined by theory and prior research, such as the location or setting, the information being disclosed by the conversational partner, details about the close friend making the introduction, and the quality of the conversation thus far. For example, a relatively simple vignette design might look something like the following:

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P. S. Brenner et al. Imagine you met a friend of a close friend at [location factor]. Your friend introduced you as [relationship factor] and introduced your new acquaintance as [other’s details factor]. You and your new acquaintance have been talking for [conversation duration factor] and the conversation has been [conversation quality factor]. Your new acquaintance [religious identity mention factor]. How likely would you be to tell your new acquaintance about your religious identity?

This vignette has factors that manipulate location (e.g., church function or cocktail party), relationship with the close friend (e.g., friends from church or school), close friend’s relationship with the new acquaintance (e.g., friends from church or school), duration of the conversation (e.g., more or less than 10 min), quality of the conversation (e.g., friendly or hostile), and whether the conversational partner brought up their religious identity (e.g., brought up or did not bring up) as suggested by the findings of the current and recent research. However, two important critiques suggest caution before developing vignette measures of identity salience. First, adequately covering the conversational context could result in more questions than we could reasonably expect a respondent to be able to answer (Atzmüller & Steiner, 2010; Mutz, 2011). In the example above, the six two-level factors generate a 2×2×2×2×2×2 design with 26, or 64, unique combinations. Although each respondent would answer only a subset, such a design would require a large sample size to achieve adequate statistical power. Any additional factor to account for other contexts, such as non-verbal communication, or additional levels to these factors would further increase the demands of the design. Secondly, like current measures of salience, vignettes rely on respondents’ ability to accurately imagine and validly predict and report their behavior in hypothetical situations. As such, they may not fit well with measurement of some identities. Alternatively, measures of salience could focus on time spent, in minutes or as a proportion of a total, in actual behavior (Burke, 2023). Respondents could be asked to recall interactions during a theoretically and methodologically appropriate reference period, such as the past month or year. Interactions could be reported using either a brief list of close-ended options or an open-ended format. For each listed interaction, respondents would be asked to report which identity was linked to the interaction (e.g., talking with one’s spouse as enacting the spousal identity). Two or three of the reported interactions could be randomly selected from this list for followup questions to detail the full context of the situation. Questions rooted in real situations would provide information about the situational enactment of identities. And of course, identities are performed in many ways in addition to verbal disclosure. This approach could be altered to focus on other forms of identity enactment. Such a behavior-focused approach would offer some benefits over vignettes, primarily avoiding questions about probable behavior in hypothetical situations. However, this approach would likely be more time consuming than current measures, still reliant on self-reports, and potentially vulnerable to social desirability biases, memory errors, and other measurement problems.

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Limitations and Future Directions Two important limitations of this study should be mentioned. Unfortunately, our convenience sample of respondents is small and homogenous by race and age, although heterogenous by education and income. The lack of racial/ethnic and age diversity is an important limitation and one often encountered by research using qualitative techniques and small, nonprobability samples. However, the lack of diversity in the current sample does not necessarily invalidate our findings. Cognitive interviews are typically conducted on a small sample of individuals from the population from which the full survey sample will be drawn. The technique has the same limitations of any small sample technique, namely an inability to generalize. Smaller samples of cognitive interviews illuminate relatively fewer problems than larger samples (Blair & Conrad, 2011), perhaps missing more subtle or nuanced problems. Nevertheless, cognitive interviews have uncovered sources of error and helped improve survey measures (Willis & Schechter, 1997). The limitations of using a small, relatively homogenous, volunteer sample of predominantly middle-aged white English-speaking adults are clear, but they would be more troubling if we were attempting to defend the validity and reliability of the tested measures. However, this is not the case. To the contrary, even with a rather demographically homogenous sample, we discovered several potential problems and identified possible solutions. Additional research with a larger, more heterogeneous sample with racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity would further clarify the potentials for error in these measures and possible solutions. Notably, however, our findings and recommendations align well with and expand on those from prior research using survey interviews (Yarrison, 2017), cognitive interviews (BulgarMedina, 2018), and qualitative interviews (Thoits, 2020). Yet, comparing these findings to prior research raises a second limitation. In prior work using cognitive interviews, religious identity salience as initially reported included positive bias, as respondents reported higher salience than in responses emerging from cognitive probes (Brenner, 2017a). This prior work used a measure of salience that was strongly behavioral—frequency of attending religious services. Here, using conversational measures of salience, a negative bias was found as respondents initially reported relatively lower salience but increased it in response to the cognitive probes. The present findings resemble a counter-normative identity, suggesting that the extent to which an identity is perceived to be normative or counter-normative may be influenced by contextual factors including those related to intermediate social structure, such as one’s region, city, or neighborhood (Long, 2017; Rose & Brenner, 2021; Yarrison, 2017). For instance, a religious identity may be perceived as normative in a small Southern town but as counter-normative in Boston or San Francisco. Similarly, one’s sexual or gender identity, such as queer or nonbinary, may be normative in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco but counter-normative a hundred miles away in California’s Central Valley. Even those identities widely perceived to be normative, such as a parent or professional identity, may also be seen as counter-normative and may intentionally not be

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disclosed in some situations. Although parents commonly invoke their parent identity in conversations with new acquaintances, they may intentionally leave it undisclosed when they meet someone who cannot have children (Long, 2017). Similarly, some professionals, such as police officers or public health officials, may intentionally not disclose their professional identity in some contexts. The reported salience of normative identities is likely to have substantial positive bias and the reported salience of counter-normative identities is likely to have substantial negative bias. These types of identities may benefit from measures focused on actual recent behavior in real, not hypothetical, situations. Such an approach may reduce the potential for measurement errors caused by conflating prominence and salience (Stryker & Serpe, 1994). For identities that are neither strongly normative or counternormative, measures based on actual behavior seem unlikely to harm validity and reliability and may improve measurement. However, future research should test measures of salience that include additional contextual factors with a variety of identities and with diverse samples.

References Atzmüller, C., & Steiner, P. M. (2010). Experimental vignette studies in survey research. Methodology, 6(3), 128–138. Beatty, P. C., & Willis, G. B. (2007). Research synthesis: The practice of cognitive interviewing. Public Opinion Quarterly, 71(2), 287–311. Blair, J., & Conrad, F. G. (2011). Sample size for cognitive interview petesting. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75(4), 636–658. Braunstein, R. (n.d.). Embattled and radicalizing: How perceived repression shapes white evangelicalism. In A. Sokhey & P. Djupe (Eds.), Trump and the transformation of religion and politics. Temple University Press. Brenner, P. S. (2021). Advancing theories of socially desirable responding: How identity processes influence answers to “sensitive questions.”. In P. S. Brenner (Ed.), Understanding survey methodology: Sociological theory and applications (pp. 45–65). Springer. Brenner, P. S. (2017a). Narratives of error from cognitive interviews of survey questions about normative behavior. Sociological Methods & Research, 46(3), 540–564. Brenner, P. S. (2017b). How religious identity shapes survey responses. In R. Finke & C. Bader (Eds.), Faithful measures: New methods in the measurement of religion (pp. 21–47). NYU Press. Brenner, P. S. (2016). Time as a situational constraint on role-identity performance. In J. E. Stets & R. T. Serpe (Eds.), New directions in identity theory and research (pp. 279–307). Oxford University Press. Brenner, P. S. (2012a). Identity as a determinant of the overreporting of church attendance in Canada. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 51(2), 377–385. Brenner, P. S. (2012b). Overreporting of voting participation as a function of identity salience. Social Science Journal, 49(4), 421–429. Brenner, P. S. (2011a). Investigating the biasing effect of identity importance in self-reports of socially desirable behavior. Sociological Focus, 44(1), 55–75. Brenner, P. S. (2011b). Identity importance and the overreporting of religious service attendance: Multiple imputation of religious attendance using American time use study and the general social survey. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50(1), 103–115.

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Chapter 5

Exploring Current Gender Meanings: Creating a New Gender Identity Scale Jan E. Stets, Melanie Kushida, Phoenicia Fares, and Monica M. Whitham

5.1

Introduction

One way of identifying current meanings of gender in society is by asking individuals to describe each gender. Two classic gender inventories for doing so emerged during the 1970s: the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) (Spence & Helmreich, 1978) and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Bem, 1974) (Donnelly & Twenge, 2017; Hoffman, 2001; Twenge, 1997). To study gender identity, identity theorists typically have used the PAQ (Burke et al., 1988; Stets, 1995, 1997; Stets & Biga, 2003; Stets & Burke, 1996). Other researchers have used either the PAQ or BSRI (Wood & Eagly, 2015). Identity theorists have asked respondents to think about each item in the PAQ and identify the degree to which they think each characteristic describes themselves. This provides their self-meanings, their gender identity. It is how masculine and/or feminine they see themselves. At issue is whether one’s gender identity today is based on gender meanings that are still current in the culture. We might expect differences as to what it means to be a man or woman since the 1970s, since women have increased their participation in higher education and the labor force (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017), and men have increased their participation in the domestic sphere (Pew Research Center, 2013). However, following a shift toward gender egalitarianism during the 1970s and 1980s, a countervailing shift toward gender traditionalism in the 1990s (Cotter et al., 2011) may have reversed any changes in gender views.

J. E. Stets (✉) · M. Kushida · P. Fares University of California, Riverside, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. M. Whitham Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_5

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In the current study, we examine whether the gender descriptors or meanings in the PAQ and BSRI inventories still apply today. We find that gender meanings have changed over time, and we develop a new gender identity scale to reflect these new meanings. This new scale can serve as the basis for future research in which the construction of gender identity more accurately depicts gender meanings in contemporary American society. To investigate current meanings of gender in the U.S. we sample 947 students from two universities. Consistent with the development of the PAQ and BSRI, we use college students as informants of the culture (Heise, 2010). We acknowledge that gender meanings may differ across the lifecourse or across age groups. As students graduate, enter the workforce, marry, and become parents, they may change their earlier conceptions of gender. However, younger generations are shaped by their parents’ gender perceptions, which likely will influence their later work and family life. Whereas most students in the PAQ and BSRI studies were White, our sample is racially diverse and includes Whites, Latinx, Asians, and Blacks. Thus, while we hold constant age and education across the decades, we introduce greater variability in race and socioeconomic status compared to past samples.1 Hence, differences in the student samples may partly explain any gender differences in meanings across time. Nevertheless, this diversity is a strength, as it better reflects the current diversity of the U.S. population. As we discuss in detail later and following identity theory on the measurement of meaning (Burke & Tully, 1977), we follow a two-step procedure for measuring gender meanings. First, we ask respondents to identify the characteristics that describe men and women. This captures gender meanings from the respondents viewpoint rather than researchers offering their own meanings of gender from their own sense of culture or from prior research. We compare these contemporary gender meanings to those of the PAQ and BSRI. We then isolate the meanings that characterize men and women and group them into categories that previous research indicates distinguishes men from women, such as agency, communion, and competence (Ellemers, 2018; Koenig & Eagly, 2014; Sczesny et al., 2019). Second, and in keeping with how the PAQ was developed, we use the meanings on which men and women differ significantly to create three new gender identity semantic differential scales: a masculine, feminine, and masculine—feminine scale, in which contrasting meanings are placed on either end of each of the scales. The construction of these bi-polar scales reflects the identity theory idea that meaning can only be understood in relation to its opposite (Osgood et al., 1957), and thus meaning should be measured accordingly. Importantly, our aim is not to reinforce a gender dichotomy but to identify current cultural meanings surrounding the genders that people draw upon to create their gender identity. In turn, the meanings in people’s gender identity will guide how

1 In this paper, we do not examine racial or class variations in gender meanings. We leave this to future research.

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they behave within and across societal institutions, organizations, and interactions. Since, in identity theory, people aim to make consistent their behavioral meanings with their identity standard meanings (Burke & Stets, 2022), our understanding of men’s and women’s behavior at the micro, meso, and macro levels of social reality will be better informed by a more accurate understanding of the gender meanings in the culture that give rise to gender identity standards.

5.2

Theory

Gender To understand contemporary gender meanings, we first consider how gender meanings may have shifted in the U.S. over time as men’s and women’s activities have evolved. Over the past 40+ years, men’s and women’s participation in the public and private spheres has changed (Cotter et al., 2011; England, 2010; England et al., 2020; Scarborough et al., 2018). Women now earn college degrees more than men (England et al., 2020). Fields of study, however, remain gendered, with men more likely to specialize in science, math, and engineering, and women more likely to specialize in the humanities and social sciences (Kroska, 2014; McDaniel & Phillips, 2018; Okahana & Zhou, 2018). Women’s increased education has led to a rise in their labor force participation (Pew Research Center, 2013; United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017) and a shift toward gender equality in the public sphere. However, women still largely enter female-dominated occupations that offer few opportunities for advancement (Kalev & Deutsch, 2018). Women in male-dominated occupations are less likely to assume high positions such as CEO (Kroska, 2014), and they tend to enter female-dominated subfields such as gynecology or pediatrics in medicine (Levanon & Grusky, 2016). Alongside women’s gains in the workforce, men have increased their work in the private sphere. Men do more housework and spend more time with their children (Pew Research Center, 2013). However, women still do more housework and childcare than men (Besen-Cassino, 2019; Bianchi et al., 2012; Pew Research Center, 2013; Sullivan, 2018). Hence, although many activities have changed for the genders, much is still the same. Some have argued that the movement toward egalitarianism has slowed or stalled in recent times (Cotter et al., 2011; England, 2010; England et al., 2020; Scarborough et al., 2018). More ambivalent gender views have emerged that support egalitarianism in the public sphere and traditionalism in the private sphere (Cotter et al., 2011; Pepin & Cotter, 2018; Scarborough et al., 2018). The steady liberalization of the 1970s and 1980s, especially for women, halted by the mid-1990s. An antifeminist backlash emerged, perhaps fueled by women experiencing “career stress” and trying to “achieve the impossible” by juggling work and family (Cotter et al., 2011).

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By the mid-1990s, a new cultural frame that combined elements of both traditional familialism and feminist egalitarianism emerged. Women could choose the stay-at-home mother role or the independent, worker role, and each was an acceptable, feminist decision. However, the rise of this new cultural frame, “egalitarian essentialism,” corresponded to a decline in married women’s labor force participation, a slowing of women’s entry into male-dominated occupations, a halt in the narrowing of the gender gap in earnings, and domestic work stopping short of gender equality (Cotter et al., 2011). Nonetheless, despite the rise in ambivalent gender attitudes supporting equality in the public sphere and opposing gender equality in the private sphere, nearly two-thirds of Americans supported egalitarianism in both spheres (Scarborough et al., 2018). Still, pressures toward separate spheres remain. The rise of overwork in the 1990s helps explain the stalled revolution in egalitarianism (Kalev & Deutsch, 2018; Shu & Meagher, 2018). Since women have greater responsibility for domestic labor than men, the demand to extend working hours may push women out of the labor force. Alternatively, women may support their spouses’ longer hours by picking up the slack at home. Either way, the rise of overwork puts pressure on men and women to return to “separate spheres.”

Gender Meanings Given the gender patterns in the public and private sphere, at issue is how young adults attribute meanings to men and women today compared to the past. Meaning is the act of making sense of ourselves, others, and our surroundings. It is a mediation response between an initial perception of a stimulus and the response that the stimulus calls forth (Burke & Stets, 2022; Osgood et al., 1957). When the stimulus is the self, meanings describe who we are in an identity. Meanings comprise the standard in any identity. People seek to behave in ways consistent with these identity standard meanings. When the stimulus is others rather than the self, as when people give meaning to men and women in society rather than giving meaning to themselves as a man or a woman, they are making sense of the genders in society by characterizing them in particular ways. This helps establish the meanings of gender in our culture. Studies find that men are viewed as more agentic and competent than women, and women are viewed as more communal than men (Ellemers, 2018; Koenig & Eagly, 2014; Sczesny et al., 2019). Agency involves free, independent, and goal-directed actions. It often involves making decisions and being aggressive, ambitious, arrogant, confident, courageous, critical, decisive, demanding, hardworking, independent, selfish, strong, and stubborn (Eagly et al., 2020). Competence, which is related to agency, is associated with ability, skill, and efficacy (Fiske et al., 2007). It includes being creative, intelligent, logical, organized, detail-oriented, and accepting of new ideas (Eagly et al., 2020). Communal action is interdependent and relational rather than independent and individualistic. Communal characteristics include a

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concern for the welfare of others, handling people well, and being affectionate, compassionate, emotional, generous, honest, nurturing, outgoing, polite, wellmannered, sensitive, and unselfish (Eagly et al., 2020). Additionally, women tend to be viewed more positively than men (Eagly & Mladinic, 1994). Meaning may be understood along three dimensions: evaluation (good/badness), potency (strong/weak), and activity (active/passive) (Burke & Stets, 2022; Osgood et al., 1957). Women are evaluated as having higher levels of goodness, while men are evaluated as more potent or powerful (Langford & MacKinnon, 2000). Given women’s increased education and employment over time, women may be perceived as more competent, but not more agentic, given continued sex segregation of occupations. Women also remain underrepresented in leadership roles in the economy in which agency would operate, such as being aggressive, confident, and demanding (Eagly et al., 2020; Fisk & Ridgeway, 2018). Men’s increased role in domestic labor and childcare may result in gains in communal characteristics. However, since women remain primarily responsible for the private sphere, they may still be defined in communal terms (Eagly et al., 2020). In a recent, large-scale meta-analysis examining changes in gender views over time, respondents were given a list of characteristics that were agency-directed, competence-oriented, and communal-focused, and they were asked to identify which characteristics were truer for men, women, or equally true of both (Eagly et al., 2020). There was a small male advantage in agency, a female advantage in communion, and gender equality in competence. Instead of giving respondents a list of characteristics that might apply to men and women, we ask respondents to come up with their own descriptors of men and women. In this way, respondents are implicitly drawing on contemporary culture and their understandings of men and women. Asking respondents to provide their own words accords with the identity theory assumption that to capture meaning, we need to discover the descriptions in use in the population (Burke & Tully, 1977). In this research, we examine whether agency, competence, and communion emerge from respondents’ words. Multiple words may describe the same meaning dimension. For example, in this study, the words aggressive, passive-aggressive, violent, and explosive characterize the meaning dimension of aggressive. The words arrogant, cocky, conceited, and brash describe arrogance. The words egotistical, vain, narcissistic, selfish, selfabsorbed, and self-centered represent egotistical. Furthermore, different meaning dimensions may share a more general meaning dimension. For example, the meaning dimensions of aggressive, arrogance, and egotistical, which were used to describe men more often than women, constitute the more general meaning dimension of agency (Eagly et al. 2020). Words that describe men and women may reflect their different roles in society (Eagly et al., 2004; Sczesny et al., 2019). Both identity theory and social role theory maintain that people observe the everyday behaviors of men and women in different roles, and based on these observations, develop a vocabulary of how to characterize them (Eagly et al., 2004; Sczesny et al., 2019). People also draw upon widely known

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cultural stereotypes about gender to describe men’s and women’s behavior (Ridgeway, 2011). Because women take greater responsibility for the private, home sphere, displays of care, sensitivity, and friendliness signal communal attributes. When women participate in the labor force, jobs in service, education, and health care reinforce communal qualities. Since men have greater responsibility for the public, work sphere, displays of strength, dominance, and confidence signal agency and competence. The gender stereotypes act as normative expectations that often result in societal backlash if individuals behave contrary to them. Given the above, we examine whether descriptors of communalism predominate for women and agency descriptors predominate for men. We also explore whether competence is a meaning shared by the genders in the current culture, and whether men or women are described more positively.

Measuring Gender Meanings Our two-step procedure for measuring gender meanings begins with capturing how our respondents view men and women in society. Following identity theory on the measurement of meaning (Burke & Tully, 1977), we ask respondents to identify the qualities that they think represent men and women by finishing the statement “Men usually are. . .” and “Women usually are. . .” This identifies the meanings of gender in the culture from the respondents’ viewpoint rather than from researchers’ viewpoint. Second, we create three semantic differential scales of words that respondents most frequently used to characterize men and women. Following the development of the PAQ (Spence & Helmreich, 1978), we create masculine, feminine, and masculine-feminine scales. For the masculine scale, meanings (descriptors) on one end of the continuum reflect what respondents identified as masculine. The opposite end of the continuum for each meaning is its antonym. It is not being masculine, but this does not mean being feminine. Similarly, the feminine scale has meanings (descriptors) on one end that respondents identified as feminine, with their opposite on the other end or not being feminine; again, this does not mean being masculine. The masculine-feminine scale has meanings of being masculine on one end of the scale and feminine on the other end. These bi-polar scales reflect the symbolic interactionist idea that meaning is contrastive (Osgood et al., 1957). Identity researchers have used such bi-polar sets of items to study the meanings of one’s gender identity (Burke & Tully, 1977), student identity (Reitzes & Burke, 1980), ethnic identity (White & Burke, 1987), environmental identity (Stets and Biga 2003), and moral identity (Stets & Carter, 2011). We first analyzed whether the words that our respondents offer to describe men and women have changed over the past 40+ years. We assess this change by comparing respondents’ words with those found in the classic masculine and

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feminine inventories: the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) (Spence & Helmreich, 1978) and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Bem, 1974). The descriptors in both the BSRI and PAQ are positively valued for either sex but are more normative for either men or women. These are known as the masculine and feminine items, respectively. What underlies the PAQ and BSRI is slightly different. In the PAQ, the important underlying dimension is gender identity, one’s self-view of being masculine or feminine (Spence, 1985). However, rather than referring to broad categories of masculinity and femininity, the PAQ descriptors operationalize instrumentality/ dominance and expressivity/warmth in men and women, respectively (Spence et al., 1974). These characteristics contribute to one’s gender identity, but do not completely define it. In the BSRI, the important underlying dimension is gender schematization, the tendency to see the world in gender terms (Bem, 1993). Through socialization, children learn what it means to be masculine and feminine (gender schemas) and then use these gender schemas to categorize their world and themselves, and to guide their behavior (Bem, 1981). The PAQ items were developed from about 130 descriptors derived from a sex-role stereotypes survey (Rosenkrantz et al., 1968).2 These descriptive stereotypes were given to college men and women in which they were to think about the typical adult male, typical adult female, or ideal individual of each gender. They were to rate each descriptor as to how much it represented each gender (Spence & Helmreich, 1978). The final PAQ was comprised of 24 bipolar opposites that contained three subscales: a masculine scale (masculine on one end and not masculine on the other) (8 bipolar opposites), a feminine scale (feminine on one end and not feminine on the other end) (another 8 bipolar opposites), and a masculine-feminine scale (masculine on one end and feminine on the other end) (a final set of 8 bipolar opposites).3 Students judged the items on the masculine scale to be stereotypically more characteristic of men, but socially desirable in both sexes. They evaluated the items on the feminine scale as more characteristic of women, but socially desirable in both sexes. Finally, for the masculine-feminine scale, students saw the ideal man falling toward the stereotypic masculine pole and the ideal woman falling toward the stereotypic feminine pole. The complete set of PAQ masculine and feminine characteristics are in the top portion of Appendix 1. For the BSRI, Bem and her students identified 200 characteristics as both positive in value and either masculine or feminine in tone, and 200 positive and negative characteristics that appeared to be neither masculine nor feminine. A sample of 100 undergraduate male and female students were instructed to rate each prescriptive

2

The items Rosenkrantz and his colleagues used in their survey in the 1960s were obtained by asking college students to list characteristics typically associated with men and women. 3 Sixteen items for men represent one end of the masculine scale (8 items) and the masculine end of the masculine-feminine scale (8 items). Sixteen items for women represent one end of the feminine scale (8 items) and the feminine end of the masculine-feminine scale (8 items).

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gender item on a 7-point scale from Not at all desirable to Extremely desirable for a man or a woman (Bem, 1974). A characteristic was placed on the masculine scale or the feminine scale depending on whether students judged it as significantly more desirable for one sex than another in American society. A characteristic was considered neutral if students judged the characteristic as no more desirable for one sex than for the other. The complete set of BSRI masculine, feminine, and neutral characteristics are in the bottom portion of Appendix 1. Since the early 1970s, many researchers have employed the PAQ and BSRI in their research on gender (Donnelly & Twenge, 2017; Twenge, 1997; Wood & Eagly, 2015) and assessments of gender identity along agentic and communal lines (Sczesny et al., 2019). By the late 1990s at least 59 studies had used the BSRI, and 39 studies had used the PAQ (Twenge, 1997). Identity theorists have used the PAQ in gender research (Burke & Cast, 1997; Burke et al., 1988; Stets, 1995, 1997; Stets & Biga, 2003; Stets & Burke, 1996). Researchers have tracked changes in individuals rating on masculinity and femininity since the early 1970s (Donnelly & Twenge, 2017; Twenge, 1997). Over the past 20 years, the pattern suggest that women have been moving away from stereotypically feminine meanings and closer to stereotypically masculine meanings, for example, being more independent. To summarize, conceptions of masculinity and femininity may have changed over time, so researchers may need to update views of gender (Donnelly & Twenge, 2017). We do that in this research. However, consistent with identity theory measurement, we capture gender meanings not by relying on our own understanding of gender or what exists in the literature as was done in the PAQ, BSRI, and in a recent, large-scale analysis of changes in gender views (Eagly et al., 2020). Instead, we elicit the current cultural meanings of gender from the population in which they are held, our respondents, who are young, racially diverse, educated adults in American society. We compare contemporary descriptors with the classic descriptors of gender in the PAQ and BSRI. We further assess whether the descriptors reflect more general meanings of agency, competence, and communion, dimensions that distinguish men and women in recent research. Upon obtaining the meanings that differentiate between men and women, we use these meanings to develop a gender identity scale for future research.

5.3

Method

To explore current cultural descriptions of gender, 947 students at two large universities were administered an online survey during 2019–2021. They answered open-ended questions on gender, and then they provided answers to a series of closed-ended background questions on themselves.

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Measures Gender Descriptions Since meaning is contrastive, respondents were asked to list various words that they thought described men in comparison to women and women in comparison to men. We provided the prompt, “Usually men are” followed by a textbox asking respondents to complete the sentence by listing various adjectives, attributes, or characteristics that they thought described men as different from women. Parallel instructions followed the prompt, “Usually women are.” Respondents listed as many descriptors as they wanted for men and women, respectively. Some respondents provided lengthier descriptions containing phrases and sometimes even sentences to each prompt. To organize the data into a manageable set of meanings for analysis, we reduced all lengthy descriptions to one- or two-word descriptions. For example, not afraid to show emotions and more extroverted with their emotions were coded emotional, while closed off emotionally and less likely to be open about emotions were coded unemotional. Logically intelligent and intelligent while suffering through many daily difficulties were coded intelligent. Attempting to demonstrate dominance and overly dominant were coded dominant, while submissive to people in power and more submissive were coded submissive. Whenever possible, we used the exact descriptor that the respondent used and avoided using substitute descriptors. Table 5.1 shows the top 50% of the words for “Men usually are” and “Women usually are” in the order of the frequency with which respondents used it. We label these “unconsolidated,” as they are respondents’ descriptors before we combined synonymous words. Interestingly, the remaining 50% of the unconsolidated words for both men and women consisted of at least 450+ different words (N = 491 for men and N = 462 for women). The top 50% list of words used to describe men and women in Table 5.1 (N = 31) comprised about 6% of the total number of different words used to characterize each gender (31/491 for men and 31/462 for women). Thus, we find that many people use the same few words to characterize gender. The relatively short list of frequently used words shown in Table 5.1, such as strong for men (N = 293) and emotional for women (N = 202), suggests that a small number of words can capture what it means to be a man or woman today. In a second phase of coding, if similar words had the same meaning, we consolidated the words to reflect a single meaning by using a thesaurus of synonyms. Since many words had a low frequency count, merging words with a similar meaning helped bring together overlapping words for analysis. For instance, affectionate, caregiver, comforting, loving, nurturing, and tender were consolidated under the descriptor caring . Adorable, beautiful, charming, cute, dapper, gorgeous, handsome, hot, lovable, pretty, sexy, and suave were consolidated under the descriptor of attractive. Conscientious, diligent, hard worker, and industrious were labeled hardworking. Amicable, approachable, engaging, extrovert, hospitable, inviting,

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Table 5.1 Top 50% of most common words used to describe men and women: unconsolidated “Men usually are” Strong Tall Unemotional Masculinea Aggressive Tough Dominant Loud Funny Assertive Athletic Confident Big Arrogant Hardworking Stubborn Smart Protector Muscular Independent Straightforward Brave Competitive Bold Hairy Handsome Prideful Immature Leader Direct Egotistical N words

N Count 293 114 105 99 91 64 61 53 48 45 43 43 37 35 35 34 33 32 31 27 27 23 22 20 20 20 20 19 19 18 18 31

“Women usually are” Emotionalb Caring Smart Kind Feminine Nurturer Sensitive Pretty Strong Empatheticc Short Gentle Independent Loving Nice Hardworking Small Weak Compassionate Understanding Soft Organized Talkative Quiet Mature Creative Thoughtful Openminded Calm Clean Friendly

N Count 202 165 104 70 66 64 61 56 55 51 47 44 39 39 39 36 34 34 33 33 32 31 29 28 26 22 22 20 19 19 19 31

Bolded words = words that appear in the masculine PAQ or BSRI. b Bolded words = words that appear in the feminine PAQ or BSRI. c Empathetic = “Aware of others’ feelings” in the feminine PAQ

a

outgoing, personable, sociable, and warm were labeled friendly.4 The labels we assigned, such as caring, attractive, hardworking, and friendly, were the most frequently occurring labels that respondents used; other descriptors were collapsed

4

A full list of the collapsed meanings and the words that comprise them is available upon request.

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into them. Therefore, we used the respondents’ meanings rather than our own meanings to capture gender meanings today. Table 5.2 shows the top 80% of the consolidated meanings in the order of their frequency. If respondents used any of the descriptors within a consolidated meaning more than once, we counted it only once. This avoids inflating the frequency count by allowing respondents to use redundant words to describe the same meaning. The remaining 20% of the words for both men and women comprised 180+ additional words (N = 206 for men and N = 180 for women). Thus, a small set of shared meanings characterized men and women (roughly 40–50 words as shown in Table 5.2), along with a large set of words that are infrequently shared.

Background Characteristics We obtained background information on our respondents to get a profile on who was providing the cultural meanings on gender. We captured respondents’ gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, age, class standing, employment status, broad area of study, and class background in terms of parents’ education and income. Respondents’ non-heterosexual orientation incorporated gay, lesbian, bisexual, and other orientations (for example, asexual or pansexual). Race/ethnicity was measured as White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, multiracial, or other (for example, American Indian or Arab/Middle Eastern). Age was measured in years. Respondents’ broad area of study was the college of their major (Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; Engineering; Natural and Agricultural Sciences; Business; Medicine; Public Policy; or Education). Respondents indicated whether they currently were employed, and if so, how many hours per week they typically worked. Respondents reported the highest education of their mother and father. Response categories were no formal education, some grade school, completed grade school, some high school, completed high school/GED, some college, college degree, some graduate work, graduate degree. Respondents’ parental income had eight categories: < $10,000; $10,000 – $14,999; $15,000 – $24,999; $25,000 – $34,999; $35,000 – $49,999; $50,000 – $74,999; $75,000 – $99,999; and $100,000 or more.

Analysis We conducted several tests. First, we considered the masculine and feminine characteristics in the PAQ and BSRI as well as the neutral descriptors in the BSRI (Appendix 1). We found the unconsolidated words in our study that mapped onto the PAQ and BSRI descriptors (Table 5.1). Then, we ran a chi-square tested to see whether the PAQ and BSRI words distinguished between men and women based on how our respondents perceived men and women. In a second chi-square test, we used the consolidated gender words to identify the meanings that significantly

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Table 5.2 Top 80% of most common words used to describe men and women: consolidated “Men usually are” Strong Unemotional Tall Direct Masculine Aggressive Athletic Dominant Bold Smart Funny Loud Arrogant Big Stubborn Easygoing Confident Provider Determined Hardworking Dumb Dependable Protective Attractive Friendly Impulsive Quiet Independent Privileged Prideful Competitive Egotistical Immature Oblivious Shy Disorganized Leader Kind Rough Abrasive Irresponsible Serious

N Count 343 122 114 101 99 98 82 82 61 57 54 53 50 48 48 47 43 37 36 35 33 32 32 31 29 28 28 27 27 26 22 22 22 22 22 20 20 19 18 17 16 16

“Women usually are” Caring Emotional Smart Empathetic Kind Strong Gentle Attractive Feminine Sensitive Helpful Weak Friendly Quiet Small Focused Short Openminded Independent Talkative Hardworking Organized Shy Submissive Dependable Determined Insecure Mature Careful Creative Respectful Stubborn Clean Funny Appearance-oriented Detail-oriented Happy Judgmental Mistreated Multitasker Homemaker

N Count 236 213 130 122 117 77 71 69 68 64 63 63 55 48 48 47 47 43 39 39 38 38 38 35 32 32 28 26 25 25 23 20 19 18 17 17 17 16 16 16 15 (continued)

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Table 5.2 (continued) “Men usually are” Simple Angry Caring Practical N words

N Count 16 15 15 15 46

“Women usually are”

N Count

41

differentiated between men and women among our respondents. These results served as the basis for an updated set of gender meanings in American society that can be used to create a gender identity scale.

5.4

Results

The sample includes 55% women and 45% men. Most respondents are heterosexual (87%), and the remainder are either bisexual (8%), homosexual (3%), or something else (specifically, asexual or pansexual (2%). The sample is racially and ethnically diverse, with approximately 32% White, 27% Latinx, 26% Asians, 8% Black, 4% Multiracial, and 3% Other (for example, Arab/Middle Eastern). The average age is 21. Most respondents are majors in humanities, arts, and social sciences (51%) or engineering (37%). The average parental education for respondents is having some college education. Respondents’ parental income is low, with an average income between $35,000–$49,999, which is below the median household income in the U.S. ($63,000) (United States Census Bureau 2017). At least 40% of the respondents are currently employed, and they typically work about 20 hours per week.

Unconsolidated Gender Words Table 5.1 shows the top 50% of the most common unconsolidated words for the genders. First, the bolded characteristics are words that appear in the PAQ or BSRI. For the “Men usually are,” nine words or about 30% are PAQ or BSRI items. For the “Women usually are,” seven words or just over 20% are PAQ or BSRI items. Thus, of the 16 PAQ masculine and feminine items, only five masculine items and five feminine items appear on our list. Of the 20 BSRI masculine and feminine items, only eight masculine and four feminine items emerge in our study. Hence, the masculine and feminine words from 40+ years ago are not commonly used today to describe men and women. We do not know if this discrepancy is because: (1) the words from 40+ years ago reflected the researchers’ understandings of gender rather than respondents’

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understandings, as those in our study do; (2) our sample of college students is significantly different from the college students surveyed years ago; or (3) gender meanings have significantly changed in the culture over time. Even if our sample is different from the PAQ and BSRI samples, its diversity reflects the changing fabric of our society, and this may be a reason for changing gender meanings over time. In Table 5.1, about 40% of the words refer to men as agentic, including strong, aggressive, dominant, assertive, confident, arrogant, hardworking, stubborn, independent, brave, bold, and prideful.5 Only three words describe women in agentic terms (strong, independent, and hardworking). In contrast, almost half (45%) of the descriptors for women are communal including being emotional, caring, kind, nurturing, sensitive, empathetic, gentle, loving, nice, compassionate, understanding, talkative, thoughtful, and friendly. No words describe men as communal. Consequently, the agency/communion distinction between the genders persists. The competence dimension does not describe men (only smart emerges). Instead, we find that more words describe women as competent (smart, organized, creative, and openminded). Overall, for the unconsolidated gender meanings, we find that while respondents use roughly 500 different words to describe men and women, about 30 words capture 50% of the descriptions of men and women. This suggests that it takes few shared words to capture how people in contemporary society perceive men and women. Among those 30 or so words, most do not appear on the PAQ or BSRI. Furthermore, while many words still describe men as agentic and women as communal, these words only characterize half of the meanings, at best, of each gender. Interestingly, more words ascribe competence to women than to men.

Comparing the PAQ and BSRI with our Data We next scrutinize the descriptors in our study and those that appear on the PAQ and BSRI. We identify whether the PAQ and BSRI words remain in use in American culture today by seeing if they occur in respondents’ original writings, that is, in our unconsolidated set of meanings. Then, we conduct a series of chi-square tests of whether the words distinguish between being a man and a woman, as they did 40+ years ago. Table 5.3 presents our results. Table 5.3 shows the PAQ and BSRI items in columns 1, 3, and 5. Columns 2, 4, and 6 identify the words in our study that match the inventory items. To find the best match, we examined respondents’ original lengthy descriptions and phrases as well as our one- and two-word descriptions that helped organize the data into a manageable set of meanings as discussed earlier (the unconsolidated meanings). When we could not find the exact descriptor used in either the PAQ or BSRI, we substituted a

5

We are guided by the words that Eagly and associates (2020) use to characterize agency, competence, and communion.

Adaptable Conceited Conscientious

Aggressive Ambitious Analytical

Aggressive Ambitious Analytical

Affectionate Cheerful Naive

BSRI: Neutral

Current study: “Women usually are”

BSRI: Feminine

Current study: “Men usually are” Affectionate Cheerful Childlike

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4 Current study: “Women usually are” Dependent Passive Empathetic Cries Devoted Emotional Not present Sensitive Gentle Helpful Homemaker Kind Insecure Submissive Understanding Warm

3 PAQ: Feminine Needs approval Not aggressive Aware of others’ feelings Cries Devoted Emotional Excitable Feelings not easily hurt Gentle Helpful Home-oriented Kind Need for security Submissive Understanding Warm

(continued)

Current study: “Men or women Usually are” Adaptable Conceited Conscientious

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Table 5.3 The PAQ, BSRI, and current gender cultural meanings a

2 Current study: “Men usually are” Active Aggressivea Confident Competitive Stoic Decisive Dominant Calm Insensitive Persistentb Independent Brave Self-confident Superior Handles pressure Knowledgeable

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PAQ 1 PAQ: Masculine Active Aggressive No need for approval Competitive Never cries Decision-maker Dominant Not excitable Feelings not hurt Does not give up Independent No need for security Self-confident Superior Withstands pressure Worldly BSRI BSRI: Masculine

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2 Assertive Athletic Not presentc Competitive Decisive Dominant Forceful Independent Solitary Leader Not present Masculine Risk-taker Not present Resourceful Strong-minded Defender

3 Compassionate Feminine Flatterable Gentle Gullible Not harsh language Loves children Loyal Sensitive to others’ needs Shy Soft spoken Soothe hurt feelings Sympathetic Tender Understanding Warm Yielding

4 Compassionate Feminine Not present Gentle Gullible Not present Nurturer Loyal Sensitive to others Shy Soft spoken Comforting Sympathetic Tender Understanding Warm Submissive

5 Conventional Friendly Happy Helpful Inefficient Jealous Likable Moody Reliable Secretive Sincere Solemn Tactful Theatrical Truthful Unpredictable Unsystematic

6 Traditional FRIENDLYd Happy Helpful Unorganized Jealous Agreeable Moody Reliable Secretive Sincere Serious Tactful DRAMATIC Truthful Unpredictable Unsystematic

a

Bolded words = words that define men and women in the current study at p ≤ .01. b Italicized words = substitutions in current study for PAQ and BSRI. c Not present = no substitute word is found in current study. d Capitalized bolded items = words are no longer neutral but are feminine in the current study

PAQ 1 Assertive Athletic Defends beliefs Competitive Decision-maker Dominant Forceful Independent Individualistic Leader Leadership abilities Masculine Risk-taker Self-reliant Self-sufficient Strong personality Willing to take a stand

Table 5.3 (continued)

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descriptor that came closest to it in meaning. For example, for the masculine PAQ descriptor does not give up, we substituted the word persistent. For the feminine PAQ descriptor aware of others’ feelings, we substituted the word empathetic. Of the 92 words in the PAQ and BSRI, we used a substitute word 30 times, and in six other instances, we could not find a substitute descriptor. The substitute words and words with no substitute were equally distributed across the masculine and feminine items. In general, about 40% of the time, our data had no identical or similar words for the words in the two inventories. In Table 5.3, the bolded words in column 2 described men more than women in our data ( p ≤ .01). Likewise, column 4 lists words that described women more than men ( p ≤ .01). The bolded words in all capital letters in column 6 significantly described women more than men in the current sample, so they are not neutral as Bem originally proposed. Turning first to the items that map onto the masculine and feminine PAQ and BSRI, most of the items in column 2 that characterize men more than women are agentic. Men are described as aggressive, assertive, brave, confident, competitive, and dominant. Almost all the items in column 4 that describe women more than men are communal. Women are characterized as compassionate, empathetic, emotional, gentle, kind, nurturing, sensitive, submissive, sympathetic, and understanding. Most of the BSRI neutral items remain neutral 40+ years later. In general, we find an agency/communal distinction between the genders.

Consolidated Gender Words We next turn to our consolidated gender words to investigate the contemporary cultural meanings that our respondents use to describe men and women. Returning to Table 5.2, we present a slightly longer list of words than the unconsolidated list in Table 5.1 to capture as many meanings of men and women as we can. The items that statistically differentiate between men and women will be the basis for our semantic differential measure of gender identity. We excluded one meaning, biology, from the list, however. We are interested in social meanings of the genders, and biology does not meaningfully socially differentiate between men and women. Biology includes words that physically and hormonally differentiate men from women. For example, for men, it includes such words as beard, deep voice, short hair, and testosterone (N count = 44). For women, it includes such descriptors as unhairy, high voice, long hair, and estrogen (N count = 35). In Table 5.2, there are two physical distinctions between men and women that we retain given their frequent occurrence: tall (Male count = 114) vs. short (Female count = 47) and big (Male count = 48) vs. small (Female count = 48). Our second chi-square analysis tested whether the words in Table 5.2 significantly distinguished between men and women in our sample. Those items that

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Table 5.4 Significantly different words used to describe men and womena

“Men usually are” “Women usually are” Abrasive Appearance-oriented Aggressive Attractive Angry Careful Arrogant Caring Athletic Clean Big Creative Bold Detail-oriented Confident Emotional Direct Empathetic Disorganized Feminine Dominant Focused Dumb Gentle Easygoing Helpful Egotistical Kind Funny Mature Immature Mistreated Leader Multitasker Loud Open minded Masculine Organized Prideful Sensitive Protective Short Provider Small Rough Smart Strong Submissive Tall Weak Unemotional Meanings not shared by men and women b Competitive—M Friendly—M Impulsive—W Happy—W Irresponsible—W Homemaker—W Oblivious—W Insecure—W Privileged—W Judgmental—W Simple—W Quiet—W Stubborn—M Talkative—M N words 33 32 a

All words distinguish men from women at p ≤ .01 Words that distinguish men from women at p ≤ .05

b

differentiated between the genders ( p ≤ .01) serve as the basis of our semantic differential of gender meanings. They are presented in Table 5.4.6

6

In a follow-up regression analysis, we estimated whether each of the meanings in Table 5.4 would still describe “Men usually are” compared to “Women usually are” when controlling for the other

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The upper portion of the table lists the words that statistically differentiate men and women for both men and women respondents ( p ≤ .01). The lower portion identifies those words that either men or women are more likely to report in response to the phrase “Men usually are” or “Women usually are.” Overall, men and women differ on what characterizes the genders about one-fifth of the time. Women make more distinctions between the genders than men; in 10 out of the 14 descriptors, or 70% of the time, women are making the distinction. However, 80% of the time, men and women agree on what distinguishes men from women. In the top part of the table, almost 30% of the descriptors for men show agency, including being aggressive, arrogant, bold, confident, prideful, and strong and relatedly being direct and dominant. Men are evaluated negatively 35% of the time as in being abrasive, angry, disorganized, dumb, egotistical, immature, loud, rough, and unemotional. Importantly, both men and women agree that these negative words characterize men. This is not to say that men are not described positively. For example, men and women see men as athletic, easygoing¸ funny, and a leader. However, the negative characteristics outweigh the positive. Nearly 30% of the words for women characterize them as communal, such as being caring, emotional, and sensitive and relatedly, being empathetic, gentle, helpful, and kind. Surprisingly, women are more likely than men to be described as competent, as in being creative, detail-oriented, open-minded, organized, and smart, and relatedly, being focused and a multitasker. This comprised almost 30% of women’s characterizations compared to none for men. And, both men and women agree that words associated with competence characterize women. Women also are described equally in negative and positive terms. For example, women are identified as submissive and weak (8% of the time) but attractive, clean, happy, and mature (12% of the time).

Creating a Gender Identity Scale Next, we created a semantic differential scale of gender identity from the consolidated meanings on which the genders differed, shown in Table 5.4. The results are presented in Table 5.5. We omit the description of women as mistreated from Table 5.4 because the description captures men’s behavior rather than what it means to be a woman. We also exclude the meanings in the bottom portion of Table 5.4, which are not shared by men and women. The items in Table 5.5 only include meanings that men and women share. Appendix 2 lists the meanings for men and the equivalent words in our data for each meaning. Appendix 3 lists the meanings and their equivalents for women.

meanings in the table. Except for two meanings that perfectly described men but not women (angry and prideful), and two meanings that perfectly described women but not men (happy and homemaker), all meanings remained significant ( p ≤ .01).

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Table 5.5 Gender identity scale Instructions: “The items below ask about the kind of person you think you are. Each item consists of a PAIR of contrasting characteristics with the numbers 1–7 in between. You cannot be both at the same time. Please choose a number that describes where YOU fall on this scale. For example, if you think that you are serious, you might choose 1. If you think you are funny, you might choose 7. And, if you think that you are in the middle of being serious and funny, you might choose 4.” Not masculine Masculine Masculine scale Agreeable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Abrasive Passive 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Aggressive Calm 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Angry Respectful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Arrogant Inactive 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Athletic Timid 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bold Insecure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Confident Indirect 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Direct Uptight 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Easygoing Altruistic 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Egotistical Serious 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Funny Follower 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Leader Quiet 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Loud Humble 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Prideful Helpless 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Protective Recipient 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Provider Not feminine Feminine Feminine scale Appearance1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Appearanceinattentive oriented Ugly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Attractive Careless 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Careful Indifferent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Caring Dirty 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Clean Dull 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Creative Vague 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Detail-oriented Heartless 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Empathetic Distracted 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Focused Useless 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Helpful Inconsiderate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kind Single-focused 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Multitasker Closed-minded 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Open-minded 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Sensitive Insensitive Masculine Feminine Masculine-feminine Big 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Small scale Disorganized 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Organized Dominant 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Submissive Dumb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Smart (continued)

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Table 5.5 (continued) Instructions: “The items below ask about the kind of person you think you are. Each item consists of a PAIR of contrasting characteristics with the numbers 1–7 in between. You cannot be both at the same time. Please choose a number that describes where YOU fall on this scale. For example, if you think that you are serious, you might choose 1. If you think you are funny, you might choose 7. And, if you think that you are in the middle of being serious and funny, you might choose 4.” Immature 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mature Masculine 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Feminine Rough 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Gentle Strong 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Weak Tall 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Short Unemotional 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Emotional

Following Spence and Helmreich’s (1978) procedure for the PAQ, we created a masculine scale (M-scale of 16 items), a feminine scale (F-scale of 14 items), and a masculine-feminine scale (M-F scale of 10 items). Table 5.5 shows our scales. Based on identity theory, we assume that meaning is not absolute but understood in relation to its opposite. Thus, the set of meanings for each scale fall on a continuum in which the end points are opposites. For the masculine scale, the meanings on the right characterize being masculine (from Table 5.4), and the meanings on the left characterize not being masculine. Not being masculine does not mean being feminine, but rather that the meanings do not characterize men as described in our data. Similarly, for the feminine scale, the meanings on the right describe being feminine (from Table 5.4), and those on the left characterize not being feminine. Again, not being feminine does not mean being masculine. Finally, the masculinefeminine scale contains words in Table 5.4 which describe men and women as opposites. For example, on the men’s list in Table 5.4, big, contrasts with small, on the women’s list. The word on the men’s list in Table 5.4, disorganized, contrasts with organized, from the women’s list. In total, 40 bipolar items comprise our M, F, and M-F scales. The instructions for filling out the semantic differential in Table 5.5 is what makes it a gender identity scale. The directions ask people to provide the meanings that they hold for themselves thereby using the self as the focus of attention. This takes advantage of the self as reflexive who has the ability to respond to itself (Burke & Stets, 2022). Individuals are to think about who they are, and then respond as to how much each pair of characteristics describes themselves. By placing themselves somewhere between the contrasting gender meanings, respondents are identifying the meanings that reflect how they see themselves in terms of gender. This is their gender identity.

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Discussion

In this study, we provided a new scale to measure gender identity based on the discovery of a contemporary set of gender meanings. The PAQ and BSRI that have been used to measure gender meanings since the 1970s are based on cultural views of men and women that have likely changed, given women’s increased higher education and labor force participation. Young adults offer us a window into U.S. culture as informants who reflect those changes (Heise, 2010). Our respondents, a recent birth cohort (1998–2002), have been exposed to a different gender culture than those born during the 1950s, whose views shaped the PAQ and BSRI. Although the 1950s birth cohort witnessed the re-emergence of the women’s movement during college, traditional gender views were still quite strong. Today’s young adults have been exposed to a mix of both traditional and nontraditional/egalitarian gender views (Cotter et al., 2011; Pepin & Cotter, 2018; Scarborough et al., 2018), specifically an orientation that combines traditional familism and feminist egalitarianism (Cotter et al., 2011). Being a stay-at-home mother is as much a feminist choice as pursuing a career in the workforce. Intensive mothering is just as valuable as finding professional fulfillment. We interpret our results within this context. When we compared the PAQ and the BSRI of the 1970s with the descriptors that our respondents used to describe men and women (Table 5.3), we found three general patterns. First, 40% of the time, the words used in the two earlier inventories did not appear, so we had to use substitute words. Second, using the closest descriptors that we could find, we tested each of the items on the masculine and feminine scales of the PAQ and BSRI to see if they continued to distinguish between the genders today. Only about 40% of the time did the masculine items of the PAQ and BSRI differentiate men from women, and only about 40% of the time did the feminine items of the PAQ and BSRI differentiate women from men. Third, for the words that our respondents used to describe men and women today (unconsolidated gender meanings in Table 5.1), only 30% of the descriptors for men were PAQ or BSRI items, and only 20% of the descriptors for women were PAQ or BSRI items. More generally, most of the time, men and women are not differentiated using the meanings that were used 40+ years ago. Hence, the gender inventories needed updating to better reflect gender meanings in contemporary society. Identifying the meanings that are commonly attributed to men and women risks polarizing the genders. However, we discovered a rich array of meanings that describe being masculine or feminine. Respondents can choose among these many meanings to describe themselves as more masculine, more feminine, or a little of both given the gender identity scale that we created (Table 5.5). We recognize that gender meanings are not equally valued. Meanings tied to men, such as agency and competence, are valued more than communalism, reflecting women’s lower status. These meanings may be supported either through benevolent sexism, or the belief that these differences are inherently fair because they are complementary and provide strengths to each gender. Such mechanisms support the status quo of gender

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inequality (Jost & Kay, 2005). When people challenge these entrenched meanings or behave contrary to them, they experience backlash (Rudman & Phelan, 2008). Though over the past 40+ years women have shown gains in the labor force years and men have increased their participation in housework and childcare, our results revealed that men still are seen as more agentic than women, and women still are viewed as more communal than men. However, women but not men tended to be perceived as competent, perhaps because of their greater visibility in the public sphere. Thus, while women may have gained in perceived competence, men lost. In some ways, men were characterized as not competent. For example, while women were characterized as organized, men were characterized as disorganized. Women were described as smart, and men as dumb. The idea that women can “have it all,” which permeated feminist movements during the 1980s, may have contributed to women’s gains in competence, while still being seen as communal. We also found that men were described more negatively than women by both women and men. Earlier evidence revealed that women are more positively evaluated than men, perhaps because of their communal characteristics, which are valued in society (Eagly and Mladinic 1994; Langford and MacKinnon 2000). However, more negative characterizations of men was not related to their greater agency, for example, being aggressive, competitive, and dominant. Instead, the negative descriptors, such as being abrasive, angry, disorganized, dumb, egotistical, immature, loud, rough, and unemotional referred to other aspects of men. One wonders whether the perception of women’s greater competence compared to men and the more negative views of men compared to women challenge traditional cultural meanings of gender. Traditional meanings persisted in this study, as in men being perceived as agency-oriented and women as communally focused. However, some evidence indicates that both men and women resisted the agency attributed to men by ascribing greater competence to women. This resistance may be more prevalent among young, educated adults like those in our sample than among older adults, who might endorse more traditional gender meanings. Our sample of young adults is the same age group used in earlier research. However, it is more diverse in terms of racial and ethnic groups, making comparisons over time somewhat difficult. And yet, the current U.S. population is more diverse than in the past. Our findings may suggest that diversity affects gender meanings by challenging some of them. Additionally, younger generations may be exposed to new role models for being male and female, which influence their views of gender. Because traditional meanings of gender persisted in this research, these meanings may outweigh the countervailing gender meanings that we found. The discovery of new gender meanings in the culture was guided by identity theory measurement procedures. We used respondents’ own words to construct the meanings that differentiated the genders, thereby obtaining the meanings from the relevant population in which they emerge. Since meaning is to be understood in a relative and not absolute sense, we then created 40 adjective pairs that distinguished between the meanings of being a man and woman using the semantic differential procedure. This follows the Burke–Tully (1977) method.

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Employing our gender identity scale in new studies can help us understand whether gender identity is related to various attitudes, feelings, and behaviors in new ways. The next step for our newly developed gender identity scale is to administer it to a diverse sample of both college students as well as older respondents who read the contrasting set of meanings and rate themselves on each set of items. We can then see whether differences emerge across different age groups. Other differences should be explored, such as racial/ethnic and class variation. Implementing a gender identity scale that mirrors the PAQ and BSRI of an earlier time will help us better determine the gender meanings of our time. Eventually, we expect that the items we constructed for a new gender identity scale will be reduced to a smaller set. In administering the scale, we advise putting the meanings on a seven-point continuum (as shown in Table 5.5) rather than a fivepoint continuum (used in the PAQ) to locate individuals more precisely. We also would advise randomizing the items in Table 5.5 to avoid generating a response set. Further, within the M, F, and M-F scales, additional randomization should occur as to whether, for example, the masculine or feminine end is represented with the highest number (7) or the lowest number (1). Following data collection and identity measurement procedures (Burke & Stets, 2022), discriminant function analysis can be used to select those meanings that discriminate most clearly between the meanings of being a man and woman in the sample. The most discriminating meanings can then be applied to respondents, weighted, and summed to form a gender identity scale. Meaning is at the heart of identity theory. What it means to be who one is, is central to understanding people’s identities. Gender is a categorical identity that is easily activated in situations, as it is highly visible. Individuals’ gender identity meanings influence how they think, feel, and behave in situations. We think the development of this updated set of gender meanings and a new gender identity scale provides a much-needed advance on gender identity in identity theory and beyond. Acknowledgement We thank members of the Social Psychology Research Seminar at the University of California, Riverside, Philip Brenner, Peter J. Burke, Jill Kiecolt, and Ashley Reichelmann for their feedback on earlier drafts.

Appendix 1: The Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) and Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) PAQ Masculine Active Aggressive Competitive Confident Decision-maker

Feminine Aware of others’ feelings Cries Devoted Emotional Excitable (continued)

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PAQ Masculine Does not give up Dominant Feelings not hurt Independent Never cries No need for approval No need for security Not excitable Superior Withstands pressure Worldly BSRI Masculine Aggressive Ambitious Analytical Assertive Athletic Competitive Defends beliefs Decision-maker Dominant Forceful Independent Individualistic Leader Leadership abilities Masculine Risk-taker Self-reliant Self-sufficient Strong personality Willing to take a stand

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Feminine Feelings not easily hurt Gentle Helpful Home-oriented Kind Need for security Needs approval Not aggressive Submissive Understanding Warm Feminine Affectionate Cheerful Childlike Compassionate Feminine Flatterable Gentle Gullible Loves children Loyal Not harsh language Sensitive to others’ needs Shy Soft spoken Soothe hurt feelings Sympathetic Tender Understanding Warm Yielding

Neutral Adaptable Conceited Conscientious Conventional Friendly Happy Helpful Inefficient Jealous Likable Moody Reliable Secretive Sincere Solemn Tactful Theatrical Truthful Unpredictable Unsystematic

Appendix 2: Final Gender Meanings and Their Descriptors for Mena Gender meaning Abrasive

Descriptors Bad mouther, barbaric, crass, gruff, harsh, jerk, obnoxious, toxic, vulgar (continued)

104 Gender meaning Aggressive Angry Arrogant Athletic Bold Confident b Direct Disorganized Dominant Dumb Easygoing Egotistical Funny Immature Leader Loud Masculine Prideful Protective Provider Rough Strong Tall Unemotional

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Descriptors Explosive, passive-aggressive, sexually aggressive, violent Annoyed, irritated Boastful, brash, cocky, conceited, smart ass, stuck up Agile, brawny, buff, built, burly, fit, gymgoer, muscular, sturdy, toned Adventurous, brave, brazen, courageous, daring, explorer, fearless, grit, sassy, thrill-seeking Assertive, blunt, forward, outspoken, straightforward, upfront Chaotic, disorderly, messy, unorganized, unsystematic Bossy, controlling, influence, in charge, overbearing, overpowering, possessive, take charge Dense, idiot, ignorant, imbecilic, irrational, meathead, not smart, stupid, unintelligent Carefree, chill, cool, laidback, lighthearted, nonchalant, relaxed, unbothered, unflappable Narcissistic, self-absorbed, self-centered, self-loved, vain Comedian, fun, goofy, humorous, playful, silly, witty Childish Decisionmaker, initiator Boisterous Macho, male, manly Proud Chivalrous, protector Breadwinner, earner, financer, financially stable, household head, worker Unrefined Empowered, forceful, persuasive, powerful, resilient, thick-skinned, tough Emotionless, hardhearted, impassive, stoic

a

Gender meanings on the left are those meanings most often used by respondents. Descriptors on the right were then folded into the relevant meanings. b Empty descriptors on the right had no further descriptors for that meaning

Appendix 3: Final gender meanings and their descriptors for womena Gender meaning Appearanceoriented Attractive Careful

Descriptors Appearance, body image, cosmetics, looks, makeup, physical image Adorable, beautiful, charming, cute, dapper, gorgeous, handsome, hot, lovable, pretty, sexy, suave Cautious, frugal, risk averse, wary (continued)

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Gender meaning Caring Clean Creative Detailed Emotional Empathetic Feminine Focused Gentle Helpful Kind Mature b Mistreated

Multitasker Openminded Organized Sensitive Short Small Smart

Submissive Weak

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Descriptors Affectionate, caregiver, comforting, loving, nurturing, tender Hygienic Artistic, crafty, imaginative, innovative, talented Thorough Cries, emotion, expressive, moody, passionate, sentimental Compassionate, sympathetic, understanding Effeminate, female, girly, ladylike, womanly Alert, astute, attentive, aware, listener, mindful, observant, observer, perceptive, vigilant, watchful Soft Big heart, considerate, encouraging, generous, giving, supportive, thoughtful Altruistic, nice, pleasant, selfless, softhearted, sweet Attacked, belittled, catcalled, criticized, discriminated, disrespected, harassed, ignored, interrupted, objectified, oppressed, overlooked, overpowered, ridiculed, sexualized, shunned, stereotyped, stigmatized, unappreciated, undermined Multi-focused Accepting, adaptable, adjustable, agreeable, broadminded, consenting, flexible, forgiving, open, receptive, tolerant, versatile, welcoming Methodical, meticulous, neat, planner, prepared, scheduled, structured, tidy Soulful, thin-skinned Dainty, lean, petite, skinny, slim Academic, analytical, book smart, brain smart, bright, clever, educated, erudite, insightful, intellectual, intelligent, knowledgeable, logical, rational, reason, studious, well-read, wisdom, wise Capitulation, compliant, docile, passive, subordinate Delicate, fragile, frail, not tough, vulnerable, wimp

a

Gender meanings on the left are those meanings most often used by respondents. Descriptors on the right were then folded into the relevant meanings. b Empty descriptors on the right had no further descriptors for that meaning

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Part III

Research: Individual Processes and Outcomes

Chapter 6

The Mental Health Consequences of Sexual Identity Discrepancies Trenton D. Mize and Long Doan

6.1

Introduction

How do sexual identity discrepancies affect people’s mental health? Identities and their verification integrally shape people’s sense of self, how they relate to the social world, and their mental health. Identity theory defines identity as a “set of selfmeanings derived from being a distinct person, role player, or member of a group or category” (Stets et al., 2020, p. 200). At its core, identity theory predicts that people will behave in ways consistent with their identities and that they are motivated to maintain their identity standards, that is, their self-meanings. Although these processes are perceptual (Burke & Stets, 2022), instances where identity and behavior are mismatched can provide a useful window into self-appraisals, an understudied perceptual input into the control system (Burke & Stets, 2022). We come to understand the categories we belong to and form our identity standards partially based on current cultural understandings. When people routinely behave in ways that are discrepant from the broadly understood standard for a given identity, they are likely to experience this personally as identity discrepancy—a mismatch between their actions and their understandings of what behavior their identity usually implies. Studying such discrepancies is important as sexual identity– behavior discordance is relatively common (Laumann et al., 1994; Mize, 2015). Thus, exploring this site of perceptual tension using a well-grounded theory can be fruitful. Decades of work have empirically supported the core propositions of identity theory (see Burke & Stets, 2009; Stets, 2018 for reviews). Yet, relatively T. D. Mize (✉) Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Doan University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_6

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little work has applied identity theory to understanding sexuality and the identities associated with sexuality (but cf. Doan & Mize, 2020; Miller, 2019). Sexualities scholars have long been interested in identity–behavior inconsistences. Some people behave (e.g., date or have romantic encounters with others) in ways that are inconsistent with their privately expressed sexual identity. For example, a self-identified gay man may date women to avoid disclosing his identity to others, perhaps to avoid stigmatization or to conform to his or others’ religious beliefs. Conversely, some heterosexual identified people routinely have sex with same-gender people but then claim an identity as heterosexual (Ward, 2015; Silva, 2017). In this paper, we apply identity theory to develop and test a theoretically grounded account of sexual identity discrepancy. We use sexual behavior as a proxy for the perceptual processes that are more typically examined in identity theory research and in doing so treat behavior as more than just the output side of the perceptual control model (Burke & Stets, 2022). Ideally, we would have explicit measures of the identity standards for each person’s sexual identity and the corresponding meanings they and others assign to their behavior in their daily lives. Absent this information, we assume that sexual identity standards tend to imply attraction (i.e., who you should be sexually attracted to) and behavior (i.e., who you should be sexually and/or romantically involved with). Because of this, any discrepancy between identity and behavior should lead to the negative mental health consequences that identity theory predicts. Future work could likely identify more precise mental health consequences with more explicit measures of identity standards, self-appraisals, and reflected appraisals. Our goal in this chapter is to bridge identity theory and sexualities studies. This bridge is overdue considering that as of 2013, no articles in the top sociological social psychology journal, Social Psychology Quarterly, seriously considered sexuality (and only 5% even mentioned sexuality at all; Hunt et al., 2013). As we show, identity theory provides a theoretically rigorous account of how sexual identity influences people’s mental health. We review the dimensions of sexual orientation and the core tenets of identity theory, focusing on the control principles of the theory and their implications for mental health. Then, we apply identity theory to the case of sexual identity discrepancy, deriving testable hypotheses about its implications. We test these hypotheses using Waves III, IV, and V of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). We show how identity theory explains much of the influence of sexual identity discrepancy on mental health.

6.2

Dimensions of Sexual Orientation

Sexual orientation encompasses at least three distinct, measurable dimensions: identity, behavior, and attraction (Laumann et al., 1994; Mize, 2015). Sexual identity refers to how someone describes their own sexual orientation. This

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conceptualization from the sexualities literature matches how identity theorists think about social identities: “the meanings that individuals claim as members of a social category” (Stets & Burke, 2014a, p. 413). Sexual behavior refers to a person’s sexual practices, including with whom they have sexual or romantic relations. These behaviors can be long-term and/or affectively intense—e.g., dating or marriage— or shorter-term and less affectively intense—e.g., a one-time “hook up.” Sexual attraction captures who people are romantically and/or sexually attracted to. For example, someone could be attracted to men, women, both men and women, and/or to other gender categories. Concordance across the three dimensions is common for heterosexual identified people. That is, the most common pattern is heterosexual identity, different-gender partners, and singular attraction to different-gender partners (Laumann et al., 1994; Mize, 2015). However, a non-trivial number of heterosexual identified people nonetheless report attraction to and/or sexual behavior with same-gender others (Silva & Whaley, 2018). In contrast to heterosexual identified people, lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) identified people more often have some discordance across the three dimensions (Laumann et al., 1994; Mize, 2015). That is, someone who identifies as LGB is unlikely to have both attractions and behaviors that perfectly match that identity. This discordance across the dimensions has myriad causes. For example, gay or lesbian identified people who were not “out” their entire lives may have previously dated different-gender partners (behavior). Much work has focused on the negative mental health consequences of identity– behavior inconsistencies for those with sexual minority identities.1 For example, LGB individuals who remain “closeted” and cannot express their true selves report negative mental health outcomes across a range of dimensions, such as lower perceived social support, lower job satisfaction, psychological strain, and depression (Mohr & Fassinger, 2006; Morris et al., 2001; Pachankis et al., 2015; Ragins et al., 2007). In contrast, the work on people who claim a heterosexual identity despite their conflicting behavior does not focus on mental health consequences (Ward, 2015; Silva, 2017; Silva & Whaley, 2018). As we discuss below, we suggest that this pattern also should have negative mental health consequences because of similar identity (non)verification processes occurring in both cases. We focus on the dimensions of identity and behavior for three reasons. First, the data we use has better and more comparable measures of these two dimensions than of attraction. Second, these two dimensions are the most relevant available dimensions to identity theory predictions about identity verification and mental health, which we discuss below. Third, behavior is typically viewed as the output to identity processes, that is, people behave in ways consistent with their identity, and when there is a discrepancy between behavior meanings and identity standard meanings, they may adjust their behavior to achieve greater consistency between the two. We argue that behaviors also can provide useful, albeit indirect information about

1

We use the term sexual minority to refer to any non-heterosexual identity. Sometimes we use the more specific LGB acronym to refer to lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities.

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perceptual processes. People may use cultural ideas about expected behaviors to determine whether the meanings their behavior gives off are consistent with their identity standard meanings.

6.3

Identity Theory

Identity theory is a symbolic interactionist theory that systematizes classic symbolic interactionist thought while also incorporating social structure (Stryker, 2001). In its current form, the theory marries the structural emphasis in Stryker’s writings with the perceptual control emphasis in Burke’s writings (Stryker & Burke, 2000; Burke & Stryker, 2016). The theory explains how people’s social positions and their social behaviors mutually influence one another. It discusses when an identity will be enacted, and how people adjust their behavior to be consistent with the meanings in their identities. In our previous work (Doan & Mize, 2020), we applied the structural elements of identity theory to show that identity commitment, which is the number and strength of ties to others based on an identity (Merolla et al., 2012; Stryker, 1980; Stryker & Burke, 2000, Walker & Lynn, 2013), influences the likelihood of sexual identity disclosure among LGB Americans. The structural emphasis in identity theory explains if and when a sexual identity is invoked. In this paper, we focus on the perceptual control emphasis in identity theory with special attention to the mental health consequences of sexual identity discrepancies. Burke (1991) formulated identities as a perceptual control process that outlines how people maintain the meanings associated with their identities. A key assumption, which is supported by much subsequent work, is that we are motivated to behave in ways that maintain how we currently think about our identities (Stets, 2018). People monitor their own and others’ reactions to the meanings implied by their behavior as indicators of whether their identity performance is consistent with their identity standard meanings. How persons perceive or think that others see them in a situation, known as “reflected appraisals,” is a key source of information (Stets & Burke, 2005). Reflected appraisals represent one of three sources of input that influences the degree to which one experiences identity verification (Burke & Stets, 2022). Other sources are “self-appraisals” or persons’ own perceptions of how they see themselves in a situation given their identity standard, and “actual appraisals” or the direct feedback that persons receive from others as to how others see them (Burke & Stets, 2022). In the case of sexual orientation, we argue that reflected appraisals and self-appraisals come largely from one’s sexual and dating practices. These practices should affect both how persons interpret the meaning of their own behavior for their identity, and how they interpret others reactions to their practices. Thus, the meaning of sexual behavior sends a signal to individuals that impacts self-appraisal and reflected appraisal meanings, both of which will then be compared with identity standard meanings to determine the degree to which identity verification exists.

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Extending this logic, having exclusively same-gender partners will lead others to perceive someone as being gay or lesbian, and their responses will suggest to the person that she or he is acting as a gay or lesbian person tends to act. In contrast, having exclusively different-gender partners will lead others and perhaps oneself to perceive a heterosexual identity. Having both same-gender and different-gender partners should lead oneself and others to intuit a bisexual sexual identity. Thus, others’ responses to individuals’ recent sexual behaviors, such as who they have dated recently, provide meaning for their reflected appraisals. In addition, recent sexual behavior will also provide meaning for one’s self-appraisals. In identity theory terms, we are arguing that sexual behavior provides an integral source of reflected- and self-appraisals for the sexual identity. The extent to which the meanings of behaviors match the meanings of individuals’ sexual identity standards will register in the different appraisals. Identity standard meanings should match behavior meanings. Although what it means to have a sexual identity is multifaceted, having romantic and sexual relationships with members of the same or different gender (depending on the claimed sexual identity) is central to what it means to hold a given sexual identity. Individuals are motivated to sexually behave in ways that are consistent with the meaning of their sexual identity. One partner (for example, “A”) within a sexual encounter and/or a romantic relationship offers feedback to the other partner (for example, “B”) about B’s sexual identity, and this feedback serves as information for B in identifying how B thinks A sees B, which is the reflected appraisal. In addition, other people such as, friends, family members, and coworkers use information about B’s romantic and/or sexual partners to offer their own feedback about B’s sexual identity, and this too serves as information for B in determining how B thinks these others see B.2 Finally, individuals evaluate themselves to understand the meaning of their own behaviors which is their selfappraisals. Applying the perceptual control process of identity theory to one’s sexual orientation, we expect that, consistent with prior work (Caplan, 2017), perceived inconsistency between sexual identity and behavior meanings will result in negative mental health outcomes. From an identity theory perspective, these negative mental health outcomes occur because it is distressing when others see us differently than we see ourselves. We expect identity disconfirmation to affect a range of mental health outcomes. We focus on the outcomes of stress, self-esteem, and depressive symptoms.

2

Following this logic, in a monogamous culture, someone is unlikely to receive feedback that sexual behaviors are consistent with a bisexual sexual identity based on knowledge of a single relationship. A single relationship will likely provide feedback more consistent with a gay or heterosexual identity (depending on the gender of the partner). However, upon observation or multiple relationships, for example, with sometimes men and sometimes women partners, an individual should receive feedback that encourages the person to think that others see the person as having a bisexual identity.

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Discrepancy and (Di)Stress Stets and Trettevik (2014: 39) succinctly summarize that “[t]he core identity theory prediction regarding emotions is that individuals will feel good when their identities are verified, and they will feel bad when their identities are not verified.” Stets and Burke (2005) outline how the source of identity meanings interacts with the source of identity discrepancies to produce a range of negative emotions. Specifically, they predict that internal attributions for failure to meet one’s identity standards lead to sadness, while external attributions for such failure leads to anger. In contrast, internal attributions for failure to meet others’ expectations lead to shame, while external attributions for such failure leads to hostility. The intensity of these emotions depends on identity prominence and commitment. Regardless of the specific emotional reactions to identity discrepancy, the theory predicts that these negative emotions are indicative of distress that will necessitate behaviors in which the meanings will more closely match identity standard meanings. Prolonged distress due to identity non-verification should lead to feelings of stress. That is, it is stressful to deal with negative emotions and to do the identity work necessary to process or attempt to solve identity nonverification. Formally this leads to our first hypothesis: Hypothesis 1: Sexual identity discrepancy will be associated with more perceived stress. By sexual identity discrepancy we mean the extent to which someone’s sexual and romantic partners (behavioral meanings) misalign with those meanings we would expect based on their expressed sexual identity. For example, someone who identifies as gay but has only different-gender partners would have highly inconsistent sexual identity and sexual behavior.

Discrepancy and Self-Esteem Sexual identity enactment should also impact dimensions of self-esteem. Stets and Burke (2014a) develop a three-dimensional model of self-esteem and show that what has generally been studied as one overarching concept has worth, efficacy, and authenticity subcomponents. The sexuality literature has tended to focus almost exclusively on the authenticity component (McLean, 2007). This is because coming out is a key event in sexual identity development for sexual minorities (McLean, 2007; Doan & Mize, 2020). Those who do not “come out” are concealing their privately held sexual identity from others. In identity theory terms, concealing one’s sexual identity leads to identity nonverification, as they are not presenting or inviting verification of their privately held identity. Indeed, as we have shown in prior work, sexual identity concealment is associated with a lower sense of self-authenticity (Doan & Mize, 2020).

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The literature on feelings of authenticity for sexual minorities discusses authenticity outcomes in similar ways to identity theory. For example, Stets and Burke (2014a, p. 416) state, “When person identities are verified, people should feel that they are living out their ‘true’ self. They are being who they ‘really’ are at their core and others are confirming this.” This idea is similar to the idea that authenticity is experienced when individuals honor their commitments to particular self-values, for example, being ‘honest.’” Similarly, sexual minorities who are not living as their “true” self tend to feel inauthentic (McLean, 2007). Although identity theorists have argued that issues of authenticity are most central to person identities—characteristics that people use to define themselves as a distinct person—they also have suggested that verification of some social identities can lead to increased feelings of self-authenticity: “if the identities become so strongly internalized and recognized by others that they become ‘master’ identities, influencing the meanings of other identities” (Stets & Burke, 2014a, p. 416). Past research has demonstrated that sexual identity is a valued identity for sexual minorities (Ragins, 2004). Research on heterosexually identified people who have same-gender partners suggests identity discrepancy though it has not yet been studied in those terms. Existing work shows that this seemingly inconsistent behavior motivates identity work especially because the heterosexual identity is usually considered quite important to these individual’s sense of self (Silva, 2017; Mize & Manago, 2018b). Within the identity theory literature, social identities have been most centrally linked to feelings of worth-based self-esteem (Stets & Burke, 2014a). Social identities link us to others, providing in-group members who share our identity. We gain a sense of being accepted and a sense of belonging by having verified social identities (Stets & Burke, 2014a). This logic, and previous empirical support for it, means that those who experience sexual identity confirmation should have higher worth-based self-esteem than those who do not. We extend the logic present in both the sexualities and identity theory literatures to argue that sexual identity discrepancy will be associated with lower self-esteem due to its effects on both the authenticity and worth-based subcomponents. Unfortunately, our measures do not allow us to distinguish between the two subcomponents of self-esteem. Instead, our measure includes some worth items and some more general measures of self-esteem. Given that sexual identity discrepancy should influence both types of self-esteem—and given that the correlations between these two components was shown to be .68 in Stets and Burke (2014a)—we expect that our more general measure should show clear effects of identity discrepancy on overall self-esteem. Thus, we expect: Hypothesis 2: Sexual identity discrepancy will be associated with lower self-esteem.

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Discrepancy and Depressive Symptoms Sexual exclusivity or the extent to which people have sexual partners of only one gender strongly predicts better mental health outcomes (Bostwick & Hequembourg, 2013; Lindley et al., 2012). Drawing on that work, Caplan (2017) demonstrated that sexual identity–behavior concordance predicts lower depressive symptoms, and she uses cognitive dissonance theory to partially explain this finding. We argue that identity theory provides additional key insights for understanding the relationship between discrepancy and mental health. Identity theorists have amply demonstrated that identity discrepancy leads to psychological distress, negative emotions, and depression (Burke & Stets, 1999; Burke & Harrod, 2005; Stets & Burke, 2014b; Burke & Cerven, 2019). Likewise, theorists have also shown that feelings of authenticity predict better self-esteem (Erickson, 1995; Hitlin, 2003), and feelings of low self-esteem are linked to negative emotions and worse global mental health outcomes such as depression (Erickson & Wharton, 1997; Sowislo & Orth, 2013). Although these mental health outcomes influence each other, meta-analyses of longitudinal studies suggest self-esteem generally presages depressive symptoms (Sowislo & Orth, 2013). We therefore hypothesize: Hypothesis 3: Sexual identity discrepancy will be associated with more depressive symptoms.

Direction of Identity Discrepancy and Effects on Mental Health Sexual identity discrepancies can occur in one of two directions. Someone’s behavior might be more heterosexual than their identity—as is the case for a “closeted” gay or lesbian person who does not act in line with their identity. Alternatively, someone’s behavior may be more gay/lesbian than their identity—as is the case for heterosexual identified people who routinely “hook up” with same-gender partners. Theoretically, we expect both to be equally distressing. This assumption is based on prior identity theory work that shows similar levels of distress to identity under- and over-verification (Burke & Harrod, 2005; Stets & Burke, 2014b). Individuals tend to feel bad when people view them differently than they view themselves regardless of whether others view them more positively or negatively than they view themselves. Identity theory’s predictions and findings are non-intuitive in that being treated better than we view ourselves is distressing rather than rewarding. For example, affect control theory would predict that the direction of the discrepancy influences whether individuals have positive or negative affective responses (Stets, 2005; ClayWarner et al., 2016). Following this logic, being viewed as heterosexual could be emotionally rewarding for those who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, because heterosexuality is privileged and more positively viewed than any sexual minority category (Mize & Manago, 2018a; Mize & Manago, 2018b). This positive aspect of

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being viewed as a member of a less stigmatized group could partially offset a lower sense of authenticity from being miscategorized. However, identity theory maintains that people want to see themselves in the way they view themselves—and the privilege or stigma associated with a given category is irrelevant. To test the identity theory prediction that identity discrepancy will be distressing regardless of direction, we present three additional hypotheses. The logic is that the distress due to identity non-verification will override any minor positive effects of being viewed as a member of a more privileged category: Hypothesis 4: Sexual identity discrepancy will be associated with (4a) greater perceived stress, (4b) lower self-esteem, and (4c) more depressive symptoms— regardless of the direction of the discrepancy.

6.4

Method

Data We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Add Health is a cohort study that recruited a nationally representative sample of middle, junior, and high school age students in 1994 and 1995. Four more waves of data collection have since been completed. The most recent wave (V) was fielded between 2016 and 2018 when participants were mostly in their late thirties. For this study, we use data from Waves III, IV, and V, when all participants were adults. Since the availability of dependent measures varies across waves, using all three allows us to test all parts of the theoretical model (mean of age across waves is 22.021, 28.547, and 37.567). Except for depressive symptoms, we are limited to cross-sectional rather than longitudinal analyses because of the unavailability of the dependent measures across all waves.

Dependent Measures We examine three different mental health outcomes: perceived stress, self-esteem, and depressive symptoms. Each are theoretically and empirically distinct concepts, capturing different dimensions of mental health. For example, in our data, perceived stress and depressive symptoms share only 36% of their variation, while depression and self-esteem share only 14% of their variation. Prior work suggests perceived stress and self-esteem share even less variation.3 Although some scholars have examined self-esteem (Stets & Burke, 2014a), identity theory has tended to focus 3

Note stress and self-esteem are not measured in the same wave so we cannot provide a similar estimate for their relationship; however, prior work suggests the association is likely even smaller

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on anxiety, depression, and emotions, while the sexuality literature has examined a myriad of mental health outcomes (e.g., Burke & Harrod, 2005; Stets, 2005; Pachankis et al., 2015; Dürrbaum & Sattler, 2020). Using all three outcomes allows us to connect our findings to the broadest possible range of prior studies and provides the most robust possible test of identity theory. An abbreviated four-question version of Cohen’s perceived stress scale was fielded in waves IV and V, which provides our measure of perceived stress (Cohen et al., 1983). The items ask how often in the last 30 days the participants felt: (a) unable to control the important things in their life, (b) confident in their ability to handle their personal problems, (c) that things were going their way, and (d) that difficulties were piling up so high that they could not overcome them. All items were measured on a never to very often five-point ordinal scale. An exploratory factor analysis of the four items produces only one latent factor with an eigenvalue greater than one; the first factor explains 87% of the variation in the items. Thus, we combined all four items into a single scale representing the latent variable of stress. We standardized the items and then averaged them to create a single scale of stress with higher values indicating more stress (Cronbach’s α = 0.727 and 0.785 in Waves IV and V).4 Self-esteem is measured in Wave III with an abbreviated four-item version of the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965). Items ask if participants agree they: (a) have many good qualities, (b) have a lot to be proud of, (c) like themselves just the way they are, and (d) feel like they are doing things just about right. Each item has five ordinal response options ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). An exploratory factor analysis of the four items produces only one latent factor with an eigenvalue greater than one; the first factor explains 84% of the variation in the items. Thus, we combined all four items into a single scale representing the latent variable of self-esteem. We standardized the items and then averaged them (Cronbach’s α = 0.780). The classic Rosenberg self-esteem items are most closely tied to worth-based self-esteem (Stets & Burke, 2014a). We expect that repeated identity disconfirmation will cumulate into higher levels of depressive symptoms. An abbreviated version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies depression scale (CES-D) was fielded in all three waves (Radloff, 1977). Items ask how often in the last seven days the participant felt: (a) they could not shake the blues, (b) depressed, (c) happy, (d) sad, (e) that life was not worth living, (f) that they were just as good as other people, (g) had trouble keeping their mind on what they were doing, (h) too tired to do things, and (i) enjoyed life.5 Four ordinal

than those described for the other measures (e.g., Edwards et al., 2010’s results suggest a shared variation of only ≈3.5%). 4 Add Health also includes a scale for mastery in Wave 4, allowing us to assess the discriminant validity of the stress scale from this related construct. The two scales are correlated at -0.407, suggesting they share only 16% of variation—giving us greater confidence the stress scale is indeed measuring a unique latent construct. 5 Different items in different combinations were fielded across each wave. For analysis, we code items so that higher values indicate more depressive symptoms.

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response options range from never or rarely (0) to most. . . or all of the time (3). We standardize the items and then average them for a single scale of depressive symptoms with higher values indicating more symptoms (Cronbach’s α = 0.814, 0.833, and 0.823 across waves).

Focal Independent Measures Sexual identity is measured on a quasi-Kinsey scale with five answer choices of: (a) 100% heterosexual (straight), (b) mostly heterosexual (straight), but somewhat attracted to people of your own sex, (c) bisexual that is, attracted to men and women equally, (d) mostly. . . gay, but somewhat attracted to people of the opposite sex, or (e) 100%. . . gay. We exclude 0.2% of participants who identify as asexual as our theoretical model likely does not apply to these participants. Recent sexual behavior is measured continuously with two items asking participants to report the number of recent male sexual partners and the number of recent female sexual partners. Wave III asks only about all relationships in the last 5 to 6 years. Waves IV and V ask about all relationships in the past year and also measure lifetime sexual behavior. Theoretically, recent sexual identity–behavior (in)consistency should best proxy identity discrepancy and have the most impact on mental health, so we focus on the most recent sexual behavior measure (last 5 to 6 years in Wave III, last year in Waves IV and V). Results using the lifetime behavior measure in Waves IV and V provide very similar results. Following Mize (2016), we include a binary variable in all models that indicates if the participant had no sexual partners in the specified period to account for missing information on this variable. To put sexual identity and behavior on the same scale we converted the five categories of sexual identity to a percent heterosexual identity scale with values of: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0%. The values of 100, 50, and 0 flow logically from the way the response options are specified (see above). The two liminal categories are less clear. We assume that participants in these liminal categories are normally distributed around the median of the category and thus assign them to 25% and 75% respectively. We converted sexual behavior to a comparable percent scale as the percent of sexual partners of a different sex. For example, someone with only one different-sex partner last year would be 100%; someone with two male and two female partners would be 50%; etc. We calculate sexual identity–behavior inconsistency as our proxy measure of identity discrepancy as the difference between these two scores, which theoretically can range from -1 to 1. However, almost all the scores (≈99.8%) fell between -0.5 and 0.5. Therefore, we top and bottom code outlying observations at these values. Results are substantively identical using the -1 to 1 scale. However, extremely wide confidence intervals at large values further substantiate our decision to focus on the truncated scale. Limiting the range also makes the maximum discrepancy |0.5| for all sexual identities. Otherwise, higher absolute values of discrepancy are possible for gay/lesbian or heterosexual identified people than for bisexual identified people. A

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value of -0.5 represents behavior that is much more gay/lesbian than their identity (i.e., someone who identifies as heterosexual but mainly has same-sex partners). A value of zero indicates consistent identity and behavior. Finally, a value of 0.5 indicates behavior that is much more heterosexual than their identity. Values between these extremes are also possible—e.g., someone whose behavior is only slightly discrepant from their identity.

Control Variables We include several control variables that are associated with sexual identity/behavior and mental health (Pollitt et al., 2020; Ramirez & Paz Galupo, 2019; Richardson & King, 2017; Doan & Mize, 2020; Rosentel et al., 2020). Age, educational attainment, marital and parental status, and income are all related to various aspects of sexual identity and behavior (e.g., Doan & Mize, 2020). For example, younger generations are much more likely to identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (Jones, 2021); LGB individuals are much less likely to be married or be parents (Mize, 2016); and educational attainment varies greatly across sexual identity groups (Mittleman, 2022). All variables also consistently predict mental health outcomes (Cockerham, 2021), for example with more educated and married individuals reporting better mental health. Therefore, to better isolate the relationship between sexual identity discrepancy and mental health we control for the following variables in regression models. Sex category is measured as male (1) or female (0); unfortunately, there is no consistent measure of gender identity across waves. Personal income is measured continuously; as annual earnings in dollars and we take the log to minimize skew. We include both the log of income and the log of income2 in all models. Employed is a binary variable (1, works at least 10 h a week, or 0, works fewer than 10 h a week). Age is measured in years. Educational attainment has five categories ranging from no high school degree to graduate degree. Race-ethnicity has five categories: White, Black, Latino (a), Asian, or other. Parent is a binary variable (1, is currently involved in at least one of their child’s lives, or 0, no children or is not involved). Relationship status has four categories: single, dating, cohabitating, or married. Finally, we also include a nominal indicator for the survey wave. Table 6.1 shows descriptive statistics of the model variables, for each survey wave. Given the relative youth of the sample it represents a well-educated and diverse sample. In addition, we see predictable life course patterns across the waves with the proportion of the sample that is married or cohabitating increasing from 29% to 74% from Waves 3 to 5.

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Table 6.1 Descriptive statistics (N = 39,115) Wave 3 (N = 13,595) Mean/ SD Prop. Perceived stress scale CES-D depressive symptoms scale Self-esteem scale Sexual identity Heterosexual Mostly heterosexual Bisexual Mostly gay/lesbian Gay/lesbian Proportion recent male partners Proportion recent female partners No recent sexual partners Sexual identity discrepancy Sex category (male = 1) Income logged Age in years Educational attainment No high school degree High school degree Some college College degree Graduate degree Race-ethnicity White Black Latino(a) Asian Other race/ethnicity Parent Relationship status Single Dating Cohabitating Married Currently employed

.00

.63

-.01

.78

.90 .07 .02 .01 .01 .45

Wave 4 (N = 14,148) Mean/ SD Prop. -.01 .74 .65 -.01

.49

.86 .10 .02 .01 .01 .53

.38

.48

.17 .02

.49

.85 .11 .02 .01 .02 .57

.49

.47

.49

.43

.49

.38

.13

.33

.08

.28

.09

.02

.10

.02

.10

.47 2.22 22.02

Wave 5 (N = 11,372) Mean/ SD Prop. .00 .78 .47 .51

.47 1.19 1.76

3.11 28.55

.43 1.18 1.77

3.58 37.57

.12 .47 .25 .15 .01

.07 .19 .41 .24 .09

.04 .14 .40 .27 .14

.56 .21 .15 .07 .01 .17

.57 .21 .15 .06 .01 .50

.60 .20 .14 .06 .01 .72

.39 .32 .14 .15 .69

.20 .18 .19 .43 .81

.15 .11 .14 .60 .85

1.14 1.89

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Missing Data and Survey Weights We exclude all cases with missing data on a dependent variable within that survey wave ( chi-square Population error Root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) Baseline comparison Comparative fit index (CFI) Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) Size of residuals Standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR) Coefficient of determination (CD)

28.026 .139 .023 .989 .981 .025 .708

15.090 .035 .045 .990 .980 .021 .843

(presented in Table 7.2). The mean scale was not used in the multivariate analyses. Full-information maximum likelihood estimation was employed to reduce the number of missing cases. It was necessary only for the lagged version. Anxiety symptom frequency, first assessed at the fourth TARS interview, was based on five of the GAD-7 generalized anxiety disorder items (Spitzer et al., 2006). These items assessed the frequency in the past week of being distressed by: “feeling tense or keyed up,” “suddenly feeling scared for no reason at all,” “feeling so restless you could not sit still,” “spells of terror or panic,” and “feeling nervous or anxious.” Responses were recoded to range from never (0) to very often (4). The scores on the items were summed. The resulting frequency score ranged from 0 to 20 anxiety symptoms over the past week, with a mean of 3.29 and standard deviation of 3.61. While mastery and apprehension were assessed as latent, the anxiety items in the TARS are worded to assess frequency of feeling anxious rather than the severity or intensity of these feelings, making a frequency score more appropriate and interpretable than a latent measurement. Apprehension in interacting with a romantic partner was assessed at the fourth interview adapted from Powers and Hutchinson’s (1979) inventory assessing

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Table 7.2 Sample descriptive statistics: means and percentages of all study variables (N = 607) Mean/ Mastery and distress Mastery [follow-up]a Mastery [baseline]a Anxiety symptom frequency Apprehension* Attractiveness identity nonverification Relationship status Current partner (versus most recent) Duration: Under one year Duration: Year or longer Parent’s education Less than high school High school Some college College degree or higher Race/ethnicity White Black Hispanic Gender Male Female Gainful activity Age

%

3.588 3.499 3.287 2.266 1.695 62.4 54.6 45.4

% % %

10.9 31.8 31.3 24.4

% % % %

64.4 23.2 11.7

% % %

53.0 47.0 65.8 20.079

% % %

Std. Dev

Range

.427 .419 3.605 .719 2.690

1–5 1–5 0–20 1–5 0–16

1.786

17–24

Note. Data from the first, third, and fourth interviews of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study. Items without ranges are assessed as nominal and dichotomous a Mean scale presented for descriptive interpretation. Elsewhere treated as latent

communication apprehension in relationships. The observed variables assessed agreement with five statements about the respondent’s current or most recent romantic partner: “Sometimes I don’t know quite what to say to X” (partner’s name), “I would be uncomfortable having intimate conversations with X,” “Sometimes I find it hard to talk about my feelings with X,” “I feel comfortable talking with X when I have a problem” (reverse coded), “Sometimes I feel I need to watch what I say around X,” and “Sometimes I find it hard to talk about sexual matters with X.” Responses ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). As with mastery, the apprehension observed variables loaded onto a single factor using a structural equation measurement model. We correlated error terms for the intimacy-related “intimate conversations” with “sexual matters” and also for “Sometimes I don’t know quite what to say to X” with the reverse-coded “I feel comfortable talking with X when I have a problem” which may reflect general social anxiety and are less relationship-specific. Model fit statistics for the apprehension measurement model are presented in Table 7.1 after those for mastery. They demonstrate good

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model fit for baseline comparisons and size of residuals and decent fit for population error. A mean scale of interaction apprehension was calculated to facilitate interpretation of the sample distribution. Descriptive statistics are shown in Table 7.2. Fullinformation maximum likelihood estimation was used to account for missing cases in individual items.

Independent Variables Nonverification of the attractiveness identity, our focal explanatory mechanism, was assessed at the third TARS interview. The items used to construct identity nonverification involved a respondent’s self-evaluation of physical attractiveness relative to others of the respondent’s age. This served as a proxy for self-views of attractiveness, or one’s attractiveness identity standard. This evaluation was assessed on a ranking scale ranging from 1 to 5, with 3 indicating neither more nor less attractive than most. We took the difference between self-evaluations of attractiveness and the perceived evaluations of the third-interview romantic partner (reflected appraisal), itself based on a single item assessing how attractive the respondent’s partner makes them feel on the same scale. We subtracted the self-evaluations from the reflected appraisal, so positive scores indicated over-evaluation (others viewed the person as more attractive than that person’s identity standard) and negative scores indicated under-evaluation (others viewed the person as less attractive than their identity standard). This value was then transformed by taking the squared term to measure identity nonverification. Relationship status, assessed at the fourth interview, included a dummy variable for reporting on a current romantic relationship (actively dating someone or cohabiting with a partner; ~62% of the sample), as opposed to the most recent past relationship. In the TARS, respondents who were not currently in a partnership at the time of interview were asked to report relationship history and quality information on the most recent relationship (within the last 2 years). We controlled for this to partially account for effects from breaking up and from retroactive reporting. Another variable measured the duration of the current or most recent past relationship at the fourth interview. It was collapsed from a categorical measure of relationship length (e.g., less than a week, 2 to 3 weeks, about a month, etc.) into a dummy variable for whether the respondent was reporting on a relationship lasting less than 1 year (55%) or a relationship lasting more than 1 year (45%). We did so due to the unequal lengths for intervals in the base categorical measure (e.g., a few days versus 2–3 months) rendering model coefficients uninterpretable. Also, the common “number of years” relationship duration measurement is inappropriate for our sample due to their age range of 15–22 years; more than half of this sample (55%) would be assigned a score of 0 had we measured duration this way. Parent’s education was included as a proxy for social class background (Wu & Martinson, 1993). It was asked of the primary parent—usually the mother—from the parent questionnaire at the time of the first interview. Categories were less than high school (11%), high school diploma or equivalent (32%), some college education

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(31%), or a college degree or higher (~24%). Race/ethnicity was self-reported as White (~64%), Black (23%), or Hispanic/ Latinx (12%). Race is controlled because subjective evaluations of physical attractiveness are conditioned by racist, hegemonic ideals (Kwan & Trautner, 2009), and because unique, race-related stressors differentially affect mental health outcomes of racial minorities (Williams, 2018). As a result, we may observe initial differences across focal variables by race. Gender was captured at the first interview and confirmed in subsequent interviews. We observe statistically significant differences by gender in attractiveness nonverification, with women reporting a higher mean nonverification score of 1.97 versus 1.38 for men. Gainful activity (1, being either actively in school or working for pay more than 10 h a week) is assessed in lieu of schooling or employment status in the age group under analysis (Alvira-Hammond et al., 2014). Age at the fourth TARS interview is measured in years (mean = 20, range = 17–24). Respondents were about 2 years younger (mean = 18) when the identity process measures were assessed (third interview).

Analyses Our study was conducted in three quantitative steps. In the first step, latent measurement, we employed structural equation measurement models to form the latent measures of mastery and apprehension. In the second step, descriptive, general sample characteristics for study variables were estimated and presented as descriptive statistics and correlations for bivariate associations between all study variables. The third and main analysis, inferential, involved multivariate hybrid OLS regression models assessed to test associations for all three outcomes of interest. The hybrid design was used to incorporate the scores for mastery and apprehension formed in the initial measurement models. The latent variables formed were calculated as factor scores for each observation comparable to scores formed via confirmatory factor analysis.

7.4

Results

Table 7.2 presents descriptive statistics for variables in the hybrid OLS regression models, which incorporated the latent measures for mastery and apprehension formed using structural equation modeling. Mastery and apprehension, both latent factor scores in the measurement models, are presented in Table 7.2 as mean scales to facilitate interpretation. Mean scores for mastery were 3.5 and 3.6, third and fourth interviews, respectively. The mean for anxiety symptom frequency was 3.29 and ranged from 0 to 20. Scores varied widely, with a standard deviation of 3.61. The mean score for the scaled version of apprehension was 2.27 out of 5. Identity nonverification ranged from 0 (verification) to 16 (maximum nonverification) with a

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mean of 1.7. 62% of the sample were currently in relationships at the fourth interview, while 55% were reporting on relationships lasting under 1 year and the remaining 45% on relationships lasting a year or longer. Eleven percent of respondents came from households where the primary caregiver/parent (usually the mother) had less than a high school education, while 32% had completed high school or equivalent but with no postsecondary education. About 31% had some college education but no formal degree, and 24% had a college or graduate degree. The analytic sample was majority White (64%), with 23% Black and 12% identifying as Hispanic/Latinx. For gender, 53% identified as male and 47% female. Sixty six percent of respondents were working for pay or attending school (gainful activity), and the average age at the fourth interview was slightly over 20 years. Table 7.3 presents correlations between the focal study variables and relationship status at the fourth interview. As expected, results are consistent with stress process expectations, with mastery, anxiety, and apprehension all associated. Higher anxiety is negatively associated with currently being in a relationship. Nonverification of the attractiveness identity by a prior dating partner is associated with mastery and anxiety, as expected, although not associated with apprehension at the bivariate level. Identity nonverification is associated with relationships lasting a year or longer, while apprehension is associated with shorter relationships. Table 7.4 shows the results from the hybrid ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression models for all three outcome variables. For the latent mastery results, nonverification of the attractiveness identity is associated with lower mastery at follow up, consistent with identity theory. Net of all study variables, being gainfully active (employed at least part time or currently in school) and baseline mastery also are associated with mastery at follow up. Results for anxiety also support identity theory expectations, with nonverification being significantly associated with greater frequency of anxiousness feelings. Consistent with bivariate associations, being in a current relationship is associated with fewer anxiousness feelings than not being in a current relationship. Respondents with parents having some college education with no degree report greater frequency of anxiousness, as do women and older respondents—the latter possibly due to increased responsibility as they begin to navigate early adulthood. Unexpectedly, results for apprehension do not support our hypothesis that feelings of apprehension would operate similarly to anxiety. We instead find no association between apprehension towards the partner and attractiveness identity nonverification. Those in a current relationship report significantly greater apprehension compared to those reporting on their most recent partnership, but this finding may help to explain the null finding with nonverification, as we discuss below. Consistent with the stress process model, baseline mastery is negatively associated with feelings of apprehension towards the partner.

-.11**

.03

.10*

-.02

-.04

-.04

.03

.06

.17*** -.01

.02

-.12**

-.02

-.04

.08^

-.04

-.08^

-.04

-.11**

.03

-.01

-.12**

.08^

-.02

-.01

-.02

.05

-.13**

-.29***

.19*** .13** -.03

-.04

-.26*** -.12**

.02

-.10*

.11**

-.02

-.00

-.05

.07^

.06

.12**

.08^

Identity nonverif

.15***

-.01

.16***

.08^

.11**

-.13**

.02

.05

.31***

Rel stat: Current

.20***

-.04

.10*

.09*

.06

-.14***

.01

.11**

.10*

n/a

.07^

-.15***

-.01

-.01

.026

.011

.25*** -.09*

.05

n/a

n/a

-.03

.12**

.00

-.12**

-.17***

Rel dur: P. ed.: < P. ed.: P. ed.: Year+ HS Some C. College

.00

R/E: Hisp

.05

-.04

Gender: Female

.07^ -.03

-.19*** -.05

.01

n/a

R/E: Black

.15***

Gainful activity

Nonverification of the Attractiveness Identity from Adolescent. . .

Note. Data from the first, third, and fourth interviews of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study ^p < 0.10. *p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001 a Reference categories in parentheses

Anxiousness frequency Apprehension Identity nonverification Rel. Status: Current (most recent)a Rel. Duration: Year+ (< 1 year)a Parent’s ed.: < high sch. (high sch.)a Parent’s ed.: Some college (high sch.)a Parent’s ed.: College (high sch.)a Race/ethnicity: Black (white)a Race/ethnicity: Hispanic (white)a Gender: Female (male)a Gainful activity (none)a Age

Appre Mastery Anxiety hension -.19***

Table 7.3 Pearson correlation coefficients of all study variables (N = 607)

7 147

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7.5

E. E. Sevareid et al.

Discussion

Following identity theory and the identity nonverification model, we tested identity processes connecting self-perceptions of physical attractiveness to mastery and emotional distress in the forms of general anxiety and apprehension towards interacting with the dating partner. We did so via discrepancies between these selfperceptions and the reflected appraisals of romantic partners, or identity nonverification. Analyzing data from three waves of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), we examined associations between nonverification and latent mastery, frequency of anxiousness feelings, and latent apprehension towards the partner. We observed significant associations between romantic partners’ nonverification of the attractiveness identity standard for two of the three outcomes, mastery and anxiety, with nonverification being associated with lower mastery and greater feelings of anxiety. We find no association between identity nonverification and apprehension. These results support identity theory and stress process expectations. The finding for apprehension following identity nonverification was inconsistent with our initial expectations. There are a few possible explanations for this, methodologically and theoretically. First, this analysis attempted to take advantage of the longitudinal nature of the TARS by considering apprehension as a sequential outcome following nonverification at a previous timepoint. Unfortunately, the span of time between these two interviews, about 2 years, is likely too wide to meaningfully assess relationship-specific identity processes. Many respondents have formed new relationships, and while we hypothesized that they would carry their apprehensive response from the previous partner’s nonverification, it is likely that the new relationship better affirms respondents’ identity standard. Second, apprehension is an example of an emotion embedded in a dyadic process (a romantic relationship), and so the individual-level data on relationship experiences in this study misses the interpersonal nuances that couple-level data or qualitative assessments may be better suited to capture. For example, nonverification may result in the kind of instability that leads to apprehensive feelings only when both partners experience nonverification by the other. Additionally, our measure of the attractiveness identity is very general: it asks respondents to compare themselves to others their age in society. Measures of the attractiveness identity in other work do not make this “relative to others” comparison, and so may be more closely connected to discrete interpersonal experiences. Finally, the null finding may be connected to the specific person identity evaluated. Although we considered findings about avoidance and attractiveness identity threat as evidence of a connection, research has not explicitly established this association between apprehension and attractiveness appraisals. Other identities, such as the dominant identity, the moral identity, or the friend identity may be more closely connected to apprehensive feelings following nonverification by dating partners. Our study has several limitations, including those we identified in the apprehension discussion. As briefly addressed above, we analyzed secondary survey data

7

Nonverification of the Attractiveness Identity from Adolescent. . .

149

Table 7.4 Hybrid OLS models regressing mastery, anxiety, and apprehension on attractiveness identity nonverification and control variables [N = 607] Mastery β Focal IV Attractiveness identity nonverification Relationship status Current partner (most recent)a Duration: Year or longer (under one year)a Parent’s education (high school)a Less than high school Some college College degree or higher Race/ethnicity (white)a Black Hispanic Female (male)a Gainful activity (none)a Age Baseline mastery Constant

SE

Anxiety β

.004

.165

**

.055

-.001

-.002

.022

-.974

**

.317

.010

-.019

.021

-.314

.310

-.289

.005 -.009 .027

.035 .024 .027

.076 .810 .340

.514 .358 .392

.070 .058 -.003

.016 -.024 -.012 .054 .004 .225 -.085

.025 .027 .020 .022 .006 .028 .112

-.962 .263 .792 -.257 .199 -.408 4.358

.362 .478 .292 .321 .084 .407 1.654

.018 .143 -.066 .010 .020 -.213 -.191

-.008

*

* ***

SE

*

** ** * **

Apprehension β SE .007

***

.003

^

.042

.042 .069 .052

* ^ ^ ***

.048 .064 .039 .043 .011 .055 .221

Note. Data from the first, third, and fourth interviews of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study ^p < 0.10. *p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001 a Reference categories in parentheses

where baseline identity processes occurred 2 years prior to our outcomes of interest. While verification has been shown to be stable over time (Burke, 2020), relationship history information can change and update rapidly for some individuals. This limits the interpretation of causal connections between study variables, particularly apprehension as we have discussed. This warrants further investigation. Emotional distress as a result of identity-discrepant interaction is best studied in a controlled experimental environment, but even for survey data analysis, connections would be better confirmed through immediate follow-up assessments. Still, our results show robust effects of identity nonverification by romantic partners years later, possibly related to the unique life course and developmental significance of youth romantic involvement (Connolly & McIsaac, 2009; Giordano et al., 2011; Shulman & Connolly, 2013). Our analysis is further limited by the available measures of identity and reflected appraisals. Although standardized, the reflected appraisals and self-views are not intentionally designed to be compared in the TARS data, and thus form only proxy assessments. Finally, although the TARS is representative of the U.S. population

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across key demographic metrics, it is a regional sample that has limited generalizability compared to nationally representative studies. Few studies with representative samples, though, include the relationship history details necessary to fully account for the many complexities surrounding adolescent/early adult romantic relationships that may condition the emotions and self-meanings that are central for studying identity processes. Our study offers important insight for identity theory and family science research on youth romantic involvement, and it also contributes to research using the stress process framework. Chiefly, we demonstrate that identity nonverification by adolescent romantic partners is associated with both mastery and anxiousness. Our focus on attractiveness evaluations in youth dating relationships adds to identity theory in two ways. First, the adolescent dating context involves a unique emphasis on peer attractiveness evaluations. Such evaluations influence social integration with peers and adolescents’ perceptions of differential treatment by teachers and classmates (Gordon et al., 2013). Differences in traits evaluated as physically attractive in adolescence are associated with real socio-economic differences following high school into young adulthood (Jæger, 2011). So, specific identity theory informed analyses are warranted in the adolescent and early adult dating contexts. Second, our incorporation of apprehension toward interacting with a romantic partner is unique to this analysis. Although our analytical results do not support apprehension as connected to identity processes, we have discussed why the null finding may have emerged. Future work should extend our analyses by testing some of the avenues we suggested, and by additional longitudinal modeling, like cross-lagged dynamic panel data modeling that can better assess longitudinal associations and facilitate causal inference (Zypher et al., 2019; Zypher et al., 2020). Acknowledgement This research received support from The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD036223 and HD044206), the Department of Health and Human Services (5APRPA006009), the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U. S. Department of Justice (Award Nos. 2009-IJ-CX-0503 and 2010-MU-MU-0031), and in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD050959). The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, or Department of Justice.

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Chapter 8

The Materiality of Identity Kelcie L. Vercel

8.1

Introduction

In 2021, a young woman from Kentucky made headlines for getting a “hilariously unfortunate” tattoo (Strapagiel, 2021). Days before Kentucky identified its first cases of the COVID-19 virus in 2020, Leah Holland got a tattoo that read, “Courageously & radically refuse to wear a mask.” She meant for the tattoo to convey her commitment to being authentic and true to herself. Of course, as the pandemic unfolded and masking became a topic of heated public debate, her tattoo took on new and unintended meanings that reflected the changing cultural significance and connotation of masks. Holland’s experience illustrates the difficulty of using tattoos to convey meanings about one’s identity in an ever-shifting cultural context. Tattoos can go awry in other ways. Many people know about “tattoo fails,”1 or tattoos that turned out very differently from their original designs. Whether because of misspelled words, blurry lines, misshapen images or other flaws in execution, many tattoos diverge from their intended form in undesirable ways. Additionally, as physical objects, tattoos may physically degrade over time through fading, stretching, or blurring (Korolkovaite, 2017). These examples suggest how attempts to communicate about the self through tattoos may be disrupted by unintended physical alterations, as well as unanticipated cultural shifts. This analysis uses identity theory to explain why and how tattoos become a problem for individuals. Identity theory is a framework for describing how people understand themselves and act in the social world. People continually adjust their 1 A Google search of the phrase “tattoo fails” returns almost 14 million results, illustrating the concept’s ubiquity.

K. L. Vercel (✉) Augustana University, Sioux Falls, SD, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_8

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actions and control perceptions of themselves as they move through social environments to achieve and maintain identity verification. Identity verification occurs when individuals’ identity standards match the meanings of who they are in a situation (Burke & Stets, 2009). Identity standards are meanings that describe how individuals see themselves in an identity. For example, the student identity standard might include meanings of being studious and responsible. If, as a student, persons perceive that others in the situation see them as studious and responsible (reflected appraisals), or in reflecting on their own self-meanings in the situation see themselves as studious and responsible (self-appraisals), they will experience identity verification. This identity verification leads to positive emotions and encourages people to continue to act as they have been. If the self-in-situation meanings do not match the identity standard meanings, they will experience identity non-verification, which will lead to emotional distress and prompt them to act differently to obtain a better match (Burke & Stets, 2009). The selection and display of identity signals, or “signs and symbols of who we are” (Swann Jr., 1983, p. 37), is one type of identity work (Snow & Anderson, 1987). Like other identity signals, tattoos may communicate symbolic meaning about the self to others and to oneself in social interaction. Using accounts of tattoo regret among individuals considering tattoo removal, I examine how tattoos, as identity signals, go awry in terms of meaning and lead to identity non-verification. Tattoos are mediated through tattoo artists who may be more or less competent in completing the final design. Once completed, tattooees (individuals who have been tattooed) carry these objects into diverse settings, and their tattoos are subject to different interpretations across these settings and over time, both by the tattooee and others. The case of tattoos provides an opportunity to consider the imperfect control individuals exert over their identity signals and over others’ perceptions and interpretations of those signals. Examining tattoo regret also reveals the multifaceted identity work individuals engage in to attempt to manage unintended meanings. By combining identity theory with insights from the study of material culture, I highlight the complexity of communicating about the self through cultural objects and meanings and reveal how unruly meanings may disrupt the identity verification process. As I will describe, many individuals who regret their tattoo experience identity non-verification specifically because of a cultural and physical process of meaning change called cultural entropy (McDonnell, 2016). Whether because of the choices or competence of the tattoo artist, changes in the tattooee’s life, or changes in the cultural and social environment, regretted tattoos communicate meanings at odds with tattooees’ identity standards. This analysis describes their distress at this discrepancy and the many ways they attempt to manage these problematic meanings.

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The Ambiguous Cultural Meanings of Tattoos The identity-relevant meanings of tattoos and the reflected appraisals of tattoees (how tattoees think that others see them) are both tied to broader cultural meanings of tattoos and tattooed people.2 Over the last 30 years, tattoos have moved into the mainstream and become less associated with deviance and lower-class culture (Braverman, 2012; Halnon & Cohen, 2006; Madfis & Arford, 2013; Woodstock, 2011). In the latter decades of the twentieth century, tattoos underwent a “renaissance,” during which the profession became increasingly artisanal and associated with fine art (Kosut, 2014; Velliquette et al., 1998; Rubin, 1988; Sanders, 1989). Subsequently, the consumption of tattoos moved into popular culture (Irwin, 2001). In the early 2000s, reality television shows like Miami Ink and LA Ink contributed to this mainstreaming by normalizing tattooing and tattoos (Woodstock, 2011). Rather than presenting tattoos and tattooees as grotesque or deviant, these shows grounded tattooees’ tattoo narratives within a neoliberal, therapeutic discourse of self-transformation and development (Woodstock, 2011). Tattoos are no longer “stigma signals” (Goffman, 1963, p. 43), or even marks of “voluntary stigma” (Sanders, 1988, p. 397). No longer associated with a stigmatized group or lifestyle, tattoos are now a site for embodied aesthetic distinction: an expression of cultural capital applied to the middle-class emphasis on body control and display (Halnon & Cohen, 2006; Irwin, 2003). This connection to middle-class values, including control over one’s body, moderation, and decency, also has raised expectations that the tattooee can integrate the tattoo’s symbolic meaning into a coherent narrative about the self (Madfis & Arford, 2013). Tattoo artists, clinicians who remove tattoos, and individuals with regretted tattoos (Madfis & Arford, 2013, p. 548) describe the pressure to provide “narratives of legitimation” (p. 550) that justify and situate tattoos within a coherent narrative about the self. Tattooees experience regret when interactions suggest that others perceive their tattoos as inadequately meaningful. With these transformations in the cultural meanings of tattoos, tattooees are less likely than in the past to experience negative reflected appraisals simply for having tattoos. However, because of tattoos’ symbolic connection to art and to the wellmaintained middle-class self, tattooees are now more likely to receive negative

In this paper, I use “tattooees” to refer to individuals who have any number of tattoos. In light of the significance of the tattooing process to the consumption of tattoos generally (Kosut, 2006; Velliquette et al., 1998)—and to the sources of tattoo regret expressed in my dataset—“tattooee” helpfully emphasizes that people with tattoos have undergone an interactive tattooing process. In research on tattoos, “tattooed people” sometimes describes a distinct category of people with tattoos that are visible or who have many tattoos (e.g., (Roberts, 2012). I only use “tattooed people” when referring to this subset of tattooees. People who have one or few tattoos, particularly if the tattoos are often covered or otherwise not visible in mundane interactions, may not generally be perceived as “tattooed people.” Nonetheless, cultural meanings ascribed to this category of people are highly relevant to social perceptions of visible tattoos and the reactions tattooees may experience in the social world. 2

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reflected appraisals related to the aesthetic quality of a tattoo or because of an inadequate narrative of legitimation (Irwin, 2001; Madfis & Arford, 2013). Still, research suggests that tattoos and “tattooed people” retain some negative associations—particularly in certain settings—leaving tattooees to actively negotiate the tension between their positive perceptions of their tattoos, and the actual or anticipated negative responses they receive from others (Madfis & Arford, 2013; Yuen Thompson, 2015). Tattooees anticipate and negotiate these potential social reactions in multiple ways, including by strategically choosing tattoo sites that can be covered or kept private (Roberts, 2012), by choosing small designs (Roberts, 2012), or by preparing compelling narratives to convey positive meanings about their tattoos (Irwin, 2001). Tattooees recognize the disputed symbolic status of tattoos, and many experience a wide range of reactions to their tattoos. When tattoos are coded as deviant, dirty, beautiful, artistic, or cool, and then that meaning is attached to their bearers, they provide identity-relevant meanings for individuals’ person identities. This ambiguous cultural terrain provides a challenging context for deploying tattoos as identity signals and sets the stage for conflicting reflected appraisals and self-appraisals. Sullivan (2009) highlights this contextual and contingent meaning of tattoos. She argues, In short, there is no “objective meaning“: the tattoo will generate different meanings depending on a range of factors including the embodied history of the subject who interprets, the relationship between him or her and the tattooed person, the other ways in which the tattooed body is marked (e.g., in terms of gender, race, class, etc.), the context in which such an encounter takes place, and so on (2009, p. 132–133).

Sullivan emphasizes that different meanings emerge in different combinations of tattooee, interpreter, and environment. Each of these combinations is an interpretive arrangement, or a “unique instance of people, object, and setting” that encompasses complex and dynamic possibilities for interpretation (McDonnell, 2016, p. 35). For example, within a prison environment, tattoos of teardrops and sombreros convey meanings of gang status and activity to other inmates and prison guards, but would be interpreted differently outside the context of prison (Phelan & Hunt, 1998, p. 285, 290).

Tattoos and the Unruly Meanings of Cultural Objects Tattoos—like all cultural objects—are “shared significance embodied in form” (Griswold, 2004). However, as demonstrated, tattoos do not signify the same meanings to all people or across all contexts. Cultural objects like tattoos are multivocal (Griswold, 1987). That is, they have the potential to be interpreted in multiple ways. Objects cannot be simply encoded with one unambiguous meaning by creators and then reliably decoded by audiences across time and social settings (Griswold et al., 2013; McDonnell, 2010; Keane, 2005). This variability in the

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interpretation of cultural objects helps explain why individuals have incomplete control over their identity signals and how tattoos’ aberrant meanings may disrupt the identity-verification process. Leah Holland’s tattoo that referenced masks illustrates this reality poignantly. The words she tattooed on her arm contained unknown symbolic potential. When activated, these new symbolic meanings did not match her identity standard. Importantly, an identity signal that produces unexpected meaning does not necessarily lead to identity non-verification. For example, if Leah Holland opposed mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, her tattoo’s new meanings could still have been in alignment with her identity standard meanings. Even if unintended meanings are ultimately consistent with the self, narratives of tattoo regret reveal the complexity of communicating about the self through multivocal cultural objects. In Holland’s case, the emerging global pandemic meant that the people interacting with her tattoo brought new meanings into the interpretive arrangement. In the case of inmates, the setting (the prison) cued a particular symbolic system of interpretation. Specific interpretations may also emerge because of material qualities of the object in the interpretive arrangement, or through changes in these qualities. The concept of cultural entropy offers a framework for understanding how these qualities influence the meaning that emerges in interpretive arrangements. Cultural sociologist Terence McDonnell (2016) uses the term cultural entropy to describe how interpretations of objects vary across settings, and how the intended meanings that creators carefully embed in objects are disrupted through material changes as objects move through the social environment. Objects’ creators often go to great lengths to stabilize the intended meanings of objects, but once they leave the creator’s mind, they enter an unpredictable social and material world in which they may fade, distort, break, or move, and be received, ignored, or misinterpreted in myriad ways. And these unintended meanings often lead to unanticipated action (McDonnell, 2016). McDonnell develops the concept of cultural entropy through an analysis of public health campaigns in Ghana. He traces the ways campaign objects intended to spread awareness about how to prevent AIDS—like posters, billboards, ribbons, and condoms—take on unintended meanings as they fade in the sun, are moved away from their original locations, and are transformed into new objects by enterprising citizens. In one vivid example, AIDS clinic workers are stunned to learn that young women have been acquiring female condoms from them not to prevent the spread of disease in their sexual encounters, but to fashion them into bracelets to be sold at the market (McDonnell, 2016, account on page 22 and following). Public health officials interpreted the condoms as signifying reproductive contraception, while the young women interpreted the same objects as saleable goods. Both meanings are grounded in the object’s specific material qualities: The same rubber that serves as an effective barrier to sperm allows the condom to be stretched into a bracelet after it is heated by boiling water. While we might expect a condom to reliably mean or symbolize “safe sex,” the interaction between female condoms and these entrepreneurial women produced a different interpretation and a new use.

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Objects’ material qualities—like color, shape, size, and texture—are central both to their possible interpretations and to what people may do with them (McDonnell & Vercel, 2017). Whether because of a “tattoo fail” or because a tattoo healed badly or faded over time, the material characteristics of a tattoo can lead to unwanted meanings and disrupt identity verification. I argue that analyzing tattoos as objects— with attention to how their particular material characteristics produce unwanted meanings—reveals uniquely material dynamics in the identity verification process.

8.2

Contribution to Identity Theory

Research on identity has not fully considered the sources or impact of interpretive variability in the process of identity verification. In an early treatment of identity signals, Swann Jr. (1983) asserts that acquiring and displaying self-consistent symbols aids in self-verification. These symbols of the self include aspects of appearance, like clothing and hairstyle, as well as possessions like cars and intangible status markers like professional titles. He emphasizes that to most effectively support identity verification, identity signals “must characteristically evoke certain specifiable reactions from others, and they must be under the control of the individual” (1983, p. 37). He does not consider what happens when this control is partial or acknowledge that the individual’s control over the meanings given off by their selfpresentation is never absolute. Because identity signals are central to conveying one’s identity, understanding how they produce diverse meanings will enhance our understanding of identity verification and identity work. Research on identity work has acknowledged the interpretive variability of identity signals by describing how people must actively construct and manage identities in social interaction. For example, individuals wear different clothing in different settings because they know diverse audiences will interpret their clothing in different ways (Tseëlon, 1992). Similarly, research on prison tattoos finds that these signals have very different meanings to different audiences, both inside and outside the prison setting (Phelan & Hunt, 1998). This research builds on Goffman’s (1956) earlier work, which recognizes that both the audience and the setting influence interpretation of one’s identity signals. As a result, individuals often adjust their self-presentation for different contexts, for example, by concealing stigma symbols (Goffman, 1963). I investigate this interpretive variability directly by centering interpretive arrangements and analyzing the unruly cultural objects in those arrangements. Tattoos have been characterized elsewhere as permanent symbols of the self that communicate identity, lifestyle, and group membership (Velliquette et al., 1998). By conceptualizing tattoos as permanent identity signals with unanticipated material qualities and symbolic meanings, I reveal how their communicative function may be disrupted. I am not the first to recognize that tattoos do not always communicate what the tattooee intends. For example, Shelton and Peters (2008, p. 11) examine tattoo removal as a strategy of identity negotiation and find that getting a tattoo

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“often results in unintended, long-term consequences for the self-concept.” These psychologists are applying neither identity theory nor cultural entropy, but the connection between the self and the unintended meanings of tattoos is apparent. In this analysis, tattoo removal is one type of identity work engaged in by tattooees as they attempt to manage the material qualities and symbolic meanings of their tattoos. Tattooees attempt to stabilize meanings in their tattoos to use them as identity signals that give off self-consistent meanings in social interaction. With particular attention to the role of self-appraisals, I examine how the meanings individuals attempt to express through their tattoos are contradicted by the interpretations they encounter in the social world, including by their own post-tattoo interpretations. Using the concept of cultural entropy, I directly interrogate how material factors may influence the meanings that serve as inputs to the identity verification process. In doing so, I reveal the challenges of communicating about the self through cultural objects and meanings; I also provide a framework for examining the limits of the individual’s control over meanings of the self in the identity verification process.

8.3

Method

Data This analysis is the first part of a larger study of tattoo regret. For the current analysis, the data come from Reddit.com. Reddit is a social media and news platform where users can post content, join topic-based communities (also called “subreddits”), and vote content up or down, which increases or decreases the content’s visibility. Reddit.com has 1.6 billion monthly visitors and is the twentieth most-visited website globally (Neufeld, 2021). Specifically, I draw on data from a subreddit titled /r/ Tattooremoval. This public subreddit was created on October 15, 2012 and had 3563 members when data collection began in March 2021. The community description reads: “Welcome to /r/Tattooremoval. This sub is intended to discuss laser tattoo removal. We are here to give you the facts and information you need on your tattoo removal journey. Share your concerns, progress and frustrations! Good luck!” As introduced by this description, this subreddit is filled with questions and information about the practical challenges and techniques of laser tattoo removal. For example, common post types include users asking for advice on what kind of laser will be most effective for removing their tattoos or asking for input on the removability of tattoos, often with pictures included. These technical questions are intermixed with more personal questions and expressions related to the “tattoo removal journey.” To construct the dataset for this analysis, I collected all posts from a 45-day period in early 2021, excluding posts that only included a technical or procedural question. For example, a post like “Anybody else get awful blistering?” (Posted March 29, 2021, by user thegingermaysnap) would have been excluded because the post and comments are focused exclusively on technical aspects of laser removal,

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and do not reference regret or the individual’s perception of the focal tattoo. I assume that writers of this type of post also experienced tattoo regret (or else they would be unlikely to pursue tattoo removal), but such technical questions do not shed light on the identity process. Collecting posts with references to regret resulted in a dataset of 58 posts with a total of 626 comments. Based on average rates of posting in early 2021, this dataset represents approximately 19% of posts during this period. These posts and comments come from 210 unique users, who average 2.85 comments during the 45-day window observed. These 210 users represent about 6% of all community members. While this is a small proportion of the community, Reddit is like other commentdriven platforms in that the majority of users are “lurkers,” meaning they never post or comment. Currently, the subreddits with the highest comment rate average less than 0.05 comments per subscriber Subreddit Stats (n.d.). This community also is continually changing as older posts are archived and new members join (subreddit membership in /r/Tattooremoval increased from 3563 on March 20, 2021, to more than 5000 by the end of July, 2021). Users on this subreddit are in all stages of tattoo removal: Many are considering tattoo removal, others are in the removal process, and some have completed tattoo removal. Thus, this subreddit is a rich source of data on individuals’ perceptions of the relationship between their tattoos and selves, their experiences of identity nonverification, and their plans for resolving the disruption. Interactions among users on the subreddit also reveal moments when different users interpret the same tattoo differently, demonstrating the variability in meaning across interpretive arrangements.

Notes on Working with Reddit Data to Study Tattoo Regret Reddit is an anonymous platform where users only need to create a username and password to post, comment, join subreddits, and vote. All visitors—even those who are unregistered—may read public content. As in many analyses of social media data, it is impossible to verify that each username represents a real and unique human user (Lazer & Radford, 2017). However, I do not anticipate that the presence of bots (autonomous software programs that can imitate human behavior online) among the list of users or the possibility of a single user with multiple accounts would substantially alter my findings. I can observe interactions among users and emergent meaning making even if some of the users are not genuine. This anonymity also means that demographic details of users are unavailable, so I cannot determine how demographic factors may be related to tattooees’ motivations for getting tattoos or their likeliness to pursue tattoo removal. Nonetheless, this analysis should be understood in light of the likely demographics of Reddit users and the demographics of tattooees. Existing research on Reddit confirms that men (Amaya et al., 2019; Singer et al., 2014), young people between the ages of 18–34 (Amaya et al., 2019; Singer et al., 2014), and English speakers are overrepresented on the site (Amaya et al., 2020).

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Americans’ rates of tattooing have risen dramatically in the last 15 years, increasing from two in ten to three in ten just in the 4 years between 2011 and 2015 (Braverman, 2012; Shannon-Missal, 2016). There is some evidence that rates of regret among tattooees also are increasing (Shannon-Missal, 2016). At the same time, estimates of regret vary widely, with previous studies reporting rates ranging from 8–37% among tattooed participants (Aslam & Owen, 2013; Braverman, 2012; Laumann & Derick, 2006; Oosterzee, 2009; Shannon-Missal, 2016; Sanders, 1988). In the U.S., men and women are tattooed at similar rates, with women slightly more likely to report having a tattoo (27% and 31%, respectively, in 2015; ShannonMissal, 2016). Research is inconclusive about gender differences in tattoo regret and removal (Aslam & Owen, 2013; Oosterzee, 2009), though women may be more likely than men to convert their regret to removal (Armstrong et al., 2008; Aslam & Owen, 2013). Age also is likely to be a relevant factor in how individuals make meaning around their tattoos. Younger Americans are more likely to have tattoos than older Americans, with nearly half of all millennials sporting tattoos in 2015 (Shannon-Missal, 2016). Some previous research suggests that older individuals report less regret (Oosterzee, 2009), and there is clear evidence that attitudes toward tattoos vary by age and generation (Roberts, 2012). It is generally not possible to determine the nationality of subreddit users unless they disclose it. All posts and comments on /r/Tattooremoval are in English, though the dataset includes references to being a non-native speaker, as well as references to national contexts outside the U.S. There is some reason to expect tattoos to evoke similar meanings in a wide variety of national contexts, since Western depictions of tattoos in media and ideals of beauty have spread through globalization to non-Western countries (Atik & Yιldιrιm, 2014). Nonetheless, the inability to situate individual users in their national and cultural settings is a limitation of the analysis. While these demographic factors may be related to tattooees’ motivations for getting tattoos, as well as their likeliness to experience regret and pursue removal, they are less relevant for tracing how aberrant meanings of tattoos disrupt the identity verification process. In this analysis, I do not investigate who is most likely to pursue tattoo removal or the circumstances under which regret leads to removal. Rather, I demonstrate the complexity of using tattoos as identity signals and describe how individuals manage their meanings to achieve identity verification. Given the rising rates of tattooing and the shifting meanings of being tattooed, it is a great moment to examine the fallout some people experience when participating in this trend. This community of Reddit users is a window into that experience. As is common on social media platforms, Reddit users often communicate using informal and “Internet” language. This includes common Internet abbreviations like imo (in my opinion), idk (I don’t know), and lol (laugh out loud), as well as sitespecific abbreviations, including “OP” for “original poster.” More generally, posts and comments often include non-standard punctuation and capitalization, and errors in spelling and word use. When quoting from this material, I preserve posts and comments in their original form, including these irregularities. Usernames are already anonymous and public, so I also present usernames and titles of posts as

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they appear on the subreddit. When referring to specific users, I follow the Oxford English Dictionary convention of using they/their/them as generic singular pronouns.

Analysis I saved all the posts—with their comments—as documents and imported them into the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti. I open coded each document (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), using the identity theory feedback model (Burke & Stets, 2009) as a sensitizing framework (Ragin & Amoroso, 2019). As components of this model, I looked for self-in-situation meanings, identity meanings, emotion descriptors, actions taken to resolve identity non-verification, and both self-appraisals and reflected appraisals. For example, I tracked descriptions of reflected appraisals tattoees received from others in the social world. User WarmConsideration692 explains, “After my family and some of my friends giving me a hard time for the last couple of days saying [the tattoo is] done poorly, I’m beginning to wonder if my opinion is worth anything” (comment on user’s own post, “Tattoo enthusiasts/experts please help”). Negative reflected appraisals about the aesthetic quality of the tattoo indicated that her family’s interpretation of the tattoo contradicted the meaning she intended to embed in her identity signal and led to a negative self-appraisal. The interactive format of Reddit also allowed me to observe appraisals offered by other members of the subreddit community. This same user—WarmConsideration692—received several positive appraisals from commenters on their post. For example, user 8080x wrote, “That’s a cool tattoo,” and user YaKnowWhatBrendaSTFU commented, “I really like [the tattoo], personally.” These kinds of exchanges highlight the variability in tattoos’ meanings across different interpretive arrangements. The analytical process resulted in twenty-eight substantive codes, representing six thematic categories: Iterations of regret, Emotional reactions, Disruption of self, Pursuing verification, Social feedback on tattoo, and Interpersonal support. This full analytic scheme with each code’s frequency across the dataset is available from the author upon request. Table 8.1 provides an illustrative excerpt of this scheme and describes one of the six thematic categories—Iterations of regret—with its accompanying analytic codes and their frequency across the dataset. The thematic categories guide the analysis and help to map the data onto the identity theory model. Consistent with the changing cultural meaning of tattoos (e.g., Halnon & Cohen, 2006; Madfis & Arford, 2013), most accounts in this data trace regret to aesthetic shortcomings (codes: Regret related to design, Regret related to placement, Regret related to size) or to a perceived contradiction with self-meanings. The former may reflect identity meanings tied to the middle-class value of aesthetic control over the body, while the latter expresses discrepancies between the present and past self (code: Regret related to life stage) or between the self and the ideal or desired future

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Table 8.1 Elaboration of analytic codes in thematic category, “Iterations of regret” Thematic Category & Analytic Codes Iterations of Regret Regret as a lesson (38)

Code Definition Reasons for regret and ways of talking about regret One common way of interpreting or reinterpreting an unwanted tattoo is to cast it as a valuable lesson

Regret related to design (64)

Tattoo regret tied to aesthetic quality or the execution of the design

Regret related to life stage (26)

Tattoo regret that is grounded in the meanings of a previous life stage

Regret related to placement (34) Regret related to size (28)

Tattoo regret tied to body placement

Regret + Time (107)

Both cultural entropy and tattooees’ decision making about their regretted tattoos unfold over time; this code tracks how tattooees connect their experiences to the passage of time

Tattoo regret tied to size of tattoo

Example Quotations “Hopefully, the tattoos will be gone in a year or two. And it was a good lesson for me, I [definitely] know myself better now.” “I just didn’t like the outcome of my tattoo, it looked completely different than I anticipated, and I just ended up hating the look of it. . .” “My tattoo isn’t particularly terrible or associated with hate but I got it at a very bad place in my life and I am more than ready to get rid of it. . .” “The placement wasn’t good, and it wasn’t what I wanted at all.” “. . .the stencil the artist put on was larger than I expected, and I asked if we could make it smaller. He said he wouldn’t advise going smaller than that and now I’m kinda shooting myself for not holding my ground because it looks SO large.” “I can go several years without pulling the trigger on removing it. May decide not to remove it at all, but this whole experience got me really interested in tattoo removal technology, especially what it could look like over the next 5–10 years.”

self (code: Tattoo/self misalignment). Contours of the different discrepancies and their connection to cultural meanings are traced in the findings section below.

8.4

Findings: How Cultural Entropy Interrupts Identity Verification

The case of tattoo regret and removal highlights the links between material qualities of the self and self-perceptions. Like others, I consider tattoos as signals of identity (Halnon & Cohen, 2006; Kosut, 2000; Phelan & Hunt, 1998; Velliquette et al., 1998;

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Sanders, 1988), with attention to both their material and symbolic qualities. The lens of cultural entropy allows me to make sense of tattooees’ experiences of frustration and distress when these signals do not materialize—literally—in the way they intend. Cultural entropy captures the myriad ways intended meanings of cultural objects change when they leave the creator’s mind and enter the social world. This concept highlights disruptions in meaning that are grounded in material properties of objects, as well as the unpredictable ways objects will be interpreted in various settings and interactions throughout the social environment. Below, I first describe how cultural entropy occurs during the tattoo process through tattoo artists as intermediaries. Then, I describe problems of interpretation connected to the tattooee’s evolving self and the durability of tattoos. Finally, I reveal the creative ways tattooees attempt to manage their tattoos’ unruly meanings to reestablish identity verification.

The Problem of Intermediaries Many of the users on /r/Tattooremoval describe elaborate planning to ensure a particular meaning or set of meanings in the design and placement of their tattoo. In tattooing, a major potential source of entropy is the mediation of the design through a tattoo artist. Tattooees often research artists’ portfolios to verify a match between an artist’s style and their preference. They often bring example designs to the studio or work directly with the tattoo artist to plan a tattoo. And it is common practice for the artist to apply a temporary stencil of the design to the recipient prior to tattooing. All these steps offer tattooees opportunities to vet, plan, and tweak the design to match their preferences: however, each of these steps may also be influenced by the tattoo artist and other social actors. For example, tattoo artists may suggest alterations to the design or tattoo site based on their artistic taste and expertise. Several users describe being swayed by these suggestions or feeling too uncertain or unconfident to object. This type of interaction and its potential to introduce entropy to the tattoo are illustrated in the following excerpt from User310101’s post “So relieved to find this subreddit.” When I booked the appointment last fall, I had been following this artist for literally years. I love all of their work and have been waiting for their books to open forever. This artist is really well known and has a very distinct aesthetic and a huge following. I've noticed recently though that their style is starting to evolve a bit. I asked for a custom piece with a general idea based off of one of their past flash pieces. When I got to the appointment, they showed me the illustration and my first reaction was that it's incredible, but not quite what I was expecting. Not even necessarily in a bad way! I asked for a few adjustments, and they were cool about it. The next thing I know, the stencil is on and it's. . .absolutely huge. More than double the size of what I had imagined. Even then, I still thought it would be ok. As soon as they finished though, the panic set in and now all I can think about is how to fix/change it. I'm mad at myself for being disappointed because it's really an amazing piece of art. I can tell the artist pushed their boundaries with it and is trying new things. It's just

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really not for me. . .I keep telling myself that I'll get used to it, but at the same time I want to forget this ever happened and start the fading process asap (sic).

Previous research has established a relationship between an impulsive decision and tattoo regret (Oosterzee, 2009; Varma & Lanigan, 1999), but this quotation defies that explanation. This tattooee studied the tattoo artist’s work over the course of years and indicates long-term intentions to seek a tattoo from them. In addition to devoting time and energy to scrutinizing the artist’s portfolio, the tattooee did not (and could not, given the artist’s popularity) simply walk off the street on a whim to have the tattoo done. The tattooee booked an appointment months in advance, which means they had time to consider and reconsider their choice to get the tattoo. When the artist presents the tattooee with a design that departs from their personalized vision, the tattooee engages in social and mental negotiations to try to manage this encroaching entropy. They first “asked for a few adjustments” to attempt to bring the design back into line with their vision, and when the design is stenciled on and proves to be “absolutely huge. More than double the size [they] imagined,” the tattooee tries to convince themself this will be an acceptable alteration. However, such material changes transform the meanings of the tattoo and the tattooee experiences regret (reflects codes Regret related to design and Regret related to size from Table 8.1). The tattooee’s reflections about the experience reveal the artist’s complicated place in this process. The tattooee praises the artist’s work as “an amazing piece of art,” but feels the tattoo is “just really not for [them].” As tattoos are increasingly recognized as art, they are also increasingly subject to an artistic system of meaning and valuation (Kosut, 2014) that might emphasize the tattoo’s place in an artist’s oeuvre over its personal meaning to a tattooee. These two interpretive lenses are in tension and interpreting the tattoo as art does not resolve the tattooee’s distress. While the identity meanings contradicted by the tattoo are unclear, the tattooee rejects it as a sign of a “Not-Me” (Killian & Johnson, 2006; McCall, 2003). In this case, the reactionary identification is not against an identity others are ascribing to the tattooee, but in contrast to the tattooee’s self-appraisals. The entropy introduced into the tattoo by the artist’s intervention transforms the tattoo’s meaning, and results in a sense of panic and a strong desire to realign the meaning of the tattoo with the meaning of self. In some cases, tattooees feel the tattoo artist asserted their vision despite the resistance of the tattooee. When this happens, tattooees often express frustration or anger toward the artist and blame them for the unwanted meanings conveyed by their tattoos. In other cases, tattooees interpret their failure to object as another reason for regret. I'm hoping it looks a bit better [after it heals], I don't know why he made the background so thick and the electricity just looks childish imo. It's my fault for being a push over, "trust me, trust me" alright I trust you. . .whoops. He's a good guy and a good artist but yeah I think he completely missed what I was going for and I should have paid more attention and told him to hold back. (User SemperNihil’s comment on their own post, “Literally just got home from being tattooed, need advice on removal.”)

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This tattooee believes they could have intervened to stop the tattoo artist and prevent the cultural entropy that attached unwanted meanings to their tattoo. They blame themselves, but also question the tattoo artist’s judgment, reflecting the complex social interaction tattoo artists and tattooees engage in to produce the tattoo. Cultural sociologist Mary Kosut (2006) emphasizes the tattooee’s active and complex role in producing the tattoo: “As a tattooed person, you are the witness, participant, and lifelong bearer of a unique production process; a process in which the producer and consumer unite in complicated exchange that is simultaneously ritualistic, economic/ consumeristic, and individualistic” (Kosut, 2006, p. 1041). The process of tattooing unfolds over time, among at least two actors, who negotiate material objects and choices, including ink type and color, density and darkness, size, and placement on the body. As the cultural object of the tattoo is being created, any of these factors may introduce entropy. The tattooing process stretches from pre-planning through the actual tattooing (which can last minutes or many hours) to the weeks of healing after the tattoo is complete, during which time the appearance of the tattoo is still not settled. Indeed, the above quotation includes the tattooee’s hope that the appearance of their regretted tattoo will improve after healing: that time will repair a design they believe the artist botched. Attending to the duration of the tattooing process makes visible the many points at which cultural entropy may enter the process and derail the tattoo’s intended meanings. Tracking this process through time also reveals moments when the tattooee was or could have been active in shaping the outcome. Both of these dimensions speak to the limits and opportunities one has for control over one’s identity signals and the meanings they give off in the social world.

Regret Now or Later: Durable Identity Signals and a Changing Self The quotations above describe two tattooees’ distress when their completed tattoos did not conform to their personal vision and material expectations. When the tattoos were placed on their bodies, they contradicted the tattooees’ self-meanings. This was a prevalent theme among the posts on regret. For many tattooees, the disruption to their identity occurred through self-appraisals, rather than through feedback from interaction partners. It is not surprising that positive reflected appraisals from others generally did not resolve this identity disruption. Prior research has established that incongruity between input and identity meanings disrupts identity verification, regardless of whether that incongruity is in a positive or negative direction (Burke & Harrod, 2005). If an individual has a clear set of identity meanings, and self-insituation meanings do not match these meanings, the individual may feel distress even if no one else perceives the mismatch. Behavior can be modified, but tattoos are permanent. This makes them durable identity signals with the potential to become durable identity disrupters. While some

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tattooees can reinterpret their tattoos to match their identity standards, others cannot. This durability is a problem for individuals who immediately regret their tattoos, but it may also become a problem for tattooees years later. For some, the meanings conveyed by their tattoos initially match their self-meanings, but over time, as their self-appraisals change, their tattoos give off unwanted meanings. User Hello_Goldfish describes how changing self-meanings have led to regret over tattoos with meanings that match a past self. I have several large tattoos, and I still think they are beautifully done. I still like them. However I got them done during a time in my life I am trying to forget about—and I just can’t when I have it drawn all over my body. I feel a lot of guilt getting rid of them, but I also feel like I can’t move forward when I see them every day and think of my old life. (from post, “I want to remove my tattoos, but not because I don’t like them.”)

In addition to highlighting the impact of material qualities on meaning, cultural entropy focuses attention on the variability in interpretive arrangements. In this tattoee’s account, it is not the tattoo that changed, but the person interpreting the tattoo. Their account also highlights the significance of self-appraisals. In their comment on Hello_Goldfish’s post, user KtMrgn describes a similar experience: “I know that feeling. I want one of my tattoos removed, even though I don’t hate it. I just don’t like the time and situation it reminds me of—and my feelings about that come up every time I see it which makes me really unhappy.” Here, regret is connected to the meanings of the tattooees’ life stage (reflected in analytic code, Regret related to life stage, see Table 8.1), rather than aesthetic qualities of the tattoo. In some cases, the tattoo contradicts self-meanings not because of its association with a past self, but because it signifies membership in a social category that the tattooee rejects. These cases tend to include a strong “Not-Me” identity assertion (Killian & Johnson, 2006; McCall, 2003) toward the tattoo. User Htlr-boy describes this experience and their rejection of the “tattooed person” identity. Hi! 4 months ago, i got a big tattoo piece on the outside of the forearm which i have thought about for about 2 years ago and last year finally got done. The problem is that the tattoo itself is great but i have started to feel huge regret about getting it and i dont see myself as a “tattooed” person if that makes sense. (From post, “Tattoo regret”)

In a comment on the same post, user Badonkadonk333 describes a similar feeling. I relate to not seeing myself as a tattooed person. I got 3 tattoos when I was 17. One of which I just got covered with a larger piece (the tattoo itself is beautiful and well done) but I’m sort of regretting my decision. I really hope this feeling goes away and I feel crazy for even feeling like this. The other 2 I’m getting removed because of how big my most recent one is and I don’t see myself as a tattooed person The fact that I’m planning on getting the 2 removed (and possibly the one I just got once it’s done healing) gives me more peace of mind.

These accounts reveal that problematic meanings can become attached to the tattoo from multiple directions. For these tattooees, the problem is not the execution or aesthetic qualities of the tattoo, which they describe as “great” and “beautiful,” or a changing self. Rather, the tattoos made them newly aware of self-meanings they held

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that defined them each as not “tattooed people.” Neither tattooee anticipated this reaction. User Htlr-boy planned the tattoo for 2 years and rejected this identity only after getting the tattoo. User Badonkadonk333 covered an original tattoo with an even larger tattoo, which seems to have strengthened the desire to remove other tattoos to avoid the “tattooed person” identity. Tattooees on this subreddit report experiencing a variety of very negative emotions connected to this perceived misalignment between the meaning of the tattoo as it reveals who one is in a situation and identity standard meanings. These negative emotions indicate a disruption to the identity verification process. As in other accounts of identity disruption (Burke, 2007; Burke & Harrod, 2005; Cast & Burke, 2002), users describe diminished self-esteem, negative impacts on their self-image, and severe emotional reactions. User kebiel writes, “I feel no self worth anymore.” User MelaTrix18 writes, “My tattoo is on my wrist and it’s in red ink. It’s really affecting my self-confidence like I’ve never had issues with selfesteem until now. Hopefully, things will get better for me.” Tattooees express emotions ranging from sadness—“SOS!! This whole situation is bumming me out so bad” (sam-anthajane), “I was crushed and so upset about the whole thing.” (Dreampup)—to fear and anxiety. User Every-Ad9273, who has already initiated removal, writes, “I thought it was going better after my first session, but now that it’s been a week; I have anxiety and depression again. I’m scared that my tattoo will come off in too many years, since my results aren’t really showing, and I don’t want to waste my youth like this.” The durability of tattoos means that tattooees face prolonged distress and heightened negative emotions when these identity signals give off undesired meanings. They cannot simply discard these signals to reestablish identity verification. Their ongoing distress highlights how problematic identity signals can be when they communicate unwanted meanings. Tattooees engage in identity work as they attempt to manage these meanings both in social settings and alone.

Managing the Meanings of Unruly Identity Signals Because cultural entropy often occurs through unanticipated material alterations or undesired material qualities of objects, attempts to manage the aberrant meanings produced by cultural entropy often revolve around correcting those qualities. The following quotation illustrates the fact that reestablishing identity verification can be a long-term process filled with actions and decisions on the part of the tattooee. In a post titled, “Tips for hiding/covering tattoo while undergoing laser removal?,” user marokintana writes: I have an (sic) forearm tattoo that circles around the width of my arm. It was originally done in teal ink which I had covered in black and then touched up again. The 2 layers of black are nearly gone leaving some patches of teal showing through. So yeah, it’s ugly. I’ve been hiding my tattoo since I got it in 2014 by wearing long sleeves of some sort, which was somewhat easy to do since I work in an office and it’s usually cold. I’m just weary of the

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anxiety and anguish this tattoo has given me for the past 7 years and I’m sick of wearing sleeves in the summer (I live in a hot and humid climate) and all the questions that go along with it.

This post suggests that they regretted the tattoo soon after getting it, and that they have been attempting to realign the tattoo’s meanings with their self-in-situation meanings since then. They note that they have been hiding it since they got it, and they reference a previous attempt to revise its material qualities by covering up the original color, which they then followed with another “touch up.” Throughout these years, their tattoo is a problematic identity signal. Their account highlights the tattoo’s continued openness to cultural entropy, as their strategic material interventions fail to reestablish identity verification. In addition to their own dissatisfaction with the aesthetic qualities of the tattoo, user marokintana provides the following description of negative reflected appraisals in a response to a commenter: “It’s so distressing having a shitty tattoo to cover all the time. My self-esteem has plummeted. Random strangers have made me cry with their horrible comments. It’s awful.”3 The unintended meanings grounded in the tattoo’s material qualities have led to unwanted social interactions. The tattoo’s material qualities have opened the tattooee up to negative reflected appraisals as well as negative self-appraisals. To manage the ongoing distress caused by this failed identity signal, marokintana attempts to foreclose some of the meanings generated by the tattoo’s material qualities by covering it and ultimately removing it. Among tattooees who are dealing with the fallout of cultural entropy, these are two common material strategies for managing social interactions while attempting to realign the tattoo with one’s identity meanings. In response to marokintana’s post, user doobiesnz describes how they foreclose certain interactions and meanings by always covering their tattoo: I’m just coming out of summer where I am (New Zealand) and I swear by skin coloured K tape. A handful of people have asked what’s up and I’ve told them that it’s to cover my shitty tattoo. When I’m at home, I just slip a tubular bandage over it. I literally can’t handle looking at my tattoo, it’s horribly done and extremely embarrassing. The depression and anxiety it has brought upon me is huge. Having it covered at all times (except in the shower) has worked wonders for me.

For this tattooee, even interacting with the uncovered tattoo while alone affords untenable meaning and negative emotion. Their account emphasizes the significance of self-appraisals in identity non-verification. They mitigate the identity disruption caused by the entropic tattoo by avoiding looking at it. Covering unwanted tattoos is a common way of managing the meanings they might give off in interaction, but it is an imperfect solution for many. In fact, the desire to be free from keeping certain body parts covered is sometimes offered as a 3

In some ways, what this tattooee describes is similar to the functioning of a social stigma. However, the identity disruption does not always, or even usually, result from a social perception that the tattoo discredits an expected group, social, or personal identity. Others have found that tattooees report a low level of stigma overall, but that those who experience stigma are more likely to conceal their tattoos and consider removing them (Dickson et al., 2014).

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primary motivation for pursuing laser removal. As Charlie820407 comments on the post, “Should I even try to remove this? Advise.” (from user Victorian_Inspired): “That’s a big reason I’m removing the 8x8 tattoo on my chest. I’m so sick of finding clothes to cover it for work. It really cuts my clothing options down. Sometimes I want to wear shirts that don’t go up to my neck.” These tattooees engage in identity work as they attempt to control the mismatch of meaning by managing their tattoos’ appearance. Of course, on the subreddit /r/Tattooremoval, most users are engaged in or considering tattoo removal as a strategy for managing the unwanted meanings of their tattoos. As referenced previously, laser tattoo removal is a long, painful, and expensive process. Users often advise each other to expect 2–4 years of getting treatments every 2–3 months, with each treatment costing upwards (sometimes considerably so) of $100. The sensation is repeatedly compared to the feeling of burning bacon grease on one’s skin. Pursuing this solution to identity disruption caused by a tattoo’s meanings might reasonably be characterized as an arduous, and even extreme, choice. Individuals’ willingness to take on this painful material strategy of identity work highlights the acute distress many feel from their tattoos. However, in this data, it also is clear that for some tattooees, just knowing removal is possible, or taking the first steps toward removal, significantly eases their distress. Below, two users describe the mental relief of beginning the removal process: I have had 3 sessions so far. Not a ton of fading but some progress. And honestly after getting the first session done, I didn’t think about my tattoo as much. It didn’t consume my thoughts like it used to. Now I’m accepting of whether it is there or not, not as angry about the choices I made at that weird time. I am going to try to fully remove it because of how much negativity I felt about it before I started. But it isn’t all-consuming like it felt for a period of time. (hmboo’s comment on Hello_Goldfish’s post “I want to remove my tattoos, but not because I don’t like them”) I also really felt this way. Once I started doing laser treatment I stopped thinking about my tattoos as much. It is such a relief to start the process, even if takes a long time. I am on my 7th treatment now and have a ways to go. But I feel much better than I used to. (Hilukus’s reply to hmboo’s comment)

For both tattooees, initiating tattoo removal brought some relief to the internal distress caused by their tattoos. Prior to beginning the process, tattoo regret was “all-consuming” for user hmboo. Even though their tattoos are not gone, Hilukus has “stopped thinking about [them] as much.” For many tattooees, embarking on the process helps to begin to better align who they are in situations with their identity standard meanings. Sometimes, tattooees can manage these meanings without resorting to removal. Community members occasionally frame their experience of tattoo regret as a valuable lesson, which helps them give it positive meaning. User Scorpiomoonfiresun encourages another regretful tattooee to do just that: “Don’t hate yourself over a tattoo you hate [and] don’t define who you are by it either. You are more than that and it will not stay there forever if you don’t want it to. It is a life lesson, not a curse” (comment on post “Tattoo regret depression”). Similarly, some

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tattooees resolve the discrepancy between the tattoo’s meanings and their identity meanings by integrating the tattoo into a broader, positive narrative about their life: Yes, they might have an ugly tattoo that they got impulsively as a teenager, but now they look at it and it reminds them of how much they’ve grown. Additionally, the very choice to participate in a community of people discussing tattoo removal could be categorized as a type of identity work aimed at dealing with identity disruption. This selective association with one’s “own” (those who share the same stigma or interpretation of tattoos (Goffman, 1963, p. 20; Phelan & Hunt, 1998, p. 294)) can enable tattooees to interpret their tattoos in new and selfcongruent ways. User DeeBeeKay27 writes, I was also embarrassed to tell people I want to remove my tattoo because I thought I would look stupid, like I knew I made a big mistake. But after stalking this sub for a while I realize I am not alone. I have told several people I am [having] laser removal (close friends) and they are all super supportive of my decision. It's liberating! (comment on post “This page is great”)

After interacting with other tattoees on this subreddit, DeeBeeKay27’s regretted tattoo becomes less of a threat to their identity. Many community members articulate changes to their tattoo meanings and their self-in-situation meanings after participating in this community.

8.5

Summary

Using the case of tattoo regret and removal, I reveal multiple challenges to communicating about the self through cultural objects. Specifically, I use the concept of cultural entropy to describe how unintended meanings of tattoos disrupt individuals’ attempts to communicate about themselves through their tattoos. In an example of identity signals gone awry, self-discrepant meanings enter tattooees’ social environment through the unpredictable material properties of tattoos and through shifting interpretive arrangements. These unintended meanings disrupt the identity verification process and lead to the negative emotions and consequences for the self associated with failed identity verification. In response, individuals attempt to alter tattoos’ material qualities or reinterpret their meaning to better align self-in-situation meanings or identity relevant meanings with identity standard meanings. Building on research describing identity work (e.g., Killian & Johnson, 2006; Snow & Anderson, 1987), this analysis specifies the limits of the individual’s control over the meanings given off by their chosen identity signals and over others’ interpretation of those signals. These limits are closely tied to the dynamics influencing the interpretation of meaning, including cultural context, materiality, and audience. Attending to cultural entropy and interpretive arrangements reveals these influences on interpretation. Unwanted meanings may become attached to an identity signal in multiple ways. An intermediary may intervene, the audience or self that is interpreting the signal may change, and the object embodying the signal may

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undergo unanticipated material changes. While others have noted the prevalence of regret from undesirable aesthetic qualities of tattoos (e.g., Madfis & Arford, 2013; Sanders, 1989; Sanders, 1988), this analysis uses the concept of cultural entropy to theorize how these qualities enable problematic meanings that lead to regret. Centering this analysis on tattoos also reveals how a durable identity signal may cause ongoing identity disruption and motivate extended efforts at identity verification. Tattooees’ negotiations around tattoo removal demonstrate that identity verification is not an on/off switch. Their efforts to realign the meanings of their tattoos that reflect who they are with identity standard meanings were often partially successful, which diminished their distress but did not eliminate it. This has implications for other cases where durable identity signals may cause stigma or identity disruption. People make sense of the world with and through objects, so the meanings that constitute one’s identity are necessarily mediated by the material world. Attending to cultural entropy and interpretive arrangements will help to ground the identity verification process in the material environment, anchor identity-relevant meanings in specific settings, bodies, and objects, and encourage more research on how identity verification gets accomplished.

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Chapter 9

Identity Theory and Pleasure: Understanding Sexual Selves Through a Pleasure–Identity Lens Shae D. Miller

9.1

Introduction

Despite the likelihood that pleasure is integral to how we explore and name our sexual identities, sociological research is relatively silent on the topic. With few exceptions, mostly focused on sex work, feminist sex shops, and contraceptive use (Better, 2014; Higgins & Hirsch, 2008; Jones, 2020), sociologists studying sexual cultures and communities seem remarkably disinterested in what pleasure has to do with anything sexual—identity or otherwise. As a result, everyday pleasures and their relationships to sexual identities remain undertheorized. But identities, whether sexual or non-sexual, are not devoid of pleasure. Identities and pleasures give meaning to each other, in that the experiences and interactions (as well as the people, places, objects, and substances) we find pleasurable can become meaningful parts of our identity, while meaningful identities can also enhance our pleasures. Although identities represent personal self-meanings, they are also socially significant. The sense of belonging and connectivity that comes from shared identification with a group can be highly pleasurable, as can being perceived by others in a way that mirrors our self-concept (Stets et al., 2014). Identities also link us together as members of broad social categories, which can be experienced as pleasurable through collective adherence or resistance to the cultural norms and meanings associated with those identities (Taylor & Whittier, 1992). Given the relationship between pleasure and identity, it makes sense for sexualities research to acknowledge how pleasurable experiences, relationships, and identities are enacted and explored. And because we understand ourselves in relation to

S. D. Miller (✉) California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_9

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our social contexts, it makes sense to consider how these pleasures are developed in community with others. Identity theory offers an analytic toolkit well-suited to this task, as it treats the self as a social process that cannot be extricated from social contexts and meanings. But while identity theory has engaged with the topic of identity and emotions more broadly (Stets, 2005), the specific relationship between identity processes and pleasure remains unexplored. In this study, I address these limitations and examine the relationship between pleasure and sexual identities by analyzing interviews with 53 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and asexual (LGBTQA+) undergraduate students.1 Drawing on students’ articulations of pleasure and identity, while highlighting the social contexts in which these pleasures and identities are given meaning, I argue that pleasure and identity are mutually constitutive at multiple levels of social reality. That is, people’s experiences of pleasure at the private (micro), interpersonal (meso), and structural (macro) levels inform their identities, while their uses of specific sexual identities also produce pleasures at each of these levels. To better understand how LGBTQIA+ people make sense of, claim, and experience sexualities, I draw key ideas from sexuality studies, queer theory, and identity theory to develop a pleasure–identity lens. This lens allows for a multi-level analysis of pleasure and identity, contributing to identity theory by elucidating the multidirectional complexities of affect-rich identities in people’s daily lives. Using this lens in my analysis of LGBTQA+ undergraduates’ sexual narratives, I demonstrate how identities and pleasures are mutually produced in both sexual and non-sexual contexts. Although I focus on sexual identities, the findings from this study provide insights into how people in other categories navigate pleasure and identity, and they help explain identity processes and pleasures more broadly.

9.2

Theoretical Overview

In the following sections, I discuss key areas where identity theory, sexuality studies, and queer theory can be productively bridged by taking a critical, multi-level approach to studying pleasure and identity. This pleasure–identity lens recognizes our pleasures and identities as mutually constitutive social phenomena that (re)produce and (re)configure our intimate, interpersonal, and structural social realities. I begin by underscoring the significance of micro, meso, and macro level identity processes and highlighting the importance of context when analyzing sexual identities. I then engage current conceptualizations of pleasure to consider how pleasure might operate similarly to other emotional and behavioral “rewards” examined by identity theorists. Within this section, I also address the ways that identity theorists

The more common acronym, LGBTQIA+, includes an “I” to indicate intersex people. I use LGBTQA+ for this study because none of the people I interviewed identified as intersex at the time of this research. 1

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tend to conceptualize the relationships among identities, emotions, and behaviors. Because social and cultural contexts serve as significant sources of identity meaning, I discuss how heteronormative ideologies in the United States operate as a broad social context for micro and meso level sexual identity processes.

Toward A Multi-level Theory of Sexual Identities Although we experience sexual identities, desires, and pleasures as intimate aspects of ourselves, we also express, embody, and make sense of them within larger social and cultural contexts (Jones, 2020; Miller et al., 2016; Morgan, 2012; Pascoe, 2011; Rupp et al., 2022; Rupp, 2001; Vidal-Ortiz & Robinson, 2022; Ward, 2022). Therefore, our sexual identities tend to develop and change like other aspects of the self-concept through micro, meso, macro level processes (Stets, 2021). In this section, I discuss key ideas from identity theory that explain how identities operate at each of these levels of social reality, then consider their implications for our specific understanding of sexual identities. Identities are meanings that apply to the individual as a unique person (person identity), in relation to a specific role (role identities), as a member of a group (group identity, or as belonging to a social category (categorical identity). At the micro level our identities are verified through self-appraisals (how we view ourselves), and through the reflected appraisals of others (how we believe others view us) (Burke & Stets, 2009). At the meso level, group identities tell us who we are as members of specific communities, and the meanings of those identities are (re)produced and refined through ongoing interactions with other group members (Stets & Burke, 2000; Tajfel, 1981). At the macro level, our identities are linked to institutions and to broader social, historical, and cultural classifications such as race, class, gender, or sexual categories (Gecas, 2006; Rupp, 2001). This means that identities are always socially constructed, culturally situated, and (re)defined through ongoing interactions with others. But micro, meso, and macro level identity processes do not operate in isolation from one another. Identities develop, change, and are given meaning across various contexts that overlap and inform one another. Significant life events (e.g., job loss or marriage) result in changes to role identities (e.g. employee or spouse), which are associated with role- or relationship-specific expectations. These changes can alter how we behave in and reflect on other areas of our lives. For example, life events can transform how we see our unique selves (person identity), offer a sense of belonging within specific groups (group identity), or provide membership in broad social categories (categorical identity). But changes to an identity or its meaning across the different levels of social reality will likely be influenced by the prominence and salience of the affected identities. According to identity theorists, the prominence of an identity reflects the degree to which we value it as a central or important aspect of the self (Brenner et al., 2014). We tend to experience high-prominence identities as core to who we are, so those

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identities often remain salient (relevant) to us across different contexts (Markowski & Serpe, 2021). Identities that are relevant across contexts may then influence other identity-relevant behaviors and performances (Markowski & Serpe, 2021). As a result, cross-situational deployment of the meanings and emotions associated with specific identities can signal the prominence of those identities—e.g., when people bring up an identity in multiple spaces or reference themselves in relation to that category when discussing different topics.2 While current research (Markowski & Serpe, 2021) suggests that prominence leads to salience, the directional relationship of prominence and salience may vary depending on the type of identity in question. For example, if an identity is activated in multiple contexts and becomes more salient, we may start to view ourselves more in terms of that identity, leading to greater identity prominence. This is often the case for people who join social movements that heavily feature claims about identity and rights (Taylor & Whittier, 1992), or for individuals who join communities that exposed them to new identities with meanings they relate to (Miller et al., 2016). Novel experiences and exposure to new ideas impacts how we view ourselves, others, and society at large, with implications for identity meaning, prominence, and salience. Additionally, macro level changes in the social, political, and cultural landscape can create new categorical identities or imbue existing identities with new meanings.3 It is therefore useful to think of identity change as a “nested phenomenon” (Stets, 2021, p. 287) in which no single level of social reality takes precedence. Within the field of queer studies, Wilkerson’s (2007) emerging fusion account of sexual identity provides a critical framework for understanding the specific dynamics through which sexualities change, emerge, and are given meaning through simultaneous, ongoing processes occurring at multiple levels of social reality: Sexuality stabilizes as individuals interpret their desires through contact with others and their own culturally specific norms. As an individual interprets experiences in light of social categories, he or she makes continual choices about the meaning and place of these experiences, and through interaction with others develops an identity that is real, chosen, and socially located. Neither the desires, nor the social categories, nor the chosen responses are primary, but instead all of them are co-constitutive and coeval in the process by which sexual orientation and sexual identity fuse together.4 This is what I call the emerging fusion account of sexual identity, because each factor fuses with the others in a continuous process from which identity emerges as synthesis (p. 4).

For Wilkerson, sexual identities do not exist a priori. Instead, sexual identities emerge as a “synthesis” or “fusion” of sexual desires, experiences, and meanings that we negotiate through socially situated interactions with others. Like Stets (2021), Wilkerson does not give primacy to any one part of the process. Instead,

2

Here, cross-situational describes something that occurs across more than one context, setting, or interaction. 3 For example, increased national discourse in the U.S. about transgender people has resulted in more widespread engagement with and self-reflexive use of a “cisgender” as both a categorical and person identity among people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. 4 Coeval means to merge, develop, or originate at the same time.

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he argues that desires, social categories, and behaviors are constructed in relation to one another and emerge simultaneously as we develop and experience our sexual selfhood.

Developing a Pleasure–Identity Lens Wilkerson’s emerging fusion account of sexual identities suggests that desire is integral to how we think of ourselves as sexual beings, and that these desires only make sense within our social contexts. Desire, a feeling of wanting to have or experience something, allows us to reflect upon our pleasures and motivates us to pursue them. We experience desire during pleasurable activities, when recalling pleasurable memories, and in anticipation of pleasures we have yet to explore. But what, exactly, is pleasure? For this study, I begin with the definition by sociologist and sexualities scholar, Jones, who describes pleasure as “infinitely different sets of gratifying social experiences,” both emotional and physical (2020, p. 25). This definition is expansive enough to account for different types of pleasure, both those involving sexual experiences as well as other forms of embodied and affective pleasure. Jones’ description also allows for multi-level analysis of the ways that pleasurable experiences are interactionally produced and given meaning across various contexts. Importantly, this conceptualization of pleasure aligns with a key tenet of identity theory: Our internal processes are always informed by, reflective of, and serve as guides for our social interactions. Although identity theorists have yet to engage specifically with pleasure, they see emotions as being central to identity-related processes. Following Cooley’s (1902) theory of the “looking glass self,” identity theorists argue that we experience positive or negative emotions depending on whether we think others perceive us in the ways that we see ourselves (Burke & Stets, 2009). Positive emotions occur when we experience consistency between our self-view and our perception of others’ views of us, whereas negative emotions occur when we perceive others as viewing us differently from how we view ourselves. The feelings resulting from non-verification or verification of our identities can prompt us to reflect on the meanings of specific behaviors and either alter or continue to engage in those behaviors (Burke & Stets, 2009; Stets, 2005). Since behavior is one way we attempt to align perceived meanings with a specific identity standard, behavior often expresses or controls our identity meanings. Since our desire to validate our identities can prompt us to act in specific ways, identities are often theorized as guides for behavior. But our behaviors are not just linked to our identity meanings, they also are linked to the feelings we associate with those identities. And while feelings can guide our behaviors, our emotional responses also can signal to us whether specific identities are a good fit (Burke & Stets, 2009). Previous research has examined how identity-relevant behavior can enhance feelings of self-efficacy (Rosenberg, 1990) or signal the importance of specific identities

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across time and place (Stryker, 1987). If our behaviors can give us these types of insights, Cast suggests that “it seems plausible that behavior can also provide important insights into who and what one is more generally” (2003, p. 45). This makes sense, because behaviors intended to fulfill identity-relevant desires—whether sexual, emotional, community-based, or professional—provide us opportunities to imagine who we are in that identity. But engagement in specific behaviors also may elicit physical and emotional responses—either pleasurable or unpleasurable—that can clarify our wants and needs, providing insights into who we are as affective and embodied individuals (Jones, 2020). This, in turn, can inform us of the identities we might claim in a situation. Thus, emotions, behaviors, and identities can be conceptualized as being interrelated in a complex and multidirectional way (Burke & Stets, 2022). When our pleasures or behaviors do not align with societal expectations, we may experience stigma. We can attempt to manage this stigma by situationally enacting behaviors that help us to “pass as normal” or through concerted efforts to realign our pleasures and behaviors with social norms (Goffman, 1964). We can also reframe stigmatized experiences and identities through a positive lens, either redefining or reimagining stigmatized characteristics and related identities through a positive lens (Taylor & Whittier, 1992). In fact, discovering and claiming self-affirming identities can provide a means of transforming our experiences of stigma into opportunities for new types of pleasures. Thoits (1985) describes the experience of recognizing ourselves as feeling and acting in non-normative ways as “norm-state discrepancy” (p. 227) and argues that people who are unable to bring their experiences into alignment with established feeling or expression norms may adopt labels or identities that reconcile this misalignment. Alternatively, they may redefine the situation so that their experiences make sense in that context. The feeling norms associated with sexual and romantic attraction in the United States are heteronormative (Schilt & Westbrook, 2009), meaning that desire is only considered appropriate when experienced by two people of “opposite genders.”5 As a result, LGBTQIA+ people will likely encounter norm-state discrepancy when we begin to experience (a)sexual and (a)romantic feelings.6 Sexual norms are also binary, which can foreclose more fluid and varied sexual identities and desires (Sumerau et al., 2020).7 But if we are aware of others whose desires and feelings

5

As a system, heteronormativity is characterized by a binary sex/gender/sexuality framework positing that there are only two sexes (female and male), only two gender categories associated with those sexes (female = woman, male = man), and only “opposite” gender attraction is normal. 6 Because we live in a society where it is assumed that everyone experiences sexual (and romantic) attractions, asexual and aromantic people are also likely to experience norm state discrepancy (Przybylo, 2019). 7 See earlier footnote re: heteronormativity and the two sex/gender system. In addition, binary sexual norms reinforce the idea that people are either heterosexual or homosexual, and that desires or attractions outside of those binary distinctions are partial, immature, or otherwise deviant.

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resonate with our own, we may be able to redefine our situation in community with those others. If we can cultivate these communities, we can access more affirming cultural norms and claim resonant identities—both of which can be pleasurable. From this perspective, pleasure operates like other positive emotions in identity theory—as a reward that we can pursue through identity related processes (McCall & Simmons, 1978). These rewards can manifest in many ways and are negotiated at multiple levels of social reality. At the micro level, developing a better understanding of ourselves, choosing an identity or identities that fit(s) with our self-view, and imagining or pursuing identity-relevant behaviors (such as identity-disclosure or sexual activities) can all be pleasurable. At the meso level, interacting with others who support or affirm our identities, or participating in group activities where our identities are celebrated can produce pleasure. At the macro level, our sense that we are part of something bigger, such as a category, community, or movement can contribute to pleasure. And we can also experience pleasure when alone or in community with others, we play with, disrupt, or redefine macro level stereotypes that are associated with our identities. Still, the pleasures achieved through reframing otherwise marginalized subjectivities are complex, situational, and interactional. In their analysis of “coming out” processes among gay men, Kaufman and Johnson (2004) found that gay men’s context-specific decisions to claim or disclose their sexual identities depended less on self-acceptance, and more on access to social support and anticipated positive or negative responses from others. They reconceptualized sexual identity processes as being nonlinear and variable across different relational and social contexts. In doing so, they successfully disrupted identity-stage models that framed “coming out” as a “final” and fixed stage in the identity development of LGBTQIA+ people. But their analytic focus on stigma-management strategies missed the pleasurable aspects of LGBTQIA+ identity processes that can accompany those struggles. In this paper, I offer an alternative to stigma-informed and unidimensional approaches to sexual identity processes by developing and implementing a pleasure– identity lens. Beginning with a central claim of identity theory—that our identities are given meaning through social contexts—this lens provides a new view through which to analyze the relationship between sexual identities and pleasures. The central assumptions of the pleasure–identity lens are as follows: 1. Individuals explore and make sense of their identities and pleasures through ongoing processes across micro, meso, and macro level contexts. 2. These identities and pleasures are both intimately and socially significant in contextually specific ways. 3. Identities and pleasures are reciprocally related, with each contributing to and verifying the other.

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Method

This paper is based on 53 interviews with LGBTQA+ (lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and asexual) undergraduate students at a West Coast University between 2011 and 2013. As part of my larger research project, I also conducted participant observation, attending LGBTQIA+ student organization meetings, events, and leadership programs. While these observations helped me to contextualize and make sense students’ narratives, I draw exclusively from interview data in this paper. Unlike observations, interviews allowed me to examine how students self-reflexively attributed meanings to their specific experiences of desire, identity, and pleasure. Interviews were organized as semi-structured life histories that covered students’ early family lives, educational experiences, first romantic and sexual experiences, current dating lives, and involvement in campus activities and communities. This approach provided a broader narrative context for students’ descriptions of their experiences and identities. Interviews lasted from 45 min to 3 h in locations students chose. We met in their dorm rooms and backyards, in my living room, in campus resource centers, or in crowded off-campus coffee shops. At the start of each interview, I collected students’ demographic information, including their sexual identities, gender identities, and gender pronouns.8 Throughout the interview I noted other sexual identities that they used and followed up by asking what each identity meant to them. Students claimed a variety of sexual identities, and the meanings they attributed to these identities often differed from person to person. Students generally used “queer” as a catchall to describe LGBTQIA+ communities, individuals, or groups, as I do in this paper.9 But students who identified as queer described it as having different meanings. In some cases, individual students described the same identity differently during the interview. Because I am not cataloguing specific identities and their meanings, these variations are not a limitation of this study. On the contrary, these variations in identity meaning provided insights into how specific feelings and contexts infused students’ identity processes and meanings, as well as how students’ identities provided them with frameworks for making sense of their affective and embodied experiences. I recruited students to participate by announcing my research during queer student meetings and events, and through word of mouth. As a result, my sample favored students actively involved in queer organizing on campus and who had access to sexuality-affirming individuals and/or communities. But students also talked about their experiences within non-LGBTQIA+ contexts, and many described

8

Gender pronouns are gendered third-person terms used to refer to others. Examples include (but are not limited to) she/her/hers, he/him/his, or gender neutral they/them/theirs, ze/hir/hirs. Where students use multiple pronouns, I use them interchangeably. 9 Queer also sometimes had political connotations, a phenomenon discussed more thoroughly in Miller et al. (2016).

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interactions with people who were either heterosexual, or who engaged in samegender sexual activity but did identify as “gay.” Thus, despite their proximity to LGBTQIA+ contexts, students represented a range of social perspectives and experiences in relation to communities of affinity and support. Their experiences within different settings and interactions, both on and off campus, contributed to a nuanced and situational examination of students’ pleasures and identities. Because my interest lies at the intersection of identity and pleasure, I focus on students’ stories about who they are, why they describe themselves in particular ways, and what their identities and identity-related processes feel like in various contexts. When coding interview transcriptions, I paid close attention to how students described and attributed meanings to their sexual histories, coming out narratives, identities, and interactions with others (e.g., with family, at school, among LGBTQIA+ or non-LGBTQIA+ friends, and in relation to romantic and/or sexual partners). In response to students’ complex articulations of identity and pleasure, I abandon the assumption that identity processes follow a linear progression toward greater stability (Kaufman & Johnson, 2004; Miller et al., 2016; Rupp et al., 2022). Instead, I conceptualized “coming out” processes as ongoing and flexible. I also consider the possibility that unstable or fluid identity meanings can remain compatible beyond the initial stages of identity exploration, despite previous research suggesting that unstable identity meanings produce feelings of dissonance in the long run (Burke, 2020). Bearing in mind Jones’ (2020) expansive definition of pleasure as resulting from unlimited types of physically and emotionally gratifying experiences, my analysis of pleasure was grounded in students’ affective articulations of their own sexualities. I avoid privileging or projecting meaning onto specific acts by asking students to define their sexual experiences in their own words. Rather than making assumptions about how and when students experienced, pleasure I focus on the emotions they expressed when telling me about their sexual identities, relationships, interactions, communities, and desires. My inclusion of pleasurable experiences that were not explicitly sexual had the added benefit of including narratives from students who identified as LGBTQA+ but who told me they had never engaged in sexual activities, as well as those who were asexual.10 Using a pleasure–identity lens requires recognizing that both identities and pleasures are socially and interactionally produced at multiple levels of social reality. In this paper, I treat students’ narratives as representative of the multi-level dynamics through which pleasure and identity inform one another, while also attending to the agentic ways that students situationally attribute meanings to their pleasures and identities. The richness of students’ descriptions enables viewing these sexual identity processes as both humanizing and grounded in their social contexts. My focus on students’ sexual histories allows for visceral recollections of pleasure through which they recognize and reflect upon themselves as sexual beings.

10

The term asexual describes those who do not experience sexual desire. It is also an umbrella term that can encapsulate varying levels of (a)sexual and (a)romantic desires.

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Meanwhile, the stories they tell about how they use identities in different contexts provide important links between identity, emotions, and behaviors. These narratives suggest that pleasure and identity are mutually productive at the personal (micro), interactional (meso), and structural (macro) levels, and that students make sense of their sexual desires, communities, and practices in relation to both.

9.4

Findings

In the following sections I demonstrate the utility of using a pleasure–identity lens through a multi-level examination of (1) How students conceptualized their sexual identities and (2) the pleasures they described in connection with these identities. Although group and categorical identities served as points of reference for students’ sexualities, I focus specifically on students’ articulations of their person identities. This is because person identities reflect individuals’ self-views and represent the dimension of identity most likely to have meanings connected with their personal experiences of embodied and affective pleasure. While I focus on sexual identity at the person level, I pay specific attention to how they made sense of their sexual selfmeanings and experiences of pleasures in relation to micro, meso, and macro level contexts. At the micro level I focus on how students described their sexual identities in relation to experiences of intimate embodied (physical) and affective (emotional) pleasures. At the meso level I attend to students’ accounts of sexual identity in relation to specific social groups or institutions—including the LGBTQIA+ student community on campus—and the identity pleasures they experienced in these contexts. Finally, at the macro level, I consider the impacts of social structure on pleasure and identity by discussing how students made sense of their identities and pleasures within the context of broad, sociocultural norms and expectations. Many of the processes articulated in this paper were ongoing, meaning that students were still negotiating and renegotiating pleasure and identity across different contexts. Other processes represented drastic shifts in how students conceptualized their sexual identities, often when exposed to new experiences and information. Although I separate my findings into distinct micro, meso, and macro level sections, most of this data has implications for multiple levels of social reality. This is because micro, meso, and macro level dynamics frequently overlap and inform one another in non-linear and complex ways (Stets, 2021). Therefore, even though I have organized them into specific sections, each narrative also spans multiple, interlocking levels of social reality.

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Micro Level: Intimate Pleasures and Identities Although mainstream narratives about non-normative sexualities often emphasize the painful and disorienting experience of realizing one is not heterosexual (Kaufman & Johnson, 2004), it is also important to acknowledge the pleasures associated with sexual discovery for LGBTQIA+ people. In the following section, I focus on these pleasures by attending to the intimate processes through which students clarified their identities and desires. I conceptualize intimate pleasures as internal experiences of emotional and physiological gratification. This does not mean that they are experienced alone or in isolation, but that they manifest at the micro levels of self-awareness and interpersonal interactions. These pleasures also include desire, which Wilkerson (2007) describes as integral to how we think of ourselves in sexual terms. We do not have to engage in specific sexual acts to know our desires. But as feelings of longing, desires will inform which types of sexual experiences we pursue. Students commonly said that same-gender desires prompted them to think about their sexual identities and to explore those identities through intimate encounters. They also described their emotional and physical responses to these encounters as integral to their sexual identities. Students therefore experienced pleasure as a reward for pursuing identity-relevant behaviors (McCall & Simmons, 1978; Pinel & Swann, 2000) and as a means of verification in their sexual identities. Phoenix (White, female-genderqueer, 20, 3rd year) identified as sexually fluid during our interview, recalling pleasurable sexual experiences with people of all genders. Their first sexual experience with a girl had been at the age of 15, while their first sexual experience with a boy had been at the age of 17. Phoenix explained that neither experience had resulted in an orgasm, but that this had not made either less pleasurable. With regards to their first sexual experience with a boy, Phoenix recalled: It was over really fast [. . .] It was a positive experience though, you know, like, I didn’t climax but, like, at that time, like, that wasn’t really the point. [Interviewer: What was the point?] Like, having that emotional intimacy, honestly, like, having that moment of just being totally exposed and vulnerable and like, giving yourself to someone.

For Phoenix, the pleasure had been in the vulnerability and emotion that they shared with each person, as well as in the physical act of exploring one another’s bodies. Likewise, in describing their first sexual experience with a girl, Phoenix recalled: Just being completely naked in front of someone for the first time and being really fuckin’ turned on. And like, just like, I feel like—I was on top of her and like [. . .] just sort of taking the moment of like, my naked body over someone else’s naked body and just like, the intense like, (long pause) open-ness and intimacy.

The affective and embodied pleasures that Phoenix described when talking about sexual experiences helped to inform their sexually fluid identity and explained why that identity felt like a good fit. When I asked Phoenix to explain what it meant to identify as sexually fluid, they again referenced visceral desire:

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Having a fluid identity is exactly what it sounds like: It’s fluid. It’s constantly in motion [. . .] That’s exactly how I feel because, uh, sexual feelings for me can change you know, within a day, honestly. You know, sometimes I wake up and I’m like [. . .] “I wanna get me some ladies!” But then other days I feel like I want a man in my life [. . .] But it’s constantly changing.

These playful references intersected with Phoenix’s genderqueer identification as well, which they also described as shifting in relation to sexual partners and experiences. Phoenix’s use of the phrases “I wanna get me some ladies” or “wanting a man in my life” evoked sexual desire in specifically gendered ways (the way a heterosexual man might refer to a woman, and the way a heterosexual woman might refer to a man). Thus, intimate desires were simultaneously expressed and informed by broader (macro level) cultural ideologies about gender and sexuality, demonstrating how different levels of social reality intersect. Christina (White woman, 19, 1st year), who identified as a lesbian, described her first sexual experience as being with a high school friend she had been in love with: Everything about her [pauses] I was just like so, so in love with this girl and we became super close friends, which is probably the weirdest way to start a relationship. But [that’s] how it happened. She was sleeping over at my house you know, and so I turned to her, and I was like, “Oh, I’ve never made out with someone,” and she was like, “Oh, we should fix that” and uh, yeah, it went from there, to lower, lower, and then like, yeah. That was my first sexual experience, and we ended up starting to date.

Like most of the students I interviewed, Christina’s first sexual experience had started with a deep emotional connection. When I asked whether she’d had any heterosexual sexual experiences, she shrugged them off: “I think I’ve kissed a couple guys, but it just like, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same at all.” While “It wasn’t the same at all” is a vague account of the difference between sexual experiences, it also references the visceral yet indescribable aspects of pleasure that contribute to sexual self-concepts at the micro level. This ambiguity is significant for a sociological analysis of pleasure and identity, since only certain types of pleasures and identities are compelled to explain themselves. Whereas heterosexual experiences are normalized and therefore taken for granted as being pleasurable, homosexual identities and desires are often excavated for clear proof that the individual has found heterosexual encounters “lacking” in some way and is therefore “sure” they are gay. However, Christina’s simple assertion that “it wasn’t the same at all” forecloses the idea that elaboration is needed, and she relies on her own visceral experience of pleasure to inform her sexual self-concept. Interpersonal experiences of pleasure that were not explicitly sexual also accounted for students’ sexual identities. Christina’s sexual behaviors and related emotional responses (or lack of emotional responses in relation to men) led her to identify as a lesbian. On the contrary, Caleb (Hispanic/Latino, gay, man, 18, firstyear) recalled the emotional bonds he had experienced with an ex-girlfriend and described his attraction to her as pansexual, which did not counter his self-concept as a gay man. “When I look back on it and I reflect back to how it was,” he explained, “I think of it more as like pansexual. Because I wasn’t in love with the physical attraction of her. I was in love with the emotional, like, connection.” When asked

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what pansexual meant to him as an identity he replied “Um, I think of it more as like, you don’t, you don’t think of like, like, like gender—you think of more, like, just emotion, yeah.” These strong feelings of love had continued over the years, and Caleb said that he still expressed them towards his ex but knew that it would never work between them because he was gay. When I asked what identifying as gay meant to him, he replied: I love people emotionally and physically of the same gender. . .Um, and there are just like certain aspects about men that, like. . . to me, they’re just like, I guess riveting or just so like intoxicating. I love, like, broad shoulders and like, those real defined chins. And, like, just women don’t do that for me.

The sexual stories that Phoenix, Christina, and Caleb told support Cast’s (2003) argument that behaviors can help to shape identity meanings. Their behaviors (different types of intimate interactions) helped them to refine and make sense of which identities fit best. However, the pleasures associated with those behaviors were also meaningful. They described pleasurable experiences as integral to their alignment with specific sexual identities or used their current sexual identities to retrospectively construct and make sense of their sexual histories. For example, Phoenix describes identifying as sexually fluid because of varied but intense feelings of emotional and physical desire towards people of all genders. Christina’s ambivalence towards kissing “a couple guys” underscores her lesbian identity. Caleb considers early feelings towards his ex-girlfriend to be romantic11 and therefore inconsequential for his sexual identity, which he describes as “gay” due to the intoxicating effects that men’s bodies had on him. In each case, their experiences of pleasure informed the sexual identities they used to describe themselves and helped to clarify what those identities meant to them.

Meso Level: Group Pleasures and Identities The micro level pleasures and identity processes described in the previous section focus primarily on self-reflexive accounts of physically and emotionally intimate experiences. Students also described meso level experiences of pleasure and identity tied to specific locations, institutions, or identity-based groups. Identity theorists generally refer to contexts like these, which affirm our identities, as self-verifying opportunity structures (Burke & Stets, 2009; Pinel & Swann, 2000). Students’ context-specific and institutionally bound stories demonstrated how pleasure and identity are negotiated through specific interactional contexts, and how these contexts produce pleasures and identities whose meanings can change situationally.

Although he used the term “pansexual” to describe his attraction, his definition did not include sexual desire and was more in alignment with panromantic—romantic attraction to people of all genders. It is also worth noting that he did not describe pansexual as an identity, but as a feeling; this may suggest that some feelings do not amount to identities, a potential area of future research.

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For example, Dalton’s experience of growing up gay and Black in Southern California was informed by both homophobia and pride, depending on the specific situation. Although he experienced his hometown as being generally homophobic, Dalton (Black, queer, man, 21, 4th year) described the immense pleasures of growing up and coming into his sexual identity through involvement in the ball scene12 with his queer Black and Latinx friends: [T]hey actually made me feel good about my sexuality and good about what I was doing, you know? And it felt good to be engaged and, like, find the struggles and . . . what it meant to be Black and queer . . .what it meant to be Black and Latino. And like intermingling and learning culture . . . and tradition and heritage, like, almost. It’s kinda just like, “Oh my God I have a history!” Like, you know, there are people out there like me who are accepting of sexuality!

Despite general homophobia in his hometown, the specific subcultural space of the ball scene had made him “feel good”, “engaged”, and “accepted”—pleasures that he now associated with his identity as a gay, Black, man. In describing the importance of receiving identity support for both his racial and sexual identities, Dalton emphasizes the importance of viewing the relationship between identity and pleasure through an intersectional lens. This lens acknowledges that individuals’ various identities intersect with and transform one another to produce unique experiences of oppression and empowerment across different interactions and social contexts (Crenshaw, 1991). The pleasures associated with sexual identities—and the sexual identities associated with those pleasures—cannot be understood in a vacuum because sexualities are also racialized, classed, and gendered at the micro, meso, and macro levels. In recalling the pleasure of finding “people out there like me” with similar histories and cultures “who are accepting of sexuality,” Dalton is not just recalling the pleasures of coming into a sexual identity. He is recalling the specific pleasures of exploring “what it meant to be [both] Black and queer” (emphasis added). Finally, students described college as providing pleasurable opportunities to interact with other LGBTQIA+ people and to explore newly meaningful sexual identities. Saul (White, gay, man, 18, 1st year) described college as a place where he could “redefine myself. . .rediscover myself,” while Om (White queer genderqueer, 20, 3rd year) described hir excitement about coming to college where ze could be out and get involved in “queer things.” For Ross, (Latino, queer, man, 19, 2nd year) his first year on campus provided an opportunity to start fresh:

Ball culture, also knowns as “The Ball Scene,” refers to a primarily Black and Latinx LGBTQIA+ subculture of drag performers who participate in pageants (or balls), frequently competing as “houses” under the name of a more established performer, or “house mother.” These houses are generally symbolic rather than material and illustrate the closeness of house members, who tend to provide alternative family or kinship structures for one another. For more on Ball Culture, see Bailey (2013). 12

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I was just like, I’m just gonna start it off: “I’m queer, this is who I am, you can’t stop me.” And it was fine because . . . I put myself in the queer community and just, like, got interactions from there and built the greatest friendships possible. . .

Seeing college as a fresh start, an opportunity to “redefine” themselves, and to get involved in “queer things” were common sentiments reflecting the queer pleasures that students anticipated would await them in this new context. Ross’ recollection of arriving on campus with an “I’m queer. . .and you can’t stop me” attitude belies a different kind of pleasure—letting go of pretenses and taking the risk of being unapologetically queer. And his subsequent statement that “it was fine” because of the interactions and friendships that he built within the queer community demonstrate how pleasurable connections can facilitate, reaffirm, and reward sexual identities. Like many other students I interviewed, Max (White, queer genderqueer, 21, 4th year) thought that queer people could make friends more easily than heterosexuals: Being queer for me was really an advantage in this situation. . . . Because we have a community with solidarity and we have a community where you can come in and say, “I’m queer, like, I’m a queer person” and . . . we immediately have something in common that is important to both of us.

Max counters popular narratives about the struggles and alienation faced by LGBTQIA+ people, suggesting that heterosexuals are more likely to experience alienation than queer people—at least when coming to college. Max’s suggestion that saying, “I’m queer. . .I’m a queer person,” would result in immediate solidarity also suggests that, in certain contexts, specific identities may be associated with pleasurable outcomes. If pleasures serve as identity-rewards in certain contexts people may claim identities in anticipation of those rewards (McCall & Simmons, 1978). Therefore, pleasure can both produce and result from meaningful identities at the meso level.

Macro Level: Structural Pleasures and Identities As members of structurally marginalized sexual categories, LGBTQA+ students understood that their desires did not align with broader heteronormative expectations. In the following section I consider how students navigated specific identity meanings and pleasures in relation to the ideologies, politics, and cultural norms of broad macro level contexts. Because sexual norms in the United States view sexualities as both binary and stable (Westbrook, 2022), I also discuss the ways that students used fluid sexual identities to validate their pleasures. To make sense of this phenomenon, I briefly introduce the concept of identity dispersion (Burke, 2020) and consider its utility for understanding the meanings and pleasures that accompany fluid identities. When talking about sexual identities and pleasures, students frequently contextualized their experiences as being meaningful within this specific social and

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historical context. When making sense of their identities and pleasures in relation to heterosexual feeling norms, students demonstrated variations on Thoits’ (1985) “norm-state discrepancy,” which they responded to in different ways. Sometimes they redefined the situation by suggesting that, although homophobia was still a problem, their experiences of marginalization were minimal in contrast with previous LGBTQIA+ generations. Saul, for example, had come out as “gay” to family members and school friends by the time he was 14 years old. When I asked if he thought that his identity might change in the future, Saul said “no,” then explained why he thought his identity would remain stable. The only reason I would hesitate on that answer is because, uh, my, dad uh, in college saw that he was gay. Given he, he was different than me in terms of his, the way he viewed himself. He wasn’t very—he wasn’t quite as happy as he is now. Um, I think he had not as good of a view of himself as I do. Um, but he, like he went to, I mean, he went to the therapy and stuff. Uh, I mean, cause you know, back then—what was that? The eighties? Yeah, the eighties. You know, it was harder.

Saul told me that, after going to therapy, his father had fallen in love with and married a woman (Saul’s mother). But while Saul believed his parents loved each other, he also believed that his dad would have continued to identify as gay if society had not been so homophobic in the eighties. In contrast with his father, Saul did not anticipate his own sexual identity would change. He explained this by recalling how he had grown up in a family with multiple gay family members and a lot of “liberal” support. He described himself as having high self-esteem, and conveyed strong sexual preferences (“I know what I like”) when talking about what types of men he was attracted to, what he looked for in a relationship, or what types of sexual encounters he was interested in. Ultimately, Saul’s comparative explanations suggested that happiness and self-esteem were key determinants in the persistence or non-persistence of sexual identities and were contingent upon societal levels of sexual acceptance. Through this comparative lens, students like Saul described contemporary access to social acceptance and supportive communities as facilitating or enhancing their identity-based pleasures. Ideologies, or systems of thinking about and understanding the world, also inform the relationship between identities and pleasures. Heteronormative beliefs that sexual identities are binary (people are either heterosexual or homosexual) and stable (these identities do not change) served as an ideological backdrop and a set of feeling norms against which students explored their identities and pleasures. In response to these expectations, some students began labelling themselves as “fluid” or “queer.” Describing queer as an identity that eschewed fixed categories of desire and action, some students suggested that a queer identity allowed them to explore their pleasures without feeling beholden to specific sexual identity expectations. Dan, for example, described going back and forth between identifying as gay, bisexual, “straight,” and queer over time. In middle school he had not thought much about his sexuality until a new friend expressed interest in guys.

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And then I was like, “Oh, dang, like, I would kinda like that so maybe I’m definitely—I’m probably bisexual.” And um . . . talking to the first guy I was like, “Yeah, I could definitely like, possibly, see this happening. I definitely think I’m like, gay.” And then at the same point I was just like, “No.” Then like I would . . . talk to a girl and be flirting and I was like, “now I’ll just go back to bisexuality.” . . . I went from, like, bisexual, to gay, to definitely straight, possibly, a little bit curious. And so like, I really do not see the need of like, titles. I feel like if anything it just confuses you just ‘cause you feel like you have to follow these set guidelines . . . So that’s why I was like, I just [. . .] when I found the umbrella term “queer” I felt like it was my little haven for a little bit. Like, “Fine, I’m queer.”

In alignment with heteronormative societal expectations, Dan had initially assumed he was heterosexual, only questioning his sexuality when the possibility was brought to his attention. Upon discovering his interest in guys, Dan changed his identity to bisexual. But through the lens of rigid identity categories, each new experience of attraction seemed to require that Dan choose a new identity with “set guidelines” that still did not align with his desires. Dan’s frustration with and confusion over “titles,” and the eventual “haven” he found in “the umbrella term queer,” suggest that rigid sexual identities and meanings can produce unpleasurable feelings of dissonance for individuals, and that more dispersed identity meanings can provide relief from that dissonance by allowing them to pursue pleasures without threatening their identities. Identity theorists refer to the shared expectations or guidelines associated with a specific identity as the “identity standard,” and they suggest that having dispersed (or less stable) identity meanings tends to produce negative feelings in the long-term (Burke, 2020). However, current theories of dispersion focus on how people experience or pursue verification of normative identities, without considering how counter-hegemonic identity processes may differ. For students like Dan, queer and fluid identities provided flexibility in the meanings and expectations associated with their sexual identities, allowing them to retain a stable identity despite varying desires and pleasures. It also allowed them to redefine the situation by normalizing fluid identities in a society where stable sexual identities are expected. But the meanings and pleasures of queer identities were contextually and culturally bound. Esthela, a Chinese International student (lesbian–queer/questioning, genderqueer, 22, 4th year), anticipated what it would be like to return to China after being immersed in the queer community on campus for over a year. She had used a lot of different identities during her time in the United States and had landed on “queer” because of the fluid and flexible nature of her desires. She was explaining this to me when she suddenly stopped: I’ve dated guys [. . .] but I would just prefer girls. But it does happen when I like guys. And it does happen when I like genderqueer—so I just sort of (long pause) [. . .] The other thing that I’m just—Let me just be completely honest [. . .] I’m just gonna go home really, really soon. And that’s why I’m trying to just not pick up too much information.

Reflecting on the differences between her home “system” and the campus community, Esthela wondered whether relinquishing her attachment to the contextually meaningful identities she had used on campus would make her transition easier. “I wouldn’t identify as queer when I’m home (in China),” she explained. “Because first

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of all, people don’t know this term. And I don’t wanna be like, you know: ‘Oh, I learned it from somewhere else . . . So you need to accept this system, too.’” In explaining that queer identity would lose meaning within another cultural system, Esthela clearly illustrates how pleasures and identities are facilitated, foreclosed, and transformed at the macro level in relation to the broader social structures that contextualize pleasure–identity meanings. Because of this, she shifted her focus from identity to pleasure. “So I don’t struggle, myself, once I go back home,” she told me, “I just want to make sure I’m comfortable about myself . . . and make sure that I know that everything can be flexible, and that I can just go with my feelings.” Here she translates the important parts of her queer identity into the identity-relevant pleasures she hopes to retain: Feelings she can “just go with,” making sure she is comfortable with herself, and remembering “that everything can be flexible.” By focusing on the pleasures of fluid desire, flexibility, and selfknowledge, Esthela anticipates being able to retain the important and pleasurable parts of her queer identity, despite its illegibility in a different cultural system.

9.5

Discussion

In the introduction to this paper, I made the case for developing and applying a new lens to address the absence of pleasure in current research on sexual identities. I then suggested that identity theory contained the conceptual tools to support such a lens, provided they were effectively combined with key insights from sexuality studies and queer theory. This lens could be particularly effective, I argued, if we theorized sexual identities and pleasures through a multi-level identity framework (Stets, 2021) and conceptualized pleasure through the lens of identity theories of emotion (Burke & Stets, 2022; Stets, 2005; Thoits, 1985) and behavior (Cast, 2003). I used this method to develop a multi-level lens for studying the relationship between pleasure and identities, which I call the pleasure–identity lens. I then used this lens to analyze interviews with 53 LGBTQA+ identified undergraduates, paying close attention to how they described their own sexual identities and experiences of pleasure across different contexts. Analyzing students’ sexual narratives through this pleasure–identity lens enabled me to view students’ identities and pleasures from within specific social contexts and to make sense of my findings through a non-linear and non-hierarchical lens. I found that students made sense of their identities and pleasures simultaneously, through processes that varied across context. In other words, students’ identities and pleasures mutually informed one another at the micro, meso, and macro levels. And their embodied and affective experiences of identity and pleasure varied at each of these levels. Reflecting upon their intimate experiences, students described their identities and pleasures as providing context and meaning for one another. These micro level pleasure–identity intimacies were evident during Phoenix’s visceral recollection of early sexual experiences and their fluid identity/desires, Christina’s understated assertion that kissing guys “just wasn’t the same,” and Caleb’s

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explanation that he was a gay man because his love for an ex-girlfriend was unlike the intoxication he felt for men. Students also emphasized the importance of sexual communities and other subcultural contexts where they could interact with others, discovering and applying new meanings to resonant sexual identities and pleasures. These meso level pleasure–identity processes were demonstrated through Dalton’s excited recollection of coming out through the ball scene, and in the ways that Om, Ross, and Max described the queer community on campus as a source of solidarity and friendship. But students also described these processes as occurring within larger social contexts. For example, they perceived themselves as living in a uniquely accepting social and historical context in comparison with previous generations (in the case of Saul), or as defining themselves through identity meanings that were specific to LGBTQIA+ politics in the United States (in the case of Esthela). Students’ narratives about intimate desires, experiences of solidarity in community with others, and generalized ideas about sexualities thus demonstrated the nested dynamics of pleasure–identity processes. Viewing pleasure and identity as interlocking processes that are both intimately and socially significant, my pleasure–identity framework extends current research on emotions in identity theory and offers a new lens through which to view non-normative identity processes more broadly. By focusing on pleasure, I could explore how identities, identity meanings, and identity processes are transformed in relation to specific emotions. Identity theorists generally conceptualize emotions as outputs resulting from verification or non-verification of an identity (Burke & Stets, 2009). But sexual identities are uniquely pleasure-based in that they represent meanings associated with our desires, interests, and related pleasures. Since we discover our desires by imagining or engaging in pleasurable experiences, embodied and affective pleasures generally precede sexual identities. In other words, our sexual feelings may precede and inform our sexual identities. This was evident among students who described how pleasure (or lack of pleasure) helped them figure out how they wanted to identify sexually. In some cases, they adopted new sexual identities and then explored identity-relevant pleasures to determine whether those identities fit. These findings provide empirical evidence that specific emotions, like pleasure, can serve as a cause, not just an outcome of identities (Burke & Stets, 2022). They also prompt us to consider whether and how other specific emotions might operate similarly. Second, by viewing a counter-normative set of identities through the lens of pleasure, this study demonstrates that socially stigmatized identities and feelings do not always produce negative emotions. As Thoits (1985) suggests, people may respond to a sense that their feelings are out of alignment with social expectations by adopting identities that reframe and justify their feelings. This process can have pleasurable outcomes for people who would otherwise experience stigma. For LGBTQ+ students, coming to college offered opportunities explore their desires and adopt new sexual identities that accounted for those desires in meaningful and validating ways.

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Some students chose to identify as queer or fluid when their behaviors and pleasures did not align with previously held, but more rigidly defined, sexual identities. This finding suggests that when people enjoy behaviors that are inconsistent with their identity (for example, a heterosexual identified person enjoying sex with someone of the same gender), they may attempt to minimize dissonance by changing their identity rather than their behavior. This reconceptualization of their sexual selfhood was a micro-level shift. Alternate identities and pleasures also were enabled at the meso level, through access to specific communities and spaces. And while macro-level heteronormative expectations provided a constraining context, advances in LGBTQIA+ rights at the state and federal level signaled opportunities for students to embrace their pleasures and identities. Finally, this research raises important questions about how identities and pleasures transform one another. Since our sexual identities are presumed to signify who or what we desire, they can be challenged if we experience seemingly contradictory desires or pleasures. Some students preferred to respond to contradictory desires by claiming sexual identities with dispersed meanings, such as queer. This suggests that emotions may guide identity dispersion. For example, Dan called queer identity a “haven” free from the “guidelines” of other sexual identities, which demonstrated how stable identity meanings can produce negative emotions and lead people to pursue identities with more dispersed meanings. This study is unique in that it focuses on positive, pleasurable emotions rather than negative emotions that people experience in relation to their counterhegemonic or stigmatized identities. It introduces a new perspective on identity processes among people who resist rather than pursue normative expectations and creates opportunities to reexamine key findings from identity theory in novel contexts. Students’ descriptions of the pleasures that more flexible identities afforded them were particularly notable. Because many students described college as a time of selfexploration and new ideas, this finding aligns with Burke’s (2020) assertion that identity dispersion can benefit people during the exploratory phases of identity development, despite leading to negative feelings in the long term. But college is not the only context in which flexible identity meanings abound. Current research in gender and sexuality studies suggests that people are embracing non-binary or fluid identities and desires beyond exploratory contexts (Sumerau et al., 2020) and that people experience these identities as pleasurable (Better, 2014; Dale, 2022; Shuster & Westbrook, 2022). Further research on fluid, non-binary, and flexible identities outside exploratory contexts can offer new insights into the longterm implications of identity dispersion, including whether it can produce positive, rather than negative emotions. Such research would complicate our understanding of identity dispersion and its implications for individuals in non-hegemonic contexts.

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Chapter 10

Normative, Counter-Normative, and Temporary Identities, Proximal Social Structure, Identity Prominence, and Self-Esteem Michael M. Harrod and Richard T. Serpe

10.1

Introduction

Growing out of structural symbolic interactionism (Stryker, 1968, 1980; Stryker & Burke, 2000), identity theory posits that one’s placement in the social structure facilitates and constrains individuals’ opportunities to engage in social action. Identity theory also posits that one’s internalized identity meanings develop and guide their actions during interaction with others. When identities are activated, the interactional context and identity meanings define the self and motivate behavior. Building on these assumptions, we focus on the role of the proximate social structure (Merolla et al., 2012; Stryker et al., 2005) on occupants of normative and counternormative identities (Adams & Serpe, 2020; Markowski & Serpe, 2018, 2021; Stets et al., 2022). The proximate social structure influences one’s day-to-day interaction with others, their experiences (Merolla et al., 2012; Serpe et al., 2020), and their internalized identity meanings (Carter & Mangum, 2022). We also propose and test that only examining normative and counter-normative identities fails to account for the diversity of people’s identities. The present research explores how an aspect of the proximal social structure is associated with the prominence of normative, temporary, and counter-normative identities and, ultimately, respondents’ reports of self-esteem. Aspects of the larger social structure, such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, and income, locate persons within a stratification system, impacting their opportunities in M. M. Harrod (✉) Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. T. Serpe Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_10

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everyday life. For example, gender scholars have demonstrated that men are treated better within society than women. Whites experience fewer challenges or questions of their presence in social spaces than people of color. The large-scale social structure shapes our location within the intermediate social structure (Stryker et al., 2005). Intermediate social structures consist of the characteristics of where people live, such as the size of the place where they live, the quality of schools, the religious environment of their neighborhood, and what their neighbors do for work. The intermediate social structure influences the proximal social structure, which facilitates the network of interaction with others. Proximal social structures are those closest to persons, such as families, athletic teams, and religious congregations. These represent the contexts within which persons generally enact role, group, and person identities (Merolla et al., 2012; Stryker et al., 2005; Serpe & Stryker, 2011). These structures provide persons with social relationships most directly attributable to a specific role identity and its enactment. Identity theory has primarily focused on normative identities, such as parent, spouse, worker, religious person, and membership in a group. More recently, interest developed in counter-normative identities and contrasts between counter-normative and normative identities (e.g., married vs. single, parent vs. childless, employed vs. not employed) (Adams & Serpe, 2020; Harrod & Serpe, 2021; Long, 2016; Markowski & Serpe, 2018, 2021; Stets & Serpe, 2013; Stets et al., 2022). Normative identities are socially accepted identities that most people come to claim. These are identities that most people hold at some point in their lives. For example, the roles of worker, parent, or significant other are roles most people hold during their lives. Counter-normative identities are identities failing to conform to society’s expectations. For example, someone who never finds a life partner and lives as a single person is criticized for breaking society’s assumption that everyone should find a partner. Recent research has found that although the lifelong marriage rate has declined, people tend to move into a committed relationship (e.g., cohabitation, marriage, or living apart together) (Brown et al., 2022 ; Wu & Brown, 2022). Researchers have been studying differences in how members of normative and counter-normative identities experience daily interactions with others. For example, Markowski and Serpe (2018) found that identity prominence operated differently for occupants of normative and counter-normative roles. Identity prominence was positively associated with greater self-esteem among those holding a normative identity. Conversely, prominence failed to influence self-esteem among those holding a counter-normative identity. To date, identity researchers have primarily examined individuals with either a normative or counter-normative identity. We propose to examine another identity along this continuum. Some individuals may be experiencing a temporary identity in which they explore the different meanings of their identity. By analogy, this is similar to what is discussed in ethnic identity research (Phinney & Ong, 2007) regarding ethnic identity exploration. Phinney argues that young adults’ ethnic identities can take more time to coalesce into a coherent and defined sense of self; in the meantime, the individual is still determining who they are. Extending Phinney’s ethnic identity exploration model to our purposes, people might choose to be childless or single

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because they are still exploring who they are. At the same time, those holding either a normative or counter-normative status made an intentional choice. Those exploring being childless or single have yet to determine their future and are unlikely to close off possibilities. We refer to these individuals as having a temporary counternormative identity. Those who have internalized being single (ever-single) and childless (child-free) and do not expect to change in the future are counter-normative identity holders.

Normative, Temporary, and Counter-Normative We conceptualize normative and counter-normative identities as endpoints on a continuum. We posit that individuals who hold a normative identity (e.g., parent, spouse) and counter-normative identity (e.g., child-free, ever-single) have a clearer sense of the meanings associated with their identities than those with a temporary identity. Normative and counter-normative identities are well-established in society (Adams & Serpe, 2020; Markowski & Serpe, 2018, 2021; Stets et al., 2022). Holders of normative identities arguably have the easiest time because society is structured for them. For example, American society is replete with examples reinforcing that one should find a life partner or become a parent (Brown et al., 2022; Preves & Mortimer, 2013; Wu & Brown, 2022).1 Likewise, despite strong societal forces encouraging people towards normative identities, people have resisted societal pressure and have maintained counter-normative identities. In both cases, occupants have well-established societal norms and understandings. In contrast, those not committed to a normative or counter-normative identity in terms of marriage/being coupled or parenting may be exploring the meanings and commitment to an alternative identity. A childless person may eventually give up on being a parent or age out of the traditional childbearing or parenting stage of their life course. If this happens, they might shift to being “child-free.” Similarly, single people may shift their identity meanings towards being “ever-single” with more experience with dating/romantic relationships, age, and personal stability and satisfaction with their single life. The centrality of one’s identity of ultimately holding normative or counternormative identity is significantly influenced by one’s place in the life course. Younger individuals are typically afforded more opportunities to explore their sense of self compared to older individuals, especially those in midlife. As one ages, society expects each of us to transition into more age-appropriate roles. For example, Sharp and Ganong (2011) discuss society’s pressure on women to marry and raise children despite Americans marrying increasingly later in life. Their study

1

Some life course researchers have held that contrary to previous work, the timing of major life events (e.g., marriage or the birth of a child) was no longer as structured as they once were believed to be (Hogan, 1978; Macmillan, 2005; Rindfuss et al., 1987).

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highlights that never-married women in their late 20s to mid-30s experience feeling a “deficit” for not conforming to the societal expectation of being married. Sharp and Ganong (2011) argue that younger and older women—do not experience the same experiences of “deficit” because of their location in the life course. Sharp and Ganong (2011) highlight that age—mid-20s through mid-30s—is a time of reflection about their futures. We examine how proximal social structure is associated with the prominence of normative, temporary, and counter-normative identities and self-esteem (Serpe et al., 2019). Testing these relationships examines a fundamental claim of identity theory that placement in the social structure impacts the self. Do features of the proximal social structure relate to how individuals evaluate their self-esteem? We examine whether the proximal social structure operates differently for those with a temporary identity than for those with a normative or counter-normative identity. This research examines an aspect of the proximal social structure related to the frequency of shared identities present in one’s interactions. Previous research has used indirect measures (Merolla & Serpe, 2013) or a conceptualization that was part of the study design—membership in a graduate program—of proximal social structures (Merolla et al., 2012). Here we ask respondents to report their proximal social structures naturally occurring in their daily lives. As we conceptualize it, normative, temporary, and counter-normative identities incorporate one’s choice when claiming the identity. There has been little identity research that has examined personal choice as it relates to one’s identity. Previous theorizing stresses that not everyone is equally capable of choosing their identities (Long, 2016; Serpe, 1987; Stryker & Serpe, 1983). Serpe (1987) points out that the amount of choice is conditioned by one’s placement within the social structure and the identity in question. For example, an assistant professor has fewer choices than a full professor. The assistant professor’s time and energy are proscribed by focusing their energy and time on projects likely to count towards tenure. Conversely, full professors have more latitude to take on riskier projects due to their structural position. Thus, including a measure of choice is important in studying whether an identity is a logical extension of recent theorizing and research examining how normative and counter-normative identities operate differently (Adams & Serpe, 2020; Long, 2016; Serpe et al., 2019, 2022). Choice has been shown as important for the holders of normative identities. Here we include a measure of choice to examine whether perceived choice also has implications for those holding temporary and counter-normative identities. Bringing these concepts together, we test how the respondent’s proximal social structure impact identity prominence and how both influences the support found for identity enactments and self-esteem (Stets & Burke, 2014).

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10.2

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Theory

According to structural symbolic interactionism (Stryker, 1980), from which identity theory emerged, we live in a named and classified world. Individuals apply names and classifications to themselves, others, and situations. The social context of interactions and the shared meanings and expectations frame how we understand our role identity relative to others (Stryker, 1980; Thoits, 2022). Stryker posits that individuals’ location in the social structure facilitates and constrains the social positions they can and will assume. Sociological research finds that societal benefits are not equally distributed within society but are stratified by an individual’s race/ ethnicity, sex, and parents’ educational attainment. For example, we know that those attending prep schools are significantly more likely to attend elite colleges and universities, and graduation from elite institutions is linked to significant future career and life advantages. These large-scale social structural contexts are the contexts that arrange our everyday lives (Stryker et al., 2005). Identity theory conceptualizes the intermediate social structures (e.g., local schools, churches, neighborhoods) as situated between the larger social structure and the proximal social structure people live within. For example, the neighborhood school is shaped by the larger social structure (e.g., housing prices, racial/ethnic composition, and educational attainment of occupants). Schools in higher SES neighborhoods provide a higher quality education for the neighborhood children compared to a low SES neighborhood. Likewise, higher SES neighborhoods are perceived as safer and more walkable than lower SES neighborhoods. The proximal social structure addresses everyday lived experiences and our routine activities. Proximal social structures contain the close relationships one has with others (Stryker et al., 2005; Serpe & Stryker, 2011). Proximal social structures contextualize our daily, routine interactions with others. People at the proximal level are those we see regularly (e.g., church members, coworkers, next-door neighbors, or other parents at a child’s school). Depending on the context, these may be people we know well or not so well for a long or short time, who are similar or dissimilar to one in terms of age, race/ethnicity, gender, etc., of higher or lower status, who control more or fewer resources than one, and whom one may know through more than one identity (Serpe & Stryker, 2011; Stryker et al., 2005; Stets & Serpe, 2013).2 Empirically, the proximal social structure influences identity prominence and future behavioral intentions (e.g., students’ intentions to pursue a science-focused career or attend graduate school) (Merolla et al., 2012; Merolla & Serpe, 2013). Proximal social structure influences identity prominence, self-evaluations, and stress (Adams & Serpe, 2020; Serpe et al., 2019). The stronger the proximal social

2 The measure used in this analysis focuses on one aspect of interaction patterns in everyday life. This measure is consistent with the proximate social structure measure used by Serpe et al. (2019) and Adams and Serpe (2020). Proximal social structure has been measured by associations with mentors and location in a specific program (Merolla et al., 2012; Merolla & Serpe, 2013).

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structure, the higher the identity prominence, the stronger the future behavioral intentions and self-evaluations, and the lower the stress. In this research, we are interested in the relationship between the proximal social structure and identity prominence. Prominence is how important or central an identity is to the self. Identities more closely aligned with a person’s ideal selfconcept are higher in the prominence hierarchy (Brenner et al., 2014, 2018; McCall & Simmons, 1978; Rosenberg, 1979). Brenner et al. (2014, p. 233) argue that a prominent identity has greater “subjective value or worth. . .relative to that of other identities.” We also are interested in how proximal social structure is related to self-esteem. It represents the positive or negative self-view (Rosenberg, 1979). Self-esteem can be an evaluation of the self in global or role-specific terms. Global self-esteem is consistent with Rosenberg’s original formulation of self-esteem as the totality of one’s self-views. On the other hand, role-specific self-esteem is how one sees the self in a specific domain or identity—as an employee or friend (Rosenberg, et al., 1995). Using identity theory, Brenner et al. (2018) illustrate that role-specific self-esteem influences global feelings of self-esteem. Self-esteem also can be understood as having three dimensions: authenticity, self-worth, and self-efficacy (Stets & Burke, 2014). Authenticity reflects individuals’ ability to be true to themselves. Self-worth is a feeling of acceptance and connectedness with others. Self-efficacy is the feeling that one can effect change in their surroundings. We utilize these three dimensions here.

Current Study Our research extends the literature on normative versus counter-normative identities by focusing on temporary identities and the number of choices individuals have. Choice refers to how voluntarily the identity is enacted or claimed (Long, 2016; Serpe, 1987; Serpe & Stryker, 2011, Stryker & Serpe, 1983). The amount of choice also differs by whether the identity is normative or counter-normative. Not all counter-normative identities are equivalent; there are many reasons someone holds a counter-normative identity (Long, 2016). Not every childless individual is voluntarily childless. For example, some people are childless due to a medical condition and have no choice; for others, foregoing parenthood is voluntary.3 Here we include a third type of identity: the temporary identity existing between the poles of a normative and counter-normative identity. Someone holding a temporary status has yet to decide whether they will ultimately move towards the normative or counter-normative identity. The precise timing or reasons one might shift from a

3

Here we utilize choice as an important dimension of the temporary identity. Our focus stems from the theoretical import of choice discussed in identity theory. We do not claim that choice is the only important aspect of the temporary identity.

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temporary identity to a normative or counter-normative one is unclear. However, based on the life course research, it may have to do with significant transitions or turning points (Sampson & Laub, 2003; Shanahan, 2000). And these kinds of transitions occur as one advances in age. We study the effects of proximal structure on identity prominence and selfesteem—authenticity, self-worth, and self-efficacy (Stets & Burke, 2014). Identity theory holds that people seek social contexts to support their identities, referred to as mutually verifying contexts Burke & Stets, 2009). Supportive social contexts should be most widely available for those holding normative and counter-normative statuses. We anticipate normative and counter-normative identity holders’ proximate social structure is broader than temporary identity holders, and therefore normative and counter-normative identity holders will have more interactional opportunities. Conversely, those with a temporary identity have a narrower range of interactional opportunities to strengthen a sense of belonging. Those with a temporary identity likely will have more difficulty finding social situations that allow for a sense of belonging. Finally, self-efficacy is a sense of controlling and influencing self-meanings within the environment leading to the sense that one can successfully achieve a goal. Self-efficacy is shaped by experience; when one regularly perceives that others see the person in the same way as the person (e.g., identity verification) does, the actor’s sense of self-efficacy increases (Burke & Stets, 1999). Identity theorists have posited and shown that there is a causal relationship between self-efficacy as a precedent and a product of the identity model (Brenner et al., 2018). Conversely, when repeated efforts to manipulate situations fail, self-efficacy wanes. Akin to the discussion above involving self-esteem, we anticipate that those holding either a normative or counter-normative identity will have greater social spaces and interactional opportunities. Consequently, we believe they will report higher self-efficacy. Those holding a temporary identity with fewer opportunities will report lower selfefficacy.4

10.3

Hypotheses

Building upon the discussion above, we propose the following hypotheses. Proximal social structures and their associated direct, close social relationships with others provide opportunities for individuals to find support for their identities (Adams & Serpe, 2020; Merolla et al., 2012; Serpe et al., 2019). When support is lacking, actors will find alternative people to support them to the extent possible. We expect the proximal social structure to be positively associated with identity prominence due to

4

Brenner et al. (2018) focused on role-specific self-efficacy. We test whether the other two dimensions of self-esteem (authenticity and self-worth) operate similarly.

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the shared identities within these environments and people’s experiences honing their identities (Serpe et al., 2019). This logic leads to the following hypothesis. H1: Proximal social structure is positively associated with identity prominence. Following Serpe et al. (2019), we posit that the proximal social structure affects individuals’ self-esteem. As identity theory posits, the social structure facilitates and constrains one’s ability to enact an identity (Serpe et al., 2019; Stryker, 1980). Similar to the positive influence the proximal social structure has on prominence, identity theory posits that identity support is related to higher self-esteem. Following Serpe et al.’s (2019) argument, the proximal social structure provides an environment where one’s identity is developed and reinforced. Through these interactions, actors reinforce their similarity with others, bolstering a sense of connectedness— self-worth—and strengthening their confidence to perform the identity successfully—self-efficacy. Given the intimate nature of the proximal social structure and the fact that they can develop and reinforce their identity regularly, respondents should report greater levels of authenticity.

Proximate Social Structure and Role-Specific Authenticity H2a: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific authenticity for normative identities. H2b: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific authenticity for the temporary groups. H2c: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific authenticity for the counter-normative groups.

Proximate Social Structure and Role-Specific Self-Worth H3a: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific self-worth for the normative groups. H3b: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific self-worth for the temporary groups. H3c: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific self-worth for the counter-normative groups.

Proximate Social Structure and Role-Specific Self-Efficacy H4a: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific self-efficacy for the normative groups.

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H4b: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific selfefficacy for the temporary groups. H4c: Proximate social structure will be positively related to role-specific self-efficacy for the counter-normative groups. The following hypotheses relate to our expectations about how identity prominence affects self-esteem. The amount of choice in the identity is likely to affect selfesteem. When one has chosen an identity, even a counter-normative one, there is a certainty of who one is, how to behave, and which situations facilitate support of the identity. Holding a temporary identity indicates that the individual could hold a normative or counter-normative identity in the future, making finding support more difficult. Because of this difficulty, we expect lower self-esteem.

Identity Prominence and Role-Specific Authenticity H5a: Identity prominence will be positively associated with role-specific authenticity for the normative identity. H5b: Identity prominence will be negatively associated with role-specific authenticity for the temporary identity. H5c: Identity prominence will be positively associated with role-specific authenticity for the counter-normative identity.

Identity Prominence and Role-Specific Self-Worth H6a: Identity prominence will be positively associated with role-specific self-worth for the normative identity. H6b: Identity prominence will be negatively associated with role-specific self-worth for the temporary identity. H6c: Identity prominence will be positively associated with role-specific self-worth for the counter-normative identity.

Identity Prominence and Role-Specific Self-Efficacy H7a: Identity prominence will be positively associated with role-specific self-efficacy for the normative identity. H7b: Identity prominence will be negatively associated with role-specific selfefficacy for the temporary identity. H7c: Identity prominence will be positively associated with role-specific self-efficacy for the counter-normative identity.

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Method

Data The data for this research comes from a nationally representative, non-full probability-based web panel of U.S. adults. The survey collected responses from just over 3000 respondents between the ages of 25 and 65, focusing on relationship, parenting, and religious identities. Analysis of non-full probability-based web samples can produce equivalent results to random digit dialing telephone samples (Braunsberger et al., 2007; Simmons and Bobo, 2015; Yeager et al., 2011). We focus on the present analysis of married/couple and parenting identities.

Variables and Measures Identification of Normative, Temporary, and Counter-Normative Identities Our analyses focus on two aspects of family arrangements: the condition of one’s relationship (married/couple) and the condition of being a parent. Being a parent involves three identities: the normative identity of the parent, the temporary identity of being temporarily childless, and the counter-normative identity of being childfree. Constructing the parental identity, respondents were asked, “Which of the following best describes you?” Only those reporting “I have at least one child by birth, marriage, or adoption” were included in the normative parent identity. The temporary childless identity was defined using respondents’ answers to three questions. First, respondents were asked, “Which of the following best describes you?” and the respondent indicated, “I do not have a child.” Second, respondents were asked, “Which of the following best represents the reason that you do not have children?” and they responded either “I cannot have children for medical reasons” or “I am waiting to have children.” Finally, respondents were asked, “Even though you do you do not have children, would you ever consider any of the following options for becoming a parent in the future?” If respondents chose any of the following options, they were included in this group. “Having a biological child,” “Adoption or foster care,” “Marrying someone with children,” “Medically assisted childbirth (such as in-vitro fertilization, surrogate mothering, gestational carrier.” The counter-normative child-free identity is constructed from four questions. First, respondents indicated they did not currently have a child. Second, in response to being asked, “Which of the following best represents the reason that you do not have children?” respondents indicated, “I have voluntarily chosen not to have children.” Third, when asked, “Even though you do not have children, would you ever consider any of the following options for becoming a parent in the future?

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Respondents indicated, “I do not plan to become a parent in the future by any means.” Lastly, respondents were asked, “How much choice did you have with respect to currently being childless?” Only respondents indicating they had a considerable choice to be childfree—a five or higher on a seven-point scale, where 1 = None and 7 = A great deal—were included. Those respondents reporting a lower level of choice—four or lower—were considered low choice and excluded. Being in a relationship also involved three identities: the normative married/ committed identity consists of respondents indicating they were married or in a committed relationship. Specifically, respondents were asked, “Which of the following best describes your current relationship status?” Only respondents indicating they were “Married,” “Divorced, currently in a committed relationship,” and “In a committed relationship” were included. The temporary—single identity involves respondents identifying themselves as “Single (not in a relationship), never married.” Despite not being in a committed relationship, these respondents indicated they were open or willing to enter a committed relationship in the future. The counter-normative status of ever-single is constructed based on responses to three questions. First, in response to the relationship status question, respondents indicated, “Single (not in a relationship), never married.” Second, they were asked, “Which of the following best represents the reason that you are not married?” Respondents indicated, “I choose to live my life as a single person and never plan to marry.” Finally, respondents were asked, “How much choice did you have with respect to currently being single?” Only those respondents indicating they had a considerable degree of choice in being single were included—five or higher on a seven-point scale, where 1 = None and 7 = A great deal—were included. Those respondents reporting a lower level of choice—four or lower—were considered low choice and excluded.

Dependent Variables The three measures of self-esteem evaluate the person’s role-specific authenticity, self-worth, and self-efficacy (Stets & Burke, 2014). A complete list of questions and the factor loadings of the questions can be found in Appendix 1. Role-specific authenticity is comprised of seven questions. Among the questions are “As someone who is [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I feel that most people don’t know the ‘real’ me;” “As someone who is [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I feel people expect me to be different than I really am;” “As someone who is [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I just wish I were more able to be myself.” Responses were captured on a four-point Likert scale with poles of 1 = strongly disagree and 4 = strongly agree. Items are coded such that a higher score represents greater role-specific authenticity. Items were then summed and averaged for the scale. Alpha reliability scores were high for both identities, parent (α = 0.80); married/coupled (α = 0.80).

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Role-specific self-worth is comprised of seven questions. The complete list of questions and factor loadings can be found in Appendix 2. Among the questions are “As someone who is [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others;” “As someone who is [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I usually feel good about myself;” “As someone who is [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I feel that I have much to offer as a person.” Responses were captured on a four-point Likert scale with poles of 1 = strongly disagree and 4 = strongly agree. Items were coded such that a higher score represents greater role-specific self-worth. Items were then summed and averaged for the scale. Alpha reliability scores were high for both the parent (α = 0.94) and married/coupled (α = 0.94) identities. Role-specific self-efficacy is comprised of seven questions. The complete list of questions and factor loadings can be found in Appendix 3. Among the questions are “In terms of being [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], there is no way I can solve some of the problems I have;” “In terms of being [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I have little control over the things that happen to me;” “In terms of being [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], I feel as if what happens is mostly determined by other people;” “In terms of being [Married/Single or Parent/Childless], sometimes I feel that I am not able to accomplish what I want.” Responses were captured on a four-point Likert scale with poles of 1 = strongly disagree and 4 = strongly agree. Items were coded such that a higher score represents greater role-specific selfefficacy. Items were summed and averaged for the scale. Alpha reliabilities were high for both the parent (α = 0.92) and married/coupled (α = 0.94) identities.

Independent Variables Proximal social structure is comprised of four questions: “How many of your close friends (people that you know and can count on if you need them) are also [Married/ Single or Parent/Childless]?;” “How many of your friends (people you know and do things with) are also [Married/Single or Parent/Childless]?;” “How many of your family members (spouse/partner, parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.) are also [Married/Single or Parent/Childless]?;” and “How many people you interact with on a daily basis do you think are also [Married/Single or Parent/ Childless]?” Responses are Almost none (1), Less than half (2), About half (3), More than half (4), or Almost all (5). Items are coded such that a higher score represents a greater proximal social structure. Items were then summed and averaged for the scale. Alpha reliabilities were high for both parents (α = 0.86) and married/coupled (α = 0.90). Identity prominence is comprised of four questions. The questions are “Being a [Married/Single or Parent/Childless] is an important part of my self-image;” “Being a [Married/Single or Parent/Childless] is an important reflection of who I am;” “I have come to think of myself as [Married/Single or Parent/Childless];” and “I have a strong sense of belonging to the community of [Married/Single or Parent/Childless].” Responses ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree. Higher

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scores represent greater identity prominence. Scores on the items were summed and averaged. Alpha reliabilities were high for both parents (α = 0.91) and married/ coupled (α = 0.85).

Background Variables To measure how aspects of large-scale social structures are related to the proximal social structure, identity prominence, and self-esteem, we include gender, race, and educational attainment. These variables are proxies for actors’ access to the resources facilitating actors’ ability to achieve identity verification. We use social structural cues (e.g., sex, race/ethnicity, and age) to signal another’s access to resources. These signals are then associated with how people treat each other during interactions. Those with greater resources are more likely to find support for their identities than those lacking these resources (Cast et al., 1999; Stets & Harrod, 2004). Respondent’s sex has been dichotomized with male as the reference category and coded as 0. Age is the respondent’s age in years. All respondents in the study were between 25 and 65 years old at the time of data collection. Race represents respondents’ self-identified race. Respondents were asked, “What race do you consider yourself to be?” Categories were White, Black/ African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Other Asian (Specify), Pacific Islander (Native Hawaiian, Guamanian, Chamorro, Samoan), and Other (Specify). Given the sample, we have dichotomized the measure (0, White, or 1, non-White). Education represents the respondent’s highest educational attainment. Response categories were Less than high school (1); High school graduate (2); Some college or technical school (3); College graduate (4); and Graduate or professional degree (5).

Analysis We use structural equation modeling to analyze the data, providing a parsimonious approach to analyzing group differences. SEM allows us to assess differences between the normative, temporary, and counter-normative identities parsimoniously. Overall, the fit of the structural equation models provides a good fit to the data. For the parent model, the chi-square statistic is 31.09, df = 36, p of Χ2 = 0.70, RMSEA = 0.000. And for the relationship model, the chi-square statistic is 22.94, df = 28, p of Χ2 = 0.74, RMSEA = 0.000. These statistics indicate the model reasonably represents the relationships presented in the data. Figure 10.1 presents a heuristic of the statistical model. Figure 10.1 shows how our theoretical expectations regarding how respondents’ proximate social structures will be related to identity prominence and, ultimately, feelings of self-esteem. Finally, we control for sex, age, race, and educational attainment. However, these are important for shaping each

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Sex

Proximate Social Structure

R-S Authencity Age

R-S Self-Worth White

R-S Self-Efficacy Educaon Identy Prominence

Fig. 10.1 Heuristic SEM Model. Note. The final estimated model includes the appropriate correlated errors

respondent’s general location within society and the proximate social structure. As discussed above, the proximate social structure is related to the prominence of identities and self-esteem. Identity prominence also should be related to self-esteem. Finally, we have posited that these all—respondents’ characteristics, the proximate social structure, and identity prominence—influence respondents’ feelings of selfesteem.

10.5 Results Table 10.1 shows the means and standard deviations of the variables. The mean values for the proximal social structure are highest among the normative identities (3.98 for parents and 3.93 for those in a committed relationship). Table 10.1 also shows that identity prominence is highest among the normative identities (3.44 for parents and 3.30 among those in a committed relationship); the counter-normative holders have the next highest prominence. Finally, the temporary identities report the lowest levels of identity prominence. We further investigated for significant differences between the identities. We ran a series of one-way ANOVAs looking for differences among the dependent variables with a Bonferroni correction. The multiple ANVOAs examined the three measures of self-esteem (authenticity, self-worth, and self-efficacy) by the respondent’s identity (normative, temporary, and counter-normative).5 When looking at the three measures of self-esteem by the relationship identity, we find that the married identity 5

ANOVAs were constructed in this way for the sake of parsimony.

0.67 (0.47) Temp. Childless N = 364 0.63 (0.48) Child free N = 427 0.52 (0.50) Married/couple N = 1020 0.61 (0.49) Temp. Single N = 636 0.64 (0.50) Ever-single N = 279 0.50 (0.50)

Identities Parent N = 1366

Sex, Female = 1 Mean (S.D.)

0.79 (0.41) 0.76 (0.43) 0.88 (0.33) 0.83 (0.37) 0.72 (0.45) 0.79 (0.40)

32.15 (6.54)

41.92 (11.43)

41.92 (10.46

37.83 (10.09)

44.96 (11.94)

Race, White = 1 Mean (S.D.)

41.82 (10.13)

Age Mean (S.D.)

Table 10.1 Means and standard deviations of variables

3.43 (1.01)

3.59 (1.00)

3.72 (0.97)

3.62 (0.98)

3.85 (0.95)

3.48 (1.00)

Education Mean (S.D.)

3.09 (1.11)

2.73 (0.99)

3.93 (0.82)

2.70 (1.00)

3.10 (1.00)

3.98 (0.84)

Prox. Social Structure Mean (S.D.)

3.09 (0.74)

2.56 (0.72)

3.30 (0.61)

2.59 (0.86)

1.86 (0.74)

3.44 (0.57)

Prominence Mean (S.D.)

3.11 (0.61)

3.09 (0.64)

3.10 (0.50)

3.12 (0.59)

3.10 (0.55)

3.05 (0.58)

Authenticity Mean (S.D.)

3.37 (0.67)

3.27 (0.65)

3.37 (0.59)

3.49 (0.62)

3.29 (0.67)

3.36 (0.57)

Worth Mean (S.D.)

3.06 (0.77)

3.10 (0.83)

3.07 (0.73)

3.42 (0.66)

3.16 (0.75)

2.88 (0.70)

Efficacy Mean (S.D.)

10 Normative, Counter-Normative, and Temporary Identities, Proximal. . . 213

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mean is significantly different from the other identities in most cases. The exception is for role-specific self-esteem, where no significant differences exist. We do not see significant differences between the temporarily single and ever-single identities. We ran similar ANOVAs with the parent identity. Here we see more variability across the comparisons. The results of all three self-esteem measures show that the parent identity is significantly different from the child-free status. Only when examining role-specific self-esteem do we find a significant difference between the parent and temporarily childless identities. The other two tests show no significant difference between the identities. We see significant differences between the childfree and temporarily childless identities for all three self-esteem measures. Most of the ANOVAs show significant differences in self-esteem among the various identities.6 Tables 10.2 and 10.3 provide the zero-order correlations among the variables by identities. Beginning with the married/couple identities, we see that, as expected, there is a positive correlation between the proximal social structure and identity prominence (r = 0.33, p ≤ 0.05). We also see that proximal social structure has a positive relationship with role-specific authenticity (r = 0.05, p ≤ 0.05) and selfworth (r = 0.14, p ≤ 0.05). Likewise, prominence has a positive relationship with role-specific authenticity (r = 0.12, p ≤ 0.05) and self-worth (r = 0.31, p ≤ 0.05). Table 10.3 presents the correlations for the parent identities. Similar to what is observed with the married/couple identities, a positive correlation exists between proximal social structure and identity prominence (r = 0.41, p ≤ 0.05). Unexpectedly, we see that proximal social structure is negatively correlated with authenticity (r = -0.06, p ≤ 0.05). We see that identity prominence is significantly related to two dimensions of self-esteem. We see a positive correlation with role-specific selfworth (r = 0.18, p ≤ 0.05) but a negative relationship with self-efficacy (r = 0.12, p ≤ 0.05).

Proximal Social Structure and Identity Prominence Tables 10.4 and 10.5 show the results for all the hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 posits that proximal social structure will positively influence identity prominence. We find a significant positive effect for both the parent and married/couple identities. In Table 10.4, proximal social structure positively influences the prominence of the parent identity (β = 0.22, p ≤ 0.05), the temporarily childless identity (β = 0.19, p ≤ 0.05), and the childfree identity (β = 0.18, p ≤ 0.05). Moreover, we can see that all three coefficients are constrained to equality, indicating there is no statistical difference between the coefficients. Table 10.5 shows support for Hypothesis 1 among the married/couple identities. We see that proximal social structure positively influences the prominence of the

6

These results are available upon request.

* p ≤ 0.05

Variables 1 = Sex, female =1 2 = Age 3 = Race, White =1 4 = Education 5 = Proximal social structure 6 = Prominence 7 = Authenticity 8 = Self-worth 9 = Self-efficacy

2 1.00 0.10* -0.11* 0.03 0.10* 0.16* 0.16* 0.12*

1

1.00 -0.08* 0.01 -0.07* -0.02 -0.03 0.10* 0.04 0.02 1.00 0.00 0.01 0.02 0.04 -0.02 0.01

3

Table 10.2 Correlations among variables—parent identity Group (N = 2263)

1.00 0.08* -0.01 -0.06* -0.07* -0.03

4

1.00 0.36* 0.05* 0.13* 0.00

5

1.00 0.12* 0.32* 0.02

6

1.00 0.53* 0.59*

7

1.00 0.43*

8

1.00

9

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* p ≤ 0.05

Variables 1 = Sex, female =1 2 = Age 3 = Race, White =1 4 = Education 5 = Proximal social structure 6 = Prominence 7 = Authenticity 8 = Self-worth 9 = Self-efficacy

2 1.00 0.08* -0.08* -0.04 0.10* 0.13* 0.09* 0.10*

1

1.00 -0.09* -0.00 -0.10* 0.12* 0.11* 0.09* 0.06* -0.02 1.00 -0.00 0.00 -0.02 0.05* -0.02 0.02

3

Table 10.3 Correlations among variables—relationship identities (N = 2527)

1.00 -0.05* -0.09* -0.06* -0.05* 0.02

4

1.00 0.41* 0.03 0.05* -0.15*

5

1.00 0.02 0.18* -0.13*

6

1.00 0.54* 0.56*

7

1.00 0.39*

8

1.00

9

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Table 10.4 Standardized comparison of all three parent identities: 1 = Parent; 2 = Temporarily Childless; 3 = Childfree

Variable Proximal social structure

Prox. SS –

Prominence

–

Sex, female = 1

1 = 0.10* 2=0.06 3=0.01 1 = 0.05 2=0.27* 3=0.22* 1 = 0.03 2 = 0.03 3 = 0.02

Age

White = 1

Education

1=0.00 2 = 0.11* 3 = 0.03

Prom. 1 = 0.22* 2 = 0.19* 3 = 0.18* – 1 = 0.09* 2=0.09 3 = 0.15* 1=0.10* 2 = 0.12* 3=0.09 1=0.03 2=0.03 3=0.02 1 = 0.01 2 = 0.01 3 = 0.01

Dependent variables R-S SelfR-S Worth Authenticity 1 = 0.10* 1 = 0.05* 2 = 0.12* 2 = 0.01 3 = -0.02 3 = 0.06* 1 = 0.39* 1 = 0.21* 2 = -0.20* 2 = -0.08 3 = 0.16* 3 = 0.39* 1 = -0.01 1 = 0.07* 2 = 0.13* 2 = 0.07* 3 = 0.01 3 = 0.07*

R-S SelfEfficacy 1 = 0.03 2 = -0.09* 3 = 0.01 1 = 0.15* 2 = -0.30* 3 = 0.17* 1 = -0.01 2 = -0.01 3 = -0.01

1 = 0.18* 2 = 0.00 3 = 0.08*

1 = 0.10* 2 = 0.06* 3 = 0.11*

1 = 0.14* 2 = -0.01 3 = 0.08

1 = 0.05* 2 = 0.02 3 = 0.11*

1 = -0.03 2 = -0.08 3 = 0.10*

1 = 0.00 2 = -0.00 3 = -0.00

1 = -0.07* 2 = 0.04 3 = -0.06

1 = -0.04 2 = -0.03 3 = -0.03

1 = -0.02 2 = 0.11* 3 = -0.02

Note. N = 2263, Χ2 = 31.09, df = 36; Prob. of Χ2 = 0.70, *p ≤ 0.05, RMSEA = 0.000 Bold, All coefficients constrained to be equal; Underlined, two groups’ coefficients constrained to be equal.

married/coupled identity (β = 0.23, p ≤ 0.05), the temporarily single identity (β = 0.14, p ≤ 0.05), and the ever-single identity (β = 0.28, p ≤ 0.05). In Table 10.5, we see that the coefficients can be constrained among respondents in the committed relationship and ever-single identities, indicating there is no significant difference between them. However, the temporarily single could not be constrained; they are statistically different from the other two.

Proximal Social Structure and Role-Specific Authenticity Next, we turn to Hypotheses 2a–2c, positing a positive relationship between proximal social structure and role-specific authenticity for all the identities. The

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Table 10.5 Standardized Comparison of all Three Married/Couple Identities: 1 = Married/Couple; 2 = Temporarily Single; 3 = Ever-Single

Variable Proximal social structure

Prox. S.S. –

Prominence

–

Sex, female = 1

1 = 0.04 2=0.11* 3 = 0.01 1 = 0.07* 2=0.04 3=0.06 1 = 0.07* 2=0.24* 3=0.06 1 = 0.06* 2 = 0.06 3=0.10

Age

White = 1

Education

1 = -0.09* 2 = 0.01 3 = 0.11

Dependent variables R-S R-S SelfAuthenticity Worth 1 = 0.05* 1 = 0.07* 2 = 0.05* 2 = 0.08* 3 = -0.11* 3 = 0.09* 1 = 0.18* 1 = 0.36* 2 = 0.02 2 = 0.18* 3 = 0.17* 3 = 0.34* 1 = 0.04 1 = 0.13* 2 = 0.12* 2 = 0.11* 3 = 0.11* 3 = 0.16*

RS-SelfEfficacy 1 = -0.01 2 = 0.07* 3 = -0.02 1 = 0.08* 2 = -0.09* 3 = 0.09* 1 = 0.07* 2 = 0.02 3 = -0.05

1 = 0.04* 2 = 0.04* 3 = 0.04*

1 = 0.13* 2 = 0.12* 3 = 0.11*

1 = 0.04 2 = 0.15* 3 = 0.24*

1 = 0.10* 2 = 0.10* 3 = 0.10*

1 = 0.00 2 = 0.00 3 = 0.00

1 = 0.04* 2 = 0.04* 3 = 0.04*

1 = -0.04 2 = -0.04 3 = -0.03

1 = -0.00 2 = -0.01 3 = 0.12*

1=0.05* 2=0.04* 3=0.04*

1 = -0.05* 2 = 0.04 3 = -0.10

1 = -0.05* 2 = -0.04* 3 = -0.04*

1 = -0.02 2 = 0.09* 3 = 0.05

Prominence 1 = 0.23* 2 = 0.14* 3 = 0.28* –

Note. N = 2537, Χ2 = 39.09, df = 36; Prob. of Χ2 = 0.33, *p ≤ 0.05, RMSEA = 0.010 Bold, All coefficients constrained to be equal; Underlined, two groups’ coefficients constrained to be equal

hypotheses receive mixed support. Beginning with the parent identities, Hypotheses 2a for the normative parent identity (β = 0.10, p ≤ 0.05) and 2b for the temporarily childless identity (β = 0.12, p ≤ 0.05) are supported. Moreover, these coefficients can be constrained to equality. Hypothesis 2c for the counter-normative child-free identity is not supported. Turning next to the relationship identities, we see a similar pattern; Hypotheses 2a for the normative married identity (β = 0.05, p ≤ 0.05) and 2b for the temporarily single identity (β = 0.05, p ≤ 0.05) are supported. Here, too, the coefficients are constrained to equality. Hypothesis 2c for the counter-normative ever-single identity is not supported.

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Proximal Social Structure and Role-Specific Self-Worth Hypotheses 3a–3c posit a positive relationship between proximal social structure and role-specific self-worth in all identities. Beginning with the parent identities, we find mixed support for these hypotheses. In Table 10.4, we find support for Hypotheses 3a for the normative parent identity (β = 0.05, p ≤ 0.05) and 3c for the counternormative child-free identity (β = 0.06, p ≤ 0.05). Additionally, we see that these two coefficients can be constrained to equality. Unexpectedly, Hypothesis 3b for the temporarily childless identity is not supported. Moving to the relationship identities and Table 10.5, we see that all three hypotheses are supported (β = 0.07, p ≤ 0.05; β = 0.08, p ≤ 0.05; β = 0.09, p ≤ 0.05 for Hypotheses 3a for the normative married/ couple identity, 3b for the temporarily single identity, and 3c for the counternormative ever-single, respectively). Moreover, all three coefficients can be constrained to equality.

Proximal Social Structure and Role-Specific Self-Efficacy Hypotheses 4a–4c posit a positive relationship between proximal social structure and role-specific self-efficacy. Only Hypothesis 4b among the temporarily single is supported (β = 0.07, p ≤ 0.05). Unexpectedly, the temporary status of temporarily childless was significant in the opposite direction (β = -0.09, p ≤ 0.05). In all other instances, the hypotheses failed to find support.

Identity Prominence and Role-Specific Authenticity Hypotheses 5a for the normative parent identity and 5c for the counter-normative child-free identity posit a positive relationship between identity prominence and role-specific authenticity. In hypothesis 5b for the temporarily childless identity, we anticipate a negative relationship between identity prominence and role-specific authenticity. Table 10.4 shows Hypotheses 5a for the normative parent identity (β = 0.21, p ≤ 0.05) and 5c for the counter-normative child-free group (β = 0.16, p ≤ 0.05) are supported. We also see that Hypothesis 5b for the temporarily childless identity is supported (β = -0.20, p ≤ 0.05). Turning next to Table 10.5 with the results for the relationship identities, we find support for Hypotheses 5a for the married/couple identity (β = 0.18, p ≤ 0.05) and 5c for the counter-normative eversingle group (β = 0.17, p ≤ 0.05). Moreover, the coefficients in the relationship identity can be constrained to equality. Hypothesis 5b for the temporarily single identity is not supported.

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Identity Prominence and Self-Worth Hypotheses 6a for the normative parent identity and 6c for the counter-normative child-free identity posit a positive relationship between identity prominence and role-specific self-worth. Hypothesis 6b for the temporary childless identity posits a negative relationship between identity prominence and role-specific self-worth. Looking at Table 10.4, we see hypotheses 6a for the parent identity (β = 0.39, p ≤ 0.05) and 6c for the child-free identity (β = 0.39, p ≤ 0.05) are supported. Additionally, the coefficients for the parent and child-free identities can be constrained to equality. Hypothesis 6b for the temporarily childless identity is not supported. It is significant in the opposite direction from our expectations (β = 0.18, p ≤ 0.05). Turning next to Table 10.5, we see support for Hypotheses 6a, the married/couple identities (β = 0.36, p ≤ 0.05) and 6c (β = 0.34, p ≤ 0.05) for the counter-normative ever-single group are supported. Here we again see that the normative (married/coupled) and counter-normative (ever-single) identities can be constrained to equality.

Identity Prominence and Self-Efficacy The final hypotheses posit a relationship between identity prominence and rolespecific self-efficacy. Hypotheses 7a for the normative parent identity and 7c for counter-normative child-free identity posit a positive relationship between prominence and role-specific self-efficacy. Beginning with the parent identities, in Table 10.4, we see that Hypotheses 7a for the normative parent identity group (β = 0.15, p ≤ 0.05) and 7c for the counter-normative child-free identity (β = 0.17, p ≤ 0.05) are supported. These two coefficients can be constrained to equality. Hypothesis 7b for the temporarily childless identity posits a negative relationship between identity prominence and role-specific self-efficacy. As expected, Hypothesis 7b for the temporarily childless identity is supported (β = 0.30, p ≤ 0.05). Moving to examine the relationship identity, in Table 10.5, we see support for Hypotheses 7a normative married/couple identity (β = 0.08, p ≤ 0.05) and 7c for the counter-normative ever-single group (β = 0.09, p ≤ 0.05). Additionally, we see that these two coefficients can be constrained to equality. Lastly, Hypothesis 7b for the temporarily single identity is supported (β = -0.09, p ≤ 0.05). The results broadly support our theoretical predictions, although not uniformly. Beginning with proximal social structure, we find it is positively associated with identity prominence, as anticipated. The expected relationship between proximate social structure and self-esteem was not as strong as initially posited. Especially problematic was the relationship between proximate social structure and rolespecific self-efficacy. In this domain of self-esteem, only among the temporarily single was the relationship supported, as seen in Table 10.5. However, when we turn to the self-esteem domains of authenticity and self-worth, the results are as expected.

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Here we see support for the positive relationship between the proximate social structure and self-esteem among the normative and temporary identities in five of six tests. The hypothesized relationship between identity prominence and the three measures of self-esteem is clear. Again, looking at Tables 10.4 and 10.5, we see that the hypotheses are supported in most cases. Among the normative and counter-normative identities, the pattern of results precisely follows our theoretical expectations. Among these two identities, we find that the higher the identity prominence, the greater the self-esteem reported. Unexpectedly, the hypotheses failed to find support all three times we tested the temporary identities.

10.6

Discussion

Our research examined how one’s local proximal social structure positively relates to identity prominence and, ultimately, respondents’ self-esteem. Using recent theorizing about normative and counter-normative identities, we investigated how different identities—normative, temporary, and counter-normative—operate. We begin with the findings and patterns related to the proximal social structure. Regardless of the identity examined, proximal social structure is positively associated with identity prominence. Serpe et al. (2019) argue that the proximal social structure reflects one’s social embeddedness in the networks of others where the actor’s identities are reinforced, the greater the prominence. By extension, the proximal social structure positively impacts the different measures of self-esteem. Recall that identity theory maintains that one’s location within the social structure shapes opportunities and influences one’s identity choices. Our results support identity theory’s prediction that respondents’ proximate social structure increases identity prominence as the theory predicts. Respondents’ proximate social structures generally enhance their role-specific authenticity and self-worth. These generally positive findings are consistent with identity theory’s predictions that close-knit proximate social structures provide feedback about one’s identities and the self. Respondents report feeling they can be themselves (authenticity) and are valued (worth) within these social structures. Unexpectedly, proximate social structures failed to influence self-efficacy positively. Turning to the relationship between identity prominence and self-esteem, we see a more consistent and theoretically expected pattern. Recall that theoretically, we expected identity prominence to positively relate to self-esteem for the normative and counter-normative identities; we anticipated a negative relationship for the temporary identities. Results show that these expectations were largely supported. When exceptions to the hypotheses exist, they occur among the temporary identities. In sum, the results generally support our theoretical predictions. However, the results also illustrate that additional theoretical effort is warranted. Except for one dimension of self-esteem—proximate social structure’s positive relationship on rolespecific self-efficacy—all the predictions involving the normative identities were

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supported. The relationships among the temporary and counter-normative identities are less clear. However, two-thirds of the hypotheses are supported; the exception is the temporary identities within the parent and relationship identity conditions. What might explain these unexpected results? It may be that those holding a temporary identity are less inclined to enact them. Long (2017) conducted a qualitative study of counter-normative identity holders to understand how they see themselves. She finds they generally do not see counter-normative identities as prominent and thus are unlikely to mention their counter-normativity when interacting with others (Long, 2017). Because the identity is not prominent, it will be lower in salience and thus less likely to be invoked (Brenner et al., 2018). Our findings are consistent with Long’s findings. In our first model—a homogeneous proximal social structure and self-esteem—those holding counter-normative identities reported no positive effect of their proximal social networks. The exception is the positive effect of proximal social structure on feelings of self-worth. We see a completely different identity prominence and self-esteem pattern among the counter-normative identity holders. In all tests, the higher the prominence of the counter-normative identity, the higher self-esteem reported. Once identity prominence is introduced, the normative and counter-normative identity occupants are similar. In four of six tests, the coefficients are constrained to equality between the normative and counter-normative identity holders. The pattern of results for the temporary identities is less clear. When looking at the models without identity prominence, the preponderance of the results supports the theoretical predictions. Respondents’ proximate social structure is associated with reports of higher self-esteem. When identity prominence is included in the model, things are more difficult to understand. Looking first at the parent identity, we see that in all three tests, there is a negative relationship between identity prominence and self-esteem. The coefficient for identity prominence’s influence on self-worth is in the correct direction but fails to reach statistical significance. Looking at the relationship identity, things are less clear. Identity prominence has no impact on authenticity, leads to an unexpected positive impact on self-worth, and has the expected negative effect on self-efficacy. Given the absence of theoretical work on temporary identities within identity theory, any ideas or suggestions offered are speculative. One possibility is that the temporary identity holders might have less identity clarity. Campbell et al. (1996, p. 141) define identity clarity as “the extent to which self-beliefs are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable.” Due to the lack of clarity of meanings defining this identity, occupants may have more difficulty interpreting identity feedback related to self-esteem and individuals’ meanings in situ (Carter & Bruene, 2019; Wright, 2001). Because without a firm sense of what meanings are associated with an identity, knowing which meanings, situations, and feedback are self-relevant is problematic during interactions making life difficult. Working from the assumption that those with temporary identities have more difficulties finding support for their identities, these people will struggle to find appropriate social contexts to enact the identity. In other words, uncertainty about an identity’s meaning makes it difficult to find social contexts allowing for improvement. These

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individuals likely struggle to behave in ways that are consistent with those meanings, thereby making identity verification challenging to secure. As defined by Campbell et al. (1996), a lack of identity clarity would also cause the actor to have difficulty successfully enacting an identity—identity verification. Failing to confirm identity meanings is consistent with our results that temporary identity holders report lower self-esteem. A lack of clarity in identity meanings should also decrease the identity’s prominence. Carter and Bruene (2019) find that respondents experiencing more identity change had less clarity in their identity meanings. Specifically, Carter and Bruene (2019) found that the magnitude of change in identity—defined as the amount of identity change—was associated with identity clarity. Our study parallels Carter and Bruene’s study in as much as we have conceptualized the temporary identity as a state of self-exploration, a form of identity change. Moreover, it is consistent with our argument that normative and counter-normative identity holders will have an easier time finding support for their identities because of the societal and proximal social structural support for the respondents’ choice. Despite some unexpected findings, this research provides a new direction for identity theory researchers. Identity clarity has significant implications for understanding how and why people behave as they do. While speculative, actors with a clear sense of their identity meanings are advantaged in finding identity verification when interacting with others. On the other hand, those without clarity likely struggle to find support since they may be unclear about what meanings are relevant during interactions. Because of this lack of identity clarity, they also face difficulties knowing which social situations to enter to support their identity meanings. Moreover, as we move from normative to temporary to counter-normative statuses, we see that the positive influence of respondents’ proximal social structure has an uneven impact on the various dimensions of self-esteem. Three of the six tests found positive effects among the temporary identities (temporarily childless/temporarily single). Finally, among the counter-normative identities (child-free/ever-single), we see positive results only regarding self-worth. Holding a normative identity allows the individual more socially acceptable avenues for receiving support for their identity and increases their self-esteem. Moreover, the holders of normative identities may have an easier time verifying the identity since society expects people to hold a normative identity. Those holding and enacting normative statuses are not challenging the status quo. However, occupying one of the other two statuses challenges others’ expectations. The temporary status is unexpected but not a direct challenge to societal expectations as there is still a chance of entering the normative status. Counter-normative holders may be an affront to people’s ontological security; it leads to questions about why occupants are so different and why the occupant does not want to conform to society’s expectations. Overall, these results suggest that exploring the interconnections between the proximal social structure, identity prominence, and self-esteem is a fruitful area of

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research. One’s proximal social structure has a positive influence on identity prominence. The results are consistent with our speculative claim that identity clarity influences self-esteem. The two identities established within society—normative and counter-normative—reported greater self-esteem, whereas those holding a temporary identity reported a less clear pattern of results. It seems that the more clarity an individual has about the meanings of their identity, the easier time they have interacting with others. Although the results are broadly consistent with theoretical predictions, the influence of one’s proximal social structure on self-esteem suggests additional theoretical development is needed. The reader should exercise skepticism, as with any single study, until additional research supports and refines these results. Our confidence would be strengthened if we had longitudinal data, which would help establish the causality of the relationships examined. While the data fit the model very well, cross-sectional data is no substitute for longitudinal data. That aside, our findings are significant because they begin to provide a better understanding of a previously unexplored identity: the temporary identity. This identity needs further examination, including the nature of its meanings and how much temporary identities spawn identity change.

Appendix 1 Principal Factor Analysis of Role-Specific Authenticity Item

As someone who is identity, I feel that most people don’t know the “real” me. As someone who is identity, I find I can almost always be myself. As someone who is identity, I feel people expect me to be different than I really am As someone who is identity, I think most people accept who I really am. As someone who is identity, I just wish I were more able to by myself. As someone who is identity, I feel the way in which I generally act reflects the “real” me. As someone who is identity, I often do not feel that I am myself. Eigenvalue

Loading Parent Identity 0.66

Relationship Identity 0.72

0.53 0.62

0.46 0.71

0.58

0.45

0.69

0.76

0.49

0.44

0.71 2.69

0.78 2.55

10

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Appendix 2 Principal Factor Analysis of Role-Specific Self-Worth Item

As someone who is identity, I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others. As someone who is identity, I feel that I have a number of good qualities. As someone who is identity, I take a positive attitude toward myself. As someone who is identity, on the whole, I am satisfied with myself. As someone who is identity, I usually feel good about myself. As someone who is identity, I feel I have much to offer as a person. As someone who is identity, I have a lot of confidence in the actions I undertake in my life. Eigenvalue

Loading Parent Identity 0.77

Relationship Identity 0.79

0.82

0.84

0.88

0.89

0.86

0.86

0.85 0.83 0.84

0.86 0.82 0.84

4.90

4.99

Appendix 3 Principal Factor Analysis of Role-Specific Self-Efficacy Item

In terms of being identity, there is no way that I can solve some of the problems I have. In terms of being identity, I have little control over the things that happen to me. In terms of being identity, there is little I can do to change many of the important things in my life. In terms of being identity, I feel as if what happens is mostly determined by other people. In terms of being identity, I certainly feel helpless at times. In terms of being identity, sometimes I feel that I am not able to accomplish what I want In terms of being identity, I often feel unable to deal with the problems of life. Eigenvalue

Loading Parent Identity 0.78

Relationship Identity 0.79

0.82

0.84

0.83

0.89

0.77

0.86

0.79 0.79

0.86 0.82

0.82

0.84

4.51

4.99

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Thoits, P. A. (2022). Successful supportive encounters from the peer supporter’s perspective: Do status similarities to support recipients matter? Journal of Community Psychology, 50(3), 1376–1394. Wright, R. (2001). Self-certainty and self-esteem. In T. J. Owens, S. Stryker, & N. Goodman (Eds.), Extending self-esteem theory and research (pp. 101–134). Cambridge University Press. Wu, H., & Brown, S. L. (2022). Union formation expectations among older adults who live apart together in the USA. Journal of Family Issues, 43(10), 2577–2598. Yeager, D. S., Krosnick, J. A., Chang, L., Javitz, H. S., Levendusky, M. S., Simpser, A., & Wang, R. (2011). Comparing the accuracy of RDD telephone surveys and internet surveys conducted with probability and non-probability samples. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75(4), 709–747.

Chapter 11

Multiple Identities: The Parent Identity, Gender Identity, and Happiness K. Jill Kiecolt, Michael Hughes, and Hans Momplaisir

11.1

Introduction

Identities are the meanings we assign to ourselves as members of groups or categories, as occupants of roles, or as unique persons. We all have multiple identities of each type (categorical or group identities, role identities, and person identities, respectively). Research on multiple identities in identity theory has mainly investigated multiple role identities, for example, how they relate to each other and how they influence self-esteem and well-being (e.g., Serpe et al., 2019; Stets & Harrod, 2004). We investigate how a categorical identity (gender) and a role identity (the parent identity) relate to each other and how they are related to happiness. According to identity theory, gender identity is at a higher level than the parent identity. Higher-level identities are more abstract than lower-level identities, and they influence the meanings of more specific, lower-level identities (Burke & Stets, 2022). What it means to be a man or woman influences what it means to be a parent. In this study, we investigate links between two identities: gender identity as a categorical identity—people’s sense of belonging to their gender category (Wood & Eagly, 2015)—and the parent identity, a role identity. These identities cluster together in people’s minds, presumably because they share common meanings (Deaux et al., 1995). What those meanings are or whether that mental association extends to various aspects of those identities is unknown. To address this gap, we review research on the meanings of gender identity and the parent identity which illustrates what those common meanings are (e.g., Simon, K. J. Kiecolt (✉) · M. Hughes Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. Momplaisir Trinity Washington University, Washington, DC, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_11

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1995; Stets et al., 2023). We investigate correspondences between gender identity and parent identity on: (1) verification (how much others see individuals in the same way that individuals do), (2) prominence (importance of an identity to individuals), (3) salience (how much an identity guides behavior), and (4) pride (how proud people are of their identities). For each aspect, we suggest mechanisms for the links we propose. Because identity verification is associated with positive feelings and happiness (Stets & Burke, 2014; Stets et al., 2022), we also examine how verification of the two identities is related to overall happiness. We extend that analysis to prominence, salience, and pride. To do so, we draw on identity theory research about multiple identities (Burke & Cerven, 2019; Burke & Stets, 2022; Stets & Serpe, 2013), theory and research about subjective well-being (Diener et al., 2018; Hughes, 2006; Myers & Diener, 2018), and identity theory research about how aspects of identity are related to happiness and well-being (Stets & Burke, 2014; Stets et al., 2022). Finally, because gender identity and the parent identity have different meanings for men and women (Simon, 1995, 1997; Stets et al., 2023), we test for gender differences in how the two identities are associated with general happiness. We use data on parents from the Identity Module of the 2014 General Social Survey (Smith et al., 2015).

11.2

Background

How Identities Work: The Process of Identity Verification When people think about themselves, they define themselves in terms of their identities (Stets & Serpe, 2013). Identities are shared sets of meanings based on roles (parent or worker), social categories or groups (gender, race/ethnicity, PTA member), or unique characteristics associated with being a particular kind of person (creative, nature loving). Everyone has multiple identities of each type—role identities, social identities, and person identities (Burke & Stets, 2022). Each of a person’s identities has a set of meanings attached to it, termed the identity standard. These meanings are fairly stable because of identity processes that act to maintain the meanings at a particular level across situations. In any given situation, the identity standard serves as an anchor point against which people compare the perceived meanings of their identity in that situation. That is, people assess the perceived correspondence between their view of themselves in an identity (identity standard meanings) and how they see themselves in an identity in a situation (self-in-situation meanings), based on reflected appraisals, self-appraisals, or actual appraisals (Burke & Stets, 2022). The goal is for identity standard meanings and self-in-situation meanings to match. When they do, verification occurs. Mismatches occur if the perceived meanings of oneself in a situation differ from one’s identity standard meanings. When people’s identity standard meanings do not match their perceived meanings as to who they are in a situation, they may change their behavior, cognitions, or both to resolve the discrepancy (Stets et al., 2020).

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For example, a man might define himself as an emotionally supportive parent. Suppose the man’s son is upset about a problem with a friend, and the man simply teases his son about it. The son gets more upset, and the man refrains from further teasing. The man’s perception of his son’s reaction (a reflected appraisal) and his perception of his own behavior (a self-appraisal) signal the meaning that his behavior in the situation is less emotionally supportive than his identity standard dictates. To verify his identity as a supportive parent, he man might apologize to his son and try to help him deal with his problem. In any situation, more than one identity may be activated simultaneously. Sometimes when that occurs, one identity is at a higher level in the identity control system than the other. Higher-level identities are more abstract than lower-level identities, and they are activated in more situations. Higher-level identities have their own standards, and in addition, they contribute to the standards for lower-level identities. That is, the higher-level identity sets meanings for the lower-level identity to verify in situations. When people verify the lower-level identity, they also verify the higher-level one (Burke & Stets, 2021). Gender is a higher-level identity than the parent identity because it is activated in so many situations and along with so many roles (Ridgeway, 2009). As a higherlevel identity, gender influences the parent identity by contributing to its identity standard. This implies that gender identity and the parent identity have common meanings (discussed below). Identities that have common meanings are more likely to be activated together. Each activated identity has its own identity standard, and people seek to verify them both. That is, people seek to bring the meanings in the situation into line with both identity standards. They behave to control perceptions of themselves in a situation to match their identity standard.

Multiple Identities: Gender and Parent We examine two identities: gender identity (a categorical identity) and the parent identity (a role identity). Gender is a “master identity” that cuts across situations (Stets & Burke, 1996). It also is a “background identity” that unconsciously frames expectations for many roles (Ridgeway, 2009), and hence the meanings of role identities that carry different expectations for men and women (e.g., father/mother or husband/wife). In identity theory, categorical identities are the meanings people claim for themselves based on their category membership, and role identities are the meanings associated with playing a role (Stets & Burke, 2014). We argue that the meanings of being a man or woman are likely to overlap with the meanings of being a parent. Since the nineteenth century, motherhood has often been synonymous with womanhood (Arendell, 2000). In everyday life, parenthood is differentiated by gender. Empirically, becoming a parent affirms people’s manhood or womanhood (Burke & Cast, 1997). But they also become mothers or fathers. Their gender roles typically become more specialized. Women often reduce their hours of paid work, and they do

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more housework. Societal expectations about mothers’ and fathers’ roles and the gender pay gap drive this pattern (Katz-Wise et al., 2010). Previous research also leads us to infer that gender identity and the parent identity have overlapping meanings. Gender identity is closely associated with family role identities for individuals (Deaux et al., 1995). Deaux and her colleagues had participants sort 64 identities into groups based on their perceived similarity to each other. Clusters of similar identities emerged. One cluster included gender identities (man, woman) and primary relationship identities (e.g., husband, wife, mother, father). Their association strongly suggests their meanings overlap for people. What are some of those meanings? Studies have identified widely shared sets of meanings for gender that describe what men and women are like (reviewed by Stets et al., Chap. 5). Stets and her associates found that specific descriptors have changed somewhat along with men’s and women’s roles, but a consensus remains. Women are still seen as more communal, and men are seen as more agentic. At the same time, women are seen as more competent than men. Words which commonly describe men include leader, provider, protective, easygoing, and funny. Words which commonly describe women include caring, empathetic, focused, multitasker, and organized. Studies that explicitly probe for the meanings of parenthood are rare. One finds that the parent identity shares gender-specific meanings with gender identity. Mothers mention caring and nurturing, and fathers emphasize providing economically as integral to what being a parent means (Simon, 1995). Another finds that women associate being a parent with “fulfilling societal obligations” and negative emotions more than men do. Men mention “guiding, being a role model” more than women do (Simon, 1997). We also can infer gendered meanings of being a parent from research on what mothers and fathers do as parents, and how they interact with their children. Mothers do more day-to-day management and care, and they spend a smaller proportion of time playing with their children (Musick et al., 2016). While visiting museums with their children, mothers manage their children’s activities, whereas fathers interact playfully with their children (Garner, 2015). In that setting, we could say that mothers are focused and organized, and fathers are easygoing and funny. When two identities have some common meanings, verifying one identity helps verify the other (Burke & Stets, 2022). For example, suppose a man’s self-meanings as a man and a father include being emotionally sensitive. He will seek to control meanings in situations so that he perceives his own behavior and others’ view of him as an emotionally sensitive man and father. If he succeeds, both his gender identity and his parent identity are verified. More generally, to the extent that gender and the parent identity share meanings, we predict: Hypothesis 1: Gender identity verification will be positively associated with parent identity verification. We expect connections between gender identity and the parent identity on the aspects of prominence, salience, and pride as well. Prominence is how important

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an identity is to one’s self-concept (Brenner et al., 2014; McCall & Simmons, 1978; Rosenberg, 1979; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). People assess some identities as more prominent than others. Most people rate gender identity and their family identities (e.g., parent) as highly important (Kiecolt et al., 2019; Pew Research Center, 2015; Smith, 2007). We expect gender identity prominence to be positively related to parent identity prominence. Identity theory has identified several factors that influence prominence, including sharing more meanings with other identities, receiving rewards from the identity, and having more emotional attachments based on the identity (affective commitment) (Burke, 2023; Burke & Stets, 2021; McCall & Simmons, 1978; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). With respect to sharing meanings, as noted above, the meanings in one’s gender identity may influence the meanings that help form the parent identity standard. The more important are gender identity and its associated meanings, the more important should be the parent identity. Affective commitment or greater emotional ties predicts greater prominence of the mother identity (Nuttbrock & Freudiger, 1991) and the father identity (Pasley et al., 2002). The factors that separately influence gender identity and parent identity prominence also should co-occur. For example, some mothers whose daughters are in a Girl Scout troop together may develop close and rewarding friendships with each other. We expect: Hypothesis 2: Gender identity prominence will be positively related to parent identity prominence. Salience is the likelihood that an identity will be invoked across situations. More salient identities are more likely to be enacted, and when they are, behavior tends to be congruent in meaning with the meaning of those identities (Brenner et al., 2014; Burke & Stets, 2022; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). Overall, when people enact their role as a parent, their gender identity is likely to be activated as well because of shared meanings (discussed above) (Stets & Serpe, 2013). Parents tend to enact behavior in which the meanings reflect their gender identity standard meanings. We expect that the parent identity will be more salient for those whose gender identity also is more salient. Thus: Hypothesis 3: Gender identity salience will be positively associated with parent identity salience. Pride in one’s group or social category is how positively or negatively people evaluate their group or category (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992; Rosenberg, 1979). Pride in a role identity stems from competently performing the role. Most people express a great deal of pride in their gender category (Kiecolt et al., 2019), and many parents are proud of themselves as mothers or fathers (Simon, 1997). To the extent that parents feel proud of the shared qualities they embody as parents and as men and women, we expect that the two are positively related. We hypothesize: Hypothesis 4: Gender identity pride will be positively related to parental pride.

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Happiness and Identities Happiness refers to a favorable assessment of the quality of one’s life (Diener et al., 2018; Veenhoven, 2015). An aspect of subjective well-being, happiness is relatively stable, but it responds to experiences and changing social circumstances (Coverdill et al., 2011). We examine how aspects of gender and parent identities contribute to happiness.1 Based on theory and research, we expect identity verification to be related to greater overall happiness. When evidence warrants, we also hypothesize that identity prominence, salience, and pride will be associated with happiness (Kiecolt & Hughes, 2017; Leveto, 2016; Stets & Trettevik, 2016). Both gender and parent identity verification should be associated with greater happiness. The more people’s identities are verified, the more they will experience positive feelings, such as happiness (Burke & Cerven, 2019). Burke and Cerven found that across seven identities, identity verification was positively related to happiness. Among married parents, higher verification of the parent identity is related to lower depressive symptoms and higher self-esteem (Cast, 2004), and to greater happiness (Stets et al., 2022). Thus, we predict: Hypothesis 5a: Gender identity verification will be positively related to happiness. Hypothesis 5b: Parent identity verification will be positively related to happiness. We expect pride in one’s gender to be related to greater happiness as well. Identifying with one’s gender means seeing oneself as similar to other category members. When people claim positive meanings for a social category, they feel proud of being a member, and they ascribe those positive group meanings to themselves as well. This enhances their self-esteem (Stets & Burke, 2014). Because self-esteem is strongly correlated with happiness (Diener et al., 2018), pride in one’s gender may be associated with greater overall happiness. Consistent with this argument, more positive ingroup evaluation promotes greater happiness for Blacks and Whites (Kiecolt & Hughes, 2017). Hence, we expect pride in being a man or woman to contribute to overall happiness because it reflects a favorable evaluation of one’s gender category and positive feelings toward it. To make predictions about the parent identity and happiness, we draw from theory and research on subjective well-being, especially happiness and a sense of meaning (Hughes, 2006; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). We propose that assigning more prominence and salience to being a parent, and greater pride in being a parent will be related to greater happiness. We think that stronger parent identities—those evidencing greater verification, prominence, salience, and pride—may be related to a greater

1

Studies have compared parents to childless adults on their emotional well-being (e.g., depressive symptoms). Some find that parents have higher levels of depressive symptoms than nonparents (e.g., Evenson & Simon, 2005), but overall, findings are mixed (reviewed by Nelson et al., 2014). Many factors influence parents’ emotional well-being relative to that of nonparents, including stressors of caring for children, financial situation, available social supports to parents, and stage in the life course (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020; Simon, 1992).

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sense of purpose and meaning (Nelson et al., 2014). Some parents may even see the role as a calling (Nelson et al., 2014). In turn, a sense of purpose and meaning is positively related to happiness (Baumeister et al., 2013; Hughes, 2006; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Our argument builds on findings that the role of parent is socially significant (Glass et al., 2016), guides behavior (Thoits, 1983), and fosters pride in oneself (Nelson et al., 2014). Identity theory, though, recognizes that these aspects of identity vary among parents, just as happiness does. Based on the above, we predict: Hypothesis 6: Parent identity prominence will be positively related to happiness. Hypothesis 7: Parent identity salience will be positively associated with happiness. Hypothesis 8a: Pride in one’s gender will be positively related to happiness. Hypothesis 8b: Pride in being a parent will be positively associated with happiness. It is unclear whether or how gender identity prominence or salience will be related to happiness. Previous research is sparse and findings are mixed (Zitelny et al., 2022),2 with studies showing both positive and negative associations with well-being. Accordingly, we do not offer hypotheses about how gender identity prominence and salience are associated with happiness, but we do examine these associations.

Gender as a Potential Moderator In theorizing about identity processes, Stryker (1987) proposed that social identities involving master statuses (such as gender) modify the meanings of role identities. As discussed above, the meanings of the parent identity differ for men and women. Some meanings for mothers are linked to higher depressive symptoms (Simon, 1997). Hence, we will test for gender differences in how aspects of gender identity and the parent identity are related to happiness. Our analysis has some limitations. Because the data are cross-sectional, we cannot determine the direction of causality. Based on theory about verification of multiple identities (Burke & Stets, 2022), we model gender identity as a predictor of parent identity. However, they are reciprocally related. Also, we argue based on evidence that the meanings of gender identity and the parent identity overlap, but we lack measures of those meanings. Finally, we cannot capture changes over time in identities and their associations with happiness.

2

These studies use different terms for prominence and salience, and definitions sometimes combine the two concepts. Rather than prominence, studies refer to centrality, defined as “the importance of gender to their self-definition and the frequency with which it comes to their mind” (Zitelny et al., 2022). However, it is measured as, e.g., “In general, being a woman/man is an important part of my self-image.” Rather than salience, studies use the term “gender definition,” measured as, e.g., “When I am asked to describe myself, being female/male is one of the first things I think of” (Hoffman et al., 2000; Zitelny et al., 2022).

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K. J. Kiecolt et al.

Method

Data Data for this study came from the Identity Module in the 2014 General Social Survey (Smith et al., 2015). The survey was a national multi-stage probability sample of English-speaking noninstitutionalized adults aged 18 and older in the United States. Data were collected using face-to-face computer-assisted interviews. The response rate was 69%. The analytic sample began with the N = 995 respondents who had at least one child by birth, marriage, adoption, or foster care, and who were asked about their gender identities and parent identities. Sample sizes in the analyses were slightly smaller because of missing cases on some variables.

Measures Happiness and Identity The dependent variable, happiness, was assessed by asking, “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” Responses were very happy (3), pretty happy (2), or not too happy (1). Four items measured dimensions of the parent identity. Prominence was assessed by asking, “How much is being [A PARENT] an important part of how you see yourself?” Salience was measured as, “In general, how much do you find that being [A PARENT] influences or guides how you behave?” Pride in being a parent was measured as, “How proud are you to be [A PARENT]? Verification was an item that asked, “Think about how you see yourself as [A PARENT]. How much do you think your friends see you this way?” Responses to all four questions ranged from not at all (0) to completely (10), with 5 representing in the middle. Because fewer than 4% of parents chose a value of four or less on these variables, the variables were recoded to range from 0 to 6 (0–4 = 0, 5 = 1, 6 = 2, 7 = 3, 8 = 4, 9 = 5, and 10 = 6). Parallel items asked about gender identity, where [MAN/WOMAN] replaced [A PARENT]. Because fewer than 5% of respondents chose a value of four or less on these variables, the variables were recoded to range from 0 to 6 (0–4 = 0, 5 = 1, 6 = 2, 7 = 3, 8 = 4, 9 = 5, and 10 = 6).

Background Characteristics In our analyses, we controlled for marital or cohabiting status, whether respondents had a child under age 18, age, race/ethnicity, and education. Many married or cohabiting people have somewhat stronger gender identities than others (Kiecolt

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et al., 2019), and married parents are generally happier, because they have fewer stressors and more cultural support (Evenson & Simon, 2005; Stets et al., 2022). Age is related to greater identity verification, perhaps because people are more skilled at attaining it (Stets & Harrod, 2004). Age is related to lower happiness, partly because of declining health (Coverdill et al., 2011). Members of racial/ethnic minorities and less educated people have somewhat stronger gender identities; their gender identities may provide them with a sense of belonging and affirm their worth. However, those groups score lower on happiness (Coverdill et al., 2011; Kiecolt & Hughes, 2017; Kiecolt et al., 2019). Gender was coded as male (0) or female (1). Respondents who were married or cohabiting (1) were compared to respondents who were neither married nor cohabiting (0). Having a child under age 18 was coded as yes (1) or no (0).3 Age was measured in years. Race/ethnicity was determined by separate questions that asked what race respondents considered themselves and whether they were Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino/Latina. In the regression analyses, non-Hispanic whites were compared to all members of all other racial/ethnic groups (non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanics, and respondents of another race).4 Educational attainment was measured in years, from 0 = no formal education to 20 = graduate or professional degree.5

Analysis Descriptive statistics were calculated for all study variables for men and women, and the differences between the two groups were tested for significance. We then computed correlations among all the study variables. Next, because gender identity is a higher-level identity than the parent identity, we regressed each parent identity item on the corresponding measure of gender identity, gender, and the other predictor variables. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) with the maximum likelihood missing value option, which uses all available information. Finally, a set of ordinal logistic regression analyses investigated how each parent and gender identity dimension, along with gender and the other predictors, were related to happiness. We also tested for interactions of each identity variable with gender. Only significant interactions with gender are reported. In the analysis, the data were weighted to adjust for differential probability of inclusion and nonresponse (Smith et al., 2015).

3

Initial models had three dummy variables for age categories of minor children (0 to 5, 6 to 11, and 13 to 17). None of these variables was significantly related to any of the dependent variables. Consequently, we created a dummy variable for having any child under age 18. 4 We combined members of minoritized racial groups into one category because race/ethnicity had no significant effects on parent identity or happiness in these data. 5 Initial models also included employment status as a background variable. Later models excluded it because it was unrelated to any parent identity dimension.

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Results

Descriptive Statistics Table 11.1 shows descriptive statistics by gender for variables in the study. In this sample of parents, men and women did not differ on happiness. About a third of each group, 33% of men and 32% of women, were very happy, and only 10% were not too happy. The largest group, 56% of men and 58% of women, were pretty happy. All four dimensions of the parent identity had very high means. Respondents largely experienced verification of their parent identity. The parent identity also is very prominent and highly salient. Pride in the parent identity had the highest mean of all four aspects of the identity for both men and women. Although both men and women scored high overall on the parent identity, women scored even higher. Women experienced more verification of the parent identity than men did, with means of 4.59 and 4.15, respectively (t = 3.28, p < 0.001). The parent identity was very prominent for both men and women, but as predicted, it was even more so for women. Men’s mean was 4.88, whereas women’s mean was 5.22 (t = 3.09, p < 0.01). As expected, the parent identity also was more salient to women. The mean for men was 4.67, while the mean for women was 4.91 (t = 2.07, p < 0.05). We did not expect men and women to differ on pride in being a parent, but women scored higher than men—with a mean of 5.64, as compared to men’s mean of 4.42 (t = 2.54, p < 0.05). Similarly, men and women scored very high on all four aspects of gender identity, and women scored even higher than men did. As with the parent identity, pride in one’s gender had the highest means of 5.42 for men and 5.64 for women (t = 6.61, p < 0.001). Table 11.2 shows the correlations among the study variables. As expected, happiness was positively related to all four aspects of the parent identity. It also was correlated with gender identity verification. However, contrary to prediction, it was not correlated with the other dimensions of gender identity. All the parent identity dimensions had moderate to moderately strong correlations with each other, from 0.42 to 0.64. Similarly, correlations among the gender identity dimensions ranged from 0.44 to 0.63.

Parent Identity Models Table 11.3 shows the regressions of parent identity on gender identity, gender, and the other predictor variables. We investigated influences on four aspects of the parent identity: verification, prominence, salience, and pride in being a parent. Each aspect of the parent identity was related to the corresponding aspect of gender identity. Verification had the largest association. The more that mothers’ and fathers’ gender identity was verified, the more their parent identity was verified (β = 0.37, p < 0.001). Gender identity prominence also was positively related to parent identity

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Table 11.1 Descriptive statistics and unweighted Ns for study variables by gender

Happiness Not too happy Pretty happy Very happy Parent identity Identity verification

Range 0, 1

Men M (S.E.) or Proportion

N (unweighted N) 407

0.10 0.56 0.33

Women M (S.E.) or Proportion

N 587

0.10 0.58 0.32

0–6

4.15***

397

4.59***

581

Identity prominence

0–6

(0.10) 4.88**

407

(0.08) 5.22**

587

Identity salience

0–6

Pride in being a parent

0–6

(0.09) 4.67* (0.09) 5.42*

405 407

(0.07) Gender identity Identity verification

(0.07) 4.91* (0.08) 5.64*

585 588

(0.05)

0–6

4.26***

399

4.71***

575

Identity prominence

0–6

(0.10) 4.21***

403

(0.08) 4.88***

585

Identity salience

0–6

Pride in one’s gender

0–6

(0.11) 4.09 (0.10) 4.68***

401 402

(0.10) Background variables Married or cohabiting Has child under age 18 Age Non-White Education

(0.09) 4.36 (0.09) 5.32***

582 586

(0.07)

0, 1

0.80***

407

0.65***

588

0, 1

0.39

407

0.44

588

22–89

54.47 (0.77) 0.26 13.68 (0.16)

402

52.48 (0.75) 0.32 13.75 (0.12)

582

0, 1 0–20

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

407 407

588 588

1.00

0.51**

0.63**

0.42** 0.28**

0.39**

0.27**

0.27** 0.12** -0.10** 0.15** -0.10** -0.06 0.10**

0.07*

0.10**

0.07* 0.08*

0.02

0.05

0.04 -0.01 -0.07* -0.04 0.00 0.20** 0.02

(2)

1.00 0.17**

(1)

Note. Ns range from 963 to 995 *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01

(1) Happiness (2) Parent identity verification (3) Parent identity prominence (4) Parent identity salience (5) Pride in being a parent (6) Gender identity verification (7) Gender identity prominence (8) Gender identity salience (9) Pride in one’s gender (10) Woman (11) Age (12) Non-White (13) Education (14) Marital/cohabiting (15) Has child under age 18

0.26** 0.11** -0.14** 0.08* -0.11** 0.03 0.14**

0.22**

0.28**

0.64** 0.32**

0.54**

1.00

(3)

Table 11.2 Correlations among variables for parents

0.22** 0.08* -0.13** 0.06 -0.04 -0.02 0.18**

0.32**

0.28**

0.44** 0.30**

1.00

(4)

0.28** 0.09** -0.07* 0.01 -0.07* 0.04 0.06*

0.20**

0.25**

1.00 0.28**

(5)

0.50** 0.13** 0.03 0.13** -0.05 -0.04 0.05

0.55**

0.56**

1.00

(6)

0.63** 0.17** -0.03 0.12** -0.13** -0.15** 0.06

0.56**

1.00

(7)

0.44** 0.07* 0.02 0.10** -0.06* -0.04 0.06

1.00

(8)

1.00 0.19** 0.02 0.16** -0.18** -0.10** 0.00

(9)

1.00 -0.06* 0.07* 0.01 -0.16** 0.05

(10)

1.00 -0.21** 0.01 -0.12** -0.63**

(11)

1.00 -0.16** -0.16** 0.10**

(12)

1.00 0.13** 0.04

(13)

1.00 0.14**

(14)

1.00

(15)

240 K. J. Kiecolt et al.

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Table 11.3 Standardized coefficients for aspects of parent identity

Gender identity verification Gender identity prominence Gender identity salience Pride in one’s gender Womana Married/ Cohabitinga Has child under age 18a Age Non-Whitea Education Constant N R squared

Parent Identity Verification 0.37***

Parent Identity Prominence

Parent Identity Salience

Pride in Being a Parent

0.27*** 0.30*** 0.27*** 0.06 -0.03

0.08* 0.07*

0.05 -0.03

0.05 0.07

-0.03

0.08

0.13**

0.02

-0.07 0.06 -0.07 2.03*** 953 0.17

-0.07 0.01 -0.08* 3.02*** 978 0.12

-0.05 -0.00 -0.01 2.43*** 971 0.13

-0.07 -0.05 -0.05 4.23*** 977 0.09

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 Reference categories are men, Whites, unmarried, noncohabiting respondents, and parents with adult children a

prominence (β = 0.27, p < 0.001). Gender identity salience was positively associated with parent identity salience (β = 0.26, p < 0.001). Pride in one’s gender also was associated with pride in being a parent (β = 0.27, p < 0.001). The background variables had a few significant effects. The parent identity was more salient (β = 0.13, p < 0.001) among respondents with minor children than among those with only adult children. More educated respondents scored lower on pride in being a parent (β = -0.06, p < 0.05). More educated women, but not men, received less verification for their parent identity (β = -0.53, p < 0.01), and they rated it as less prominent in their self-concept (β = -0.38, p < 0.01).

Happiness Models Table 11.4 shows the odds ratios from ordinal logistic regressions of happiness on gender, the parent identity, gender identity, and the other predictors. As predicted, greater parent identity verification was related to greater happiness for men and women (OR = 1.25, p < 0.001). Gender identity verification interacted with gender in a surprising way. As Fig. 11.1 shows, it was positively related to happiness for men, but unrelated to happiness for women.

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Table 11.4 Odds ratios of ordinal logistic regressions of happiness on predictor variables Predictor variables Womana Parent identity verification Gender identity verification Gender identity verification X Woman Parent identity prominence Parent identity prominence X Woman Gender identity prominence Parent identity salience Parent identity salience X Woman Gender identity salience Pride in being a parent Pride in one’s gender Married/Cohabitinga Has child under age 18a Woman X has child under 18 Age Non-Whitea Education Cut 1 Cut 2 F Df N

Verification 2.34* 1.25*** 1.16* 0.82*

Prominence 4.53*

Salience 5.56***

Pride 1.38

1.26** 0.74** 1.06 1.34*** 0.75** 1.07

2.76*** 0.65*

2.55*** 0.69*

0.99* 0.85 0.99 -1.06 2.07 7.12*** 9, 943 952

0.99 0.97 0.98 -1.29 1.76 4.89*** 9, 968 970

2.54*** 0.92 0.54* 0.99 0.88 0.98 -0.92 2.17 5.31*** 10, 960 970

1.09 1.07 2.44*** 1.04 0.49* 0.98* 0.92 0.99 -1.77 1.25 5.54*** 9, 967 976

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 Reference categories are men, unmarried, noncohabiting respondents, parents with adult children, and Whites

a

0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

1

2

3

4

5

Gender Identy Verificaon Men Women Fig. 11.1 Probability of being very happy by gender identity verification and gender

6

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0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Parent Identy Prominence Men

Women

Fig. 11.2 Probability of being very happy by parent identity prominence and gender 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

1

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Parent Identy Salience Men Women Fig. 11.3 Probability of being very happy by parent identity salience and gender

Parent identity prominence also interacted with gender to influence happiness. As Fig. 11.2 shows, it was positively related to happiness for men, and unrelated to happiness for women. Gender identity prominence was unrelated to happiness. Similarly, parent identity salience was related to greater happiness for men, and unrelated to happiness for women. Figure 11.3 shows the predicted probability of being very happy for men and women by parent identity salience and gender. Men whose identity as a parent was not very salient were less happy than other men, and they were less happy than women whose identity as a parent was not very salient. Surprisingly, neither pride in being a parent nor pride in one’s gender was related to happiness. Overall, in the multivariate models, none of the gender identity dimensions aside from verification were related to happiness. Even that was contingent on gender. Gender identity prominence and salience, and pride in one’s gender remained nonsignificant. Only one of the background variables was significant. Married or cohabiting respondents were happier than unmarried, non-cohabiting ones.

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Discussion

In this study, we have extended identity theory research on multiple identities by examining linkages between gender identity (a more abstract, higher-level social category identity) and the parent identity (a lower-level role identity) on verification, prominence, salience, and pride. We also examined how these aspects of gender identity and parent identity were related to overall happiness, using a large national sample of parents. Based on identity theory and research (Burke, 2003; Burke & Stets, 2022) we expected that gender identity verification would be positively associated with parent identity verification. We presented findings that the two identities share meanings, stemming from the gendered nature of parenthood. Because of shared meanings, when people verify their parent identity, they are likely to verify their gender identity as well. Our hypothesis was supported, but the correlation was only moderate. Of course, other higher-level identities aside from gender identity have their own identity standards, which also help set parent identity standards. For example, the meanings of people’s social class identity carry over into their parent identity. Some meanings are qualities parents value in themselves that they want to inculcate in their children. People in higher social classes favor autonomy (“thinking for oneself”) over obedience more than those in lower social classes do (Alwin & Tufiș, 2021). Such parents often negotiate with their children (Weininger & Lareau, 2009), and they may verify both their social class and parent identities in doing so. Moreover, not all gender identity meanings are relevant for the parent identity. We extended identity theory by showing that other aspects of higher-level and lower-level identities aside from verification are related to each other. As with verification, our primary rationale was that gender identity and the parent identity share meanings. As predicted, corresponding aspects of gender identity and the parent identity also were related. Gender identity salience was associated with higher parent identity salience. The more one’s identity as a man or woman guides one’s behavior, the more it is invoked in one’s behavior as a parent. We found similar associations of identity prominence and pride across gender identity and the parent identity. Our hypotheses that stronger gender and parent identities would be associated with greater happiness were only partially and conditionally supported. On verification, as expected, greater verification of the parent identity was related to happiness for men and women. We also expected greater gender identity verification to be related to happiness, because having more role identities that are verified tends to benefit well-being (Burke & Cerven, 2019; Thoits, 1983). That was the case for men, but not for women. Similarly, parent identity prominence and salience were associated with greater happiness for men, but not women. These findings lead to broader questions. When and why does identity verification fail to enhance well-being? And when and why are more prominent and salient identities linked to greater happiness for some groups than others?

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As Stets et al. (2022) have pointed out, structural arrangements and cultural beliefs that disadvantage some groups relative to others can weaken and offset the positive outcomes of identity verification. In their case, parent identity verification was not linked to happiness for parents in non-normative family arrangements. Those parents may perceive that others view their arrangement somewhat negatively. In our case, gender identity verification did not have the expected positive outcome for women’s happiness. The explanation may partly lie in the meanings of gender. Our culture places less value on meanings that are tied to women, such as communalism, than on meanings tied to men, such as agency (Ridgeway, 2009; Stets et al., 2023). Perhaps women recognize that more meanings of being a woman are undervalued in society. At the same time, Hughes (2006) suggested that a sense of meaning and purpose might sometimes take precedence over positive affect. His argument implies that people may seek to verify even less culturally valued identity meanings if they help sustain a sense of purpose. Even though gender identity verification was not associated with happiness for women, gender identity is a critical factor in most people’s lives. People may pursue gender identity meanings that are personally significant, even if they do not increase happiness. For example, women may value being caring, despite the burdens involved and the societal devaluation of care work. Parent identity prominence and salience were positively associated with happiness for men, but not for women. We reasoned that more prominent and salient parent identities would be positively related to happiness because they reflect a greater sense of meaning and purpose in life. That mechanism may operate for both men and women. But prominence and salience may be connected to happiness through other mechanisms that benefit women’s happiness less. For example, parent identity prominence and salience may be associated with more time spent parenting. However, children disrupt their mother’s sleep more often than their father’s (Musick et al., 2016), and mothers experience time with children as more stressful and fatiguing than fathers do (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020). Parent identity dimensions also may interact with other predictors of parents’ well-being, such as stressors of caring for children, available social supports to parents, and stage in the life course (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020; Simon, 1992) that also relate to happiness. Overall, research is needed on how parent identity prominence and salience are related to and may interact with costs and benefits of parenting. It also would be fruitful to know what identity meanings, both positive and negative, are associated with greater parent identity prominence and salience. Perhaps men for whom parenthood is more prominent and salient attach more positive meanings to it than women do. Simon (1997), for example, found that women defined their role more in terms of fulfilling societal expectations than men did, and that meaning was associated with higher distress. Women also were more likely than men to mention the physical and emotional costs of parenthood. Because previous evidence was so mixed, we could not predict whether gender identity prominence and salience would be related to happiness. In our sample of parents, they were not. Zitelny et al. (2022) proposed that high gender prominence and salience might simultaneously enhance and undermine well-being. For women,

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these identity dimensions entail both a sense of belonging and a focus on their status as a disadvantaged group. For men, these identity dimensions may reflect both their status as a socially valued group and a perceived need to prove their status as “real” men. Theory about multiple identities suggests another possibility. Gender identity sets the standard for multiple lower-level identities: parent, spouse/partner, and worker (Burke & Stets, 2022). Perhaps greater gender identity prominence and salience leads to greater role conflict among those lower-level identities. Surprisingly, pride in one’s gender and pride in being a parent also were unrelated to happiness for either men or women. Perhaps pride could explain very little variation in happiness because scores on pride in those two identities was so high. As noted above for prominence and salience, we need to know more about what men and women, and mothers and fathers, are proud of. This study has some limitations. The data were cross-sectional, so we could not determine the direction of causality. Based on theory about multiple identity verification (Burke & Stets, 2022), we modeled gender identity as a predictor of parent identity. However, they are reciprocally related. Enacting one’s parent identity may invoke one’s gender identity. Overall happiness and identity as a parent are likely to affect each other as well (Leveto, 2016). Also, we presented evidence that the meanings of gender identity and the parent identity overlap, but we lacked measures of identity meanings for the two identities. Finally, we could not capture changes over time. Identities and happiness change over the life course (Burke & Cast, 1997; Diener et al., 2018). We found that parents with a minor child have a more salient parent identity, and mothers with a minor child are less happy than mothers whose children are older. Our analysis of multiple identities focused on four aspects of gender identity and the parent identity. Future research could examine how gender identity is related to other higher-level identities such as racial identity, as well as other role identities, such as work identities. Similarly, studies could explore how other higher-level identities such as social class and religion are related to the parent identity. Although gender identity had little effect on overall happiness, other higher-level identities may work differently in tandem with role identities. For example, although a positive ethnoracial identity contributes to happiness, Whites remain happier than members of minoritized groups (Coverdill et al., 2011; Kiecolt & Hughes, 2017). Role identities or person identities may interact with ethnoracial identity to magnify or reduce the gap. Overall, much remains to be learned about how multiple identities relate to each other and to well-being. Discovering how they do so will help refine identity theory and give us a more complex picture of how identities operate. Acknowledgement We thank Peter J. Burke, Ashley V. Reichelmann, and Jan E. Stets for their comments on earlier drafts.

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Chapter 12

Student, Mexican American Student, or White Student? The Relative Influence of Identity Prominence on Academic Performance, Educational Aspirations, and Academic Self-Esteem Laura Aufderheide Brashears

12.1

Introduction

Categorical identities such as race, ethnicity, and sex transcend institutional boundaries, influence how others view us in various roles (e.g., Black student or female worker), and how we internalize messages about ourselves. Such relationships are well-documented in the literature on student identities, which shows that the experiences of students of color do not mirror those of the White majority. White teachers hold different stereotypes for students based on their racial and ethnic backgrounds (McGrady & Reynolds, 2013). African American students experience far more disciplinary actions in schools (Morris & Perry, 2016, 2017), and African American, Latino, and Native American students are consistently placed into lower academic tracks than White and Asian American students (Oakes, 1985; Tyson, 2013). These practices indicate to students of color that they are not just “students” in the eyes of the educational system, but “African American students,” or “Latino students.” Students, in turn, internalize such messages (Carter, 2006; Schmader, 2010; Sellers et al., 1998; Steele & Aronson, 1995), which can reduce not only academic performance and educational aspirations, but also self-esteem. Despite literature pointing to the importance of examining the student identity in combination with ethnoracial identities, we know very little about how the relative importance, or prominence, of ethnoracial and role identities predicts various types of academic outcomes, and even less about whether these effects differ by ethnoracial background.

L. A. Brashears (✉) University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_12

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This research utilizes identity theory (IT), a theory uniquely suited to understanding the complex relationships between multiple identities, to answer the following questions: How does the relative importance of role and ethnoracial identities affect academic performance, educational aspirations, and academic self-esteem? Does this effect differ for Mexican American and White youth? As IT predicts, prominence is an important predictor of student identity enactment (Brenner et al., 2014), attitudes related to role identities (e.g. Di Leone et al., 2016; Stryker & Serpe, 1994), and academic self-esteem (Rosenberg et al., 1995). Thus, we surmise that higher student prominence influences the enactment of the student identity and subsequent academic performance, educational aspirations, and academic self-esteem. What is missing from this research is acknowledgement that in a racialized school system, students may identify with student, ethnoracial, or possibly ethnoracial–student identities, and that the relative identification with each affects academic outcomes. In this paper, I begin to fill this gap by exploring whether Mexican American and White high school students have different prominence hierarchies in the school context. And, if they do, whether the relative student, ethnoracial, and ethnoracial– student prominence among self-identified Mexican American and White high school students differentially affect performance, aspirations, and academic self-esteem. Mexican Americans make up the largest subgroup of the Latino population in the United States (Noe-Bustamante et al., 2019), and currently almost 25% of U.S. K–12 children are Latino (Gándara, 2013). Thus, understanding student identities among this population is important, both for their individual trajectories and for improving national educational outcomes. Additionally, White Americans are often left out of the conversation about student identities, which focuses on trying to explain the underperformance of African American students relative to White students (Harris, 2011; though see Carter, 2012 for a notable exception). The assumption seems to be that White students do not think about their ethnoracial identities within the educational arena, inadvertently reinforcing the idea that a “student” identity is a “Whitestudent” identity, in a society that often views whiteness as invisible (McDermott, 2005; McDermott & Ferguson, 2022). Knowledge of both groups’ identities thus increases our understanding of identity enactment among students of various ethnoracial groups in the U.S., while simultaneously enhancing our understanding of how individuals experience the confluence of categorical and role identities within the IT framework. Below, I describe the theory informing this work, my methodology, and the results of my analyses. I then advance suggestions for future research. Based on my findings, I call for IT researchers to address how the relative importance of multiple identities being activated at once affects important sociological outcomes. Additionally, I suggest that IT researchers need to contend with how categorical and role identities may intersect to create qualitatively new identities (e.g., “Mexican American-student,” in contrast to “student” or Mexican American”).

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Student, Mexican American Student, or White Student? The. . .

12.2

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Background and Theory

Identity Prominence and Identities Prominence, or the extent to which identities are important to us, is a key factor in identity theory (Stryker 1980/2002). More important identities should influence individual outcomes in a variety of ways. Additionally, research has both theoretically argued for, and empirically validated, that prominence affects other identity processes. For example, identity prominence directly affects the likelihood of activating identities, or the salience, of identities within situations (Brenner et al., 2014). It also influences self-esteem (Hughes et al., 2015) and important behavioral outcomes such as utilizing Veteran’s Affairs Health Services (Di Leone et al., 2016). Indeed, a large body of self- and identity-related studies often includes student identity prominence as a predictor of a variety of academic behaviors and selffeelings (Brenner et al., 2018). Given the importance of academic performance for later occupational attainment and socioeconomic status more broadly (Sewell et al., 1969), the prominence of the student identity has high-stakes implications. Identity theory argues that role, person, group, and categorical identities are characterized by, among other factors, a level of prominence (Burke & Stets, 2022). Role identities (e.g., “student”) are meanings that we hold by virtue of our roles tied to positions in the social structure. Each role identity tends to have a counter identity to which it is related, such that we understand the meaning of the “student identity” in part because we know what the complementary “teacher identity” means. In addition to role identities, varying prominence levels are tied to our person identities, group identities, and categorical identities. Person identities are unique to the individual (e.g., being dominant or moral) and tend to be activated across situations. Group identities are linked to group memberships in which individuals interact with each and attempt to meet the expectations of each other and the goals of the group (e.g., membership in a Lions Club.). Categorical identities are based on characteristics used by society to stratify its members’ control of access to valued resources (e.g., sex, race, ethnicity). Categorical identities can be foci (Feld, 1981) for group activity (e.g., the Black Lives Matter Movement), but they are also characteristics that follow us from situation to situation, influencing how the world reacts to us in subtle as well as more overt ways. Thus, when people perform role identities, categorical identities are also likely relevant, whether it be in a classroom or in a workplace. As described below, there are good reasons to think that non-White students are reminded of their categorical ethnoracial identities while performing their student identities. This leads to a scenario where we might envision that students experience high prominence for multiple types of identities at once: the student identity, the ethnoracial identity, and possibly an ethnoracial–student identity in which two identities intersect, sharing meanings from both identities. Given the prominence of various potentially relevant identities in the school context, and the importance of

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academic outcomes to future success, understanding how the relative prominence of these identities affect outcomes is of substantive importance. For instance, if we find that the relative prominence of the student identity has a stronger effect on academic outcomes for White students, and the ethnoracial–student identity has a stronger effect on academic outcomes for Mexican American students, academic achievement programs can emphasize these two groups’ identities to maximize their performance. Theoretically, the effects of relative prominence on specific behaviors, beliefs, and self-feelings adds to the literature in IT on multiple identities.

Multiple Identities Within Identity Theory IT has empirically examined various outcomes of multiple identities, such as the stress of holding multiple voluntary and obligatory identities (Thoits, 1986; Thoits, 2003), or how people with different categorical memberships (e.g., ethnoracial, gender) experience various role identities (e.g., Burke & Cerven, 2019; Ma & Xiao, 2021; Merolla et al., 2012). Theoretically, there have been two main attempts to explain simultaneously activated identities. In the first approach, Burke (2003; Burke & Stets, 2022) has argued that multiple identities can be activated concurrently. The likely outcome of this activation is that the meanings of the less salient identity will shift to become more aligned with the meanings of the more salient identity over time. Using this logic, we should expect that students whose student and ethnoracial identities are both activated will have higher prominence for either the student or the ethnoracial identity meanings over time. Alternatively, however, the identity meanings of the relevant role and categorical identities may blend (Burke & Stets, 2022), rather than one being subordinate to the other, leading to a categorical–role identity (suggested by Carter, 2006; Sellers et al., 1998 in relation to ethnoracial and student identities). For example, Lee (1998) asked boys and girls enrolled in a STEM summer camp to rate themselves (“I am”), “samesex others,” and “other science students” on a variety of semantic differential scales (evaluation, potency, activity, cooperativeness, hardness, emotionality, objectorientation, inquisitive motivation, systematicity, and logic). He then compared the “I am” ratings to both the “same-sex others” (categorical sex) and “other science students” (role) for both groups. He found that the self-meanings reported differed significantly from the “same-sex others” and “other science students” ratings for both boys and girls. In general, girls simultaneously rated themselves as more traditionally feminine than “other science students,” as well as more traditionally masculine than “same-sex others.” The pattern was less clear for the boys, but in general, boys tended to rate themselves as less traditionally science-focused and traditionally masculine than “other science students” and “same-sex others.” Thus, boys and girls often see themselves as sitting somewhere in between, or slightly divergent from their science peers and their same-sex peers, as well as different from each other. This suggests that there may two gender-based STEM

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identities, a “female-STEM student” and a “male-STEM student identity,” rather than identity meanings that merge with either the underlying categorical or role identity meanings. Such differences affect the real world to the extent that self and other identity meanings help predict educational aspirations. Indeed, Lee found that female science students preferred more feminine (i.e., “people-focused”) STEM careers such as physician or psychologist, and male science students preferred more masculine (i.e., “hard science”) careers such as mathematician and physicist. Lee’s findings support the second main theoretical argument in IT about multiple identities. Stets and Burke (2014) argue that categorical identities invoked across multiple situations (i.e., master statuses) will likely be experienced not only as categorical identities, but also as similar to person identities that also follow us across situations (e.g., an optimist is an optimist at school, at home, and at the doctor’s office). Given this logic, we should see categorical identities invoked repeatedly alongside situationally relevant role identities, a claim that fits with Lee’s study, as well as the education literature reviewed below. Just as the categorical sex identity conditions the STEM student role identity and leads to different educational aspirations among boys and girls, I suggest that the ethnoracial identity conditions the student identity, leading to different academic performance, educational aspirations, and academic self-esteem, as Carter documented (2006). The extent to which students identify with the ethnoracial–student identity, relative to the student or ethnoracial identity, should have effects on academic outcomes.

Student Identities Contextualized When children enter the classroom, they are immediately classified by their categorical identities, such as race, ethnicity, and sex. Labeling theorists argue that teachers’ awareness of such categorical identities, coupled with their knowledge of students’ past academic behaviors, influence how they treat students in the present (Rist, 2007). Children thus develop their student role identities within a context that consistently reminds them of their categorical identities. This is especially problematic when the messages being sent about ethnoracial–student identities are linked to, or contained in, differential evaluations and meanings. For example, White teachers hold more negative views about African American and Latino students than do teachers of color (McGrady & Reynolds, 2013). African Americans also are judged as committing more disciplinary infractions than White students and other students of color (Morris & Perry, 2017), which can degrade their sense of school belonging (Pyne, 2019). Thus, students of various ethnoracial backgrounds are exposed to different teacher behaviors and likely internalize different reflected appraisals about what teachers think students are like (Schmader, 2010). Racial disparities in treatment also are present at the organizational level. For example, Asian American and White students are disproportionately tracked into Advanced Placement and honors classes, relative to African American, Latino, and Native American students (Tyson, 2013). Students can see these patterns, and even

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when they perform well in lower-tracked courses, they internalize a belief that they are not smart enough to be in the higher-tracked courses (Musto, 2019). At the highest level of abstraction, teachers’ beliefs and behaviors and school tracking policies send signals about student identities within a racialized society, where people of color still experience prejudice and discrimination (Hunt, 2007; Hunt et al., 2007). This prejudice extends to the classroom, where Asian American students are often assumed to be highly intelligent and hard-working (Lee, 2012), and African American and Latino students are often assumed to be the opposite (McGrady & Reynolds, 2013). Even in the absence of overt racism, people come to hold implicit biases towards higher and lower status groups (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995), as well as toward their in-group (Valla et al., 2018). All these messages are problematic because they are internalized by students themselves. The literature on stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995) exemplifies the internalization of such beliefs. In education, stereotypes of academic inferiority can easily be triggered by having students engage in an academic task, while also priming them on their race prior to the task (Schmader, 2010). The threat of fulfilling negative stereotypes about their group appears to interfere with working memory and hinders performance, even among highly achieving African American and Latinx students. Students who cannot fully utilize their working memories cannot perform to their best ability. Thus, stereotype threat reinforces beliefs of academic inferiority in the moment, and it has longer lasting results, such as discouraging science persistence through disidentification with the science identity for Latino students (Woodcock et al., 2012). Thus, we have a context in which students are reminded by teachers, the school structure, and society at large that they are different from their peers by virtue of their ethnoracial backgrounds. Asian Americans are assumed to be extra brilliant and hard-working (Lee, 2012), and African Americans and Latino students are assumed to be less intelligent and academically motivated (McGrady & Reynolds, 2013), suggesting that there are different meanings for the Asian American–student identity and the African American–student identity. Are students of color internalizing these messages and seeing themselves not just as students, but as ethnoracial–students, or possibly identifying more strongly with their ethnoracial identity than their student identity? Do the same processes occur for White students, or are White students comfortable adopting a generic “student” identity, since they are not regularly reminded of their categorical ethnoracial identities? While no research directly addresses these questions from either a social psychological perspective or from comparing various groups of ethnoracial students, qualitative research offers preliminary support. Carter (2006) finds that low income African American and Latino students are keenly aware of their ethnoracial categorical identities at school. In response, Carter’s interviewees appear to have higher prominence for one of three types of identities. Cultural mainstreamers adopt “white American middle-class tastes for speech and interaction codes, dress and physical appearance, music, and other art forms” (Carter, 2006, p. 322), which their ethnoracial peers often interpret as derogating their own ethnoracial group. Noncompliant believers reject the cultural codes espoused by schools as signaling

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compliance with the dominant White culture, and therefore prefer to interact with and follow the cultural codes of their own ethnoracial group. Cultural straddlers attempt to enjoy the best of both worlds, adopting White American styles of speech and appearance in the classroom, but consuming culture consistent with their ethnoracial status outside the classroom. Importantly, Carter finds that any connection with hegemonic student ideals, either as cultural mainstreamers or cultural straddlers, leads to higher academic achievement, aspirations, and self-feelings related to academics. Noncompliant believers, in contrast, have poorer academic outcomes. Translating this into my framework, cultural mainstreamers appear to have high student prominence, cultural straddlers have high ethnoracial–student prominence, and noncompliant believers have high ethnoracial prominence. In other words, for some students, categorical identities significantly interact with their student role identities, and subsequently impact academic outcomes. IT research can facilitate deeper understanding of these processes.

Hypotheses Both the IT and education literature reviewed above lead to my hypotheses. The first set of hypotheses make simple predictions about the prominence of student, ethnoracial–student, and ethnoracial identities for Mexican American and White students. I predict that the student identity will be more prominent for White students than for Mexican American students. This hypothesis is based on my contention that the student identity may reflect a White hegemonic ideal in which Whiteness is the invisible category (McDermott, 2005), and thus ethnoracial categorization is already wrapped up in the student identity itself for White youth. Given Mexican Americans’ more visible status as persons of color in the U.S., I predict that they will have higher prominence for both the ethnoracial–student and ethnoracial identities than Whites will.1 This hypothesis is supported by Carter’s (2006) empirical research with Mexican American and Black youth, as well as the IT argument (Burke & Stets, 2022) that culturally-relevant categorical identities follow us from situation to situation. H1: White youth will have higher student prominence than Mexican American youth. 1

Historically, Mexican Americans in the American Southwest have experienced a similar caste position to African Americans in the American Southeast, confronting both prejudice and discrimination based on their ethnicity (Ortiz & Telles, 2012). This type of negative treatment can help reinforce strong social identities based on race or ethnicity (Hogg, 2003). Additionally, Mexican Americans are among the lowest SES Latinx groups in the U.S. (Noe-Bustamante et al., 2019), which makes their structural position comparable to that of African Americans, despite the distinct historical context. All of this suggests that similar combined ethnoracial–student and ethnoracial identities will be important to Mexican Americans (Carter, 2006).

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H2: Mexican American youth will have higher ethnoracial–student prominence than White youth. H3: Mexican American youth will have higher ethnoracial prominence than White youth. The second set of hypotheses accounts for the relative prominence of respondents’ student, ethnoracial–student, and ethnoracial identities in predicting academic performance (a behavior), educational aspirations (a belief), and academic self-esteem (a feeling). Given IT research linking prominence to role-related behaviors (Brenner et al., 2014), I expect student prominence to positively affect academic performance, educational aspirations, and academic self-esteem (H4a–H4c), controlling for the prominence of other identities. Thus, I expect these effects to hold regardless of ethnoracial category. H4: High student prominence positively affects (a) academic performance, (b) educational aspirations, and (c) academic self-esteem. I expect ethnoracial–student prominence to positively affect academic outcomes of interest for all students (H5a–H5c). These hypotheses are again driven by Carter’s (2006) findings that the cultural straddlers, who successfully defined themselves by their student role and ethnoracial categorical identities, had strong academic performance, high aspirations, and positive self-feelings. H5: High ethnoracial–student prominence positively affects (a) academic performance, (b) educational aspirations, and (c) academic self-esteem. In contrast to higher student prominence leading to positive academic outcomes, I expect higher ethnoracial prominence to lead to negative academic outcomes. This hypothesis should apply to any highly prominent identity (e.g., gender, friend, sibling) that is more important than the student identity. In this case, I am especially interested in the ethnoracial identity given its impact in the classroom. That Carter (2006) specifically found that a stronger ethnoracial identity was correlated with poorer academic performance lends further support to this set of hypotheses (H6a– H6c). I also expect these effects to hold regardless of ethnoracial category. H6: High ethnoracial prominence leads to (a) lower academic achievement, (b) lower educational aspirations, and (c) lower levels of academic self-esteem.

12.3

Method

Data were collected from 331 sophomore high school students in 2008. I chose to study sophomores because they are not completely new to high school, but are still young enough to provide variability on the outcomes of interest. All students were enrolled in Greenbriar High School (GHS), a pseudonymous high school 30 minutes from a major city in the southwestern United States. GHS has a mix of rural and suburban students, with slightly more rural students. Although rural and urban

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schools often have lower scores on standardized tests than suburban schools (Logan & Burdick-Will, 2017), scores at GHS were comparable to those of other schools within the district and county, and to the southwestern state more generally one year before my data collection, making it a typical school and thus an appropriate research site within the state. At the time of data collection, 507 sophomores were enrolled at GHS, and 395 were enrolled in one of two required sophomore courses.2 Thus, out of the entire pool of 395 students enrolled in the required courses at the time, 331 students completed the survey, for a response rate of 83.8%. Greenbriar High School provided me with one district-identified racial and ethnic category for each student: African American, American Indian, Asian or Pacific Islander, White, or Hispanic.3 Additionally, I asked students to self-identify as one of eight racial and ethnic categories: African American, American Indian, Asian or Pacific Islander, White, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Latin or South American, and Other. Given my research focus on the Mexican American identity in the Southwest, it was critical to know how students self-identified. School-reported and self-reported indicators matched for the entire White sample (N = 208), and most of the Mexican American sample (N = 68). In addition, three students selfidentified as “Other,” indicating a biracial identity including Mexican American. Since the school identified those children as Hispanic, I added them to the Mexican American sample, for a total sample of 71 students. I excluded one student who selfidentified as Mexican American but was born in Mexico. The remaining 55 students surveyed did not self- or school-identify as Mexican American or White.

Relative Prominence To assess the relative prominence of various identities, I followed Stryker and Serpe’s procedure (1994). My data included eight target identities that I believed would be relevant to high school students based on previous research on students’ significant others and peer crowds (Crosnoe, 2000), as well as potentially relevant racial and ethnic identities: athlete, student, friend, sister/brother, son/daughter, ethnoracial classification, ethnoracial–student, and American. The ethnoracial and ethnoracial–student identities presented to each student varied based on the schoolprovided ethnoracial categories. I identified all of the dyadic combinations of the eight targeted identities, yielding 28-word pairs. I then listed all 28 word pairs, and

2 Students at GHS could opt out of taking the two required courses (life skills and health) over the summer, to make room in their schedules for other courses during the school year. 3 The ethnoracial categories provided to me by GHS do not reflect the current ethnoracial categories adopted by the U.S. Census. The Census uses one question to ask about race with five broad categories (African American, Black; Asian; Alaskan Native, American Indian; White), and a separate question asking respondents to classify whether they do or do not identify ethnically as Hispanic or Latinx.

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asked subjects to choose the identity in each pair that was more important than the other when they thought about themselves. For example: _____ Athlete

or

_____ Mexican American Student

Using this measure, I derived prominence hierarchies for each student, via a count variable corresponding to the number of times a student said that one identity was more important than another. Scores for an identity could range from 0 = the student never chose a particular identity to 8 = the student chose a particular identity every time they were given the option. Additionally, I can discern which identities are relatively more or less prominent to each respondent. My models include the prominence scores for the ethnoracial, ethnoracial–student, and student identities. This allows us to model the effects of having higher values of prominence on any one identity while controlling for prominence of the other identities, as well as prominence for the five identities not included in the models (athlete, student, friend, sister/brother, and son/daughter). I also include interactions of race and ethnicity with ethnoracial, ethnoracial–student, and student prominence where necessary to test my hypotheses.

Academic Variables Academic Performance My dataset has five indicators of academic performance: self-reported GPA, and four responses to the following prompt with the subject changed as indicated, “Mark the statement that best describes your grades in [SUBJECT] from 9th grade up till now,” with math, science, social studies, and English serving as the subjects. Response categories are: mostly As (an average of 90–100), mostly Bs (an average of 80–89), mostly Cs (an average of 70–79), mostly Ds (an average of 60–69), mostly below D (below 60), and does not apply to me (my classes are not graded or I haven’t taken this subject yet). To create the latent Academic performance variable, I employ a measurement model using the “mlmv” method in Stata. The “mlmv” method uses the aggregate variance/covariance matrix generated using all observations to fit the model.4 All five indicators are significantly driven by latent academic performance, and the measurement model fits well (RMSEA = 0.000; CFI = 1.000; χ2 model versus

4

In addition to running analyses using Academic performance, I also ran all analyses using a straight GPA variable, using Stata’s “impute” command. With few exceptions, the results were the same using either measure. When there was a discrepancy, the Academic performance variable was more likely to yield certain (i.e., significant) results. As the Academic performance variable contains more information, and high school students may be less likely to accurately report their GPA than their typical letter grade, I use Academic performance throughout the analyses.

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saturated of 4.90). White students have significantly higher academic performance than Mexican American students.

Educational Aspirations A single item asks students, “What is the highest level of education you hope to complete?” The seven response categories, scored as 1–7 respectively, are: less than a high school diploma, high school diploma, some college, associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PhD or MD. Students who did not respond or provided multiple responses were dropped, since I did not want to impute data for a dependent variable. The modal response for the total sample is Associate’s degree. It is largely driven by the White students, who aspire to attain an Associate’s degree most of the time. Mexican Americans’ modal response is Master’s degree.

Academic Self-esteem I use three indicators to create a latent score for academic self-esteem. The three variables ask respondents about their social comparisons and reflected appraisals (see Rosenberg et al., 1989). Two indicators from Rosenberg et al.’s (1995) academic self-esteem scale ask students to compare themselves with their peers: “How intelligent do you think you are compared to others your age?” and “How do you rate yourself in school ability compared to others your age?”. End points for both items are 1 = Far Below Average to 6 = Far Above Average. The third variable uses a semantic differential to assess self-based reflected appraisals related to intelligence, “Usually, I am intelligent/unintelligent,” ranging from 4.3 to -4.3. The three indicators are strongly predicted by a latent academic self-esteem measure (RMSEA = 0.000; CFI = 1.000; AIC = 2459.686) using the “mlmv” method in Stata for measurement models. White and Mexican Americans do not significantly differ in terms of academic self-esteem, suggesting that they all feel quite good about themselves as students.

Control Variables In addition to the dependent and independent variables of interest, I also control for factors known to be correlated with academic outcomes in the literature: sex, ethnoracial status, and parental education as a measure of socioeconomic status. Sex is coded as male (0) or female (1). Both Mexican Americans and Whites respondents had roughly equal sex distribution. Racial and ethnic status is coded as Mexican American (0) or White (1). In lieu of having parental reports of income, students were asked to self-report their mother’s and father’s education levels. Choices were: less than high school;

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high school diploma; some college; Associate’s degree; Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree (including MBA and Law degrees); PhD or MD; I don’t know. For mother’s education, 15 Mexican American and 28 White students checked that they did not know their mother’s education level. For father’s education, 18 Mexican American and 37 White students indicated they either did not know their father’s education or left the category missing. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know what is driving the missing values. Students may not have both parents in the home, or they may simply not talk extensively with their parents about parental education. The first is not a potential bias: children with only one parent or guardian in the home tend to have similar educational outcomes to children living in nuclear families, once appropriate controls are accounted for (Ginther & Pollak, 2004). However, children who do not discuss their parents’ educational backgrounds with them may be missing valuable knowledge about the “rules of the game,” which could affect their academic outcomes (Lareau, 2015). I conducted a series of sensitivity analyses to discern whether the “I don’t know” and missing responses were randomly distributed throughout the data. Finding that they were randomly distributed, I used multiple imputation procedures in Stata125 to impute mother’s and father’s education scores based on the other independent, dependent, and control variables in the full model, following the method described in the Stata documentation. This approach is useful in several ways. First, it allows Stata to impute scores for ordinal variables, such as mother’s and father’s education. Second, all imputations are concurrent. Third, Stata generates multiple imputed datasets (in my case 10) that are then all accounted for when running final OLS regressions. This method provides a more robust approach to imputation than less sophisticated alternatives. The majority of the respondents have parents with either high school diplomas or some college. White students are slightly more likely to have parents with Bachelor’s degrees or higher, fitting well-documented patterns of educational attainment by ethnoracial groups in the U.S. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). Descriptive statistics for the dependent variables and control variables are presented in Table 12.1. Although Stata populates values for the missing mother’s and father’s education variables during the analysis step, those numbers are not populated for descriptive statistics. As such, the N for those variables is considerably smaller than for the entire sample.

Analytic Strategy I start by examining whether Mexican American and White students do indeed have different prominence hierarchies for the eight identities described above (H1–H3). In

5

Specifically, the “mi impute chained (ologit)” command.

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Table 12.1 Descriptive statistics (Means and S.D.) of dependent and control variables for the entire sample and Mexican American and White subgroups; significance derived from independent means t-test comparisons of Mexican American and White students

Academic outcomes Academic performance (Min = -1.55; Max = 0.835) Educational aspirations (Min = 1; Max = 6) Academic selfesteem (Min = -2.781; Max = 1.619) Control variables Female (Female = 1; Male = 0) Mother’s Education (Min=1; Max=7)

Father’s education (Min=1; Max= 7)

+

Entire sample (N = 279)

Mexican American Students (N = 71)

White students (N = 208)

0.001 (0.471)

-0.149*** (0.483)

0.053*** (0.457)

3.900 (1.562) N = 269 Mode = Associate’s degree 0.000 (0.717)

3.926 (1.651) N = 68 Mode = Master’s degree -0.064 (0.634)

3.891 (1.536) N = 201 Mode = Associate’s degree 0.022 (0.744)

Female = 136 Male = 143

Female = 36 Male = 35

Female = 100 Male = 108

3.629 (2.233) Mode = H.S. diploma & some college N = 229 2.829 (1.538) Mode = H.S. diploma N = 217

2.796 (0.204) Mode = some college N = 54 2.431* (0.188) Mode = H.S. diploma N = 51

2.811 (0.092) Mode = H.S. diploma and some college N = 175 2.952* (0.122) Mode = H.S. diploma N = 166

p < 0.05 (one-tailed test); * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001

this analysis, I use t-tests to obtain a baseline understanding of (1) whether Mexican American and White students differ; and (2) if so, how they differ. I use OLS regressions with imputed scores for mother’s and father’s education to simultaneously examine the effects of ethnoracial, ethnoracial–student, and student prominence on the three outcomes of interest: academic performance, educational aspirations, and academic self-esteem. All models include all three types of prominence, in addition to the control variables for sex, race and ethnicity, and mother’s and father’s education. This allows me to gauge the relative importance of particular identities in comparison to others in the same models. By extension, it makes the reference category those students who rate their student, ethnoracial, and

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ethnoracial–student identities as all being less prominent than one of the remaining alternative identities (e.g., friend, son/daughter, brother/sister, athlete, American).

12.4

Results

Mexican American and White Prominence Hierarchies Beginning with similarities, the prominence scores for sibling, athlete, and child do not significantly differ between Mexican American and White students (see Table 12.2). However, Mexican Americans have lower friend prominence than White students (Mexican American friend mean = 4.451, S.D. = 1.619; White friend mean = 5.178, S.D. = 1.323). Turning to the identities of interest there is more variability. First, using the appropriate one-tailed test for a directional hypothesis, White students have slightly higher student prominence than Mexican American students (Mexican American student mean = 3.69, S.D. = 1.695; White student mean = 3.995, S.D. = 1.534). This is unsurprising because Mexican American students have significantly higher Mexican American-student prominence than Whites have for White-student prominence. It suggests that Mexican American students are reminded of their categorical ethnoracial identities more often than their White counterparts, whether in-school or out-of-school. These results support both H1, predicting higher student prominence for Whites, and H2, predicting higher ethnoracial–student prominence for Mexican Americans. Also unsurprisingly, Mexican American identity is more prominent to Mexican Americans than White identity is to Whites (Mexican American Mexican American mean = 2.127, S.D. = 1.192; White mean = 1.091, S.D. = 1.342). This supports H3 and reinforces research indicating that the White students do not need to think about their ethnoracial identity to the same extent as people of color. However, the American ethnic identity seems to serve as an alternative to a White racial identity for White students, who have lower White identity prominence (Mexican American mean = 1.563, S.D. = 1.645; White American mean = 3.159, S.D. = 1.548). Further research should explore this possibility. Figure 12.1 uses the patterns of significance detailed in Table 12.2 to order the eight identities into prominence hierarchies for each group. Visualizing the data this way indicates that the sibling, child, friend, student, and athlete role identities have similar relative prominence for students, regardless of ethnoracial status. The prominence of child and friend identities support previous work on adolescents indicating that parents and friends, as well as teachers, are significant others during high school (Hoelter, 1984). The ethnoracial patterns, however, diverge for the two groups. Mexican American youth have higher prominence for their ethnoracial–student identities, with their ethnoracial identity towards the bottom of the hierarchy, and American at the very bottom. This again suggests that Mexican Americans are aware of holding both

{

Child 5.338 (1.473)

5.183 (1.636) 0.712

Sibling 5.606 (1.357)

5.389 (1.55) 1.046

2.808 (1.789) -1.452

Athlete 2.437 (2.054) 5.178*** (1.323) -3.768

Friend 4.451 (1.619)

Racial/Ethnic Student 2.789*** (1.192) 1.192 (1.286) 8.412

Student 3.69 (1.695) 3.995{ (1.534) -1.408

p < 0.05 (one-tailed test); * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 (two-tailed test)

Mexican American Students White Students T statistic

Table 12.2 Mexican American and White Prominence Scores (Means and Standard Deviations)

1.091 (1.342) 5.451

Race/Ethnicity 2.127*** (1.492)

3.159*** (1.548) -7.379

American 1.563 (1.645)

12 Student, Mexican American Student, or White Student? The. . . 265

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Sibling Child Friend Student Mex. Am.-Student Athlete Mexican American American

Sibling Child Friend Student American Athlete White-Student White

Fig. 12.1 Average prominence hierarchies of Mexican American and White Youth

categorical and role identities. Additionally, the American identity seems less important to Mexican American youths’ sense of self, which is understandable in a racialized society. Perhaps in a non-racialized context, Mexican Americans would have more highly prominent American identities. In contrast, most White GHS students do not see themselves as White, but rather as American, placing their American identity in the same ordinal rank where Mexican Americans place their Mexican American-student combined identity. Additionally, when asked to rank White-student and White, they choose White-student much more often (N = 190) than White (N = 13), likely preferring the student component of the combined identity. Indeed, the unspecific American identity is more important to White youth, reinforcing the notion that Whiteness is often less visible to those people in the numerical majority (McDermott & Ferguson, 2022).

Relative Prominence and Academic Outcomes Table 12.3 shows pairwise correlations and significance for all of the independent and dependent variables in my regression analyses. Unsurprisingly, the three dependent variables, academic performance, aspirations, and academic self-esteem are all significantly correlated with one another, though the effects are weak to moderate. As I discuss more below, the modest correlations likely reflect the reality that these three outcomes are under varying degrees of individual control. Thus, even when we students have high aspirations, such dreams do not always manifest in the real-world in terms of academic performance, due to a variety of potential structural constraints (e.g., tracking, teacher labeling, poor quality schools, etc.). Academic self-esteem is more strongly related to academic achievement with a correlation of 0.6, and more likely to be directly connected to actual performance in the classroom. Beyond correlations among the three dependent variables, ethnoracial classification is only correlated with academic performance, matching previous findings on the opportunity gap, indicating that White students outperform African American and Latino students (e.g., Carter & Welner, 2013). Turning to the prominence variables, student prominence is positively and significantly correlated with all three dependent variables. Ethnoracial prominence is

– 0.364*** 0.154 0.287*** 0.313*** -0.010 0.350*** 0.055 -0.268***

– 0.442*** 0.601*** 0.082 0.267*** 0.431*** 0.187** 0.199*** -0.107 -0.194**

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001

1. Aca. Perf. 2. Aspirations 3. Aca. SE 4. Sex 5. M. Educ. 6. F. Educ. 7. Race 8. Stu. Prom. 9. E/R-stu. Prom. 10. E/R Prom.

2

1

Table 12.3 Correlations of variables

– -0.022 0.229*** 0.240*** 0.052 0.227*** 0.049 -0.083

3

– -0.022 -0.071 -0.023 0.238*** -0.053 -0.061

4

– 0.364*** 0.005 0.188** -0.083 -0.132*

5

– 0.144* 0.138* -0.175** -0.234***

6

– 0.084 -0.451*** -0.311***

7

– -0.148* -0.383***

8

– 0.584***

9

–

10

12 Student, Mexican American Student, or White Student? The. . . 267

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Table 12.4 OLS regression coefficients with standard errors predicting Academic Performance, Educational Aspirations, and Academic Self-Esteem

Control variables Female Mother’s Educ. Father’s Educ. White Prominence variables Student Ethnoracial–student Ethnoracial Constant R2 N

Model 1 Academic Performance

Model 2 Educational Aspirations

Model 3 Academic Self-Esteem

0.092 (0.053) 0.038 (0.024) 0.114*** (0.021) 0.138* (0.066)

0.395* (0.172) 0.194** (0.071) 0.209** (0.062) -0.062 (0.213)

-0.051 (0.086) 0.084* (0.041) 0.077* (0.035) 0.129 (0.107)

0.026 (0.019) 0.025 (0.021) -0.025 (0.023) -0.682*** (0.125) 0.245 275

0.195*** (0.060) 0.313*** (0.070) -0.331*** (0.076) 1.812*** (0.397) 0.293 269

0.092** (0.030) 0.079* (0.035) -0.017 (0.038) -0.985*** (0.205) 0.139 275

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 (two-tailed test)

negatively and significantly correlated with academic performance and aspirations, but not academic self-esteem. And lastly, ethnoracial–student prominence is uncorrelated with all three dependent variables. However, it should be emphasized that these are simple bivariate correlations that do not take account of any additional factors. As we will see, these patterns change when we simultaneously examine the prominence of all three identities. Table 12.4 presents results from three different regression equations predicting academic performance (testing H4a in Model 1, H5a in Model 2, and H6a in Model 3), educational aspirations (testing H4b in Model 1, H5b in Model 2, and H6b in Model 3), and academic self-esteem (testing H4c in Model 1, H5c in Model 2, and H6c in Model 3). As the table shows, relative prominence of the student, ethnoracial–student, and ethnoracial identities has a consistent pattern of results across academic outcomes, although the variables are not significant in all models. Model 1 examines academic performance. This model fits the data quite well with an R2 of 0.245. White students, and children of fathers with higher educational attainment have higher academic performance, mirroring previous findings of sex, race, and socioeconomic status. None of the prominence variables are significant, leading us to reject H4a, H5a, and H6a. That none of the prominence variables are significant is not statistically surprising given the weak correlation between student

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prominence and academic performance in Table 12.3. However, it is theoretically surprising, and suggests that there are potential structural factors (e.g., tracking, school climate) unaccounted for by my model that are externally influencing students’ academic performance in the classroom. Alternatively, it could simply be that without the students who opted out of the two required sophomore GHS courses during the school year, we simply do not have enough variation on the high end of the academic performance variable. Moving to Model 2 examining educational aspirations, girls aspire to higher educational attainment than boys, as do students whose mothers and fathers have attained higher levels of education. There is no main effect for White, indicating that Mexican American and White students have similar plans for the future, again taking relevant controls into account. The relative prominence variables are all significant and in the predicted direction, supporting H4b, H5b, and H6b. Students with higher student prominence and ethnoracial–student prominence, in contrast to prominence for other identities, have higher aspirations (H4b and H5b). In contrast, higher ethnoracial prominence has a negative effect on educational aspirations (H6b). This fits Carter’s (2006) pattern of results and suggests that the ethnoracial identity may have identity meanings less consonant with academic hopes than the student identity. Alternatively, students who place greater importance on their ethnoracial identities in contrast to their other identities may be too busy enacting the ethnoracial identity to have time to engage in the sort of behaviors that improve academic performance, a precursor to higher education. The data again fit the model quite well, with an R2 of 0.293. Lastly, mother’s and father’s education positively predicts academic self-esteem in Model 3. Student prominence and ethnoracial–student prominence also have positive effects on academic self-esteem, supporting H4c and H5c. In contrast, ethnoracial prominence does not have a significant effect on academic self-esteem. However, while the effect is insignificant, the negative coefficient is in the predicted direction. Additionally, the pattern of effects among all three prominence coefficients matches that found for both academic performance and educational aspirations. The subsample of students with higher ethnoracial prominence than student or ethnoracial–student is small, only 10 Mexican Americans (14.1%) and 12 Whites (5.8%). More data would allow us to adjudicate whether the nonsignificance is due to insufficient signal stemming from the small number of students in these categories. More specifically, educational aspirations are largely under an individual’s control, regardless of structural realities. For example, African Americans consistently aspire to equal or higher levels of educational aspirations as Whites (Harris, 2011), despite the opportunity gaps that they face (Carter & Welner, 2013). Similarly, academic self-esteem is likely driven by prior academic performance, but it is also influenced to a large extent by our perceptions of our own ability in comparison to others. As such, while academic self-esteem is somewhat contingent upon what people around us are doing, it is still within our control. In contrast, academic performance is contingent upon a wide variety of external variables that could not be accounted for in this study (e.g., tracking practices, teacher labeling, a racialized

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social system, school climate). As such, while prominence for the student or ethnoracial–student identity may be high, barriers may prevent performing those identities at high levels. Such barriers appear to be experienced similarly for the White and Mexican American students at GHS.

12.5

Discussion

Categorical identities, such as ethnoracial identities, follow people from situation and situation, and as such, should often be relevant simultaneously with role identities, such as student (Burke & Stets, 2022). This study is the first to probe the extent to which Mexican American and White students rank the importance of their student, ethnoracial–student, and ethnoracial identities differently, as well as whether the relative prominence of each identity differentially affects academic performance, educational aspirations, and academic self-esteem when examined concurrently. I find that White students rank their student identities consistently higher than their White-student, or White identities. While Mexican American students also rank their student identities higher than their Mexican Americanstudent and Mexican American identities, their ethnoracial–student and ethnoracial identities are significantly more important to them than the corresponding identities for White students. Thus, White and Mexican American students have internalized different identities in the classroom context, which is reflected in the relative prominence of those identities. This finding supports the IT assumption that categorical and role identities can occur simultaneously (Burke & Stets, 2022). But do these differences lead to tangible differences in educational outcomes? The short answer is yes. Higher prominence for the student identity or ethnoracial–student identity has positive and significant effects on educational aspirations and academic self-esteem. A similar positive, though insignificant, relationship exists between student and ethnoracial–student identity and academic performance, reinforcing the need for more data. The ethnoracial–student identity especially predicts educational aspirations for Mexican American students. This interaction suggests that promoting strongly integrated ethnoracial and student identities, in combination with strategies aimed at helping Mexican American students learn how to prepare for college, may be especially useful in helping Mexican American students build foundations to support their dreams through academic performance. Given Mexican Americans’ low high school graduation rates (NCES, 2020), and even lower college enrollment rates, such identity-based programs could be of profound practical import. In contrast to the patterns for student and ethnoracial student identities, higher prominence of the ethnoracial identity has a significant negative effect on educational aspirations for all youth in the study. This result is especially striking given the small proportions of students who rank their ethnoracial prominence higher than either their student or ethnoracial–student identities (10 Mexican Americans (14.1%) and 12 Whites (5.8%)).

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High ethnoracial prominence negatively affects educational aspirations for Mexican Americans, similar to Carter’s (2006) findings on Latino and African American youth, whom she dubbed “noncompliant believers.” As with my study, Carter’s noncompliant believers made up a small subsample of her respondents. It could be that the highly ethnoracially-identified Mexican American students in my study were driven away from high educational aspirations out of a desire to fit in with others in their ethnoracial group, though we cannot test that with the current data. It could also be that factors outside school (e.g., parental education) are driving lower aspirations, though the negative effect of ethnoracial prominence identity on aspirations holds, even when we control for parental education. However, regardless of the mechanism, it is apparent that prominence for the ethnoracial identity is somehow conflicting with prominence of the student and ethnoracial–student identities to the extent that it has a negative effect on educational aspirations. The silver lining is that very few Mexican American and White students consider their ethnoracial categorical identities most important. It should therefore be possible to design interventions that encourage students to preferentially adopt academically relevant identities more frequently. In contrast to Mexican American students of color at GHS, White students belonged to the numerical majority. That some White students strongly identified with their whiteness at a school where presumably they were not forced to by sheer numbers alone is fascinating. It is also concerning. If White youth turn to ethnoracial identities when they disidentify as students, and ethnoracial prominence is associated with strong prejudices that could possibly lead to discriminatory actions (Hogg, 2003; Hunt & Reichelmann, 2019; Jardina, 2019; Reichelmann & Hunt, 2021), then schools may need to be especially attuned to interventions preventing prejudice and discrimination. Further research could examine the White students’ prominence in schools in a variety of ways, from looking at in and out-group beliefs within more and less integrated schools, to considering the long-term academic and social behaviors of students with higher ethnoracial prominence. There are two clear limitations to this research. First, these data are crosssectional. This prevents my making strong causal, rather than correlational, inferences. Longitudinal data would allow for more definitive claims. Second, as discussed previously, the sample size is a persistent challenge. While a sample of over three hundred respondents is large by the standards of most experimental work, it is modest for a naturalistic data collection. Moreover, despite the high sampling fraction and the relatively high fraction of Mexican Americans in the underlying population, the absolute number of Mexican American students in my sample is not large, and the number of respondents identifying with each identity of interest is often smaller (i.e., students with high ethnoracial prominence). As a consequence, these data do not allow us to make inferences as firmly as we might like. At the same time, despite their growing demographic importance, data on Mexican American youth remain rare, and data that include measures of identity are rarer still. Thus, despite their limitations, these data and the analyses based on them provide substantial insight.

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IT has long examined how subjects with different categorical memberships (e.g., ethnoracial, gender, and ethnoracial–gender) experience various role identities (e.g., Burke & Cast, 1997; Burke & Cerven, 2019; Merolla et al., 2012; Chap. 11). However, my study is the first to examine the relative importance of a categorical, role, and combined categorical-role identity on outcomes of substantive importance. The findings support the IT assumption that categorical identities are likely activated alongside role identities (Burke & Stets, 2022) for traditionally disadvantaged groups (e.g., women, people of color), and are less important to advantaged groups (e.g., men, White Americans). Not only that but focusing on categorical identities to the exclusion of role identities may have negative effects on relevant role-related behaviors, beliefs, and self-feelings. Additional research in this vein will only add to our understanding of categorical-role identity combinations and suggest new interventions to improve substantive outcomes. Acknowledgement The National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant supported this research #SES-0622869.

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Chapter 13

Black/Latinx Scientist or Black/Latinx and Scientist? Multiple Identities, Threat, and Self-Esteem Among Minority STEM Students Brennan J. Miller and Kelly L. Markowski

13.1

Introduction

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields have significantly grown over the past few decades, as science and engineering degrees awarded increased at all levels between 2000 and 2017 (National Science Foundation [NSF], 2019). For instance, with respect to graduate education, the number of STEM master’s degrees awarded more than doubled during this time, while the rise in STEM doctoral degrees awarded outpaced the rise in all other doctoral degrees (NSF, 2019). The number of master’s and doctoral STEM degrees are projected to continue increasing until at least 2028 (Hussar & Bailey, 2020). However, it is not likely that racial/ethnic groups will share equally in the projected growth because the recent gains are heavily stratified by race and ethnicity. For example, though Black and Latinx doctorates increased from 8% in 2000 to 14% in 2017, White students were still awarded the majority, comprising 66% of doctorates earned in 2017, even after falling from 77% in 2000 (NSF, 2019). These realities suggest that Black and Latinx students are key populations to investigate to understand why racial disparities in STEM persist (Brunsma et al., 2017; McGee, 2016; Miles et al., 2020). Much research documents the unique structural constraints that racial/ethnic minority students face (see, e.g., Brunsma et al., 2017). For instance, STEM is a historically White institutional space where cultural messages that racial/ethnic minorities cannot and should not be scientists are B. J. Miller (✉) University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. L. Markowski The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_13

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still perpetuated (Carter et al., 2019; McGee, 2016; Moore, 2008). Oppression like this often leads to attrition (McGee, 2020; Sowell et al., 2015). So how do Black and Latinx students persist in such spaces? Research approaching this question from a social psychological perspective points to the self-concept, with self-esteem and identities playing central roles. For example, some work shows that self-esteem is positively associated with the intent to persist in STEM (Chemers et al., 2011). At the same time, other work yields contrasting findings on the relationship between identities and well-being. On the one hand, research in the bicultural identity literature finds that individuals exhibit greater well-being when two identities share meaning and thus can be enacted at the same time (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002; Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005; Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013). On the other hand, research in the stereotype management literature finds that racial/ethnic minorities experience psychological turmoil and poorer well-being when racial and student identities share meanings and are enacted at the same time in STEM spaces (McGee, 2016; McGee & Martin, 2011). To make sense of these opposing findings, we draw on identity theory (Burke, 1991; Burke & Stets, 2009; Stryker, 1980) and the literature on stereotype threat (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995). Stereotype threat refers to an experience where an individual fears confirming negative stereotypes about their group (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995). In STEM environments, Black and Latinx students often experience high levels of stereotype threat when they fear that they may confirm the negative racial/ethnic stereotype that they are academically inferior to their White counterparts. In identity theory, stereotype threat is a form of situational input indicating that stereotyped meanings associated with being Black or Latinx (e.g., “lazy”) conflict with being a high-achieving science student (e.g., “hardworking”) (see, e.g., Davis et al., 2019). In situations where stereotype threat is present, reflected appraisals, or how individuals perceive that others view them (or those in one’s group), convey negative information that can trigger nonverification (Merolla, 2016). Nonverification is experienced when individuals’ perceptions of how others view them in a situation do not match individuals’ self-views. Research finds that unfavorable reflected appraisals, such as those conveying racially discriminatory meanings, hinder mental well-being (Kiecolt et al., 2016), as does nonverification in general (Stets & Burke, 2014). Thus, we expect that high levels of stereotype threat will have negative consequences for self-esteem, especially if Black and Latinx students’ racial/ethnic and student identities share meaning. In this scenario, negative reflected appraisals and culturally nonverifying messages are present; the situation is also one in which only one identity, and not both, can be verified (Burke & Stets, 2009). However, when stereotype threat is low, we expect that shared meaning between racial/ethnic and student identities will have positive consequences for self-esteem. In this scenario, neither harmful reflected appraisals nor culturally nonverifying feedback is present, increasing the likelihood that both identities can be simultaneously verified (see, e.g., Burke & Cerven 2019). In this research, we first review Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations to contextualize STEM spaces as oppressive environments for aspiring Black and

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Latinx scientists. We then introduce self-esteem, an indicator of well-being, and student and racial/ethnic identities as key contributors to STEM persistence. Then, we review recent work about how the sharing meaning between racial/ethnic and student identities relates to self-esteem, yielding contradictory findings. To reconcile these findings, we draw on the identity theory and stereotype threat literature. This leads us to posit a more complex view on how the relationship between multiple identities interacts with contextualized identity information to influence self-esteem for Black and Latinx science students.

13.2

Background

STEM as a Racialized Organization Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations argues that meso-level organizations use racialized practices to support and reproduce micro- and macro-level racial inequality. A racialized organization is a hostile working environment that systematically favors the efforts of one racial/ethnic group more than another. Embedded within larger racial structures, racialized organizations reflect and reinforce the racial ideology of the racial social system in which racial practices situate and shape norms that reward Whiteness and penalize or otherwise exclude people of color. In organizations, these practices formally and informally legitimize racial stereotypes and beliefs at the individual level by allocating social and material resources along racial lines. Importantly, the processes by which organizations advantage Whites and exclude people of color from equal participation adapt over time and generate novel mechanisms to reproduce racial inequality. This means racism is not “an ahistorical constant lodged in individuals’ minds or as a singular ideology, but rather as a variable, adaptive to organizational niches” (Ray, 2019, p. 33). Universities, and especially STEM fields are racialized organizations rooted in historical practices and ideologies that are antagonistic toward people deemed “not White” (see Carter et al., 2019, for an extensive review). Those considered “not White” were historically dehumanized by and excluded from the scientific community based on the early construction of race (Bonilla-Silva & Baiocchi, 2008; Carter et al., 2019; Goar, 2008). These deep seated “scientific” notions about the biological inferiority of Black and brown people as well as the biological superiority of White men shaped the context of STEM to create an intersectional belief of “scientist” that is synonymous with “White man” (Carter et al., 2019; Morton & Parsons, 2018; Ong et al., 2011). These racial beliefs and related stereotypes of the White-male/scientist credit Whiteness in STEM and legitimize Whites’ disproportionate accumulation of STEM-related educational and occupational resources (Moore, 2008; Slaton, 2010). Though overt racist ideology has adapted into covert ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Carter et al., 2019; Mueller, 2020), the White-male/scientist stereotype remains prominent in STEM environments (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Kim et al., 2018; Ong et al., 2018). This means STEM persists as a White institutional space—

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one in which historical and contemporary racialized ideologies and practices advantage Whites and signal to Black and Latinx students that they cannot and should not be scientists (Carter et al., 2019; McGee, 2016; Moore, 2008). Oppressive environments like these have detrimental effects for racially marginalized STEM students. They especially affect Black and Latina women because of the intersection of their disadvantaged racial/ethnic and gender statuses (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Johnson, 2007; Morton & Parsons, 2018). A primary negative consequence is attrition from STEM degree-granting programs (McGee, 2020; Sowell et al., 2015). Referred to as ‘the leaky pipeline’ (Tinto, 1993), attrition continues to hinder equal racial/ethnic representation in STEM careers (Soldner et al., 2012).

Self-Esteem and Multiple Identities: Contradictory Findings What helps protect against attrition and promotes persistence in STEM? Some work points to self-esteem (Chemers et al., 2011). Broadly speaking, self-esteem refers to the positive appraisal of oneself. Self-esteem has several components, including worth and efficacy (Cast & Burke, 2002). Worth involves feelings of acceptance and belonging, and efficacy involves feelings of agency and control over one’s environment (Stets & Burke, 2014). Research shows Black and Latinx individuals report levels of self-esteem that are as high or higher than their White counterparts (Hughes & Demo, 1989; Louie & Wheaton, 2019; Umaña-Taylor & Shin, 2007). This is often attributed to differences in proximate social structure (e.g., peer networks in school, family), which tends to consist of similar racial/ethnic others (Louie & Wheaton, 2019). However, Black and Latinx people also experience more stressors, such as racial discrimination, relative to White people (Williams et al., 2016). Self-esteem serves as a resource to cope with such stressors and threats (Thoits, 1995). For example, self-esteem helps people more effectively attain their goals by buffering stressors and enabling individuals to persist through failure or other negative situations (Cast & Burke, 2002; Stets & Cast, 2007; Thoits, 2003). Many social psychologists argue that self-esteem affects and is affected by other aspects of the self-concept, such as identities (see, e.g., Ervin & Stryker, 2001). Identities are the self-meanings that describe who people are in situations. For example, aspiring scientists in the STEM classroom are likely to have an identity as a student, and they also are likely to have identities as members of social categories, such as race/ethnicity. Given that STEM is a racialized organizational environment (Carter et al., 2019), an important question is how racial/ethnic and student identities relate to one another as well as how both relate to self-esteem among racially marginalized students. Findings from two bodies of literature on multiple identities help explain how the relationship between one’s racial/ethnic and student identities relate to self-esteem, but they yield contrasting findings. First, the literature on bicultural identity discusses situations in which two identities, such as a Chinese American person’s Chinese and American identities, share meaning and thus can be enacted at the

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same time (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002; Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). For instance, Chinese and American identities would share meaning for a Chinese American if they associated a positive meaning for both identities. Identities with meanings would not be shared, however, if they were in conflict (e.g., if a Chinese American associated a positive meaning with the American identity but a negative meaning with the Chinese identity) because the enactment of one is directly at odds with the enactment of the other. According to this literature, having identities that share meaning should be beneficial in and of itself. This is presumed because multiple identities with shared meanings make individuals “more adept at adjusting to various people or situations in either of their cultures” (Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013: 132). Researchers theorize this to mean that individuals can seamlessly transition between identities–or switch between identities being used as a frame for interaction–because the same behavior can serve to verify both identities (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). Indeed, a meta-analysis found that, among bicultural individuals, those with identities shared meaning exhibited higher well-being than those whose identities did not (Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013). Second, the literature on stereotype management in STEM also examines multiple identities–specifically, racial/ethnic and student identities–but finds a different relationship between identities and well-being. For example, McGee and Martin (2011) studied Black students whose racial and student identities had shared meanings (e.g., associating both being “Black” and being a “student” with success). These shared meanings enabled both identities to be enacted at the same time, defying racial stereotypes that Black students cannot be successful in the classroom. However, these students reported feeling pressure to always prove to others that prevailing racial stereotypes about academic performance were wrong, which led to chronic stress. Similar results were found for Black and Latinx STEM students whose racial/ethnic and science student identities shared meaning (McGee, 2016). In such cases, shared meanings between racial/ethnic and student identities appears to lead to significant internal turbulence associated with lower well-being (McGee, 2015, 2016; McGee & Martin, 2011).

Grounding in Identity Theory To make sense of these opposing findings, we first draw on identity theory (Burke, 1991; Burke & Stets, 2009; Stryker, 1968, 1980). In identity theory, meanings associated with identities are conveyed in individuals’ behaviors in social interaction (Stets et al., 2017). When individuals enact their identities, identity theory assumes that individuals seek verification for those identities (Burke & Stets, 2009). That is, identity theory assumes that individuals seek to control their perceptions of how others view them in the situation such that they match with how they see themselves in the situation (Burke, 1991). When meanings across the two perceptions match, identity verification occurs, which leads to positive feelings, but when they do not

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match, nonverification occurs, which leads to negative feelings (Stets & Burke, 2014). In identity theory, shared meanings across identities allow individuals to verify both identities simultaneously when the shared meaning is relevant to the situation (Burke, 2006). For example, if a Black or Latinx student’s racial/ethnic and student identities were both associated with being intelligent or hard-working, verification of intelligence or work ethic in one identity would signal verification of intelligence or hard-work in the other identity in a setting such as the classroom (Burke, 2006). Individuals experience greater positive feelings the more identities that are verified at once (Burke & Cerven, 2019). Thus, shared meaning allows for the simultaneous verification of multiple identities. The scenario where identities do not share meanings is more complicated. On the one hand, a Black or Latinx student may hold different meanings across their racial/ ethnic and student identities. For example, an individual who associates their racial/ ethnic identity with being family-oriented might not associate this meaning with their student identity; furthermore, perhaps the individual associates being intelligent with their student identity but does not associate this dimension of meaning with their racial/ethnic identity. Here, racial/ethnic and student identities are theoretically compatible (e.g., if one identity becomes associated with the same meaning dimension as the other), but they do not share meanings. Thus, for this individual, the verification processes in one identity should not affect the verification process in the other (Burke, 2006). On the other hand, a Black or Latinx student may hold conflicting meanings across their racial/ethnic and student identities. In this case, the same category of meaning is associated with both identities, but the meanings associated with both identities are at odds such that verification in one identity precludes verification of the other. For example, Black students may associate meanings of intelligence with being a student, but they also may internalize negative racial stereotypes (i.e., Black people are not intelligent). In a situation where both meanings are situationally relevant (e.g., in a classroom where an overt racist remark is made or stereotypes are otherwise made salient), it is impossible to have both identities verified at once. This is because verification of one would be nonverification of the other (Burke & Stets, 2009). Situations like these lead to ambivalent outcomes like mixed emotions at best (Smith-Lovin, 2003) and low levels of well-being at worst (Hughes et al., 2015). Identity theory helps us understand why the literature on bicultural identity finds positive outcomes when multiple identities share meanings. Positive outcomes may result when shared meanings allow simultaneous verification of integrated identities. But what about the finding from the literature on racial identities and stereotype management that negative outcomes are associated with multiple identities? We now draw on the stereotype threat literature to help make sense of the contradiction.

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Grounding in Stereotype Threat When widely known negative stereotypes exist about one’s group, members of the group risk being impacted by stereotype threat. Stereotype threat refers to the fear of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995). For example, a negative stereotype of racially and ethnically marginalized STEM students is that they are not capable of being successful scientists (Carter et al., 2019; McGee, 2016; Moore, 2008). When individuals experience stereotype threat, the pressure to disconfirm negative stereotypes and meanings associated with their group has negative individual-level consequences. For example, negative stereotypes reduce individuals’ intentions to pursue a STEM degree as well as their sense of belonging in STEM and the overall strength of their science identity (Beals, 2016; Casad et al., 2018; London et al., 2011; Whitson, 2008). These negative outcomes do not reflect individuals’ abilities but show how racialized organizational practices that perpetuate stereotyped beliefs contribute to racial/ethnic inequalities in STEM environments (Ray, 2019). From an identity theory perspective, stereotype threat in STEM spaces can be viewed as situational input conveying the culturally nonverifying message that meanings associated with being a member of marginalized racial/ethnic group conflicts with being a high-achieving student (see, e.g., Davis et al., 2019). It involves unfavorable reflected appraisals related to how others view an individual as a member of a racial/ethnic category (Merolla, 2016). Importantly, unfavorable reflected appraisals about one’s racial/ethnic group are associated with poorer mental well-being (Kiecolt et al., 2016), as is nonverification in general (Stets & Burke, 2014). The literature on stereotype threat also allows us to understand why the literature on racial identities and stereotype management find negative outcomes for identities that share meaning. Negative outcomes may result when stereotype threat imposes cultural meanings in which racial/ethnic and student identity meanings conflict. This form of nonverifying feedback otherwise disrupts the simultaneous verification of identities that share meanings. Instead, only one identity can be verified at a time because verification of one identity produces nonverification in the other (Burke & Stets, 2009).

Current Study Based on the above, we propose the following as to how identities that share meanings relate to self-esteem across different levels of stereotype threat. First, we expect that identities that share meanings will be associated with high self-esteem given low levels of stereotype threat. Here, individuals are unlikely to perceive that others see their student and racial identities as in conflict. Thus, when the shared meaning is relevant to the situation, verification in one identity would

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simultaneously verify the other identity and should lead to greater self-esteem (Burke & Cerven, 2019). Second, we expect that identities that share meanings will be associated with low self-esteem given high levels of stereotype threat. Here, stereotype threat signals to the individual that others see their student and racial identities as in conflict. Thus, individuals are unable to verify both their student and racial/ethnic identities, and at least one will be unverified. We expect that this will produce negative outcomes, like lower self-esteem (Hughes et al., 2015). Third, we expect that non-shared identity meanings will be associated with low self-esteem given both high and low levels of stereotype threat. Non-shared meanings may indicate that verification processes across identities are unrelated (Burke, 2006), but this would not be the case if the meanings are not shared because they conflict and are both relevant to the situation. Stereotype threat makes both relevant and indicates that they conflict due to the unfavorable reflected appraisals that signal culturally nonverifying feedback about the two identities. In this situation, lower self-esteem is likely because verification of one identity would mean nonverification in the other (Stets & Burke 2014; Kiecolt et al., 2016). In short, we hypothesize: Stereotype threat will moderate the relationship between shared meanings and self-esteem, with the highest self-esteem resulting when identities share meaning and stereotype threat is low.

13.3

Method

Sample The sample is drawn from TheScienceStudy, a longitudinal survey of minority students within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields across 50 U.S. colleges (Schultz et al., 2011). The study was designed to examine the long-term effects of minority training programs (MTPs). Participants were recruited through online screenings at the beginning of the fall semester of 2005 and continued once a semester until 2014. Overall, 1420 undergraduate and graduate students participated in the study at some point. We report data from the fall semester of 2009 because this is the first time our dependent and independent variables simultaneously appear on the survey. For this analysis, we only include students who completed all survey items of interest. Starting with those that answered all items that serve as a proxy for shared meaning (N = 520), 96 were dropped due to missing data: 46 respondents did not complete all self-esteem items, 31 respondents did not have responses for grade point average, and 19 respondents did not complete all the stereotype threat measures. Our final analytical sample was 424 respondents. Table 13.1 presents descriptive statistics for the sample: 75% were female, 49% were Black, 51% were Latinx, and 59% were graduate students.

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Table 13.1 Descriptive statistics for graduate student sample (N = 424) Dependent variable Self-esteem Independent variables Identity integration Stereotype threat Control variables Black Latinx Male Biology Math and engineering Social sciences Minority training program Mentorship Graduate Grade point average

Mean/Prop.

Std. Dev.

Range

3.41

0.48

1.80–4

3.73 2.31

0.97 0.98

1–5 1–5

0.49 0.51 0.25 0.58 0.06 0.36 0.19 0.56 0.59 3.34

– – – – – – – – – 0.47

0–1 0–1 0–1 0–1 0–1 0–1 0–1 0–1 0–1 1.80–4

Dependent Variables Self-esteem Self-esteem was constructed from the 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Stets and Burke 2014), which asks participants to respond to a series of statements on a scale from Strongly disagree (1) to Strongly agree (4). The scale is a comprehensive self-esteem measure that encompasses both self-worth and self-efficacy. We created a scale by reverse-coding negatively worded items and then averaging the items. Higher values indicate higher levels of self-esteem. These items have good scale reliability (α = 0.88). On average, participants reported strong feelings of worth (M = 3.41).

Independent Variables Shared Meanings Shared meanings between the science student and racial/ethnic identities were assessed through eight reverse-coded items drawn from the bicultural identity literature. Items asked participants to respond to a series of statements on a scale

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Table 13.2 Factor loadings of identity integration (N = 424) with oblique rotation for two factors Items Conflict items 1. My ideals as an ethnic minority differ from my ideals as a student. (R) 2. I feel conflicted between my identity as an ethnic minority and my identity as a student. (R) 3. I am someone whose behavior switches between the norms of my culture and the norms of my academic training. (R) 4. I feel torn between the expectations of my culture and my major. (R) Distance items 5. I do not feel any tension between my goals as an ethnic minority and the goals of my academic training. 6. Succeeding as a student involves the same sides of myself as succeeding as an ethnic minority. 7. My self-concept seamlessly blends my identity as a student and my ethnic identity. 8. I keep everything about being an ethnic minority separate from being a student. (R) Α

Factor 1

Factor 2

0.62 0.66

0.08 0.09

0.62

-0.09

0.67

0.06

0.28

0.33

-0.01

0.44

0.09

0.46

0.37

-0.04

0.76

0.47

Note. (R) = Reverse-coded

from Completely disagree (1) to Completely agree (5).1 Example items include, “I feel conflicted between my identity as an ethnic minority and my identity as a student.” Importantly, these items do not directly assess any specific meanings; instead, we use these items as a proxy for shared meaning. For example, individuals who feel “conflicted” between identities likely experience conflict deriving from meanings that cannot be simultaneously enacted and verified because they are not shared (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005; von Hippel et al., 2015). Though not an ideal measure of shared meanings, we argue that this proxy measure is sufficient for an initial examination of the relationship between shared meanings between two identities and self-esteem. First, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis on the items. Previous research by Benet-Martínez and Haritatos (2005) identified two independent subscales from these items, labeled conflict and closeness (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). Thus, we factor analyzed with an oblique rotation and two factors specified. Factor analysis results are presented in Table 13.2. We found one factor with an acceptable eigenvalue (2.09). The second factor was below the conventionally acceptable eigenvalue of 1; additionally, the reliability for the two items with factor

In the survey, participants were first asked: “Do you consider your ethnic group to be a minority in the United States?” Participants answered “Yes” or “No.” Participants who answered “No” were not asked the identity integration items and thus are excluded from our analysis. Participants who responded “Yes” were prompted with the identity integration items of interest.

1

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Table 13.3 Factor loadings of stereotype threat with principle component factor analysis (N = 424) How often do you feel that because of your ethnicity... 1. Some people believe that you have less ability. 2. If you are not better than average people will assume that you are limited. 3. Professors expect you to do poorly. 4. Professors are less likely to encourage you. 5. You are not fully accepted or included by your program. 6. If you ask a simple question people will think it is because of your ethnicity. 7. If you do poorly on a test people will assume that it is because of your ethnicity. 8. People of your ethnicity face unfair evaluations because of their ethnicity. Α

Efficacy 0.81 0.77 0.81 0.74 0.73 0.84 0.82 0.66 0.92

Note. (R) = Reverse-coded

loadings above 0.40 was weak (α = 0.47).2 We only retained the first factor and constructed our proxy measure of shared meaning using four items. For the analysis, we created a scale by averaging the items. Higher values indicated higher levels of shared meaning. The scale had good scale reliability (α = 0.76). On average, participants reported relatively high levels of shared meaning (M = 3.73).

Stereotype Threat To measure stereotype threat, participants were asked eight items. Each item started with “How often do you feel that because of your ethnicity. . .” but presented eight different situations (e.g., “Professors expect you to do poorly,” “Some people believe that you have less ability.”). Responses ranged from Never (1) to Almost always (5). Scores were averaged; higher values indicated higher levels of stereotype threat. These items had good scale reliability (α = 0.92). On average, participants perceived a moderate degree of stereotype threat (2.31).

Background Variables We included a series of background variables in the analysis. First, even though Black and Latinx students use similar strategies to manage racial stereotypes in We conducted a factor analysis that included the five items that loaded above .30 on the first factor (items 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8; see Table 13.3). Factor loadings did not significantly change. We also replicated all our models using a five-item integration scale, which virtually produced the same results as our four-item integration scale. Due to lack of differences, we used the four-item scale based on previous research (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). Results of these analyses are not shown but are available upon request. 2

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STEM, Latinx students negotiate forms of Whiteness, such as removing racial-ethnic indicators to avoid discrimination, in ways Black students cannot (McGee, 2016). Thus, we include race/ethnicity (1, Latinx, or 0, Black). Research finds STEM spaces are particularly hostile towards women compared to men (Ong et al., 2011; Poirier et al., 2009), so we include gender (1, man, or 0, woman). We also consider students’ majors using dummy variables for math/engineering majors and biology/natural science majors with the reference group being social sciences. This is because there are significant racial and gender disparities in the representation of racially marginalized students within the subdisciplines of STEM (Eagan et al., 2014). Further, we consider whether students are in a minority training program (MTP). MTPs can increase the salience of individuals’ science identity, which can carry its own implications for self-esteem (Merolla et al., 2012). In addition, for students not in MTP programs, stereotype threat has been shown to weaken mastery goals, or personal aspirations to develop or achieve competence of a skill or subject (Woodcock et al., 2016). Thus, we include MTP (1, enrolled in a minority training program, or 0, not enrolled in a minority training program). In addition, we examine mentorship, as it has been positively associated with students’ self-esteem (Palmer & Gasman, 2008). Mentorship status was assessed through a dummy variable (1, has a faculty mentor, or 0, does not have a faculty mentor). Education status was assessed with a dummy variable (0, undergraduate, or 1, graduate). We controlled for education status because graduate students’ persistence in STEM education may be indicative of a more salient student identity (Merolla & Serpe, 2013). Finally, we included students’ cumulative grade point average because GPA has been positively associated with science behavior (Stets et al., 2017).

Analysis Since students were nested within universities, the assumption of independence for ordinary least squares (OLS) was violated. However, we examined potential cluster effects and found no statistical differences across clusters (i.e., universities). The lack of statistical difference across universities is similar to other studies using this data (e.g., Schultz et al., 2011). Because a multilevel model did not improve upon our OLS models, we present an OLS analysis for parsimony. Due to the presence of heteroskedasticity, we report robust standard errors for our analysis.

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Table 13.4 Self-esteem results using robust standard errors (N = 424)

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Self-Esteem Model 1 Independent variables Identity integration Stereotype threat Identity integration*stereotype threat Control variables Race/ethnicity (black = 1) Gender (male = 1) Biology Math and engineering Minority training program Mentor Graduatea Grade point average Intercept R2

0.23*** (0.06) 0.09 (0.09) -0.05* (0.02) 0.22*** (0.04) 0.05 (0.05) 0.07 (0.04) 0.06 (0.08) -0.02 (0.06) 0.04 (0.04) -0.03 (0.05) 0.10* (0.05) 2.23*** (0.29) 0.16

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 Reference category is undergraduate student

a

13.4

Results

The correlations between our main variables of interest are presented in the Appendix. Results confirm our expectations that self-esteem is positively correlated with shared meanings (r = 0.28) and negatively correlated with stereotype threat (r = 0.23). Shared meanings and stereotype threat are also negatively correlated (r = 0.42). Since are hypothesis is concerned with the interaction effect between shared meanings and stereotype threat on self-esteem, we conducted an OLS regression with an interaction term to test our hypothesis. Our primary analysis is presented in Table 13.4. We find a significant coefficient for shared meanings (b = 0.23, p < 0.01) on self-esteem but not for stereotype threat on self-esteem. Furthermore, we find a significant interaction between shared

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Fig. 13.1 Self-esteem by shared meanings at three levels of stereotype threat

meanings and stereotype threat on self-esteem (b = -0.05, p < 0.01). This supports our hypothesis that stereotype threat moderates the relationship between shared meanings and self-esteem. We graphed these results to determine if the interaction between shared meanings and stereotype threat supports our prediction that self-esteem will be highest when identities share meanings in the absence of stereotype threat (see Fig. 13.1). For respondents who scored at the mean of stereotype threat (shown by the solid line), having more shared meanings was positively associated with higher self-esteem. For respondents who scored one standard deviation below the mean on stereotype threat (shown by the dashed line), more shared meanings was even more positively associated with self-esteem. By contrast, respondents who scored one standard deviation above the mean on stereotype threat (shown by the dotted line) show a weaker association between more shared meanings and self-esteem compared to respondents who scored at the mean. Overall, these findings indicate that shared meanings are positively associated with self-esteem, but higher levels of stereotype threat dampen the positive effect. Additionally, greater self-esteem is associated with more shared meanings when stereotype threat is low, further supporting our expectations.

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289

Discussion

In this research, we examined the relationship between Black and Latinx students’ racial/ethnic and student identities in the context of STEM. Specifically, we explored how stereotype threat moderated the relationship between shared meanings across two identities and self-esteem. Understanding how stereotype threat impacts this relationship is important because self-esteem plays a key role in increasing persistence intentions in STEM. We also were motivated by two literatures on identity and racial/ethnic well-being that show contrasting findings: the bicultural identity literature finds that shared meanings are associated with greater well-being, while the racial/ethnic identity and stereotype management literatures find that shared meanings between racial/ethnic and student identities in STEM spaces is associated with poorer well-being. To make sense of these contrasting findings, we drew on identity theory and the literature on stereotype threat as well as the theory of racialized organizations. Grounding our research in this work led us to frame STEM as a racialized organization and White institutional space—one in which historical and contemporary racialized ideologies and practices advantage Whites and signal to Black and Latinx students that they cannot and should not be scientists. One of the ways in which this is pervasively conveyed is through stereotype threat, which involves both unfavorable reflected appraisals as well as culturally nonverifying information that Black and Latinx racial/ethnic identities and student identities conflict. When stereotype threat is high, individuals are nonverified as a member of their racial/ethnic group. In situations like these, and regardless of shared meaning across racial/ethinc and student identities, we predicted that self-esteem would be low. By contrast, we only expected high levels of self-esteem when identities shared meanings but stereotype threat was low, as unfavorable reflected appraisals as well as culturally nonverifying information are relatively non-existent, opening the possibility for simultaneous verification of both identities. We tested these ideas using data from 424 Black and Latinx STEM students, and the results supported our expectations. Self-esteem was highest when identities shared more meanings and stereotype threat levels were low. Additionally, the positive effect of shared meanings was attenuated at higher levels of stereotype threat. Finally, fewer shared meanings was associated with lower self-esteem at all levels of threat. Our findings have several implications, both for racially and ethnically marginalized students in STEM and for research on identity more broadly. First, our research helps explain the contradictory findings across the bicultural identity and stereotype management literatures. That is, the relationship between identity meanings and self-esteem is dependent on context and whether information that threatens verification from shared meanings is present, suggesting that shared meanings may be associated with different levels of self-esteem under different circumstances. Shared meanings was positively associated with self-esteem when levels of stereotype threat were relatively low, which supports findings in bicultural identity

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research (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002; Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005; Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013). However, when levels of stereotype threat were high, as is the case documented in stereotype management research (McGee, 2013, 2016; Mcgee & Martin, 2011;), the association between shared meanings and self-esteem was reduced. This reveals the complexity and contingent benefits of having shared identity meanings as well as reinforces the negative consequences of stereotype threat. Second, our research highlights the importance of considering organizational context and environmental feedback within the racial social system. Past research within social psychology often under theorizes about social context in general (Hall, 2003; Hollander & Howard, 2000; Williams & Correa, 2003) and tends to ignore racial processes (Goar, 2008; Hunt et al., 2000; Hunt et al., 2013) as well as issues of power and inequality (Hall, 2003; Hollander & Howard, 2000). Here, we illustrated one way in which these concerns may be addressed in social psychological work on identity by acknowledging that STEM spaces are racialized organizational spaces that may convey messages that impede functional identity processes. Broadly, we hope this work encourages more theoretical and empirical analyses on how racialization impacts self-formation in spaces where racial/ethnic disparities persist (Itzigsohn & Brown, 2015). On a more practical note, and third, this research encouragingly reveals that racially and ethnically marginalized students can benefit when identities share meaning. Unfortunately, it also shows how racialized organizations hinder this ability to benefit by continuing to be detrimental to marginalized racial/ethnic group members. This underscores the need to eliminate threats that prevent the benefits of verification from shared meanings from being realized among racially and ethnically marginalized students in STEM. There are several actionable ways in which this goal can be accomplished. For example, fostering a racially/ethnically inclusive environment in which positive feedback is given to those whose identities share meaning signals that it is normal, acceptable, and desirable to be a racial/ethnic minority and a scientist, which may reduce the salience of stereotype threat in this context. However, since structural racism requires structural and cultural changes, systematic action must also be taken on a larger scale across environments. Toward this end, Griffin (2019) outlines three strategies. First, universities can create holistic initiatives to address minority students’ needs. Initiatives should move beyond a solitary focus on academics and use a multifaceted approach that also affirms students’ cultural backgrounds and family life. Second, explicit policies and programs to promote diversity should derive from these holistic initiatives. For example, intentional programming, such as the development and continual offering of first-year experience and STEM preparation courses, can be tailored to racially marginalized students’ needs associated with their unique campus and community challenges. Third, university leaders must recognize the pivotal roles faculty play in recruiting minority students and encouraging their retention. Faculty members create STEM lessons and interact with students in front of the entire classroom, which means faculty racial biases can impact students directly and indirectly. Universities should design programs to reframe STEM culture and curriculum away from White

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male/scientist standards toward acceptance of diverse identity integration displays (Carter et al., 2019; Morton & Parsons, 2018; Ong et al., 2011). On a final note, we must acknowledge the limitations of our study. First, our sample is predominantly (nearly two-thirds) women. Consequently, we lacked the power to estimate separate models by gender (or by gender and race/ethnicity). Past research has found that Black women and Latina women face unique challenges in STEM in comparison to Black and Latino men as well as White women (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Ong et al., 2018; Williams et al., 2016). Since our sample is largely Black and Latina women, our results may be particular to this population. Second, though identity integration hinges on shared meanings, specific meanings associated with student racial/ethnic identities were not available in our data. Instead, the data included bicultural identity integration measures that assess identity conflict. Finally, it is possible that White students associate different meaning sets with integrated identities compared to Black or Latinx students, though again, the limits of our data prevented this exploration. Future research with larger samples should seek to verify if the results found here hold across other demographic intersections and should do so while directly measuring meanings, identifying which shared meanings associated with student and racial/ethnic identities are threatened in racially hostile environments. Overall, our results reveal the complexity of the relationship between identity and self-esteem in STEM environments, encouraging scholars to consider these topics with an eye toward social context and racialized institutions. We challenge future research to continue to examine the operations of shared meanings across racial/ ethnic and student identities, especially as they may contribute to racialized patterns in the STEM workforce; we also challenge future research to examine processes across different types and combinations of identities.

1. Self-esteem 2. Shared meanings 3. Stereotype threat 4. Race/ethnicity (Black = 1) 5. Gender (male =1) 6. Biology 7. Math and engineering 8. Social sciences 9. Minority training program 10. Mentor 11. Graduate 12. Grade point average

1.00 0.28 -0.23 0.17 0.00 0.09 0.01 -0.10 0.04 0.09 0.02 0.10

1

1.00 -0.42 -0.02 -0.09 0.09 -0.02 -0.09 0.07 0.04 -0.02 0.04

2

1.00 0.21 -0.06 -0.05 -0.04 0.07 -0.07 -0.12 0.02 -0.03

3

1.00 -0.20 -0.01 -0.01 0.02 -0.05 -0.01 0.07 -0.05

4

1.00 0.02 0.03 -0.04 -0.06 0.03 0.01 0.05

5

1.00 -0.30 -0.88 0.14 0.08 -0.09 -0.04

6

1.00 -0.19 0.08 0.01 -0.11 0.03

6

1.00 -0.18 -0.09 0.14 0.02

8

1.00 0.27 -0.24 0.10

9

1.00 0.10 0.20

10

1.00 0.40

11

1.00

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Appendix Correlations for All Variables (N = 424)

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Chapter 14

Ethnic Identity Achievement, Identity Verification, Group-Specific Self-Worth, and Intergroup Attitudes Among Latinos Matthew Grindal

14.1

Introduction

A large literature over the past fifty years has documented notable adaptations within communities of color to help members manage discrimination and prejudice (Cross, 1991; Hughes et al., 2006; Phinney, 1989; Quintana, 2007). One adaptation is the development of a strong ethnic identity. A strong ethnic identity provides personal meaning and exposure to the positive elements of one’s ethnic heritage, which helps mitigate the destructive impact of prejudice and discrimination (Quintana, 2007). While prior research finds that a strong ethnic identity generates positive psychosocial outcomes such as enhanced self-esteem (Smith & Silva, 2011), other work has examined whether a strong ethnic identity fosters hostile intergroup attitudes (Jackson, 2002a; Phinney et al., 2007; Verkuyten & Masson, 1995). Theoretical work examining how a strong ethnic identity shapes intergroup attitudes has traditionally operated within the framework of social identity theory (Ellemers & Haslam, 2011; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Social identity theory predicts that people with a strong ethnic identity are motivated to enhance themselves by making favorable comparisons between their own ethnic group and ethnic outgroups, thus generating ingroup bias and the possibility of outgroup derogation (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Empirical tests of this proposition suggest that the association between ethnic identity and ingroup bias is highly nuanced (Brewer, 1979; Jackson, 2002a). Whether ingroup bias entails hostility towards outgroups often depends on the social status of the ingroup, perceptions of threat from the outgroup, and how ethnic identity and ingroup bias are defined and measured (Branscombe et al., 1999;

M. Grindal (✉) University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_14

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Brewer, 1979, 1999; Jackson, 2002a, 2002b; Phinney, 1990). For instance, measures of ingroup bias that subtract outgroup evaluations from ingroup evaluations (as opposed to measuring both as separate outcomes) are unable to detect nuances of ingroup bias, such as whether bias reflects a large amount of positivity for the ingroup or negativity for the outgroup (Brewer, 1999). Relatedly, when ethnic identity is defined and measured as a cognitive awareness of one’s ethnic group membership, that is, as centrality or prominence, this appears to tap into everyday threats one experiences as a member of their ethnic group and may thus be linked to greater bias and outgroup derogation (Leach et al., 2008). Research in the ethnic identity literature has provided a more subtle understanding of the relationship between a strong ethnic identity and ingroup bias, which lends insight into these nuanced results. Researchers note that for people from lower-status ethnic groups (ethnic minorities), strong ethnic identities often emerge through a developmental process marked by a period of exploration and commitment to their ethnic identity (i.e., ethnic identity achievement; Phinney, 1989) (Quintana, 2007). This process leads to a clearer and more secure understanding of their ethnic group membership and fosters a greater appreciation of their own ethnic group and other ethnic groups (Cross, 1991; Phinney, 1989; Quintana, 1994). In addition to this research on ethnic identity, research in identity theory suggests that attaining the goal of identity verification (Burke & Stets, 2022) might also reduce negative ingroup and outgroup attitudes. Identity verification increases and sustains a person’s self-esteem tied to their ethnic group (group-specific self-worth; Grindal et al., 2021) and self-esteem more broadly (Cast & Burke, 2002). This generates a reservoir of positive energy (Cast & Burke, 2002), which may thus reduce negative feelings people have for their own ethnic group as well as mitigate the harmful psychological impact of disconfirming perceptions of who one is in a situation. If one obtains repeated verification of their ethnic identity, when discrimination and prejudice occur, these disconfirming perceptions will pose less of a threat. Thus, people may view the ethnic outgroups who are the sources of these disconfirming perceptions less negatively. Drawing on a Latino college student sample, this paper integrates theoretical insights from the ethnic identity literature and identity theory to test a theoretical model that examines how ethnic identity achievement, ethnic identity verification, and group-specific self-worth conjointly influence ingroup evaluations and evaluations of three ethnic outgroups (Whites, Asians, and African Americans). This research contributes to an understanding of the relationship between ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes among ethnic minority groups in three ways. First, it revisits how ingroup status shapes the relationship between ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes. Second, it examines the importance of how scholars define and measure ethnic identity when studying intergroup attitudes. Third, it introduces identity verification and group-specific self-worth as factors alongside ethnic identity to see how they each influence ingroup and outgroup attitudes.

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Theory

Ethnic Identity Development and Intergroup Attitudes Social identity theory has typically conceptualized and measured ethnic identity as a static multidimensional construct conveying the strength of one’s ethnic identity at a given time. Measures of ethnic identity may consist of all or some of the following dimensions: ethnic pride such as ingroup affect, private regard, and affirmation; a sense of connectedness to other people in one’s ethnic group, for example, ingroup ties and belonging; and the importance (centrality or prominence) of one’s ethnic identity (Ashmore et al., 2004; Cameron, 2004). In contrast, the ethnic identity development literature has conceptualized ethnic identity as a process through which people develop a stable and secure understanding of their ethnic group (Cross, 1991; Phinney, 1989, 1990). These developmental models have been especially instructive for understanding the formation of ethnic identities for ethnic minorities. In contrast to White people, for whom ethnic identity is rarely salient (Bonilla-Silva, 2021), ethnic minorities often confront threats that derive from their ethnic group membership, such as discrimination and prejudice. The developmental processes that foster a stable and secure understanding of their ethnic group help buffer these threats and thus sustain psychological health and help promote positive intergroup attitudes (Cross, 1991; Quintana, 1994; Phinney, 1989). One central theoretical framework for explaining how ethnic identity forms and develops is ethnic identity achievement (Phinney, 1989). Drawing on early developmental models of the self (Erikson, 1968; Marcia, 1980), Phinney (1989, 1992, 1993) argues that one achieves an ethnic identity through the iterative processes of commitment and exploration. At a young age, children of color may have little awareness of their ethnic identity. In response to an identity crisis, such as encountering prejudice or becoming more aware of their ethnic group’s negatively viewed social status, these youth start exploring the underlying social meanings of their ethnic identity (Phinney, 1989). Exploration might include learning more about one’s ethnic heritage, attending cultural festivals, and developing close ties within one’s ethnic community. As these youth explore and learn more about their ethnic identity, they develop a greater clarity of their ethnic group membership (i.e., commitment) and view their ethnic group more positively. As the iterative processes of exploration and commitment proceed, the result is ethnic identity achievement, which entails a strong, secure, and stable ethnic identity and broader sense of self (Phinney, 1990). Much of the literature on ethnic identity achievement has focused on its beneficial psychological outcomes such as higher global and group-specific self-esteem (Costigan et al., 2010; Ghavami et al., 2011; Grindal et al., 2021; Phinney & Chavira, 1992). In addition, implied in this identity formation process is that those with an achieved ethnic identity should have more positive feelings for their own and other ethnic groups. With a more stable and secure sense of their ethnic group

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membership, those with an achieved ethnic identity have more resilience against prejudice, can reject negative stereotypes against their own group, and feel more confident and comfortable interacting with ethnic outgroup members (Cross, 1991; Phinney, 1993). With greater contact, people develop a more sophisticated and tolerant understanding of people from ethnic outgroups (Quintana, 1994), which helps reduce stereotypes and negative outgroup attitudes (Phinney et al., 1997, 2007). Thus, those with an achieved identity should view all groups less negatively, both their own ethnic group and others (Cross, 1991; Quintana, 1994). Quintana and colleagues (Quintana, 1994; Quintana et al., 1999) have theorized that ethnic identity development entails a process of “ethnic-perspective taking.” Through this process, youth gradually develop a more sophisticated understanding of their own ethnic group and other ethnic groups. At first, youth understand their own ethnic group in terms of its components, such as language, food preferences, and parental heritage. Their understanding grows from interactions with other group members in their social environment, such as personal experiences of discrimination. Later, their understanding transcends their immediate context. They view their personal experiences and values as shared on a broader societal level with other ethnic group members, and a strong ethnic identity (i.e., ethnic consciousness) emerges (Quintana, 1994). In the final stage, youth further their understanding of race and ethnicity by taking the perspectives of people from all ethnic groups, both dominant and minority groups (Quintana, 1994). Individuals become aware of the complexity of ethnic identities and how inter-ethnic relations are shaped by broader social forces. They identify shared historical experiences with other ethnic minority groups, in particular those groups that have experienced social oppression. They also arrive at a more sophisticated understanding of the underlying social causes of strife between ethnic groups. As a result of this enhanced perspective-taking, people develop a pluralistic orientation that entails appreciation of all ethnic groups, which reduces negative attitudes towards both their own ethnic group and other ethnic groups. Quintana (1994) notes that this final stage corresponds with having an achieved ethnic identity, which is consistent with research finding that ethnic identity achievement is positively associated with the complexity of one’s ethnic-perspective taking abilities (Quintana et al., 1999). In general, those with an achieved ethnic identity should experience positive feelings for both their own ethnic group and ethnic outgroups. If ingroup bias exists, it should fit Brewer’s (1999) concept of ingroup love, where group members experience positive feelings toward all groups, but the most positive feelings for their ingroup. Prior research is consistent with these propositions. Among Latinos and Asians, ethnic identity achievement was associated with more open and positive outgroup attitudes (Phinney et al., 2007). Among African American and Latino adolescents, a strong ethnic identity was associated with both positive ingroup and positive outgroup attitudes (Phinney et al., 1997). Similarly, research in social identity theory found that a strong ethnic identity reduced outgroup derogation among ethnic minority group members (Verkuyten & Masson, 1995).

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Thus, in the current research, I expect greater levels of ethnic identity achievement to be directly associated with lower negative feelings for both one’s own ethnic group and other ethnic groups. Recent research in identity theory (Burke & Stets, 2022) also suggests that identity verification and group-specific self-worth may conjointly operate with ethnic identity achievement to influence intergroup attitudes (Grindal et al., 2021).

Identity Theory Identity theory is a prominent social psychological framework that examines identity verification as a motivating force for self-relevant behavior (Burke & Stets, 2022). In identity theory, people hold many identities. Each identity has a set of conventional and idiosyncratic meanings by which people define themselves as a unique individual (person identity), a role occupant (role identity), a member of social group (group identity), or a member of a social category (categorical identity) (Burke & Stets, 2022). These identity meanings are identity standards. When an identity is activated, people monitor the situation for meanings relevant to the identity. Some of these situational meanings are reflected appraisals (how individuals think others see them), others are self-appraisals, and others are others’ (actual) appraisals. When the situational meanings, whatever their source, match those in the identity standard, people experience identity verification, which generates positive affect and sustains self-esteem (Burke & Harrod, 2005; Burke & Stets, 1999; Cast & Burke, 2002; Stets & Burke, 2014). When there is a mismatch, people feel distress, which motivates either a behavioral or cognitive change to restore consistency between the meanings in their identity standard and their appraisals (Burke & Stets, 2022; Stets et al., 2020). Identity verification sustains one’s identity and provides predictability in interactions. Prior theoretical work in the ethnic identity development literature maintains that a stable and secure sense of one’s ethnic group membership is an essential component of an achieved ethnic identity (Phinney, 1989). Recent research in identity theory has elaborated on this point by examining how ethnic identity achievement increases verification of the ethnic identity (Grindal et al., 2021). When faced with negative evaluations about their ethnic identity, people are motivated to explore the meanings of their ethnic identity. They may seek out others with shared ethnic identity meanings in their proximate social structures, or those structures immediate to them where an ethnic identity is likely to be activated, such as friends, family, and school. This will make their proximate social structure more homogenous and help them secure identity verification (Stets et al., 2021). Thus, an achieved ethnic identity contributes to a stable and secure understanding of one’s ethnic group by enhancing one’s ability to verify their ethnic identity and providing predictability in interactions. Empirically, Grindal et al. (2021) found that ethnic identity achievement was associated with greater levels of identity verification, and,

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in turn, greater group-specific self-worth. Thus, the positive psychological benefit of having an achieved ethnic identity was partly due to enhanced identity verification. Identity verification also might reduce negative ingroup and outgroup attitudes. For ingroup attitudes, verification of one’s ethnic identity contributes to a secure and stable understanding of one’s ethnic group, enhancing the self-worth tied to one’s ethnic identity (Grindal et al., 2021), thus reducing negative feelings one has for their ethnic group. Regarding outgroup attitudes, high levels of group-specific self-worth that emerge from repeated identity verification could provide resilience against occasional instances of discrimination and prejudice. Cast and Burke (2002) theorize that repeated identity verification over time enhances self-esteem, thus creating a reservoir of positive energy that mitigates the psychological harm that comes with disconfirming reflected appraisals. They found that repeated identity verification increased self-esteem. In turn, those with greater self-esteem experienced less depression, anxiety, and hostility when their identities were not verified (Cast & Burke, 2002). Disconfirming reflected appraisals were less threatening for those with greater self-esteem. If disconfirming reflected appraisals are less threatening to the self, the sources of those reflected appraisals also may be viewed less negatively. Cast and Burke (2002) focus on global self-esteem, or one’s evaluation of their global self-concept, as the source of positive energy that mitigates the harmful impact of nonverifying reflected appraisals. I focus on one’s evaluation of themselves as a member of their ethnic group, or group-specific self-worth, as the source of positive energy that mitigates the harmful effect of nonverification. The concept of group-specific self-worth reflects two advances in the study of self-esteem (Ervin & Stryker, 2001; Rosenberg et al., 1995; Stets & Burke, 2014). First, prior research indicates that self-esteem has three dimensions, which correspond to the bases of an identity: authenticity (person identity), worth (group/ categorical identities), and efficacy (role identity) (Stets & Burke, 2014). Worthbased esteem is how much people feel they are worthwhile and valuable. People’s active membership in social groups and categories, such as their ethnic group, reflects the desire to belong to a larger collective and be liked by others (Stets & Burke, 2014). When people obtain verification of a group or categorical identity, it confirms and enhances feelings of self-worth. Past research also has drawn a distinction between specific self-esteem and global self-esteem (Ervin & Stryker, 2001; Rosenberg et al., 1995). As the self is multifaceted and composed of many identities (Burke & Stets, 2022), self-evaluations may be specific to a particular identity (specific self-esteem) or more generally to the whole self (global self-esteem). Global self-esteem can be viewed as the collection of self-evaluations of all of one’s identities. It is shaped and sustained by selfevaluations of those individual identities (Hoelter, 1986). Identity verification has the most pronounced impact on the specific self-esteem tied to an activated identity. Thus, specific self-esteem mediates the relationship between identity verification and global self-esteem (Grindal et al., 2021). Combining these two theoretical extensions in the self-esteem literature, I use the concept of group-specific self-worth to refer to self-esteem tied to the ethnic identity. This form

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of self-esteem should provide the most potent source of positive energy, as it is directly impacted by the verification of the ethnic identity. Connecting the work of Cast and Burke (2002) to the present study, people with achieved ethnic identities receive repeated identity verification, which enhances group-specific self-worth (Grindal et al., 2021). This self-worth is a reservoir of positive energy that should reduce the harmful impact of disconfirming reflected appraisals. Discrimination and prejudice can be understood as disconfirming reflected appraisals, as most people of color view their ethnic group positively (Cross et al. 2018; French & Chavez, 2010; Sanchez et al., 2012; Stets & Fares, 2019). Thus, obtaining repeated verification of one’s ethnic identity should enhance this source of positive energy and lessen the adverse psychological impact of prejudice and discrimination. In turn, the sources of these disconfirming reflected appraisals, that is, ethnic outgroups, should be seen less negatively.

Summary and Hypotheses Social identity theory maintains that those with a strong ethnic identity exhibit greater ingroup bias towards other ethnic groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Other research has found that due to the developmental nature of ethnic identities for people of color (Phinney, 1989; Quintana, 1994), a strong ethnic identity is associated with both positive ingroup and positive outgroup attitudes. As people explore the underlying social meanings of their ethnic group membership, they develop a clearer and more sophisticated understanding of their own ethnic group and of intergroup relations. This understanding provides a foundation for rejecting negative stereotypes of all ethnic groups, thereby weakening negative attitudes towards one’s own ethnic ingroup and ethnic outgroups. Therefore, I hypothesize: H1a: Ethnic identity achievement is directly associated with less negative ingroup attitudes. H1b: Ethnic identity achievement is directly associated with less negative attitudes towards Whites. H1c: Ethnic identity achievement is directly associated with less negative attitudes towards Asians. H1d: Ethnic identity achievement is directly associated with less negative attitudes towards African Americans. Recent research indicates that those with achieved ethnic identities secure greater identity verification, and that both increase group-specific self-worth (Grindal et al., 2021). Identity achievement immerses people in the positive elements of their ethnic group, which should enhance group-specific self-worth. Identity verification generates a secure and stable sense of one’s ethnic identity, which also enhances groupspecific self-worth. (Grindal et al., 2021). With greater group-specific self-worth, and the positive feelings people experience as a member of their ethnic group, they should be less inclined to evaluate their ethnic group negatively. Thus, I hypothesize:

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Group-specific Self-worth Ingroup Atudes Identy Achievement

Outgroup Atudes Identy Verificaon

Fig. 14.1 Conceptual model

H2: Ethnic identity achievement is positively associated with ethnic identity verification. H3: Ethnic identity achievement is positively associated with group-specific selfworth. H4: Ethnic identity verification is positively associated with group-specific selfworth. H5: Group-specific self-worth is associated with less negative ingroup attitudes. Regarding outgroup attitudes, group-specific self-worth should directly reduce negative outgroup attitudes. Both identity achievement and repeated identity verification increase and sustain group-specific self-worth, which builds a reservoir of positive energy that reduces the adverse psychological impact of disconfirming reflected appraisals such as discrimination and prejudice (Cast & Burke, 2002). As the sources of these reflected appraisals, people from ethnic outgroups should appear less threatening (and thus be viewed less negatively) for those with higher levels of group-specific self-worth. Consequently, I hypothesize: H6a: Group-specific self-worth is associated with less negative attitudes towards Whites. H6b: Group-specific self-worth is associated with less negative attitudes towards Asians. H6c: Group-specific self-worth is associated with less negative attitudes towards African Americans. The full theoretical model is shown in Fig. 14.1. The solid lines are the hypothesized effects.

14.3 Methods Data The survey data for this study are cross-sectional and drawn from undergraduate students at a large southwestern university (Grindal et al., 2021). The university’s undergraduate student body is a diverse majority-minority population with Latinos

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and Asians collectively comprising the majority. The survey was administered to 12 sociology classes in 2016 and 2017. Participation was incentivized with course extra credit. A total of 1686 respondents completed the survey.

Sample Respondents were included in the sample if they identified as Latino and provided answers to all the study variables. The question used to identify people’s ethnicity was forced choice and asked respondents: “With which ethnicity do you primarily identify?” One of the response options was “Latino/Hispanic/Chicano.” The tests of the hypotheses required identification with a single ethnic minority group, to permit an analysis of the ingroup and outgroup feelings. Latinos were chosen since they had the largest subsample size of 824 respondents, with 97% providing complete data. The final sample consisted of 799 respondents, with 81% female and 19% male. This gender breakdown differs from the larger undergraduate population, which is about 54% female and 46% male. Eighty-nine percent of respondents were born in the United States, and 11% identified as first-generation immigrant. Median parental income was $37,500, and median parental education was some high school.

Measures Group Attitudes To measure group attitudes, respondents were asked “What best describes your feelings for people from the following ethnic groups?”: Latinos, Whites, Asians, and African Americans. Responses ranged from very positively to very negatively (coded 0–10). Higher values reflected more negative attitudes.

Ethnic Identity Achievement Ethnic identity achievement was measured with the achievement subscale in Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM; Phinney, 1992). The MEIM is a 14-item scale measuring three separate dimensions of strength of ethnic identity identification: affirmation and belonging, achievement, and ethnic behaviors. The ethnic identity achievement subscale has seven items measuring the two processes

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Table 14.1 Factor loadings for ethnic identity achievement items Items I have a clear sense of my ethnic background and what it means to me. I think a lot about how my life will be affected by my ethnic group membership. I am very clear about the role of my ethnicity in my life. I understand pretty well what my ethnic group membership means to me, in terms how to relate to my own group and other groups. I have spent time trying to find out more about my own ethnic group, such as its history, traditions, and customs. In order to learn about my ethnic background, I have often talked to other people about my ethnic group. I have spent a lot of time trying to learn more about the culture and history of my ethnic group. α reliability

Factor Loading 0.69 0.58 0.71 0.70 0.79 0.77 0.72 0.87

outlined in obtaining an achieved ethnic identity: commitment (or a respondent’s clear understanding of their ethnic group membership)1 and exploration (learning about their ethnic group). Three items measure commitment (for example, “I am very clear about the role of my ethnicity in my life.”) and four items measure exploration (for instance, “I have spent time trying to find out more about my own ethnic group, such as its history, traditions, and customs.”). Two items from this subscale have performed poorly in prior psychometric analyses, possibly due to being negatively worded (Roberts et al., 1999). These two items were modified to be positively worded prior to data collection. Response options ranged from strongly disagree (0) to strongly agree (4). A factor analysis indicated a one-factor solution with moderate to high factor loadings (λ > 0.58). Table 14.1 shows the factor loadings. The items were averaged to create a scale, with higher scores reflecting greater ethnic identity achievement (α = 0.87).

Ethnic Identity Verification Ethnic identity verification was measured with a 14-item scale used in prior research (Burke & Harrod, 2021; Grindal et al., 2021). Prior to reverse coding, the items measure the difficulty of engaging in ethnic practices tied to two dimensions of meaning within the ethnic identity: the personal (for example, “dating within my ethnic community”) and heritage (for example, “speaking the language associated with my ethnicity”). Prior identity theory research has measured identity discrepancies (and conversely identity verification) by calculating the squared difference

1 This definition of commitment differs somewhat from how the concept is traditionally used within identity theory, where it entails the qualitative and quantitative network ties one has in an identity.

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Table 14.2 Factor loadings for ethnic identity verification items Items Eating foods associated with my ethnicity Engaging in ethnic traditions Speaking the language associated with my ethnicity Sharing my ethnic heritage with my family Holding on to my ethnic beliefs and attitudes Observing the religious traditions associated with my ethnicity Participating in ethnic holidays/festivals Having friends with the same ethnic background Looking like my ethnicity Listening to music associated with my ethnicity Being in my ethnic community Dating within my ethnic community Wearing clothes associated with my ethnicity Maintaining an ethnic home α reliability

Factor loadings Heritage Personal 0.51 0.06 0.77 0.05 0.64 -0.02 0.81 -0.06 0.65 0.16 0.52 0.17 0.75 0.03 0.04 0.54 -0.09 0.61 0.09 0.59 0.12 0.69 -0.03 0.72 -0.01 0.72 0.17 0.63 0.87 0.85

Note. Bolded values are greater than 0.40 and statistically significant at p < 0.05

between the meanings in the identity standard and the meanings of the reflected appraisals for a given identity in a situation (Burke & Stets, 2022). Identity verification based on reflected appraisals is how persons think that others see them in a situation. The present scale is based on a subjective assessment of one’s own identity discrepancy, the perceived difficulty of engaging in practices needed to accomplish, or verify, one’s identity in a situation (Burke & Harrod, 2021). Each item had five response options ranging from no difficulty at all (0) to a great deal of difficulty (4). This measure is based on self-appraisals, a person’s own evaluation as to whether they think their meanings in the situation match their identity standard meanings (Burke & Stets, 2022). Self-appraisals have been understudied as a source of verification. I use it in this research. A factor analysis of the items revealed a two-factor structure corresponding to the theorized dimensions of personal and heritage (Burke & Harrod, 2021). Table 14.2 shows the factor loadings. Since there is no theoretical reason to believe that these two dimensions would operate differently, scores on the 14 items were averaged to create a single measure of identity discrepancy, with higher scores indicating greater discrepancy (α = 0.90). This scale was then reverse coded to reflect greater identity verification.

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Table 14.3 Factor loadings for group-specific self-worth items Items In general, I am glad to be a member of my ethnic group Generally, I feel good when I think about myself as a member of my ethnic group I often regret that I am member of my ethnic groupa I don’t feel good about being a member of my ethnic groupa α reliability a

Loading 0.82 0.78 0.68 0.73 0.81

Items were reverse coded

Group-Specific Self-Worth Group-specific self-worth was measured with four items drawn from a previously validated scale (Cameron, 2004). Two items measure the extent to which people have a positive emotional evaluation of themselves as a member of their ethnic group. The other two items measure the extent to which people have a negative emotional evaluation of themselves as a member of their ethnic group. The latter two items were reverse coded. Each item had six response options ranging from strongly disagree (0) to strongly agree (5). As Table 14.3 shows, a factor analysis indicated a one factor solution with high loadings. The items were averaged to create a scale, with higher values indicating greater group-specific self-worth (α = 0.81).

Demographic Controls I included three demographic controls: age, socioeconomic status, and gender. Prior research indicates that each of these variables is associated with one or more of the study variables. For instance, as status markers, gender and socioeconomic status shape perceptions of competence, which help men and people from higher social classes secure more identity verification (Burke et al., 2007; Stets & Cast, 2007). Additionally, women display greater closeness towards racial outgroups, perhaps from being socialized to have a stronger orientation towards interpersonal relationships and concern for others (Johnson & Marini, 1998). Lastly, ethnic identity achievement tends to increase with age as people have more opportunities to explore the meanings of their ethnic identity (Phinney, 1992). Age was measured in years. Gender was measured dichotomously with males as the reference group. Socioeconomic status was measured with a two-item scale consisting of mother’s education and parental income.2 Mother’s education was measured with a 13-point ordinal scale ranging from no formal education (1) to doctoral degree or professional degree (13). Parental income was measured with a 9-point ordinal scale with each point signifying a $15,000 interval. This measure

2

Theoretically, these indicators are being included in the analyses for the same reason—they are socioeconomic resources that help people obtain identity verification. So, they were combined into a single measure to help ensure theoretical and statistical precision.

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ranged from $0–$15,000 (1) to More than $120,000 (9). Since mother’s education and parental income were scaled on different metrics, they each were standardized and then averaged into one measure.

Analysis The theoretical model was tested with a structural equation model. Maximum likelihood estimation was used to calculate the parameter estimates of the theoretical model. Since the model is saturated, no model fit statistics were generated. Per Fig. 14.1, net of controls, I tested the direct effects of ethnic identity achievement with each of the group attitudes variables; the direct effects of ethnic identity achievement with verification and group-specific self-worth; the direct effect of ethnic identity verification with group specific self-worth; and the direct effects of group-specific self-worth with each of the four group attitude variables. I also tested the direct effects between verification and each of the four group attitudes. Although not hypothesized, these last four pathways were estimated to provide a more stringent test of the indirect effects between identity verification and each of the four group attitude outcomes (via group-specific self-worth). Following this main analysis, I ran two additional tests of the model to assess the presence of gender variation and variation by dimension of identity verification.

14.4

Results

Table 14.4 gives the descriptive statistics and correlations of the study variables. Respondents reported moderate to high levels of ethnic identity achievement (M = 2.70, SD = 0.78), ethnic identity verification (M = 3.22, SD = 0.66), and group-specific self-worth (M = 4.27, SD = 0.99). On group attitudes, respondents reported the lowest negative feelings for their own ingroup (M = 1.28, SD = 1.76), followed by Asians (M = 2.34, SD = 2.22), African Americans (M = 2.44, SD = 2.25), and finally Whites (M = 3.19, SD = 2.64). T-tests indicated no gender differences in ethnic identity achievement, ethnic identity verification, or any of the four ethnic group attitudes. However, there were significant gender differences in group-specific self-worth (t = 3.85, p < 0.001) with women (M = 4.33) reporting greater mean levels than men (M = 3.99). Before testing the theoretical model, the error terms of the four group attitude variables were correlated to permit a stringent test of the theoretical model. Table 14.5 shows the path coefficients of the theoretical model. Hypotheses 1a–1d were partially supported. Ethnic identity achievement was inversely associated with negative ingroup attitudes (β = -0.12, p < 0.01), negative attitudes towards Asians (β = -0.08, p < 0.05), and negative attitudes towards African Americans (β = -

* p < 0.05

1. Ethnic identity achievement 2. Ethnic identity verification 3. Group-specific selfworth 4. Negative ingroup attitudes 5. Negative outgroup attitudes (Whites) 6. Negative outgroup attitudes (Asians) 7. Negative outgroup attitudes (African Am) 8. Gender (Female) 9. Age 10. Socioeconomic status

0.30*

-0.19*

-0.10*

-0.07

-0.09*

0.06 -0.03 -0.11*

0.34*

-0.23*

-0.04

-0.12*

-0.18*

0.08* -0.07 -0.09

2

1.00

1.00

0.37*

1

1.00

0.14* -0.11* -0.05

-0.18*

-0.17*

-0.10*

-0.29*

3

0.00 -0.07 -0.09*

-0.10* 0.07 0.06

0.58*

1.00

0.52*

0.60*

0.41*

1.00

5

0.63*

4

Table 14.4 Descriptive statistics and correlations for variables

0.75*

1.00

0.02 -0.01 0.02

6

1.00 -0.05 0.07 0.03

7

1.00 -0.09* -0.10*

8

1.00 0.04

9

1.00

10

0.81 20.05 0.00

2.44

2.34

3.19

1.28

4.27

3.22

M 2.70

0.39 2.34 0.82

2.25

2.22

2.64

1.76

0.99

0.66

SD 0.78

0 18 -1.47

0

0

0

0

0

0.5

Min 0

1 40 2.81

10

10

10

9

5

4.0

Max 4

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Table 14.5 Standardized direct effects of variables in theoretical model (N = 799) Independent variable

Identity achievement Identity verification Group-specific self-worth Gender (Female) Age Socioeconomic status

Dependent variable

Identity verification 0.36***

Groupspecific selfworth 0.25***

Negative ingroup attitudes -0.12**

Negative outgroup attitudes (Whites) 0.00

Negative outgroup attitudes (Asians) -0.08* 0.00

–

0.20***

-0.07*

-0.09*

–

–

-0.22***

-0.08*

0.02

0.10**

-0.06*

0.00

0.03 0.02

-0.08* -0.10**

0.00 -0.07*

-0.08* 0.01

-0.15***

Negative Outgroup Attitudes (African Americans) -0.13*** -0.01 -0.12**

0.03

-0.02

-0.03 0.01

0.04 0.01

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 (two-tailed)

0.13, p < 0.001). Ethnic identity achievement did not directly influence negative outgroup attitudes towards Whites. In support of the second and third hypotheses, ethnic identity achievement was positively associated with identity verification (β = 0.36, p < 0.001) and groupspecific self-worth (β = 0.25, p < 0.001). Supporting the fourth hypothesis, identity verification also was positively associated with group-specific self-worth (β = 0.20, p < 0.001). In support of the fifth hypothesis, group-specific self-worth was inversely associated with negative ingroup attitudes (β = -0.22, p < 0.001). Lastly, I found support for Hypotheses 6a–6c. Group-specific self-worth was associated with lower levels of negative attitudes for Asians (β = -0.15, p < 0.001), African Americans (β = -0.12, p < 0.01), and Whites (β = -0.08, p < 0.05). Given the gender variation in the sample, the model was tested for gender differences. There was a significant difference in the chi-square goodness of fit between a model where the structural coefficients were constrained to be equal by gender and a model where the structural coefficients were free to vary by gender (χ2 = 40.61 (df = 27), p < 0.05). Wald tests of parameter invariance identified two pathways with significant gender differences. The positive effect of identity verification with group-specific self-worth was stronger for men than women (χ2 = 5.73 (df = 1), p < 0.05), and the negative relationship of group-specific self-worth with negative ingroup attitudes was stronger for men than for women (χ2 = 4.03 (df = 1), p < 0.05). Lastly, because there were two dimensions of ethnic identity verification (personal and heritage), the theoretical model was retested by substituting measures of the two individual dimensions for the combined verification measure. All the hypotheses supported in the main analysis were supported in this reanalysis.

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Discussion

The current study tested a theoretical model integrating ethnic identity achievement with identity verification and group-specific self-worth to further elaborate on the association between ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes among a sample of Latino young adults. Consistent with the developmental model of ethnic identity (Phinney, 1989; Quintana, 1994), ethnic identity achievement was directly associated with lower negative attitudes towards both the ingroup and the two ethnic minority outgroups (African American and Asian). The process of attaining an achieved ethnic identity involves developing a more sophisticated understanding of one’s own ethnic group, other ethnic groups, and ethnic relations more broadly (Quintana, 1994). This reduces negative views of one’s own ethnic group and other ethnic minority groups. I found no direct association between identity achievement and outgroup attitudes towards Whites. The affection for ethnic outgroups fostered by a developed ethnic identity might be more notable towards groups with shared social and historical experiences (Quintana, 1994). In this study, Latinos, African Americans, and Asians have shared social experiences of prejudice and discrimination, which might lead Latinos to view Asians and African Americans more favorably than Whites. However, I did not find a positive association between identity achievement and negative outgroup attitudes towards Whites, suggesting that a strong ethnic identity may not lead to outgroup derogation of Whites. This is consistent with research testing minority group attitudes towards majority outgroups (Jackson, 2002a; Verkuyten & Masson, 1995). Ethnic identity achievement was positively related to ethnic identity verification, and identity verification was indirectly related to ingroup and outgroup attitudes via group-specific self-worth. Verification was indirectly associated with less negative ingroup attitudes. I expected identity verification to be indirectly associated with outgroup attitudes. Insofar as those with an achieved ethnic identity can secure consistent identity verification and build group-specific self-worth, nonverifying perceptions such as discrimination and prejudice pose less of a threat to the self. As a result, ethnic outgroups are viewed as less threatening and evaluated less negatively. In this study, identity achievement and identity verification enhanced group-specific self-worth, which was associated with less negative attitudes toward all three ethnic outgroups. I found three significant gender differences. Women had greater levels of groupspecific self-worth than men. In addition, the positive relationship between verification and group-specific self-worth was stronger for men than women, and the negative relationship between group-specific self-worth and negative ingroup attitudes was stronger for men compared to women. Latino men have traditionally been subject to criminal stereotypes, a trend which has intensified since Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign (Silber Mohamed & Farris, 2020). The proliferation of this gendered stereotype may uniquely threaten the self-worth of Latino men, especially self-worth tied to their ethnic identity. Thus, the self-affirming process

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of identity verification, and its tendency to promote positive self-views and positive ingroup attitudes, might especially benefit Latino men as they work to reject these stereotypes. This research adds to the literature by integrating identity theory principles with the developmental models of ethnic identity to help explain how ethnic identity is associated with intergroup attitudes. When examining intergroup attitudes, developmental models of ethnic identity have traditionally focused on the enhanced understanding of one’s own ethnic group (Phinney, 1989) and other ethnic groups (Quintana, 1994) that emerges from the exploration of one’s ethnic identity. While these models often note that this developmental process results in greater stability and security with one’s ethnic group membership, they have not specified a theoretical mechanism to account for it. Identity verification and group-specific selfworth fill this gap. The current results suggest that repeated identity verification provides a reservoir of positive energy through greater group-specific self-worth, which may help neutralize the adverse impact of discrimination and prejudice and thus diminish negative attitudes towards one’s own ethnic group and ethnic outgroups. This study reinforces the importance of being mindful of how ethnic identity is conceptualized and measured when studying intergroup attitudes. Prior studies examining intergroup attitudes have conceptualized ethnic identity as multidimensional (e.g., as ingroup pride, ingroup ties, and centrality/prominence) and measured its strength as a stable trait (see Ashmore et al., 2004; Cameron, 2004). The findings of this study suggest that ethnic identity achievement and verification provide additional theoretical clarity to the relationship between ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes by examining how an ethnic identity emerges and is sustained, especially for people of color. While the other dimensions of ethnic identity emerge from an achieved ethnic identity (Phinney & Ong, 2007), it also is possible that someone without an achieved ethnic identity could be high on other dimensions of ethnic identity, and thus manifest different patterns of intergroup attitudes than observed in this study. For instance, an achieved ethnic identity is not possible for people in social contexts that do not support exploration of their ethnic identity. However, their ethnic identity may still be central to their self, as it is invoked in many threatening situations. Future research should include ethnic identity achievement and verification alongside the other traditional dimensions of ethnic identity as predictors of intergroup attitudes. Additionally, research measuring the multi dimensions of ethnic identity could test the extent to which ingroup pride, ingroup ties, and centrality mediate the relationship between ethnic identity achievement and intergroup attitudes. Theoretically informed models that integrate the stable dispositional dimensions of ethnic identity noted above with the process-based dimensions of achievement and verification could provide further clarity to the relationship between ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes. In this study, the ways in which these developmental processes impact intergroup attitudes are only generalizable to lower status racialized ethnic minorities, who have historically been subjected to discrimination and prejudice and felt compelled to

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explore the meanings of their ethnicity. A benefit of being White in America is that one’s race is an invisible trait (Bonilla-Silva, 2021). White people have historically benefitted from not having their racial identity challenged and have enjoyed “the luxury of not thinking about their racial group and its collective interests” (Jardina, 2019, p. 36). Indeed, White people have lower levels of ethnic identity achievement compared to minority groups (Phinney & Alipuria, 1990; Grindal et al., 2021). When White people experience threats to their racial identity and are compelled to think in terms of their race, they often respond instead with racial resentment (Genter, 2022) and outgroup derogation (Jackson, 2002a). When studying Latino populations as was done here, it is important to note many Latinos racially identify as White, which could confound theoretical models testing the effects of ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes. Latino people with stereotypically White phenotypic traits could achieve “honorary White” status and be subject to less discriminatory and prejudiced treatment (Bonilla-Silva, 2004). This might impact ethnic identity development as well as the formation of intergroup attitudes. Future research using this model with Latinos who racially identify as White could test this proposition and further elaborate on the nature of the relationship between ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes among Latinos. This study has some limitations. First, the data were cross-sectional. Feedback effects could have inflated the parameter estimates. For instance, insofar as ethnic identity achievement increases positive ingroup attitudes, one should have positive relations with members of one’s own ethnic group. This could intensify homophilous ties and foster identity verification (Stets et al., 2021), as well as motivate people to further explore the meanings of their ethnic group and become more committed to their ethnic identity. Second, the data had a limited number of control variables. The parameter estimates may have been smaller if other correlates of ethnic identity achievement and group attitudes were modeled (for example, political ideology). Future research with longitudinal data and a more complete set of controls would add confidence to the current findings. Additionally, these data were collected from a university where Latinos represent the plurality of students. Deaux and Martin (2003) stress the importance of the context in which people’s categorical identities are nested when studying identity processes. Identity support might be greater for Latino students in an environment where they make up a plurality of the undergraduate student population. Thus, ethnic identity achievement and the development of favorable outgroup attitudes may be more prevalent for Latinos in this setting. Future research should examine this model in contexts with smaller Latino populations. More generally, this study adds to theory about the relationship between ethnic identity and intergroup attitudes. By drawing on concepts and principles from the social identity theory, identity theory, and ethnic identity development literatures, this study elaborates on how ethnic identity achievement and verification influences the nature of intergroup attitudes among ethnic minority groups, and in particular Latinos. This research also informs the broader literature on intergroup attitudes by reinforcing the need to be mindful about the conceptualization and measurement of ethnic identity to ensure the theoretical understanding of this relationship.

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Grindal, M., Kushida, M., & Nieri, T. (2021). Ethnic identity achievement, identity verification, and self-worth. In P. Brenner, J. Stets, & R. Serpe (Eds.), Identities in action: Developments in identity theory (pp. 39–60). Springer. Hoelter, J. W. (1986). The relationship between specific and global evaluations of self: A comparison of several models. Social Psychology Quarterly, 49(2), 129–141. Hughes, D., Rodriguez, J., Smith, E. P., Johnson, D. J., Stevenson, H. C., & Spicer, P. (2006). Parents’ ethnic-racial socialization practices: A review of research and directions for future study. Developmental Psychology, 42(5), 747–770. Jackson, J. W. (2002a). The relationship between group identity and intergroup prejudice is moderated by sociostructural variation. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(5), 908–933. Jackson, J. W. (2002b). Intergroup attitudes as a function of different dimensions of group identification and perceived intergroup conflict. Self and Identity, 1(1), 11–33. Jardina, A. (2019). White identity politics. Cambridge University Press. Johnson, M. K., & Marini, M. M. (1998). Bridging the racial divide in the United States: The effect of gender. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61(3), 247–258. Leach, C. W., Van Zomeren, M., Zebel, S., Vliek, M. L., Sjoerd, P. F., Doosje, B., Ouwerkerk, J. W., & Spears, R. (2008). Group-level self-definition and self-investment: A hierarchical (multicomponent) model of in-group identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 144–165. Marcia, J. E. (1980). Identity in adolescence. In J. Adelson (Ed.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (pp. 159–187). Wiley. Phinney, J. S. (1989). Stages of ethnic identity development in minority group adolescents. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 9(1–2), 34–49. Phinney, J. S. (1990). Ethnic identity in adolescents and adults: Review of research. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 499–514. Phinney, J. S. (1992). The multigroup ethnic identity measure: A new scale for use with diverse groups. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7(2), 156–176. Phinney, J. S. (1993). A three-stage model of ethnic identity development. In M. Bernal & G. Knight (Eds.), Ethnic identity: Formation and transmission among Hispanics and other minorities (pp. 61–79). State University of New York Press. Phinney, J. S., & Alipuria, L. L. (1990). Ethnic identity in college students from four ethnic groups. Journal of Adolescence, 13(2), 171–183. Phinney, J. S., & Chavira, V. (1992). Ethnic identity and self-esteem: An exploratory longitudinal study. Journal of Adolescence, 15(3), 271–281. Phinney, J. S., Ferguson, D. L., & Tate, J. D. (1997). Intergroup attitudes among ethnic minority adolescents: A causal model. Child Development, 68(5), 955–969. Phinney, J. S., & Ong, A. D. (2007). Conceptualization and measurement of ethnic identity: Current status and future directions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 54(3), 271–281. Phinney, J. S., Jacoby, B., & Silva, C. (2007). Positive intergroup attitudes: The role of ethnic identity. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 31(5), 478–490. Quintana, S. M. (1994). A model of ethnic perspective-taking ability applied to Mexican-American children and youth. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 18(4), 419–448. Quintana, S. M. (2007). Racial and ethnic identity: Developmental perspectives and research. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 54(3), 259–270. Quintana, S. M., Castaneda-English, P., & Ybarra, V. C. (1999). Role of perspective-taking abilities and ethnic socialization in development of adolescent ethnic identity. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 9(2), 161–184. Roberts, R. E., Phinney, J. S., Masse, L. C., Chen, Y. R., Roberts, C. R., & Romero, A. (1999). The structure of ethnic identity of young adolescents from diverse ethnocultural groups. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 19(3), 301–322. Rosenberg, M., Schooler, C., Schoenbach, C., & Rosenberg, F. (1995). Global self-esteem and specific self-esteem: Different concepts, different outcomes. American Sociological Review, 60(1), 141–156.

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Sanchez, D. T., Chavez, G., Good, J. J., & Wilton, L. S. (2012). The language of acceptance: Spanish proficiency and perceived intragroup rejection among Latinos. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, 43(6), 1019–1033. Silber Mohamed, H., & Farris, E. M. (2020). ‘Bad hombres’? An examination of identities in US media coverage of immigration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(1), 158–176. Smith, T. B., & Silva, L. (2011). Ethnic identity and personal well-being of people of color: A metaanalysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(1), 42–60. Stets, J. E., & Burke, P. J. (2014). Self-esteem and identities. Sociological Perspectives, 57(4), 409–433. Stets, J. E., & Cast, A. D. (2007). Resources and identity verification from an identity theory perspective. Sociological Perspectives, 50(4), 517–543. Stets, J. E., & Fares, P. (2019). The effects of race/ethnicity and racial/ethnic identification on general trust. Social Science Research, 80(May), 1–14. Stets, J. E., Savage, S. V., Burke, P. J., & Fares, P. (2020). Cognitive and behavioral responses to the identity verification process. In R. Stryker, R. T. Serpe, & B. Powell (Eds.), Identity and symbolic interaction: Deepening foundation and building bridges (pp. 65–88). Springer. Stets, J. E., Aldecoa, J., Bloom, Q., & Winegar, J. (2021). Using identity theory to understand homophily in groups. In P. Brenner, J. Stets, & R. Serpe (Eds.), Identities in action: Developments in identity theory (pp. 285–302). Springer. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. S. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 29–47). Wadsworth. Verkuyten, M., & Masson, K. (1995). ‘New racism,’ self-esteem, and ethnic relations among minority and majority youth in the Netherlands. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 23(2), 137–154.

Part IV

Research: Group Processes and Outcomes

Chapter 15

The Structure of Racial Identity: Comparing Non-Hispanic White and Black Americans Matthew O. Hunt and Ashley V. Reichelmann

15.1

Introduction

Over the last half-century, social psychologists have increased their attention to issues of race and ethnicity.1 Hunt and colleagues (2000) show that by the late 1990s, 41.3% of articles in Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ) referred to race/ethnicity, 22% included race/ethnicity in the analysis, and 10.1% “seriously considered” race.2 Between 2000 and 2012, these same percentages had increased to 65.3%, 46.0%, and 24.2% (Hunt et al., 2013). Despite these increases, however, social psychological analyses of race still lag behind those of gender where the comparable percentages in SPQ for gender/sex/sex-category were 78%, 54.1%, and 41.3% for the late 1990s, and changed to 88.3%, 65.3%, and 36.3% for the 2000–2012 period (Hunt et al., 2013). Inclusion rates of race/ethnicity for key specialty journals in the late 1990s, including Sociology of Education (67.9%, 65.4%, and 55.1%), Journal of Health and Social Behavior (66.4%, 54.1%, and 31.1%) and Journal of Personality and Social

1

We use the terms race, race/ethnicity, and race and ethnicity interchangeably in this paper, while recognizing that race and ethnicity can be conceptualized as distinct or overlapping bases of identification (Cornell & Hartmann, 1997). 2 By “seriously consider,” Hunt et al. (2000, 2013) mean any article that uses race in its title, uses race as an independent or dependent variable (including racial attitudes, for example), or which tests the “assumption of race/ethnic similarity,” that is, whether findings generalize across race/ethnic lines. M. O. Hunt (✉) Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. V. Reichelmann Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_15

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Psychology (27.0%, 13.5%, 9.0%) further underscore the relative neglect of race and ethnicity in social psychological research (Hunt et al., 2000). Most social psychological research on racial identity has focused on within-race identity development models (Cross, 1991; Sellers et al., 1998; Kim-Ju & Akutsu, 2015) and/or the implications of racial identity for outcomes such as subjective wellbeing (Branscombe et al., 1999; Hughes et al., 2015), attitudes (Hunt & Reichelmann, 2019), and policy support (Reichelmann & Hunt, 2021). Less is known about possible race/ethnic differences in racial identity itself or in how the identity-formation process—including the ways social structural factors shape identity—may differ across race/ethnic lines (but see Stets & Fares, 2019; Kiecolt et al., 2021). In the current investigation, we use data from the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS) to advance our knowledge of the structure of racial identity among non-Hispanic White and Black Americans in two main ways. First, using factor and reliability analysis on the five racial identity items offered by the GSS (prominence, salience, private self-regard, public self-regard, and verification), we examine the underlying structure of racial identity. Here, our focus is on whether a comparable and reliable composite measure of Racial Identification (RI) can be utilized in a study examining non-Hispanic White and Black Americans.3 Second, we examine how RI is shaped by people’s social structural locations, with a special focus on the effects of race and other social and political background variables. Here, we ask (1) whether there are racial group differences in RI, (2) if any such differences hold net of the effects of the other background factors, and (3) if Whites and Blacks differ in any of the determinants of RI. Our primary goal in the current study is not to theorize or test theoretical predictions drawn from pre-existing models; rather, we focus on measurement and analytic questions carrying implications for future research on the intersections of race/ethnicity, RI, and socio-political attitudes (see Hunt & Reichelmann, 2019; Hunt, 2020; Reichelmann & Hunt, 2021). Additionally, our study builds on previous research demonstrating that different aspects of RI vary across racial lines (Kiecolt et al., 2021). Utilizing this empirical precedent, we examine the applicability of a composite measure of RI for White and Black Americans as well as how social structural factors may differentially affect racial identity among these two ethnoracial groups (see, e.g., Kiecolt et al., 2021).

Hunt (2020) examined such a five-item measure, which he termed “racial identity intensity,” in a study of white GSS respondents. Stets and Fares (2019) used a four-item measure of the same construct, which they refer to as Racial Identification. We follow Hunt’s lead on measurement while adopting Stets and Fare’s terminology in the current study.

3

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323

Background

While most theories of identity conceptualize its social bases in some capacity (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), identity theory (IT) is unique in its primary focus on how social structure shapes the self-concept which, in turn, shapes social behavior and attitudes (Burke & Stets, 2009; Stryker, 1980). The self-concept refers to persons’ ideas of who and what they are, including one’s set of identities (Rosenberg, 1979). Rosenberg’s image of the self as both “social product and social force” encapsulates the sociological perspective on the self-concept (1981). The self as “social product” highlights its nature as the outcome of social relationships and interactions. The self as “social force” references the way the self, once established, shapes other subjectivities and behavior. Identities represent internalized self-designations that stem from our social roles, group memberships, and who we are as unique individuals (Stryker & Burke, 2000). These social roles and memberships are shaped by different levels of structure: larger social structures, intermediate structures, and proximate ones (Stryker et al., 2005). Larger social structures refer to more general sociodemographic classifications, such as race, gender, and socio-economic status. Intermediate structures are composed of more localized institutions where networks are likely to be formed, such as neighborhoods and places of worship (Stryker et al., 2005). Proximate structures involve “even greater relative closeness to commitments themselves,” such as how involvements in one network domain (e.g., family) may impact involvements in another (e.g., work)—a variable Stryker, Serpe, and Hunt term “social embeddedness” (2005, p. 96). These structural levels are a direct outgrowth of IT’s roots in structural symbolic interactionism (Stryker, 1980)—itself a response to criticism that the symbolic interactionist frame neglects issues of power and inequality (Howard, 2000; Callero, 2003). Similarly, Deaux and Martin (2003) discuss how “identity contexts” shape identity processes, differentiating between two broad levels: large scale social categories and interpersonal networks. Deaux and Martin’s (2003) large scale social categories refer to “the cognitive and representational context shaped by categorical membership,” while interpersonal context is “grounded in specific reciprocal relationships with others” (p. 105). For Deaux and Martin (2003), large scale social categories refer to collective identities such as those based on persons’ race/ethnicity, occupation, and national and religious backgrounds, and thus generally correspond to Stryker and colleagues’ “large scale structure” (2005). Identity contexts rooted in interpersonal networks correspond to the intermediate and proximate levels of structure discussed by Stryker and colleagues.4 The concept of race as a larger social structure (or category in the “identity context” framing) is central to analyses of inequality in the United States. Explaining how and why race matters is a central aim of the social sciences, and social 4

See also Stets (2021) for a discussion of how micro, meso, and macro levels of social structure relate to the issue of identity.

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psychologists are uniquely situated to demonstrate how racial identity operates as both a social product and social force. Still, contributions in this area often utilize non-representative samples (e.g., college students or adolescents) and/or focus on a single race/ethnic group (Croll, 2007; Hartmann et al., 2009; Jardina, 2019). Consequently, they frequently cannot generalize about the important social dynamics involving race in the United States. The GSS is a nationally representative survey that provides a strong empirical foundation for transcending these limitations. Specifically, in 2014, the GSS fielded an identity module (designed by several social psychologists) that includes measures of five aspects of racial identity: prominence, salience, private self-regard, public self-regard, and verification. Identity prominence refers to the importance individuals attribute to an identity (McCall & Simmons, 1978; Rosenberg, 1979). Identity salience denotes the chances that an identity will be invoked cross-situationally (Stryker, 1980; Burke & Stets, 2009). Private self-regard (Oney et al., 2011) concerns the degree of pride people feel in an identity tied to a particular group membership (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1991). Public self-regard involves the degree of respect or esteem individuals perceive that others accord to them as members of a group (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1991). Verification concerns the degree of congruence between self-views and others’ view with respect to an identity the self holds (Burke & Stets, 2009). These five aspects serve as one way to understand and analyze identity through a social psychological lens, and recent studies using these items have enhanced our understanding of the nature, causes, and consequences of racial identity, as well as its applicability in studies across racial groups. In one of the earliest studies using the GSS data, Hunt and Reichelmann (2019) show that, among White respondents, these five items are positively correlated with one another, and that selected items operate as a “social force” with respect to Whites’ racial attitudes. Specifically, racial identity prominence (or importance) was positively associated with preferences for greater social distance from Black Americans, while private self-regard (or pride) was the key determinant of opposition to race-targeted policies. And, more recently, Reichelmann and Hunt (2021) found that, among White Americans, greater private self-regard (pride) increased opposition to reparations for slavery, while greater public self-regard decreased opposition to such policies. While both studies are important initial steps, Hunt and Reichelmann (2019) call for more research on racial identity that is explicitly comparative by race/ethnicity. Kiecolt et al. (2021) heeded that call in one of the first direct examinations of White/Black differences in racial identity using the 2014 GSS items. Noting the multifaceted nature of racial identity, Kiecolt and colleagues analyze racial group differences in each of the five racial identity items offered in the 2014 GSS. They observed significant White/Black differences in all five of these aspects of racial identity. Net of the effects of education, age, gender, and several social relationship/integration variables (e.g., marital status; church attendance), Blacks scored significantly higher than Whites on racial identity prominence, salience, private self-regard, and verification. In contrast, Blacks scored significantly lower than Whites on public self-regard. Regarding other predictors, Kiecolt et al. observe

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that age and education showed the most consistent effects: older respondents and those with less education scored higher on all dimensions (except public self-regard). In addition, women evidenced significantly higher racial identity verification and public self-regard than men. Kiecolt et al. also report selected “race x covariate” interactions. Specifically, relative to Whites (among whom birth cohort differences were more muted), Black Millennials (ages 18–31) showed heightened identity prominence and salience relative to Blacks in the Post-Civil Rights cohort (ages 32–62). In addition, relative to Whites, Blacks showed stronger gender differences in identity prominence and private self-regard, with Black women scoring significantly lower than Black men on these identity dimensions. Stets and Fares (2019) also observed race/ethnic group differences in racial identity. In their study exploring relationships between race, racial identity, and general trust among White, Black, and Hispanic Americans, Stets and Fares (2019) used four of the five GSS racial identity items to create an index (alpha = 0.88) with higher values representing stronger “Racial/Ethnic Identification.” These authors analyzed public self-regard separately under the heading of racial/ethnic “respect” because of the lower average correlation this item had with the other four items. While racial identity was not their primary focus, Stets and Fares (2019) were the first to demonstrate the utility of a composite measure of racial identification using the GSS items, as well as the importance of analyzing race/ethnic differences in social psychological processes (in this case between racial identity and trust). Stets and Fares’ primary analyses show that, while Whites have higher overall levels of trust than Blacks and Hispanics, racial identification impacts trust differently by race/ethnicity. Specifically, Stets and Fares show that Whites who more strongly identify with their racial group experience higher levels of group threat, resulting in lower trust compared with their Black and Hispanic counterparts. Consistent with Kiecolt et al.’s general findings, Stets and Fares also demonstrate that Blacks have stronger racial identification (RI) than Whites. However, as their study focused on the relationship between RI and trust, they did not pursue the question of whether the White/Black difference in RI holds in a multivariate model controlling for other background factors. Hunt (2020) presents a multivariate analysis of a five-item RI index constructed using the 2014 GSS items among self-identified White respondents. After demonstrating that the five GSS racial identity items constitute a single underlying factor with strong reliability (alpha = 0.83), he shows that RI is stronger among Whites who are less educated, older, female, and residents of the U.S. South. Kiecolt et al. (2021) report similar effects of education, age, and gender for selected racial identity items in their combined White and Black GSS sample. A central question for the current investigation is whether the structure (factor analysis and reliability results) and determinants (predictors in multivariate model) of RI reported by Hunt (2020) are generalizable to Black Americans. We turn next to a more formal statement of our research questions and aims.

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Research Questions and Aims Question 1: Do non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks differ in the underlying structure of racial identity ? Past research using White GSS respondents shows that five items representing aspects of racial identity—prominence, salience, public self-regard, private self-regard, and verification—are positively correlated with one another (Hunt & Reichelmann, 2019) and represent a single underlying dimension (Hunt, 2020). In addition, Stets and Fares (2019) show that, among a combined sample of White, Black, and Hispanic GSS respondents, a four-item Racial/Ethnic Identification index has strong reliability. Thus, a key question for the present study is whether the single underlying dimension, and a multi-item index with strong reliability, are also observed among non-Hispanic Black Americans—a requirement for a valid statistical analysis of possible White/Black differences in RI. Question 2: Are there White/Black differences in RI and do these hold net of other social and political background differences? Stets and Fares (2019) show that Blacks score significantly higher than Whites on their Racial/Ethnic Identification index, though it is unclear whether this race difference is robust to controls for other ways that Whites and Blacks differ. Kiecolt et al. (2021) provide a multivariate examination of White/Black differences, but only for the individual GSS racial identity items. Thus, a key question for the current study is whether any White/ Black difference in RI exists, after controlling for a wider range of predictors that has been utilized to date in similar studies. Question 3: Do Whites and Blacks differ in the effects of any of the determinants of RI ? To test the assumption of race/ethnic similarity noted by Hunt et al. (2000), we analyze whether non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks differ in any of the determinants of RI. Much research explicitly or implicitly assumes that basic social psychological processes do not vary across race/ethnic lines (Hunt et al., 2000). However, the unique histories and experiences of major race/ethnic groups in the U.S., alongside evidence challenging an assumption of race/ethnic similarity across groups (Steelman & Powell, 1993; Schnittker et al., 2000; Hunt, 2007; Reichelmann et al., 2022), suggest the possibility that different structural, interpersonal, and ideological contexts (Deaux & Martin, 2003; Stryker et al., 2005) may shape racial identity differently for non-Hispanic White and Black Americans. Why expect such differences? Black Americans’ experience of racial discrimination shapes outcomes ranging from education to housing to health. Research shows that Blacks’ shared history of oppression and collective experience of discrimination underlies a “sense of linked fate” among Black Americans (Dawson, 1994) that cuts across major social class lines. That is, Blacks with high SES share with their less-advantaged counterparts an understanding that anti-Black discrimination shapes the life chances of all Black Americans. As such, this greater acrossclass consensus and group identification among Blacks may mean that indicators of SES such as income and education will have weaker effects on racial identity among Blacks than among Whites.

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There also is precedent for expecting race/ethnic differences in how factors such as birth cohort, gender, region, religion, and political/ideological orientations shape racial identity (Hunt, 2007). Regarding age or cohort dynamics, Kiecolt et al. (2021) observe such differences for selected racial identity dimensions, showing that Black Millennials (ages 18–31 in 2014) have significantly stronger racial identity prominence, salience, and private self-regard than do Blacks in the Post-Civil Rights cohort (ages 32–62). Regarding gender, studies of White racial identity (Jardina, 2019; Hunt, 2020) find that White women have stronger racial identities than White men. Because White women simultaneously experience privilege and disadvantage across different statuses, they may favor their dominant group identity (race) over their relatively disadvantaged one (gender) (Juan et al., 2016). Supporting the more advantaged identity allows White women to maintain a relative degree of status when privileges or interests associated with their intersecting identities are threatened (Reichelmann & Hunt, 2021). In contrast, Black women are disadvantaged with respect to both race and gender (Hill Collins, 1990). Regarding region, the U.S. South (and in particular relatively rural areas in the “Deep South”) fosters especially conservative racial attitudes among White Americans (Tuch & Martin, 1997). We also know that White Americans’ racial identity is stronger in the South than in other regions (Hunt, 2020). The South was also the locus of the “peculiar institution” of slavery whose legacy continues to shape the lives and consciousness of Black Americans in distinctive ways (Eyerman, 2002; Feagin, 2004). While Blacks are still disproportionately concentrated in the U.S. South, the Great Migration and the subsequent urbanization (and, more recently, suburbanization) of Black Americans may foster regional variation in Blacks’ racial and place-based identities (Lacy, 2016). Religion is another area where White and Black Americans operate in largely separate spheres, carrying implications for the racial identities and politics of each group. Among Whites, religious fundamentalism is generally associated with more racially conservative political orientations (Emerson & Smith, 2000). In contrast, Blacks have long combined theological conservatism with progressive politics (Lincoln & Mamiya, 1990). Given this distinct relationship between religious conservativism and politics by racial group, it stands to reason that Whites and Blacks may differ in the relationship between RI and “larger social category” (Deaux & Martin, 2003) factors such as religious fundamentalism. Further, Kiecolt et al. (2021) report that church attendance—a more interpersonal network identity context (Deaux & Martin, 2003)—positively predicts private self-regard in their combined White and Black GSS sample. Finally, ideological and political orientations represent areas where exploring possible White/Black differences in racial identification are warranted. Past research has extensively documented how political ideology (liberalism/conservatism) and partisanship (Democrat/Republican affiliation) structure Whites’ racial attitudes (see Jardina, 2019 for a recent example). Generally speaking, Whites are more politically conservative, and Republicans are more racially conservative as indexed by opposition to race-targeted policies and reported levels of group competition/threat (Sears

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et al., 2000). Given the racially conservative implications of contemporary White identity (Jardina, 2019), alongside the different ideological and party alignments of African Americans (who are disproportionately liberal and overwhelmingly Democratic) (White & Laird, 2020), we examine whether these factors produce racially distinctive patterns of racial identification.

15.3

Method

Sample In the current study, we draw on data from the 2014 GSS Identity Module. Conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the GSS is designed to yield a representative sample of English-speaking adults, 18 years and older, living in non-institutionalized settings within the United States. Following Kiecolt et al. (2021), we limit our analyses to non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks. Non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks are respondents who identified as “White” or “Black,” respectively, on the GSS race measure, and who said they were not Hispanic on the GSS Hispanic ethnicity measure. The GSS only asked a subset of 2014 respondents about their racial identities. We limit our analyses to the 969 non-Hispanic White and Black respondents who were asked about their racial identities and who provided responses to all five racial identity items we utilize in this study. Finally, we use the WTCOMBNR weighting variable following NORC’s recommendations for use of files combining cross-sectional and panel cases.5

Racial Identification As noted above, the 2014 GSS included measures of five aspects of racial identity that past research suggests can be successfully combined into multi-item indices (Stets & Fares, 2019; Hunt, 2020). Prominence (or importance) is measured with the question: “How much is being White (Black) an important part of how you see yourself?” Salience is measured with the question: “In general, how much do you find that being White (Black) influences or guides how you behave?” Private selfregard is measured with the question: “How proud are you to be White (Black)?” Public self-regard is gauged with the question: “How much do you think people in the U.S. respect Whites (Blacks)?” And, Verification is measured with the question: From 2006 to 2014, the GSS fielded both a nationally representative cross-section and a repeating panel. See NORC’s “Release Notes for the GSS 2014 Merged File” for more background on weighting with the 2014 merged data. See Appendix A of the GSS codebook for full details on sample design and weighting. The WTCOMBNR variable additionally corrects for non-response occurring during the two-stage subsampling process the GSS introduced in 2004. 5

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“How much do you think your friends see you as White (Black)?” Response options for each of the five questions ranged from 0 = not at all to 10 = completely. Hunt (2020) shows that these five items represent a single underlying factor among Whites, while Stets and Fares (2019) report that the four items excluding public self-regard form an index with strong reliability. Below, we analyze whether Whites and Blacks differ in the factor structure of the five items, and if a multi-item index with adequate reliability can be created for use among White and Black Americans.

Independent Variables The regression models used to answer our second and third research questions contain a set of social structural and political-orientation measures used widely in the racial attitudes literature (Bobo et al., 2012). Several have also been used in studies of racial identity in recent years (Hunt & Reichelmann, 2019; Hunt, 2020; Jardina, 2019; Reichelmann & Hunt, 2021). Most of these predictors correspond to large social category identity contexts (Deaux and Martin, 2003). These include race, education, income, age, gender, region, political ideology, political partisanship, and religious belief. Two additional predictors—urbanicity and church attendance—correspond more closely to the localized structures represented by Deaux and Martin’s interpersonal networks identity context. Race is measured using a dummy variable, coded non-Hispanic Black (1) or nonHispanic White (0). Education is measured in years. Family income contains 12 categories ranging from under $1000 to $150,000 or over. We follow Kiecolt et al. (2021) in identifying three birth cohorts from respondents’ ages: respondents assigned to the Civil Rights cohort (and older) were aged 63–89 in the 2014 GSS; the Post-Civil Rights cohort contains those aged 32–62; and the Millennial cohort contains respondents aged 18–31. We use dummy variables to identify the Civil Rights and Millennial cohorts, thus the Post-Civil Rights cohort represents the excluded category in the reported regressions. Gender is coded as female (1) or male (0). South is coded 1 if the respondent resides in the South Atlantic, East South Central, or West South-Central categories, and 0 otherwise. Religious fundamentalism was captured with an item classifying denominations into liberal, moderate, and fundamentalist subgroups (see Smith, 1986) which we recoded as fundamentalist (1) or liberal or moderate (0). Ideology (Conservative) is a seven-point scale ranging from extremely liberal (1) to extremely conservative (7). And Partisanship (Republican) is a seven-point scale ranging from strong Democrat (1) to strong Republican (7). Urban is coded as 1 if the respondent lives in a city whose population is >50,000, and 0 otherwise. Church attendance ranges from never (0) to everyday (8).

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Table 15.1 Principal components analysis of identity elements for non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks (N = 969)

15.4

Item Prominence Salience Private self-regard Public self-regard Verification α

Whites (N = 789) 0.86 0.84 0.80 0.59 0.80 0.84

Blacks (N = 180) 0.78 0.65 0.70 0.33 0.66 0.62

Results

Question 1: Do Non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks differ in the underlying structure of racial identity ? To answer our first research question, we conducted separate principal components analyses of the five GSS racial identity items among our White and Black subsamples. These results are reported in Table 15.1 and reveal a single-factor solution in each group, indicating that all the items load on the same theoretical construct. Among Whites, this factor (eigenvalue = 3.05) explains 61% of the variance. Among Blacks, this factor (eigenvalue = 2.08) explains just under 42% of the variance. For both groups, the somewhat lower factor loading for the public self-regard item stands out, particularly among Blacks. However, the reliability analyses we performed suggest that, while excluding public self-regard increases reliability slightly, the differences are very small. Specifically, among Whites, the four-item index (excluding public self-regard) produces an alpha of 0.86, compared with 0.84 for the five-item index. Among Blacks, the four-item index produces an alpha of 0.64, compared with 0.62 for the five-item index. In addition, the four-item and five-item indices correlate very highly among each racial group (r = 0.99 among Whites and r = 0.97 among Blacks), suggesting that these are essentially identical composite measures of RI. We follow Hunt (2020) and use the five-item measure of RI—an index created by averaging scores for the five items to retain the metric of the original items (0–10). Respondents who score higher on the RI index view their identity with more importance, say it guides their behavior more strongly, feel greater pride in their identity, feel others view it with greater esteem, and report that others verify this identity at higher rates. Before turning to our other two research questions, we briefly review descriptive statistics for all study variables, presented separately for the White and Black subsamples given our focus on racial differences in this paper. First, as expected based on past research (Stets & Fares, 2019; Kiecolt et al., 2021) using the individual GSS items (Kiecolt et al., 2021) or a four-item composite measure (Stets & Fares, 2019), Blacks (7.21) show significantly higher RI than Whites (5.90) on the five-item measure of RI. This means that Blacks identify with their racial group more strongly than do Whites. Regarding our predictors, Black respondents show significantly lower education and income than Whites. And, while Millennials represent a similar percentage of

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Black and White respondents (15 and 13% respectively), a significantly higher percentage of Blacks than Whites fall in the Post-Civil Rights cohort (69 vs. 60%), while the opposite is true for the Civil Rights cohort (16 vs. 27%). In addition, compared to the White subsample, the Black subsample has a significantly higher proportion of females (63 vs. 53%) and residents of urban areas (43 vs. 25%), Southerners (58 vs. 35%), and fundamentalists (56 vs. 20%), and more frequent church attendance (4.3 vs. 3.1 on the nine-point scale). Finally, not surprisingly, Blacks are significantly less conservative (3.7 vs. 4.2) and less likely to identify as a Republican (1.3 vs. 3.0) than Whites. These results set the stage for the regression analyses providing answers to our final two research questions. Question 2: Do Whites and Blacks differ on RI, net of other social and political background differences? Table 15.3 presents results of the RI index regressed on race and our other predictors, first for the combined (White and Black) sample, and then separately within each race sub-group. Results in the first column of Table 15.3 indicate that the significantly higher RI level among Blacks seen in Table 15.2 persists when other background variables are controlled. Specifically, being Black (vs. White) is associated with a 1.36 unit increase in RI (b = 1.36, p < 0.001). This finding resonates with Kiecolt et al.’s (2021) results for the individual racial identity items and shows that the race difference in RI is robust to an even larger set of controls. Other findings in the first column of Table 15.3 demonstrate that, as expected, RI is highest among the less educated (b = -0.12, p < 0.001) and among older Americans (Civil Rights cohort (b = 1.02, p < 0.001). In addition, women (b = 0.48, p < 0.01) and residents of the U.S. South (b = 0.33, p < 0.05) score significantly higher on RI than their male and non-Southern counterparts, though subsequent models (outlined below) demonstrate that these effects are specific to Whites. The same is true for the effect of partisanship seen in the first column of Table 15.3, indicating that strong Republican affiliation increases RI (b = 0.10, p < 0.05). Overall, we find that Black respondents have higher overall levels of RI, net of other variables known to affect racial identity. Question 3: Do Whites and Blacks differ in the effects of any of the determinants of RI ? Our third and final research question addresses the assumption of race/ethnic similarity (Hunt et al., 2000). The second and third columns of Table 15.3 report the results of the initial regression model (minus the race dummy variable) run separately among Whites and Blacks. To assess the significance of White/Black differences in the effects of the predictors, we ran a fully saturated “race by covariate” interaction model (not shown) and evaluated the significance of the Wald test statistic for each interaction term. Results from separate OLS regression models for Whites and Blacks are presented for ease of interpretation, with the significance of White vs. Black coefficient (slope) differences summarized in the final column of Table 15.3. Significant White–Black differences are observed for the effects of five of the eleven included predictors. The first two (cohort and gender) echo findings reported by Kiecolt et al. (2021) for the individual GSS items, and document that these patterns are generalizable to the RI index when controlling for a broader set of predictors.

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Table 15.2 Comparison of means of for study variables for non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks Variable Racial identification Education Income Civil rights and older cohorts Post-civil rights cohort Millennial cohort Female Urban South Fundamentalist Church attendance Ideology (Conservative) Partisanship (Republican)

Whites 5.90 (789) 14.22 (788) 18.45 (748) 0.27 (782) 0.60 (782) 0.13 (782) 0.53 (789) 0.25 (789) 0.35 (789) 0.20 (768) 3.12 (789) 4.15 (776) 3.01 (760)

Blacks 7.21 (180) 13.34 (180) 15.76 (169) 0.16 (177) 0.69 (177) 0.15 (177) 0.63 (180) 0.43 (180) 0.58 (180) 0.56 (176) 4.32 (179) 3.71 (176) 1.33 (179)

White–Black difference *** *** *** ** * NS * *** *** *** *** *** ***

Note. Subgroup Ns in parentheses below mean * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001

Regarding cohort differences, among Blacks, Millennials show significantly higher RI than members of the Post Civil Rights cohort (b = 0.89, p < 0.05), controlling for the other variables in the model. Interestingly, however, the opposite effect is seen among Whites (b = -0.56, p < 0.05), who differ significantly from Blacks in this regard. These patterns suggest the possibility that racially salient events of the current century have registered distinctive cohort effects on racial identity, by race. Among Black Millennials, coming of age during an era of intense focus on race relations, the election of Barack Obama, and the Black Lives Matter movement (whose origins are traceable to the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012) underlie their heightened RI compared to older cohorts of Blacks. In contrast, it is likely older Whites whose sense of (racial) group position (Blumer, 1958) has been made most salient (and is most threatened) by recent social, political, and demographic changes in the U.S. (Jardina, 2019).

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Table 15.3 OLS unstandardized estimates for regression of racial identification for non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks Independent variables Black Education Income Civil Rights Cohort Millennial Cohort Female Urban South Fundamentalist Church attendance Ideology (Conservative) Partisanship (Republican) R2 N

Racial identification Total Whites 1.36*** – (0.23) –0.12*** –0.13*** (0.03) (0.04) 0.01 0.01 (0.02) (0.02) 1.02*** 1.06*** (0.19) (0.20) –0.26 –0.56* (0.23) (0.28) 0.48** 0.63** (0.16) (0.18) –0.14 0.05 (0.18) (0.21) 0.33* 0.47* (0.17) (0.19) 0.20 0.21 (0.20) (0.24) 0.00 –0.01 (0.03) (0.04) –0.08 –0.13 (0.07) (0.09) 0.10* 0.17** (0.05) (0.06) 0.13 0.12 851 691

Blacks –

White–Black Diff. –

–0.05 (0.06) –0.02 (0.03) 0.18 (0.42) 0.89* (0.38) –0.66* (0.31) –0.83** (0.29) –0.89** (0.32) –0.01 (0.30) 0.11 (0.06) –0.02 (0.09) –0.20* (0.10) 0.15 160

NS NS NS * ** * ** NS NS NS *

Note: Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001

Regarding gender, among Blacks, women show significantly lower RI than their male counterparts (b = -0.66, p < 0.05). This gender effect echoes Kiecolt et al.’s findings for the prominence and private self-regard dimensions in the GSS data and confirms that this gender divide among Blacks generalizes to the issue of overall RI. In contrast, however, among Whites we see the previously observed pattern of women scoring significantly higher than men on RI (b = 0.63, p < 0.01) (Jardina, 2019; Hunt, 2020). What is new here is the documentation that Blacks differ significantly from Whites in this regard. Urbanicity and Southern residence also differ, by race, in their effects on RI. Among Whites, we see the same patterns as for the combined sample in Table 15.3: there is no effect of urban residence, and there is a significant positive effect on RI of

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living in the South (b = 0.47, p < 0.05). Among Black Americans, however, these predictors both register significant, negative effects on RI. That is, living in urban areas (b = -0.83, p < 0.01), and in the U.S. South (b = -0.89, p < 0.01), reduce RI for Blacks, relative to their non-urban and non-Southern counterparts, respectively. This suggests that, among Blacks, living outside the South and in non-urban contexts is the locus of heightened racial identification—perhaps because such contexts are more likely to have lower Black population densities, which can increase the likelihood of experiencing racial discrimination (Oliver & Wong, 2003; Krysan & Farley, 2003; Hunt et al., 2007), and thus the salience of one’s racial identity.6 Finally, the effect of partisanship seen in the first column is replicated among Whites (b = 0.17, p < 0.01); the more strongly Whites identify as Republican (vs. Independent or Democrat), the stronger their RI. In contrast, however, among Black Americans, the opposite effect of partisanship is seen (b = -0.20, p < 0.05). That is, among Blacks, RI is highest among those who identify most strongly with the Democratic party—a pattern that resonates with our knowledge of major party alignments on racial issues since the 1960s (Carmines & Stimson, 1989). All told, the results in Table 15.3 suggest a “profile” among Whites where less educated, older, female residents of the South, who identify as Republican, show the strongest RI. In contrast, among Blacks, RI is maximized among Millennial males who live outside of urban areas in the non-South, and who identify strongly as Democrats.

15.5

Discussion

In this paper, we asked three questions about racial identification (RI) among non-Hispanic White and Black Americans, with special focus on critically examining an assumption of race/ethnic similarity (Hunt et al., 2000) regarding the structure and determinants of RI. Our first question was whether the underlying structure of racial identity itself varies across racial lines. Factor analyses suggest that the answer is no. We observed the same single-factor solution in principal components analyses run separately in the White and Black subsamples of the 2014 GSS data. Further, while reliability analyses showed somewhat stronger internal consistency among Whites, the evidence supports the construction and utilization of a five-item index among both Whites (alpha = 0.84) and Blacks (alpha = 0.62). These findings

6

Oliver and Wong (2003) show that, at the neighborhood level, greater interethnic propinquity reduces intergroup prejudice and competition, consistent with the expectations of intergroup contact theory. However, they also observe that—at the level of metropolitan areas—larger minority population shares increase intergroup hostility, a finding consistent with other research on group threat, for example, Taylor (1998). Krysan and Farley (2003) document Blacks’ reluctance to move into all or mostly White neighborhoods, as such “pioneering” is associated with White hostility. And, Hunt and colleagues (2007) find that Blacks report higher levels of racial discrimination in neighborhoods where Blacks represent a smaller share of the local population.

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provide support for the additional analyses of RI among Whites and Blacks that we pursued in this study, and they suggest the RI index can be used in research among Whites and Blacks. Nevertheless, given the higher means but lower inter-item correlations that we observed among Blacks, future work should explore whether the five items comprising the RI index have different meanings across major race/ ethnic lines in the U.S. For example, does “being proud to be White” mean the same as being “proud to be Black?” Our other two research questions concern the structure of RI in another main sense: whether RI differs by race, net of other social structural and ideological factors, and whether the effects of those other predictors on RI differ by race. Our results show significant White/Black differences on both counts. We observed that Blacks have significantly higher RI than Whites, even after controlling for the other predictors we examined, which likely reflects Blacks’ lower status in the U.S. racial hierarchy and the discrimination they face. The devaluation of Blackness in American society (Williams & Mohammed, 2009) requires African Americans to use creative means, such as redefinition, limitation of outgroup comparisons, or comparison to abstract standards, to maintain a positive sense of group identity (Blanz et al., 1998; Hogg & Abrams, 1990; Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Thoits & Virshup, 1997). The pattern of higher levels of RI (overall and in its individual dimensions) among Black Americans, save public-self-regard, is likely part of this response to prejudice and discrimination. Secondly, we show that five predictors—birth cohort, gender, urbanicity, region, and partisanship—differ significantly, by race, in their effects on RI. Four of these represent larger social structures and/or categories (Deaux & Martin, 2003; Stryker et al., 2005). Future studies should incorporate more predictors representing Deaux and Martin’s interpersonal network identity context to more fully capture how different types of identity context shape race-based identity processes. In addition, future research should seek to move beyond the single-item indicators of each of the five identity dimensions examined herein (a constraint posed by the GSS data collection) to further investigate possible race/ethnic differences in the identity dimensions that comprise the RI index. Put simply, having multiple items tapping each of the five aspects of identity (e.g., prominence, salience, etc.) captured by the GSS items would place research on race and racial identity on a stronger measurement footing. Despite its limitations, our study sheds new light on the utility of identity theory in discussions of race in sociological social psychology and establishes an important methodological baseline for future studies of racial identity. Our demonstration that RI has consistent measurement properties across racial groups sets the stage for other important research questions. Do racial identity and its dimensions carry the same meaning across racial lines? Do racial identities operate as a “social force” in similar or differing ways for Whites, Blacks, and other ethno-racial groups? Fruitful lines of research could examine interpersonal trust (Stets & Fares, 2019), racial policy attitudes (Sears et al., 2000; Hunt & Reichelmann, 2019), school choice (Billingham & Hunt, 2016), and neighborhood preferences (Krysan & Farley, 2003; Fossett, 2006). Research into such questions is central to IT’s mission of demonstrating how

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identities “matter.” The findings reported here represent an important step in advancing research on race and racial identity through a social psychological lens. Acknowledgement We thank conference participants and the Editors of the current volume for their helpful comments on prior drafts of this manuscript.

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Chapter 16

“Calling Out Our Own for Political Incivility? Identity and Shared Versus Oppositional Partisanship in Perceptions of Name-Calling and Deception” Robin Stryker, Vasundhara Kaul, and Bethany Anne Conway

16.1

Partisanship and Perceived Political Incivility

American national politics are hyper-partisan and uncivil (Mutz, 2015; Pew Research Center, 2017; Schaeffer, 2020). First as candidate, then as president, Donald Trump engaged in insults, misrepresentation, name-calling, vulgarity, reputational attacks, and race-ethnic, religious, and sexist slurs (Frimer & Skitka, 2018; Lee & Quealy, 2017; Washington Post, 2019). Even after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, political incivility remains pervasive. Ninety-three percent of Americans regard it as a problem, 75% believe it is getting worse, 80% think it creates dangerously high societal risks, 88% think it leads to violence, and 79% think it lessens community engagement (Weber Shandwick et al., 2019). However, reactions to incivility differ by partisanship. A 2017 representative national poll found 90% of self-identified Democrats (and 60% of self-identified Independents) said Trump’s conduct embarrassed them, while 78% of self-identified Republicans said this conduct made them proud (McClatchy-Marist, 2017). A 2015 representative national poll showed 76% of Democrats found Trump “insulting and offensive,” but only 25% of Republicans agreed (MSNBC et al., 2015). Republicans and Democrats disproportionately blame each other for rising incivility (Wolf et al., 2012). There are many reasons to care about political incivility. Political incivility and hyper-partisanship may fuel each other (Strachan & Wolf, 2019; Suhay et al., 2018; R. Stryker (✉) · V. Kaul Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. A. Conway California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_16

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Wolf et al., 2012). Incivility lowers political trust, efficacy, and the perceived legitimacy of political opponents, while increasing negative emotions and attitudes toward opponents (Gervais, 2015, 2017; Mutz, 2007, 2015; Mutz & Reeves, 2005). Political incivility increases attitude certainty and perceptions of elite and mass political polarization, while decreasing open-mindedness and expectations for positive deliberative outcomes (Borah, 2014; Hwang et al., 2014). Although incivility enhances political engagement and participation (Borah, 2014; Brooks & Geer, 2007; Kahn & Kenney, 1999), it often does so because people get angry and lose self-esteem when they confront incivility in arguments that are counter to their own attitudes. This promotes defensive political engagement (Chen, 2017; Gervais, 2017). Derogating political opponents also increases affective and social polarization (Suhay et al., 2018).1 In a two-party system, affective polarization refers to the distance between how much people like or dislike their own party and like or dislike the opposition (Levendusky, 2018; Webster & Abramowitz, 2017). Social polarization refers to the extent to which people prefer to marry, live near, work, attend church, talk politics, and/or socialize with fellow partisans rather than members of the political opposition (Bishop, 2008; Iyengar et al., 2012). Scholarship using social identity theory (SIT) suggests that perceptions of insulting speech are influenced by partisan-based motivated reasoning, such that people perceive the same insults as more uncivil when the speaker is a political opponent relative to a fellow partisan (Kim, 2018; Muddiman, 2017, 2019). This helps explain why Republicans and Democrats decry incivility while blaming their opponents for it. However, previous studies did not distinguish between mild insults and egregious name-calling by politicians, nor did they consider whether and how identity processes highlighted by identity theory (IT) and social identity theory (SIT) might influence perceptions of deceptive speech by politicians who are fellow partisans of the perceiver, relative to the same deception by the perceiver’s political opponents. We addressed these questions, using data collected from voting age Americans who participated in an online survey experiment. In so doing, we deepen the theory of partisan-based motivated reasoning and extend it to multiple dimensions of perceived political incivility. Prior research shows that insulting utterances, including name-calling, vulgarity, character assassination, and race-ethnic, sexist, and religious slurs, constitute just one dimension of political incivility as perceived by Americans. Deception is a second dimension (Stryker et al., 2016, 2022). We examine whether prior findings that respondents perceive the same insults as more uncivil when uttered by a political

1

Charting incivility’s nature and impact requires nuance. Because the powerful may exclude others from electoral politics by labeling them uncivil (Braunstein, 2018; Chen et al., 2019; Stryker et al., 2016), those excluded may need to be uncivil to be heard (Massaro & Stryker, 2012). Viewing “outrage media” enhances a sense of identity and community (Sobieraj et al., 2013), but a steady diet of lies and partisan insults may provoke consumers to violence (Conway & Stryker, 2021). We presume that issue-based disagreements are essential to democracy, and we recognize incomplete consensus on what is perceived as uncivil.

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opponent than a fellow partisan extend to two forms of deception: intentional lying (disinformation) and careless falsehoods and misrepresentation (misinformation).2 Perpetrating misinformation/disinformation strikes at the heart of democracy, by undercutting fact-based political deliberation by an informed citizenry (Hahl et al., 2018; Massaro & Stryker, 2012; Tucker et al., 2018).3 Although partisan-based motivated reasoning that lessens perceived incivility of fellow partisans (vs. opponents) may well extend to deception, deception also may activate motivation to achieve accuracy (Kunda, 1990). If so, deception is likely to be perceived as equally uncivil whether the deceiver is a fellow partisan or a political opponent. Prior treatments of partisan-based motivated reasoning by political psychologists and communication scholars drew on SIT exclusively to explain when and why people are motivated to think and act in ways consistent with lessening threats to their partisan identity (Chen & Lu, 2017; Druckman et al., 2013; Huddy & Blankert, 2017; Hwang et al., 2018; Taber & Lodge, 2006). We show that IT helps further develop when, how, and why partisan-based motivated reasoning occurs, and thus further integrates IT (Burke & Stryker, 2016) with SIT (Tajfel, 2010). We do not directly test contrasting motives of accuracy vs. lessening identity threat, but our findings suggest the latter predominate.

16.2

Theoretical Backdrop and Hypotheses

Predictions Based on Partisanship as a Social Identity Motivating Political Reasoning Scholars use theories of social identity and motivated reasoning to explain many political attitudes and behaviors. Social identities are categories such as race, gender, and political partisanship that may lead to group-based identification, in-group positive affect and favoritism, and out-group derogation (Huddy & Blankert, 2017; Tajfel, 1978). Motivated political reasoning refers to biased information processing that drives conclusions supporting prior beliefs and positive views of

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We do not investigate a previously identified third dimension of political incivility—behaviors tending to shut down inclusive, ongoing discussion. Stryker et al. (2016, 2022) call this the discursive dimension. Much literature debates scholarly concepts of political incivility (Laden, 2019; Massaro & Stryker, 2012; Muddiman, 2019; Papacharissi, 2004; Stryker et al., 2016, 2022). However, Americans largely agree that insults, deception, and behaviors tending to shut down ongoing, inclusive discussion are uncivil (Kenski et al., 2017, 2019; Stryker et al., 2016, 2022). 3 There is vast literature on deception divorced from discussing incivility (e.g., Osmundsen et al., 2021; Swire et al., 2017). That incivility framing fails to illuminate fully some aspects of the rise of “fake news,” does not negate this frame’s capacity to provide insight. A few incivility scholars prefer viewing deception as a distinct construct, but ordinary Americans perceive it as part of political incivility (Stryker et al., 2022). Perceptions have consequences, so we must know if partisan-based motivated reasoning shapes perceiving deception’s incivility.

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fellow partisans (Chen & Lu, 2017; Druckman et al., 2013; Hwang et al., 2018; Taber & Lodge, 2006). Kunda (1990) postulates two categories of motivated reasoning. One aims to achieve accuracy. The other is directional, aimed at reaching desired conclusions. With respect to politics, Chen and Lu (2017) suggest the desire to protect one’s beliefs motivates political reasoning. Druckman et al. (2013) find that, when politics are polarized, partisans are even more motivated to confirm their prior opinions. Chen and Lu (2017) find that exposure to uncivil disagreement prompts negative affect, promoting defensive engagement. Drawing on SIT, Huddy et al. (2015) test a model of partisanship highlighting affect. They refer to this model as one of expressive partisanship, contrasting it with partisanship models emphasizing ideological self-placement on the liberal to conservative spectrum. Iyengar and Westwood find that “hostile feelings for the opposing party are ingrained” (2015, p. 690). Together, motivated reasoning and SIT provide a strong basis for hypothesizing that people perceive the same norm-violating speech as more civil from a fellow partisan than an opponent. At a general level, most Americans believe civil political communication is desirable (Barnidge, 2017; Frimer & Skitka, 2018; Massaro & Stryker, 2012). Politicians who practice civility can enhance their reputation, approval, and vote totals (Druckman et al., 2019; Frimer & Skitka, 2018; Mölders et al., 2017). However, politicians also use incivility strategically (Muddiman, 2019), and Trump retained base support despite routine incivility (Hahl et al., 2018). Because most people do value being respectful, partisans may use motivated reasoning to downplay fellow partisans’ incivility, thereby increasing their own positive sense of self. When partisanship is a social identity, partisans “wish to defend or elevate [their party]. Their internalized sense of partisan identity means that the group’s failures and victories become personal” (Huddy et al., 2015, p. 3). Indeed, much research views partisanship as a social identity (Huddy & Blankert, 2017). Stemming from Tajfel (1978, 2010; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), SIT shows how social categories may lead to group-based identification, in-group positive affect and favoritism, and out-group derogation and hostility. Understanding when category identification leads to group-based motivation requires that we examine the salience of the social identity, because identity-based emotion and behavior, including motivated reasoning, likely increase as identity salience increases (Huddy et al., 2015; Iyengar & Westwood, 2015). Situations enhancing social identity salience include presence of out-groups and group-based competition or conflict (Tajfel, 2010; Turner et al., 1989). Enhanced social identity salience produced under such conditions does significantly influence political opinions, voting, media selectivity, and perceived political polarization (Hwang et al., 2014; Long et al., 2019; Miller & Conover, 2015; Unsworth & Fielding, 2014). However, because parties compete electorally, partisanship should always be salient enough to stimulate motivated reasoning, causing the same uncivil speech to be viewed as more civil when the source is a fellow partisan (vs. opponent) (see Iyengar & Westwood, 2015). Thus, viewing certain acts as violating norms of civil discourse depends in part on whether the norm violator is in our political in-group or

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out-group; with the latter receiving more condemnation (see Howard & Rothbart, 1980; Muddiman, 2019). In an experiment on M-Turk, participants judged uncivil comments more leniently when made by same-party (vs. opposing party) ordinary people commenting online (Kim, 2018). Conceiving incivility as rudeness and name-calling, Kim operationalized it using the labels “idiots” and “morons.” Based on experimental manipulations with a national sample of approximately 1000 respondents, Muddiman (2017, 2019, 2021) found respondents perceived less incivility for the same insults from a same-party (vs. opposing party) real-life politician.4 We test for partisan-based motivated reasoning for name-calling by using an experimental vignette that contrasts name-calling by a hypothetical presidential candidate who is Republican with one who is a Democrat. We combine this manipulation with data on survey respondents’ partisanship to construct a treatment contrasting perceptions of a presidential candidate of one’s own vs. the opposition party. H1: Respondents perceive insulting speech by a politician from their own party as less uncivil than the same speech by a politician from the opposing party. What about partisan-based motivated reasoning in perceiving deception? Although people are motivated to reason directionally, they also are motivated to arrive at accurate conclusions (Kunda, 1990, p. 481). Where insults violate civility norms by being rude, falsehoods violate civility norms because civility favors truthtelling (Conway & Stryker, 2021).5 Because the norm-violation basis is different, different motivations may govern perceptions of the incivility of deception vs. namecalling. As well, deception is especially egregious because effective democratic debate requires accurate information. As COVID-related misinformation and disinformation show, policymaking and behavior premised on media or political elite-peddled falsehoods are dangerous (Tucker et al., 2018). Thus, the cost/benefit ratio for partisan-based motivated reasoning in assessing incivility of fellow partisans vs. opponents may be different for deception (vs. insults), such that perceptions of deceptive incivility remain equivalent no matter the speaker’s partisanship. H2a: Respondents perceive deceptive speech by a politician from their own party to be equally uncivil as the same deceptive speech by a politician from the opposing party.

Frimer and Skitka (2020) suggest that Americans have “double standards” when perceiving incivility. However, they focus on political in-group leaders vs. in-group rank-and-file and do not invoke partisan-based motivated reasoning to investigate perceptions of the incivility of fellow partisans vs. opponents. They find Democrats and Republicans evaluate incivility by fellow partisan leaders more harshly than the same incivility by fellow partisan rank-and-file. 5 Civility norms do not invariably require truth telling. For example, in a social situation where a friend asks us to validate that what they are wearing looks nice when we think it does not, kindness may trump truth-telling in evaluating our civility. 4

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Predictions Based on IT’s Perceptual Control Model Trump supporters disproportionately believed Trump’s assertions that Covid was controlled, and mask wearing was unnecessary, even though some died because of these falsehoods. This shows that motivation to maintain a positive view of fellow partisans can overpower accuracy motivation, even when consequences are dire (Lempinen, 2020; Nanos, 2020; Stevens et al., 2020). Extending partisan-based motivated reasoning to deception is consistent with the Covid-related partisan belief gap (Lempinen, 2020). Self/identity theory also supports this scope extension (Burke & Stryker, 2016; Owens & Samblanet, 2013; Rosenberg, 1979). Self-concept and identity are part of the self (James, 1890; Mead, 1934), “an organized and interactive system of thoughts, feelings, identities and motives” that “people attribute to themselves” and that reflexivity makes possible (Owens & Samblanet, 2013, p. 226). Identities involve meanings and expectations that generate cognitive and emotional self-processes (Stets & Serpe, 2013; Serpe et al., 2020). IT as originally formulated by Sheldon Stryker (1968, 1980, 2002) pertained to roleidentities, but now also encompasses person-, group-, and category-based identities, with all identity types subject to perceptual control processes (Burke & Stets, 2022). Both identity and self-concept theory include a focus on verification. Psychologists assume that persons seek to maintain and protect their sense of self, responding to self-esteem and consistency motivations (Owens & Samblanet, 2013). Selfesteem motivation requires validating a positive sense of self; consistency motivation presumes that persons seek to validate a positive or negative sense of self, whichever accords with prior self-concept (Owens & Samblanet, 2013). Swann (1983, 1990) incorporated the consistency motive into self-verification research. Burke (1991) incorporated the consistency motive in elaborating IT’s perceptual control model of identity verification. Identity verification occurs when people perceive that others see them the same way they see themselves. Identity nonverification occurs when people perceive others see them differently than how they see themselves (Burke, 1991). Burke (1991; Burke & Stets, 2022; Stets & Burke, 2014) proposed a perceptual control process of identities. Individuals are trying to control the perceptions of meanings in the situation as to who they are. These perceptions involve direct or selfappraisals based on seeing their own behavior in the situation and the meanings that this behavior implies, and also involve reflected appraisals, or how they think others see them in the situation. Meanings from the different appraisals are compared to the meanings stored in an individual’s identity standard. The identity standard is the set of meanings defining the character of an identity held by a person. The comparator in the perceptual control process relates the perceptions of meanings relevant to an identity in the situation with the meanings of the identity standard. The closer the match is between the perceptual meanings as to who one is in a situation and the person’s identity standard meanings, the more it represents identity verification. The greater the mismatch is between a person’s perceptual meanings of the self in the situation and their identity standard meanings, the greater

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is the identity non-verification. Identity verification generates a positive response where individuals feel good as to who they are, and they continue to behave as they have been behaving. Identity non-verification produces a negative emotional reaction, and individuals subsequently behave differently, think differently in the situation, or both, to correct the disturbance so that self-in-situation meanings are better aligned with identity standard meanings. Because Burke and Stets (2022) make clear that their perceptual control model should apply to all types of identities, whether they are role-, person-, category-, or group-based, we propose that IT complements SIT in explaining why perceptions of deception, as well as name-calling, should depend on whether the perpetrator is a fellow partisan or a political opponent. To the extent that political partisans seek to verify meanings associated with the identity standards they hold for their political party membership, they will be incentivized to downplay deception as well as namecalling by their fellow partisans relative to opponents.6 With respect to perceiving incivility perpetrated by fellow partisans relative to opponents, there are two possible identity standard meanings that perceptual control process could seek to verify. First, it could be that partisans define what it means to be a partisan as involving the expression of support for fellow partisans. If so, partisans might seek to verify such supportiveness by diminishing fellow partisans’ incivility, despite that they recognize the incivility. Alternatively, partisans might fail to recognize the extent of deceptive incivility by fellow partisans because they are protecting themselves from the threat that they will be unable to verify other meanings, including honesty, that they associate with their partisan and person identities. Research on partisanship finds that partisans distinguish between their own group (the in-group) and their opponents (the out-group) by attributing positive characteristics to their own and negative characteristics to their opponents. Doherty and Kiley (2016) find that Republicans and Democrats on average associate negative traits, including close-mindedness, immorality, dishonesty, and laziness with opponents, and positive traits including open-mindedness, morality, honesty, and working hard with fellow partisans. If “they” are dishonest but “we” are honest, partisans cannot verify the honesty identity standard for their own group—as well as the dishonesty meaning they associate with the opposition—without downplaying the same deception when it is perpetrated by their own relative to their opponents.

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SIT was originally presented as a theory of inter-group conflict, and it defined social identity as “that part of a person’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the emotional significance attached to that membership” (Ellemers & Haslam, 2011, pp. 380–381). Thus, SIT essentially equated categorical and group identities. IT distinguishes between the two bases of identity; groups are formed through social interaction, whereas category membership need not imply that category members are interacting (Burke & Stets, 2022). The IT distinction between categories and groups is analytical, and a particular identity, including that pertaining to political party membership, can manifest empirically in ways evoking both categories and groups. What is important for our argument is that perceptual control processes pertain to all types of identities.

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In the Doherty and Kiley (2016) study, all characteristics that partisans associate with their own political party membership, including but not restricted to honesty and morality, are generally considered good. Characteristics associated with opponents, including dishonesty and immorality, are generally considered bad. As we demonstrated above, Americans generally associate political civility with goodness and political incivility with badness. Thus, if “we” are “good” and “they” are “bad,” it follows that people will be motivated to perceive their fellow partisans as more civil than their opponents. As with honesty/dishonesty, but now for more general meanings of “good/bad,” identity verification of one’s partisan identity requires finding that those who engage in equal deception and equal name-calling are more civil if they are our fellow partisans relative to our political opponents. H2b: Respondents perceive deceptive speech by a politician from their own party as less uncivil than the same deceptive speech by a politician from the opposing party. Although IT presumes the goal of identity verification, it does not assume that the identity meanings verified are positive (Stets & Burke, 2014). Rather, SIT-framed empirical research demonstrates that persons associate specific positive traits with their partisan identities. As well, deriving H2b requires no assumptions about the relationship between the social identity of partisanship and the identity standard (s) that people hold for themselves as persons. However, SIT assumes that many persons do “internalize a group membership as a meaningful aspect of their selfconcept” (Ellemers & Haslam, 2011, p. 384). To the extent that those with a political partisan social identity attribute honesty and goodness to that identity, and also presume that they are honest and good persons, their self-perception as an honest and good person is likewise be threatened by the threat to their partisan identity.7 While IT assumes identity verification is the goal, IT also suggests there are multiple strategies to counter the absence of verification (Stets & Burke, 2014). One strategy that could be used when standards of honesty and/or goodness for a partisan identity are not verified, is to monitor fellow partisans for incivility and try to change their behavior. Consistent with the accuracy motive, this provides more underpinning for H2a. However, such policing of one’s own has the potential cost of negative reactions from fellow partisans. As well, if one’s partisan identity includes the standard of supporting fellow partisans, such policing is not consistent with verifying one’s partisan identity. Engaging in partisan-based motivated reasoning to evaluate deception by one’s own as less uncivil than the same deception by opponents reduces perceived mismatch and diminishes the negative emotion and cognitive energy expenditure associated with identity non-verification, without adding policing-associated costs. One further issue merits discussion. When asked to rate potentially uncivil behavior using a 5-point scale from “not at all” to “very uncivil,” large majorities of respondents find deception (including intentional misrepresentation and

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Their self-esteem, especially its worthiness component, would be affected as well (Burke & Stets, 2022). More generally, both IT and SIT discuss various potential relationships between identities and aspects of self-esteem (Ellemers & Haslam, 2011; Burke & Stets, 2022).

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exaggerating to obscure the truth) and insulting speech (including name-calling), to be very, mostly, or somewhat uncivil. Only about 9%–14% find these behaviors only slightly or not-at-all uncivil (Stryker et al., 2022). However, if false statements comport with the listener’s prior partisanship-influenced beliefs, partisan identitypromoted protective cognition may prevent listeners from recognizing the falsehood (Druckman et al., 2013; Kahan et al., 2005). If so—and although partisan-based reasoning would enter into believing the statement—incentive to invoke that reasoning to evaluate an ally’s deceptive incivility more leniently is lacking. We emphasize to respondents that the deceptive statements they are evaluating are false, whether made by fellow partisans or opponents. We also manipulate normviolation levels, conduct manipulation checks, and assess the average effect of high vs. low norm violation on the perceived incivility of deception by fellow partisans and opponents.

16.3

Methods

Data Data are from a national survey of incivility, media, and politics, ensuring variability on age, gender, race/ethnicity, and partisanship. The Kent State Survey Research Lab (SRL) administered the survey in spring 2018, subcontracting sampling to Research Now Survey Sampling International (RN-SSI). From its online panel of millions who self-selected to register as potential respondents and are compensated for taking surveys, RN-SSI provided a sample of U.S. Black, LatinX, and White persons of voting age, oversampling Black and LatinX persons for within racial/ ethnic group analyses.8 RN-SSI contacted participants electronically, recruiting them using multiple points of randomization. Of the 2979 individuals completing the survey, we removed 63 (2.1%) because they failed an attention check embedded in our experimental vignettes. Non-full probability sampling methods used by SSI typically produce samples with similar demographic profiles as samples recruited via full probability sampling (Braunsberger et al., 2007; Simmons & Bobo, 2015; Yeager et al., 2011), but the profiles the two methods produce are not exactly the same. The biggest discrepancy between our unweighted sample and the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS) is with respect to race/ethnicity, because we purposely over-sampled Black and LatinX participants.9 Otherwise, our unweighted sample is 59% women compared to 55% 8

Little research focuses on racial differences in perceived incivility. We conduct within racial/ethnic group analyses elsewhere. Here, we test for heterogeneity of treatment effects by race. 9 Due to misunderstanding with RN-SSI, we did not sample from those who exclusively identify as Native American or Asian American (together about 6% of the population). Thus, we cannot generalize results to a national population including these groups. However, as with laboratory experiments typically relying on convenience samples, our estimated treatment effects generalize to theory (Lucas, 2003).

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women in the 2016 weighted GSS, and our unweighted sample is about 25% Republican, 45% Democrat and 29% Independent compared to about 23% Republican, 33% Democrat and 42% Independent in the weighted GSS. Our unweighted sample under-represents those with less than a high school education. Age and income distributions in our sample and the 2016 GSS are extremely similar. SRL also rake-weighted our data to achieve national representativeness on age, gender, race/ethnicity, and partisanship, using the U.S. Election Project for partisanship, and the U.S. Census for gender, age, and race/ethnicity. We use unweighted data generated from respondents’ random assignment to vignette conditions, while controlling for variables used in the rake weighting. Assuming random assignment is effective, coefficients of treatment effects will not change when controlling for additional independent variables. However, if added covariates correlate with the dependent variable, adding them can reduce the size of treatment effect standard errors (Mutz, 2011). As long as there are no heterogeneous treatment effects, survey experiments using unweighted, online, non-full probability samples, including full convenience samples, typically produce results closely mirroring the results of the same experiment conducted using population-based full probability sampling (Coppock et al., 2018; Mullinix et al., 2015). Heterogeneous treatment effects are rare (Coppock et al., 2018), but we test for them by race/ethnicity and partisanship so we can rule them out or incorporate them.

Procedures Participants answered questions about demographics and participated in an experiment exposing them to two vignettes, one involving deception and the other involving insults/name-calling. Within each vignette, participants were assigned randomly to one of four conditions. Two conditions varied the level of civil discourse norm-violation (low vs. high). These were crossed with two conditions varying the uncivil speaker’s partisanship (Democrat or Republican). We asked respondents to report their partisanship after the vignettes so we would not prime thinking in partisan terms. We combined this with the vignette speaker’s partisanship creating “same-party” vs. “cross-party” (opposing party) speaker conditions. In the same-party condition for deception, Democrats (including those leaning Democrat) and Republicans (including those leaning Republican) evaluated deception by a fellow partisan president. In the cross-party condition, Democrats (including those leaning Democrat) and Republicans (including those leaning Republican) evaluated the same deception by a president from the opposing party. We constructed analogous same- vs. cross-party conditions for name-calling, so participants evaluated the same insults either by a presidential candidate from their own party or from the opposing party. We excluded 340 Independents who leaned neither Republican nor Democrat and 47 respondents who answered “other” for partisanship. This left 2576 respondents in our analytic sample.

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In all conditions, respondents rated the degree to which they found the speaker uncivil on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = not-at-all uncivil, 1 = slightly uncivil, 2 = somewhat uncivil, 3 = mostly uncivil, 4 = very uncivil). We eliminated respondents answering “no opinion” to incivility level. The number of such respondents varied by vignette and condition assigned within vignette, ranging from 94 to 189. The order of vignettes and associated questions was constant across respondents, with deception first and name-calling second. Random assignment resulted in 24%–26% of respondents in each condition of both experiments.

Manipulations Our experimental vignettes presented hypothetical scenarios mimicking situations in which an actor engages in political incivility. For deception, the high and low civil discourse norm-violation conditions contrast purposeful lying—what Meltzer (2019) refers to as disinformation—from unknowing, careless deception—what Meltzer (2019) refers to as misinformation. The high norm-violation Democratic speaker vignette states: At a press conference, President Joseph Brown, a Democrat stated: “The rate of violent crime in the U.S. has risen astronomically since 1991.” In reality, data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics show the rate of violent crime nationwide has been on a steady decline since it was at its height in 1991. Before the press conference, President Brown reviewed the crime statistics and was briefed on them by his aides.

The high norm-violation Republican speaker vignette is the same except that it indicates President Brown is Republican. The contrasting low norm-violation Republican speaker vignette also refers to President Brown as Republican but substitutes a new final sentence: “[B]efore the press conference, President Brown had not reviewed the crime statistics, nor had he been briefed on them by his aides.” The low norm-violation Democrat speaker vignette is the same except it indicates President Brown is a Democrat. For name-calling, the high and low norm-violation vignettes contrast explicit name-calling with a milder insult. The high norm-violation, Democratic-speaker vignette states: Democratic presidential candidate Robert Green has just finished debating his Republican opponent in the general election. In an interview with the press after the debate, candidate Green was asked how he perceived his opponent. Green responded, “My Republican opponent is not very bright. In fact, he is as dumb as a stump.”

The high norm-violation Republican speaker vignette is the same except it indicates that presidential candidate Robert Green is a Republican and is debating a Democrat opponent. The low norm-violation Democrat speaker vignette indicates a Democrat presidential candidate Robert Green with a Republican opponent and excludes the statement that the opponent “is dumb as a stump.” The low norm-violation

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Republican speaker vignette also excludes the “dumb as a stump” statement, but indicates a Republican presidential candidate, Robert Green, and a Democrat opponent. Using the previously discussed five-point scale, respondents reported how uncivil they perceived the speaker to be. They then answered questions tapping their understanding of manipulated norm-violation levels.10 For deception, we used 4-point scales (1, strongly agree to 4, strongly disagree) assessing if respondents agreed that President Brown’s comments were purposely deceptive, and if they agreed that President Brown had a responsibility to tell the truth, even if it went against what he believed. Results show our manipulation worked as anticipated.11 For name-calling, we asked respondents to indicate if they agreed that presidential candidate Green’s comments were demeaning, and if they agreed it was not necessary for presidential candidate Green to insult his opponent. Results show our namecalling manipulation worked as anticipated.12 To maximize internal validity, we avoided referencing real world presidents or candidates. We did not tell respondents they were judging hypothetical situations, but use of generic names like Brown and Green signaled this. Speaker names were constant across partisanship. Using real-world figures likely would have evoked reactions not only based on partisanship, but also politicians’ personalities and visibility. This could have contaminated results. To the extent that using hypothetical speakers lessens the experiment’s external validity, we probably made it harder to find support for H1 and H2b because real world figures likely generate more affect and thus more partisan-based motivated reasoning. Our name-calling vignette enhances external validity by mirroring real-life instances of name calling that typically target out-groups, including out-group

10 A limitation of our procedures is that we included no manipulation check for either vignette to make sure participants noticed speaker partisanship. Given results do suggest partisan-based motivated reasoning in perceiving incivility, we are confident most respondents noticed speaker partisanship. Also, partisanship is concrete and specific, so respondents do not have to interpret it. Norm-violation reflects a latent variable, so it becomes essential to check if respondents interpret it as intended. 11 T-test results for our first manipulation check for the deception vignette, employing unequal Welch, show respondents in the low norm-violation condition were significantly less likely to see the behavior as purposefully deceptive (m = 2.79) compared to respondents in the high normviolation condition (m = 3.28), t (2,274.91) = 12.99, p = 0.00). T-test results for our second manipulation check, employing unequal Welch, show that those in the high norm-violation condition were significantly more likely to agree the president has an obligation to tell the truth (m = 3.53) compared to those in the low norm-violation condition (m = 3.49), t (2,429.91) = 1.33, p = 0.09). (3 = agree; 4 = strongly agree). 12 T-test results for our first manipulation check for the name-calling vignette, using unequal Welch, show those in the low norm-violation condition (m = 3.23) were significantly less likely to see the statement as demeaning compared to those in the high norm-violation condition (m = 3.41), t (2,431) = 5.96, p = 0.00. T-test results for our second manipulation check, using unequal Welch, show those in the low norm-violation condition (m = 3.36) were significantly less likely to see the statement as unnecessary compared to those in the high norm-violation condition (m = 3.44), t (2,403) = 2.61, p = 0.01).

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politicians, societal groups associated with them, and/or policy stances they support (Gervais & Morris, 2021; Sydnor, 2019). Consistent with real-life, speakers in our name-calling vignette also insult out-group targets: if the speaker is Republican, the target is Democrat and vice versa. Prior research adopted a similar approach, and we discuss the implications of this in our discussion section. Because female political candidates are judged more harshly than their male peers for engaging in the same types of incivility (Gubitz, 2022; Krupnikov & Bauer, 2014), our vignettes feature male speakers only. Given that we avoid deception involving gender or sexuality, that we avoided gendered insults/name-calling, and that the name-calling speakers and targets are both male, we think it unlikely that substituting females for males would alter treatment effects.

Outcome and Covariates The outcome of interest is perceived incivility, converted to a binary measure (0, low perceived incivility, or 1, high perceived incivility). Random assignment controls for participant characteristics measured and unmeasured. We include covariates of race, gender, and age in all models, and partisanship for models run on the combined sample of Democrats and Republicans. Because prior research suggests significant effects for demographic covariates, including them allows us to assess their size and interpretation, and adds precision in estimating treatment effects. We measure gender as a dichotomy (0, female, or 1, male). Prior research finds that women perceive greater incivility than men for the same insulting speech, probably because of greater sensitivity to others’ feelings and to norms of politeness norms (Conway & Stryker, 2021; Fridkin & Kenney, 2011; Kenski et al., 2017, 2019; Stryker et al., 2015). Republicans and conservatives perceive greater incivility than Democrats and liberals when exposed to the same insulting speech (Conway & Stryker, 2021; Fridkin & Kenney, 2011; Kenski et al., 2017; Stryker et al., 2015). These differences may stem in part from differences in psychological profiles such that conservatives, relative to liberals, display “greater attraction to emotionally charged, aggressive ‘black and white’ speech with readily identifiable antagonists” (Conway & Stryker, 2021, p. 7). Because we eliminate pure independents from our analyses, we code partisanship as binary (0, Republican or leaning Republican, or 1, Democrat or leaning Democrat). Although prior research is more equivocal about age effects, some research finds that age influences perceived incivility, perhaps because socializing media and political environments differ by age-cohort (Conway & Stryker, 2021). We create a three-category age variable using the following groups: 18–24 years, 25–54 years, and 55 years and older. We explore the potential impact of race in shaping perceived incivility of insults/name-calling and deception, because race shapes many political attitudes (Gubitz, 2022; Hutchings & Valentino, 2004). We code race/ethnicity as a

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three-category nominal variable (0, White, 1, Black, or 2, LatinX) because the sample is restricted to these groups. Table 16.1 provides descriptive statistics for our total analytic sample and the Republican and Democrat subsamples. Tables 16.2, 16.3, and 16.4 provides correlation matrices for the total sample and the partisan sub-samples.

Analytic Methodology We use binary logit and cumulative ordered logit models to evaluate our hypotheses. For interpretive ease, we present results from the binary logits. We also conduct analyses of indistinguishability (Long & Freese, 2014) to verify that transforming our five-category dependent variable into a binary variable is appropriate. Such tests examine whether the combined average marginal effects of our treatment conditions are significantly different across each of our five original outcome categories. We provide and discuss our estimates in predicted probabilities and marginal effects instead of log-odds or odds-ratios (Mize et al., 2019). Marginal effects capture the difference between two predictions and are the same as regression coefficients in linear regression (Mize, 2019). Prior to formal hypothesis testing, we not only conducted indistinguishability tests to verify the appropriateness of our binary outcome variable, but we also examined whether we needed to stratify deception or name-calling data into subsamples based on norm-violation condition, partisanship, or both, because of heterogeneous treatment effects (Mize, 2019; Mize et al., 2019). We also tested for heterogeneous treatment effects by race/ethnicity. We find no heterogeneous treatment effects by race/ethnicity for name-calling or deception. For deception, there are no heterogeneous treatment effects for partisanship, and the effect of cross- vs. same-party condition does not vary significantly across norm-violation levels. Thus, we do not stratify the deception data by partisanship or norm-violation level. For name-calling, the impact of the cross- vs. sameparty condition did not vary significantly by partisanship. However, we did find statistically significant heterogeneous effects of norm-violation condition across Republicans and Democrats. Hence, we stratified the name-calling data by partisanship for testing indistinguishability and hypothesis testing. Wald tests and graphs depict the direction of the treatment effects for each outcome category for indistinguishability tests, conducted separately for Republicans and Democrats for name-calling, and on the full sample for deception. Results support a binary outcome combining responses of not-at-all, slightly, and somewhat uncivil into one category of low perceived incivility (0), and mostly and very uncivil into the contrast category of high perceived incivility (1). Stratification analyses using the binary outcome and the results are consistent with the stratification results for the five-category ordinal outcome. We test H1 by specifying two models for name-calling, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. In these models, the cross- vs. same-party treatment condition

454 442 896

450 446 896

444 452 896

467 356 823

0= 1=

Same-party Cross-party Total Deception: Norm violation condition

0= 1=

Low norm violation condition High norm violation condition Total Name calling: Norm violation condition

0= 1=

Low norm violation condition High norm violation condition Total Perceived incivility of deception

0= 1=

56.74% 43.26% 100.00%

49.55% 50.45% 100.00%

50.22% 49.78% 100.00%

50.67% 49.33% 100.00%

49.44% 50.56% 100.00%

Percent

0.4326 (0.4957)

0.5045 (0.5003)

0.4978 (0.5003)

1.4933 (0.5002)

Mean (SD) 1.5056 (0.5002)

669 841 1510

800 826 1626

813 813 1626

819 807 1626

786 840 1626

N

44.30% 55.70% 100.00%

49.20% 50.80% 100.00%

50.00% 50.00% 100.00%

50.37% 49.63% 100.00%

48.34% 51.66% 100.00%

Percent

Democrats

0.5570 (0.4969)

0.5080 (0.5001)

0.5000 (0.5002)

1.4963 (0.5001)

Mean (SD) 1.5166 (0.4999)

1136 1197 2333

1244 1278 2522

1263 1259 2522

1273 1249 2522

1229 1293 2522

N

Total

48.69% 51.31% 100.00%

49.33% 50.67% 100.00%

50.08% 49.92% 100.00%

50.48% 49.52% 100.00%

48.73% 51.27% 100.00%

Percent

(continued)

0.5131 (.4999)

0.5067 (0.5001)

0.4992 (0.5001)

1.4952 (0.5001)

Mean (SD) 1.5127 (0.4999)

“Calling Out Our Own for Political Incivility? Identity and Shared. . .

Low perceived incivility High perceived incivility Total

443 453 896

N

Republicans

Same-party Cross-party Total Name calling: Same party vs. cross-party speaker condition

0= 1=

Deception: Same-party vs. cross-party speaker condition

Table 16.1 Descriptives of variables

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1= 2= 3=

Race

1= 2= 3=

Age

0= 1=

Party affiliation

0= 1=

LatinX Black, Non-LatinX White, Non-LatinX Total

18–24 years old 25–54 years old 55+ years old Total

Republican Democrat Total

Low perceived incivility High perceived incivility Total

Perceived incivility of name calling

Table 16.1 (continued)

246 92 558 896

82 459 355 896

896 0 896

400 462 862

N

27.46% 10.27% 62.28% 100.00%

9.15% 51.23% 39.62% 100.00%

100.00% 0.00% 100.00%

46.40% 53.60% 100.00%

Percent

Republicans

2.348 (0.8814)

2.3047 (0.6288)

0.0000 (0.0000)

Mean (SD) 0.5360 (0.4990)

519 658 449 1626

228 888 510 1626

0 1626 1626

613 954 1567

N

31.92% 40.47% 27.61% 100.00%

14.02% 54.61% 31.37% 100.00%

0.00% 100.00% 100.00%

39.12% 60.88% 100.00%

Percent

Democrats

1.9570 (0.7706)

2.1734 (0.6512)

1.0000 (0.0000)

Mean (SD) 0.6088 (0.4882)

765 750 1007 2522

310 1347 865 2522

896 1626 2522

1013 1416 2429

N

Total

30.33% 29.74% 39.93% 100.00%

12.29% 53.41% 34.30% 100.00%

35.53% 64.47% 100.00%

41.70% 58.30% 100.00%

Percent

2.0960 (0.8329)

2.2201 (0.6462)

0.6447 (0.4787)

Mean (SD) 0.5830 (0.4932)

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0= 1=

Gender

Female Male Total

503 393 896

56.14% 43.86% 100.00%

0.4386 (0.4965) 1032 594 1626

63.47% 36.53% 100.00%

0.3653 (0.4817) 1535 987 2522

60.86% 39.14% 100.00%

0.3914 (0.4882)

16 “Calling Out Our Own for Political Incivility? Identity and Shared. . . 355

Perceived incivility 1.000 0.1050 0.0563 0.1189 0.0678 0.0084 -0.0414

Norm violation 0.1050 1.0000 -0.0047 -0.0042 -0.0173 0.0112 -0.0100

Same vs. cross party 0.0563 -0.0047 1.0000 0.0107 0.0051 0.0257 0.0063

Note. Correlation matrix computed using listwise deletion of missing data

Perceived incivility Norm violation Same vs. cross party Party affiliation Age Race Gender

Table 16.2 Correlations for deception data (Total Sample N = 2333) Party affiliation 0.1189 -0.0042 0.0107 1.0000 -0.0914 -0.2296 -0.0783

Age 0.0678 -0.0173 0.0051 -0.0914 1.0000 0.2623 0.0510

Race 0.0084 0.0112 0.0257 -0.2296 0.2623 1.0000 -0.0028

Gender -0.0414 -0.0100 0.0063 -0.0783 0.0510 -0.0028 1.0000

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Table 16.3 Correlations for name-calling data, Republican subsample (N = 862) Perceived incivility 1.0000

Perceived incivility Norm violation condition Same vs. cross party condition Age Race Gender

Norm violation 0.1147

Same vs. cross party 0.0873

Age -0.0146

Race 0.0090

Sex -0.1203

0.1147

1.0000

-0.0135

0.0053

-0.0241

0.0074

0.0873

-0.0135

1.0000

0.0060

-0.0079

-0.0043

-0.0146 0.0090 -0.1203

0.0053 -0.0241 0.0074

0.0060 -0.0079 -0.0043

1.0000 0.2967 0.0300

0.2967 1.0000 -0.0566

0.0300 -0.0566 1.0000

Note. Correlation matrix computed using listwise deletion of missing data Table 16.4 Correlations for name-calling data, Democrat subsample (N = 1567)

Perceived incivility Norm violation Same vs. cross party Age Race Gender

Perceived incivility 1.0000

Norm violation 0.2363

Same vs. cross party 0.0691

Age 0.1191

Race 0.0226

Sex -0.0528

0.2363 0.0691

1.0000 -0.0085

-0.0085 1.0000

-0.0168 -0.0153

-0.0343 -0.0135

0.0069 -0.0444

0.1191 0.0226 -0.0528

-0.0168 -0.0343 0.0069

-0.0153 -0.0135 -0.0444

1.0000 0.2127 0.0437

0.2127 1.0000 -0.0050

0.0437 -0.0050 1.0000

Note. Correlation matrix computed using listwise deletion of missing data

and high vs. low norm-violation treatment condition are the key independent variables, along with gender, age, and race/ethnicity as controls, that predict the perceived incivility of name-calling. We then test H2a and H2b for deception, using the full sample and specifying models including the two treatment conditions and all four covariates, including partisanship. We also ran post-hoc tests to determine whether the effects of the independent variables are significantly different across Republicans and Democrats for name-calling. These results further support stratifying name-calling data by partisanship and are available on request from the authors.

16.4

Results

Plots of Predicted Probabilities Figure 16.1 depicts predicted probabilities for perceived incivility of name-calling, stratified by partisanship, within each of our experimental conditions. Figure 16.2 does this for deception, for the un-stratified sample. Predicted probabilities are from logit models with no covariates.

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.8

.8

Pr(Perceived High Incivility)

Pr(Perceived High Incivility)

A: Republicans 1

.6

.4

.2

.6

.4

.2

0

0 Low Norm Violation

High Norm Violation

Low Norm Violation

High Norm Violation

Same Party Condition Cross Party Condition Note: The lines with brackets at the top of each bar show the confidence intervals for the predicted probabilities

Fig. 16.1 Probability of perceiving high incivility of name-calling across experimental conditions. Note: The lines with brackets at the top of each bar show the confidence intervals for the predicted probabilities

Figure 16.1 displays two panels, Fig. 16.1a for Republicans and Fig. 16.1b for Democrats Each supports expectations. On average, Republicans and Democrats perceive more incivility in the cross-party speaker condition than in the same party speaker condition, and in the high norm violation condition than the low norm violation condition. Moving from left to right in both panels, the average likelihood of both Republicans and Democrats perceiving high incivility for the same name-calling increases monotonically. The lowest probability of perceiving high name-calling incivility is for Republicans and Democrats in the low norm-violation condition evaluating fellow partisans—0.43 and 0.45 respectively—and the highest probability is for Republicans and Democrats in the high norm-violation condition, egregious namecalling, evaluating opponents—0.65 and 0.75 respectively. The predicted probability of Republicans’ perceiving incivility by a Democrat in the low norm violation condition, a mild insult, is 0.52. For Democrats evaluating the same low normviolation by a Republican, it is 0.53. The predicted probability of perceiving incivility for Republicans in the same-party high norm violation condition is 0.55. For Democrats in the same-party condition evaluating the same high norm-violation, it is 0.69. These patterns are consistent with H1, which proposes that people are more likely to perceive insulting speech by a politician from their own party as less uncivil than the same speech by a politician from the opposing party. For deception, the predicted probabilities for perceived incivility by crossvs. same-party condition are consistent with H2b and not H2a (Fig. 16.2). Rather than perceiving equal incivility regardless of the speaker’s partisanship, the

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1

Pr(Perceived High Incivility)

.8

.6

.4

.2 Same Party Condition Cross Party Condition

0 Low Norm Violation

High Norm Violation

Note: The lines with brackets at the top of each bar show the confidence intervals for the predicted probabilities

Fig. 16.2 Probability of perceiving high incivility of deception across experimental conditions. Note: The lines with brackets at the top of each bar show the confidence intervals for the predicted probabilities

probability of perceiving incivility is higher for respondents evaluating a president from the opposing party. Figure 16.2 also shows that the perceived incivility of deception is higher for the high (vs. low) norm-violation condition. Moving from left to right in Fig. 16.2, on average, the probability of perceiving high incivility is highest for respondents in the high norm-violation (purposeful deception), crossparty condition (0.59), and second highest for respondents in the high normviolation, same-party condition (0.54). It is second to lowest for respondents in the low norm-violation (careless deception) cross-party condition (0.49), and lowest for respondents in the low norm-violation, same-party condition (0.42).

Hypothesis Testing Table 16.5 presents results from the estimated name-calling models, and Table 16.6 presents results for the estimated deception model. The tables present the average marginal effects of the focal cross- vs. same-party condition and of high- vs. low norm-violation condition, along with covariates, on perceived incivility of namecalling and deception.13 Effects of experimental treatments are causal; covariate effects are associational.

13 We checked for and found robust results for our hypothesis testing using a five-category measure as well as the binary measure for which we report results.

360 Table 16.5 Average marginal effects for perceptions of the incivility of name-calling for Republican and Democrat subsamples

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High norm-violation condition Cross-party speaker condition Age 25 to 54 vs. 18 to 24 55+ vs. 18 to 24 55+ vs. 25 to 54 Race/ethnicity Black vs. LatinX White vs. LatinX White vs. black Male

Republicans (N = 862) 0.117*** (0.033) 0.090** (0.033)

Democrats (N = 1567) 0.234*** (0.024) 0.068** (0.024)

-0.097 (0.058) -0.066 (0.061) 0.031 (0.037)

0.046 (0.037) 0.172*** (0.039) 0.125*** (0.026)

0.054 (0.060) 0.011 (0.040) -0.043 (0.056) -0.124*** (0.034)

0.018 (0.028) 0.002 (0.031) -0.016 (0.030) -0.058* (0.025)

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; two-tailed

We find evidence of partisan-based motivated reasoning for both Republicans and Democrats perceiving the incivility of insults/name-calling (Table 16.5). Consistent with H1, cross- vs. same-party average marginal effects are significant and sizeable for both Republicans and Democrats. Controlling for covariates, Democrats have a 0.068 greater probability of perceiving insults/name-calling by political opponents as high (vs. low), whereas Republicans have a 0.090 greater probability of perceiving insults/name-calling by political opponents as high (vs. low). These effects are not significantly different ( p > 0.1) across sub-samples. For both Republicans and Democrats, the causal effect of high (vs. low) normviolation is significant and larger than cross- vs. same-party effects. Democrats (0.234) are about twice as sensitive as Republicans (0.117) to perceiving incivility when moving from mild insult to full-blown name-calling. The post-hoc test verifies these effects differ significantly across subsamples ( p < 0.05). In support of H2b but not H2a, respondents seem to engage in partisan-based motivated reasoning when evaluating the incivility of a politician’s deception. As Table 16.6 shows, respondents evaluating deception by a president from the opposing party have a greater probability—by 0.054—of perceiving incivility of deception to be high (vs. low) than respondents evaluating the same deception by a fellowpartisan president. Respondents judging purposeful deception have a greater probability—by 0.107—of perceiving that incivility as high (vs. low) than respondents judging careless deception.

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Table 16.6 Average marginal effects for perceptions of the incivility of deception: full sample (N = 2333)

High norm-violation condition Cross-party speaker condition Democrat Age 25 to 54 vs. 18 to 24 55+ vs. 18 to 24 55+ vs. 25 to 54 Race/ethnicity Black vs. LatinX White vs. LatinX White vs. Black Male

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0.107*** (0.020) 0.054** (0.020) 0.146*** (0.023) 0.065* (0.032) 0.121*** (0.034) 0.056* (0.023) -0.037 (0.027) 0.018 (0.026) 0.055* (0.027) -0.032 (0.021)

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; two-tailed

With respect to covariates, both Republican and Democrat women are more sensitive than their male counterparts to name-calling incivility. However, on deception, men and women are equally likely to perceive high (vs. low) incivility, regardless of whether the speaker is a fellow partisan or opponent. Conversely, we find race/ethnic effects for deception but not for name-calling. White persons are significantly more sensitive than Black persons to deception’s incivility regardless of its source. There are no significant differences between Black and Latinx persons or White and Latinx persons. With respect to age, older age groups are significantly more likely than younger age groups to perceive deception as highly uncivil. With respect to the perceived incivility of name-calling, however, there are no significant age-group effects for Republicans. For Democrats, although there is no statistically significant contrast between those aged 18–24 and 25–54, there are significant contrasts between the oldest group (55+) and the younger groups. Democrats who are 55+ are more likely to perceive the incivility of name-calling as high (vs. low) relative to the younger groups. The size of these effects is especially large (0.172) for the contrast between oldest and youngest Democrats. Post hoc tests verify that age effects are significantly different across partisan sub-samples and greater for Democrats than Republicans ( p < 0.05).

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Finally, because there was no need to stratify our deception analysis by partisanship, we included partisanship as a covariate predicting perceived incivility of deception. Democrats are 0.146 more likely than Republicans to perceive deception’s incivility as high (vs. low), regardless of whether an opponent or fellow partisan perpetrates the deception. The effect is statistically significant. Effects for partisanship, as for gender, race/ethnicity, and age, must be interpreted as associations, not causal effects.

16.5

Discussion

Our vignettes reflect citizen concerns and media foci. For example, President Trump fed followers a steady diet of insults, targeted to opponents, and false claims of a stolen Presidential election. This behavior helped precipitate the January 2021 violent storming of the U.S. Capitol, suggesting how disastrous lying by presidents and presidential candidates can be. Using a survey experiment on a national sample of over 2500, we find that, for both Republicans and Democrats, partisan-based motivated reasoning reduces the likelihood of perceiving high (vs low) incivility of insulting speech when the source of the same uncivil act is a fellow partisan vs. opponent. This replication is important because the one similar prior national study (Muddiman, 2017, 2019, 2021) does not include covariates shaping perceived incivility. That study also uses real politicians with whom some respondents would have been familiar, meaning prior feelings about these figures may have shaped results. Our study, conducted on a demographically diverse national sample using experimental conditions involving hypothetical political figures, multiple norm-violation levels, and more refined analytic techniques, increases confidence that partisan-based motivated reasoning shapes the perceived incivility of insulting speech. A limitation of our test for name-calling, shared with prior studies, stems from trade-offs between internal and external validity. Enhancing the latter by presenting only speaker insults to opposition candidates means potentially confounding a cross- vs. fellow-partisan speaker effect with a cross- vs. fellow partisan target effect. This is because threat of identity non-verification—the mechanism incentivizing perceiving name-calling incivility by fellow partisans (vs. opponents) as less uncivil—also may incentivize viewing speakers who insult respondent’s fellow partisans (vs. opponents) as more uncivil. 14 14

Investigating emotional and behavioral responses to manipulated incivility rather than perceived incivility, Gervais’ (2017) argument employs social identity mechanisms. He demonstrates that participants respond to incivility differently depending on whether it is “disagreeable”—insulting messaging denigrating respondent’s party for its position on how best to reduce government debt— or “like-minded”—insulting messaging denigrating respondent’s opposition party for its position on that issue. The former on average caused respondents to experience anger; the latter did not. Messaging used neutral language depicting “party leaders” criticizing “the other side.” However,

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An ideal name-calling experiment would vary cross- vs. same-party speaker and cross-vs. same-party target, and then test for interactions between them. We suspect that the higher incivility associated with name-calling by a cross- (vs. same-) party speaker will intensify when the target of name-calling is a fellow partisan (vs. opponent). We nonetheless think our name-calling results show a crossvs. same-party speaker effect because we find the same effect for deception, and our deception vignette does not confound speaker and target. The falsehood in our deception vignette has no explicit partisan target. Its implicit target is the American public. Our most important contribution is theorizing and testing same- vs. cross-party effects on perceived incivility of deception. We could not directly test the accuracy vs. partisan-based motives undergirding our competing hypotheses. However, results are consistent with the predominance of partisan-based reasoning. Future research can test the two motives directly. As well, future research should directly measure the specific meanings persons associate with their political partisanship. Our results support our IT theorizing, in which perceptual control processes lead to dampening the perceived incivility of equally deceptive fellow partisans relative to political opponents. This theory shows how perceptual control processes relate to the goal of identity verification for all types of identities. In turn, this deepens our understanding of the nature of partisanbased motivated reasoning and helps explain why political scientists and psychologists find that partisan-based motivated reasoning influences many political attitudes and behaviors. At the same time, multiple meanings could be incorporated into identity standards based on partisan affiliation to motivate dampened perceptions of incivility for deception and insults/name-calling when perpetrated by our own relative to our opponents. Partisans could seek to verify that they support their fellow partisans, and/or that fellow partisans are honest, moral, and/or good people. Any of these identity standards are likely to motivate partisans to see their own as more civil. Future research should assess and/or manipulate the different meanings that constitute partisans’ identity standards so that we gain more empirical knowledge about political partisanship-based perceptual control. Such research should be informed both by IT’s emphasis on meanings associated with identity standards and SIT’s emphasis on the distinctions/oppositions that define “us” vs. “them.” This dual approach will allow us to further refine the concept of identity standards for social identities, and to specify from where these standards come. Because capacity to recognize incivility by one’s own party is necessary (albeit insufficient) for partisans to call out their own, and because our results strongly support the presence of partisan-based motivated reasoning in perceiving the message content implicitly signaled association with Democrats (to solve the debt crisis, the other party must agree to refrain from lowering corporate taxes), or Republicans (to solve the debt crisis, the other party must agree to cuts in social spending) (Gervais, 2017, pp. 392–393). Thus, though Gervais (2017) suggests the import of incivility’s targets rather than its sources, the experiment may confound the two.

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incivility of deception and of insults, we conclude that partisans of all stripes are dis-incentivized from calling out their own. Both behaviors, but perhaps especially deception, have dramatic negative consequences for U.S. democracy. Our findings mirror what we observe in the world: lambasting opponents for incivility while giving more of a “pass” to fellow partisans. Lambasting opponents for incivility probably exacerbates both incivility and political polarization. Where some politicians called out by their own might double-down on uncivil behavior, others might “dial down” their own incivility for strategic, if not identity reasons. Recall as well, that although consumers of falsehoods from fellow partisans in the world may presume that the information they consume is true, this option was not available to our respondents. In all conditions of deception, we emphasized that statements uttered were false. Our manipulation check showing that, on average, respondents found purposive deception more uncivil than careless deception, suggests they did recognize the falsehood. As implied above, our theorization and findings also move toward integrating SIT-derived predictions about political reasoning and behavior with the perceptual control and identity verification processes central to IT. In the first synthetic overview of IT and SIT, Hogg et al. (1995) note that both theories use many of the same terms but define them differently. Stets and Burke (2000) highlight different definitions of terms including identity salience, situationally primed for individuals within SIT but a core component of self for IT, in which identity salience is defined as the likelihood of invoking a given identity across situations. Nonetheless, Stets and Burke (2000, p. 224) argue: “linking the two theories can establish a more fully integrated view of the self.” We move in this direction. Our findings pertaining to the impact on perceived incivility of milder insults vs. full blown name-calling are as expected. The gender effects on perceived incivility of name calling for Republicans and Democrats, age effects on perceived incivility of deception, and age effects on perceived incivility of name-calling for Democrats also are as expected. Partisanship effects on perceptions of deception’s incivility, regardless of whether the deceptive speaker is a fellow partisan or opponent, are as expected.15

Because the deception involved inflating crime rates and this could help justify the “law and order” policies that Republicans, relative to Democrats, typically favor, it is possible that Republicans felt more inclined than Democrats to forgive it. This could have exacerbated Democrats’ sensitivity to the deception we used, regardless of whether the deceiver was one of their own or an opponent. Future research should test for partisan differences using deception scenarios that are neutral, those that favor Democratic policy preferences, and those that favor Republican policy preferences, so there is no confound with partisan valence. Any inadvertent partisan valence priming stemming from our choice of subject manner for deception does not manifest with respect to our focal same vs. cross-party treatment effect. If it had, it would have given Republicans lesser need to perceive fellow partisans’ deceptive incivility leniently, yet Republicans and Democrats exhibited no significant difference in apparent motivated reasoning in perceiving deception’s incivility. This enhances confidence in our core results pertaining to partisan-based motivated reasoning in perceiving deception’s incivility. 15

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However, whereas race has no significant impact on the perceived incivility of name calling, the fact that Black respondents perceive deception as less uncivil than White respondents is puzzling. Given the history of deception by the U.S. government and other authority figures, such as in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which ill Black males were not told their disease would not be treated (Brandt, 1978), we thought Black respondents might be more sensitive to deception than White respondents. Since our findings indicate the opposite, it is possible that Black persons perceive they are being taken advantage of by (White) authority figures lying to them so routinely that government deception is more normalized for Black persons than for White persons. Overall, we expect race/ethnic effects on perceived incivility to depend on the type of incivility and/or the perpetrator’s race. The name-calling in our study was not racialized. However, we might find race/ethnic effects when incivility entails using racial/ethnic slurs, milder forms of racialized insults, racial stereotyping, and namecalling denigrating non-Whites. Race/ethnic identity-based motivated reasoning may also incentivize more leniency in perceiving the same uncivil act when the perpetrator is of the same race/ethnic group as the respondent vs. another race/ethnic group. Consistent with our theory of partisan identity-based motivated reasoning in perceiving cross- vs. same-party incivility, we suggest that race/ethnic identitybased motivated reasoning should be greater in situations of racial threat, competition, and conflict that increase the salience of a person’s racial/ethnic identity as defined by SIT. This is good fodder for future research. Our study does have limitations. We failed to sample from the about 6% of the national voting-age population who exclusively identify as Native American or Asian American. Future research should include such respondents. The same vs. cross-party speaker effect we found for name-calling may have been intensified by targeting speaker insults to political opponents. Future research should avoid confounding speaker partisanship and target partisanship. This requires an even larger sample size than ours to accommodate more treatment conditions and any needed sample stratification, while maintaining adequate statistical power. We also failed to randomize vignette order. We do not think this affected our results for two reasons. First, the deception and name-calling vignettes reflect distinct dimensions of incivility (Stryker et al., 2016, 2022). Hence, it is unlikely that the vignette a participant reads first will influence their responses to the second vignette. Second, because all respondents encounter the deception vignette first, responses to that vignette could not have been primed by the name-calling vignette. Still, future research should randomize vignette order. Beyond remedying these limitations, we suggest the following avenues for fruitful further research. First, we add our voice to the chorus calling for examining the similarities and differences in responses to different types of political incivility (Conway & Stryker, 2021; Gervais, 2017, 2019; Kenski et al., 2017; Muddiman, 2019). Second, future research could include pure independents—those who do not indicate they lean toward Republicans or Democrats—to examine whether they perceive the same incivility perpetrated by Republicans and Democrats equally. Third and most important, researchers should explore factors that may moderate

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individuals’ tendency to engage in partisan-based motivated reasoning in perceiving incivility. Currently, we are examining factors such as political polarization and the subjective importance of political identity that may exacerbate partisan-based motivated reasoning. We invite others to identify factors that may mitigate partisan-based motivated reasoning and help partisans recognize and perhaps even call out political incivility perpetrated by their own. Acknowledgement We thank the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona, and the Cal Poly College of Liberal Arts for supporting this project. We presented earlier versions of this chapter at the 2019 National Institute for Civil Discourse Research Conference, Tucson, Arizona, the 2020 meeting of the American Sociological Association, and the 2021 Identity Conference, Roanoke, Virginia. We thank participants at these conferences, especially Jan Stets and Scott Savage, and this volume’s editors for helpful comments. We thank Teppei Yamamoto, Shawn Bauldry, Trenton Mize, Richard Serpe and Robb Willer for technical advice.

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Chapter 17

Please Don’t Go: How Group Identity and Endorsement Affect Retention in a Reciprocal Exchange Network Scott V. Savage and David Melamed

17.1

Introduction

When structurally disadvantaged actors have an opportunity to join an alternative network, why would they remain in the very networks that disadvantage them? For example, why do employed individuals sometimes stay in lower-paid jobs after receiving better job offers from other companies? Or when children choose between two friendship networks (Adler & Adler, 1995), why might relatively powerless children stay in a friendship network that disadvantages them? We argue here that group identity meanings are critical to explaining this choice and that prior interaction will influence the strength of these meanings following an exit opportunity. We approach this question by viewing interactions as reciprocal exchanges between individuals embedded within larger network structures (Molm & Cook, 1995; Savage & Sommer, 2016). Existing work suggests that exchange frequency, conceptualized for reciprocal exchanges as the back-and-forth of reciprocal giving, can increase personal attractions, or idiosyncratic interpersonal attachments to specific others or relationships (Hogg, 1992), in static exchange networks where there is no possibility of changing the power structure (e.g., Molm et al., 2007). Building on that work, we argue that having an opportunity to leave or exit an existing reciprocal exchange network, such as the interactions with coworkers at a place of employment, can trigger identity processes that ultimately affect whether structurally disadvantaged individuals leave the network.

S. V. Savage (✉) University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] D. Melamed The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. E. Stets et al. (eds.), Advancing Identity Theory, Measurement, and Research, Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32986-9_17

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An identity consists of the meanings individuals have for themselves as persons (person identities), role occupiers (role identities), or group members (group identities). The likelihood of an identity being activated according to identity theory is a function of the number and quality of one’s relationships based on that identity (Stryker et al., 2005). Further, once an identity is activated, it will guide people to behave to align meanings in the situation with meanings in the identity standard or the self-meanings about who one is in a situation (Burke & Stets, 2009). Based on this logic, we propose that under the right exchange conditions, opportunities to leave one network and join another can elicit an underlying group identity in structurally disadvantaged people within the original network. When this occurs, disadvantaged individuals should be more likely to stay in the network. Moreover, stronger group identity meanings should effectively minimize the impact of other network members endorsing the act of staying on actually staying. In this way, we explain how structures of interaction set the stage for identity processes that help perpetuate inequality in reciprocal exchange networks. Below, we draw out our predictions in detail. We first highlight relevant exchange network theories before describing how the frequency of reciprocal exchanges may prime group identification and group identity meanings. We also consider how legitimation (Weber, 1978 [1924]) figures in this process because of its clear implications and presence in organizational settings (Dornbusch & Scott, 1975). Based on this discussion, we develop eight hypotheses that we test with a controlled laboratory experiment. After reviewing these results, we discuss the implications of these findings for research on social stability and change, and for the perpetuation of inequality (Johnson & Ford, 1996; Stryker, 1994).

17.2

Structural Disadvantage, Group Identities, and Staying in Networks

Social exchange theorists recognize that actors’ ability to amass resources when interacting with others in a network depends in part on their place in the network structure (Emerson, 1972; Savage & Whitham, 2018; Willer, 1999). According to power-dependence theorists, two aspects of a network affect the ability to obtain valued resources: the number of possible alternatives and the value of the connections between the actors in the network (Cook et al., 1983; Yamagishi et al., 1988). To see why, consider a three-person line network where a central actor interacts with two peripheral actors over the distribution of equivalent resource pools and where an exchange in one relation precludes an exchange in another. Here the central actor is power advantaged because both peripheral actors must give resources to the central actor to entice the central actor to give to them. Consequently, the central actor should receive more than he or she gives. How much more, however, depends on the value of the linkages connecting actors. For example, in the three-person line network noted above, if the central actor

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valued resources from one of the two peripheral actors more, the central actor would be willing to forego exchanging with the other peripheral actor to convince the preferred partner to give. Thus, by considering both who is connected to whom as well as the value of those connections, power-dependence theorists make predictions about how the availability of alternatives affects resource distributions across the positions of an exchange network. Power-imbalanced exchange networks are those networks where the structure makes some actors more dependent than other actors for resources and thus, at a power disadvantage. Negatively connected power-imbalanced networks, where exchange in one relation precludes exchange in another, can be classified as either strong or weak power structures (Markovsky et al., 1993). While strong power structures guarantee that at least one actor will be excluded from exchange, weak power structures do not. Consequently, weak power structures afford actors greater opportunity to affect the outcomes of exchange through strategy since outcomes are not as determined by the structure of exchange. For example, person identities associated with fairness and dominance and the identity verification process affect the inequality that emerges in these power imbalanced networks (Savage et al., 2017; Stets et al., 2018, 2020; Burke et al., 2021). Specifically, this work shows that identity processes can exacerbate or curb structural pressures toward inequality by prompting exchange behaviors that reflect both differences in structural position and the identities of the individuals in those positions. Although that research illuminates how different person identities affect resource distributions in static power imbalanced networks, it ignores how exchange processes can give rise to group identity meanings, and how these meanings might affect the relative stability of these networks. Emerson (1972) thought that imbalances in the distributions of value and alternatives would destabilize exchange networks, as relatively disadvantaged actors worked to overcome their greater dependency by changing the structure of the network either through coalition formation or network expansion. In coalition formation, disadvantaged actors bond together to improve their bargaining power by negotiating as one. In network expansion, actors add new exchange partners and thus, reduce the advantage of the powerful by giving themselves alternatives. These mechanisms help remedy structural disadvantages (Abra, 2005; Cook & Gillmore, 1984; Leik, 1992; Willer & Willer, 2000). Blau (1964), however, questioned whether structural disadvantage was itself enough to motivate such power balancing actions. He contended instead that power-imbalanced networks could become institutionalized and persist despite producing inequality. Savage and Sommer (2016) partially reconcile these contradictory views. They find a positive relationship between the strength of one’s group identity meanings of attachment, obligation, and belonging to the others in a network and the likelihood of structurally disadvantaged actors staying in the network when given the opportunity to join a new network and show that the form of exchange prior to the exit opportunity affects the strength of these identity meanings. Specifically, they argue and show that disadvantaged individuals in reciprocal exchange networks are more likely to remain in them than are disadvantaged individuals in negotiated exchange

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networks. And this is because they express stronger group identity meanings of attachment, obligation, and belonging when given the opportunity to join a new network. That is, experiencing reciprocity effectively primes disadvantaged individuals to invoke positive meanings associated with group membership upon learning of an exit opportunity. Self-categorization theory, a theory in the social identity approach, explains why. According to self-categorization theory, a situation prompts a group identity when categorization minimizes intra-class differences relative to inter-class differences and when past experiences and present aims prime individuals to view categories of people as groups (Turner et al., 1994). An exit opportunity always introduces categorical or class distinction into a situation. Unlike negotiated exchange, a history of reciprocal exchange readies disadvantaged actors to activate a group identity upon learning about the opportunity to join another network. Disadvantaged actors perceive reciprocal exchanges as less conflictual and fairer than negotiated exchanges (Molm et al., 2003, 2006). Consequently, disadvantaged individuals in reciprocal exchange networks are more likely to express greater personal attraction, or idiosyncratic interpersonal attachment to a specific exchange partner (Molm et al., 2007). These differences in personal attraction for specific exchange partners across negotiated and reciprocal exchange matter because they affect how individuals psychologically respond to the exit opportunity. Specifically, the strength of one’s personal attraction to specific exchange partners should positively affect whether the exit opportunity operates to increase perceptions of commonality within the group and minimize intra-class differences relative to inter-class differences (Hogg & Turner, 1985; Turner & Reynolds, 2012). That is, key to Savage and Sommer’s (2016) argument is that differences in personal attraction across the two forms of direct exchange prime disadvantaged individuals to respond to the exit opportunity differently. In reciprocal exchange, the exit opportunity results in stronger group identity meanings and as a consequence, a greater likelihood of disadvantaged actors staying in their networks. This is the least one can do if she is working to enact the identity, as identity theory would suggest (Burke & Stets, 2009). Although this finding explains why disadvantaged actors are more likely to stay in reciprocal exchange networks than negotiated exchange networks, it does not explain differences in why relatively disadvantaged actors in reciprocal exchange networks might opt to stay in them when given the chance to leave. Here we turn to literature which shows that the frequency of exchange can also affect the bonds that develop between actors (Burke & Stets, 1999; Lawler & Yoon, 1993, 1996, 1998; Thye et al., 2011). Differences in exchange frequency, or the number of times actors of exchange allocate resources to one another, affect the personal attractions that develop between actors, which again set the stage for people responding to the exit opportunity by enacting stronger group identity meanings. Of particular importance for disadvantaged actors is how strongly they are attracted to their structurally advantaged partner, as this exchange relationship frames the disadvantaged actor’s exchange experience, both in terms of actual earnings and perceived inequality. Thus, as described previously, differences in personal attractions to one’s exchange

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H1 Exchange Frequency with Focal Actor

H2

Aracon to Focal Actor

Group Identy Meanings H4

H3 Aracon to Other Actor

Exit Opportunity

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Staying Interest

H5

Staying H7

H8 Informaon About Alternave H6 Endorsement

Fig. 17.1 Model of staying behavior

partner should influence how disadvantaged actors respond to the exit opportunity, with those who express stronger attractions for specific exchange partners indicating stronger group identity meanings. The consequences for leaving are straightforward. Identity theorists contend that people work to enact their identities by behaving in ways that are consistent with the identity standard (Burke & Stets, 2009). For group identities, this involves individuals favoring their in-groups relative to relevant out-groups (Bergami & Bagozzi, 2000; Ellemers et al., 1999). This is because once activated, the group identity comes with meanings or expectations about what a group member should do (group norms) as well as individual-level motives, such as uncertainty reduction, that pressure individuals to enact behaviors that are consistent with the identity. Therefore, we should expect that when given the opportunity to leave one’s proximate social structure for another, stronger group identity meanings of attachment, obligation, and belonging should increase one’s interest in staying in the network and ultimately, have a positive effect on whether an individual actually stays. Based on the above, we predict the following and model these relationships in Fig. 17.1, with each hypothesis identified on its corresponding path: Hypothesis 1: More frequent reciprocal exchanges with structurally advantaged exchange partners will positively affect disadvantaged actors’ personal attraction to structurally advantaged exchange partners. Hypothesis 2: The more attracted disadvantaged actors are to their structurally advantaged exchange partners, the stronger the group identity meanings the actors will express after receiving an opportunity to leave their exchange network for an alternative one.

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Hypothesis 3: Stronger group identity meanings will positively affect disadvantaged actors’ interest in staying in their current exchange network. Hypothesis 4: Stronger group identity meanings will positively affect whether structurally disadvantaged actors choose to stay in their exchange network. Hypothesis 5: Interest in staying will positively affect whether structurally disadvantaged actors choose to stay in their exchange network. Hypothesis 5a: Interest in staying will mediate the relationship between group identity meanings and staying.

17.3

Legitimacy and Social Stability

Our focus so far has been on the individual psychological processes by which group identity meanings emerge in networks of self-interested actors and what this means for network stability absent group pressure. Now, we consider whether having other members of the network endorse the act of staying changes the relationship between group identity meanings and staying for actors in a weak power, reciprocal exchange network. Research suggests that the legitimacy of an act can pressure individuals into enacting behaviors with which they might otherwise disagree. Weber (1978 [1924]) contended that legitimacy rests on the belief that actions are or should be governed by a norm or normative system. At the collective level, legitimacy “exists when norms, values, beliefs, and procedures are treated as matters of objective fact” (Zelditch & Walker, 2003: 219). This type of legitimacy is called validity. There are two sources of validity: authorization and endorsement. Authorization exists when higher order authorities or super-ordinates support a particular social order. Endorsement, on the other hand, comes from the support of peers for particular values, beliefs, or actions. Validity often overrides personal beliefs about the acceptability of a particular social object or behavior (Walker, 1988; Walker et al., 1986, 1991). Socially valid systems that legitimize a position, person, or act via endorsement or authorization are likely to gain people’s support for that position, person, or act. Thus, socially valid systems secure compliance from even those individuals who are disadvantaged by them, thereby perpetuating existing social inequalities (Berger et al., 1998; Ridgeway & Berger, 1986; Stryker, 1994; Zelditch & Walker, 1984). Legitimacy theory, then, suggests that whether disadvantaged actors elect to stay in a power-imbalanced network depends on whether staying gains social validation. Consequently, we expect individuals to be more likely to stay in their networks if others endorse doing so. Moreover, we should expect the effect of endorsement to vary by one’s group identity.1 Those with stronger group identity meanings are likely to stay in a network

1

We focus on endorsement and leave open whether authorization has the same effects.

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with or without endorsement, because staying expresses their identity as a group member. For those who have not enacted a group identity or who do not have strong group identities, choosing to stay in the network does not express an identity. These individuals are swayed more by others’ endorsement for staying. Consequently, if remaining in a power-imbalanced exchange network gains validity through endorsement, we expect individual actors, even those disadvantaged by the structure, to be more likely to stay. This effect will matter most for those who do not identify with the group. We, therefore, predict the following and depict these in the latter portion of Fig. 17.1: Hypothesis 6: Endorsement for staying will positively affect whether structurally disadvantaged actors choose to stay in their exchange network. Hypothesis 7: Group identity meanings of attachment, obligation, and belonging will moderate the effect of endorsement for the act of staying on whether structurally disadvantaged actors choose to stay in their network.

17.4

Information About an Alternative Network

In addition to group identification and endorsement, the information actors have about an alternative network should affect an actor’s interest in remaining in the current network. Exchange theory assumes self-interested actors (Savage & Whitham, 2018). Consequently, actors who have an opportunity to join an alternative network will try to compare the potential benefits of the new network to those of the existing network. Although an actor cannot know how actors in the alternative exchange network will behave, disadvantaged actors who know that the alternative network has the same structural conditions as their existing network have no reason to expect more resources from the alternative. Thus, they have little incentive to leave. In contrast, when disadvantaged actors know nothing about the alternative network, their history of disadvantage should lead them to view moving to the alternative network as a possible way to improve their situation, making them less interested in staying. Thus, we predict the following, as shown in Fig. 17.1: Hypothesis 8: Actors will have greater interest in staying if they know an alternative network is structurally like their existing network than if they know nothing about the alternative network. Taken together, our eight hypotheses describe how exchange frequency in proximate social structures characterized by reciprocal exchange primes disadvantaged actors in such a way as to affect whether identity processes motivate individuals to stay in their networks when given the opportunity to leave them.

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Method

We test these predictions with data from a laboratory experiment. To increase experimental control, undergraduate students exchanged with two computersimulated actors to earn money in what they believed was a four-actor exchange network. Participants did not know that the other actors in the network were simulated. Also, having them believe that there was a fourth member of the exchange network who they did not exchange with allowed us to investigate how interactions with only a subset of individuals in a network affect group identity meanings for the larger network. Moreover, it allows for the examination of these processes in one well-studied, negatively connected, weak power exchange network. Structurally disadvantaged participants engaged in a series of exchanges whereby they gave points, worth money, to one of their two exchange partners without knowing whether or when these exchange partners would give points to them. Our focus is on how variation in giving behavior by these disadvantaged participants affect group identity following an exit opportunity, and what this means for staying in the network. The amount of money participants received depended on the exchanges they made with their partners.

Design and Participants Social exchange theory assumes actors value the resources they can gain from exchanges (Molm & Cook, 1995). To meet this scope condition (Walker & Cohen, 1985), we recruited 64 undergraduate students from a large public university based on their desire to earn money, the exchange resource in the experiment.2 These students were randomly assigned to one of four different conditions: low vs. high information about an alternative network and no endorsement of the act of staying vs. endorsement. We allowed giving behaviors to emerge organically in the experiment, although we programmed the responses of simulated actors to these acts of giving to create equal amounts of inequality across conditions. For control purposes, we counter-balanced on participant sex, assigning equal numbers of men and women to each cell.3

2

Seventy undergraduate students actually participated. Data from two students was excluded because they did not believe they were interacting with real people. Data for four others was unusable because of a power outage during the experimental session. 3 This is consistent with procedures typically used in exchange research (Molm et al., 2013), and preliminary analyses reveal no gender effects.

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Procedures Individuals participated in the study by engaging in a series of reciprocal exchanges with two exchange partners in what they believed was a fixed, four-person exchange network. Exchange partners were simulated actors designed to mimic real exchange behavior, but participants did not know this. We relied on simulated actors to ensure comparable earnings for the same exchange behaviors. We say more about the programming of these simulated actors later. All participants were unknowingly placed in a low power position within this weak power exchange network. Figure 17.2 illustrates this, with ‘SLP’ representing the participant’s relatively low power place in the network. Participants had one equal power exchange partner (Z) and one advantaged exchange partner (Xfocal). Participants could receive 2 points from Z and 6 points from Xfocal. The greater benefits that Xfocal could provide, combined with the fact that Xfocal also had a high value relation with Y, meant that participants were more dependent on Xfocal for resources. As a result, they were at a power disadvantage. Placing all participants in this disadvantaged position enabled us to study how endorsement and information affect staying behaviors for structurally disadvantaged actors in a weak power, reciprocal exchange network. Although multiple people could participate in the experiment at the same time, no two people encountered one another during the experiment, ensuring that any group identity meanings arose from exchange processes rather than extra-experimental encounters or relative status. Exchange opportunities were divided into three distinct exchange phases, with two different questionnaires coming between the phases. After arriving, participants were led to isolated rooms where they received an introduction to the experiment. They were told that the experiment would require them to interact with other participants via a computer network, and that through these interactions they would earn money. They also were told that detailed instructions for the experiment would appear on the computer terminal as soon as all participants had arrived. This, of course, was just intended to prompt them to believe they were interacting with other humans. Instructions informed subjects that the amount of money they earned would depend on their interactions with other participants. Specifically, participants learned that they would have two exchange partners who each had a common alternative partner. A diagram of this exchange network appeared on participants’ screens and Xfocal

Y

SLP

Z

Note: Solid lines represent high valueexchange relations; dashed lines represent low value exchange relations

Fig. 17.2 Network exchange structure for participants

382 Fig. 17.3 Network exchange structure on participants’ screen. Note: Participants were told that they were ‘S,’ and that they could exchange with ‘X’ and ‘Z’

S. V. Savage and D. Melamed X

Y

S

Z

can be seen in Fig. 17.3. Participants did not know they were structurally disadvantaged, because they only knew the values of the relations in which they were capable of exchanging. The instructions also taught participants how to exchange with their partners. Participants were informed that they would interact with their exchange partners over a series of exchanges, but that on any one exchange they would only be able to give points to one partner.4 Although they knew of the potential benefits they could receive from each partner on each exchange opportunity, they did not know if either of their partners would give them points on each exchange opportunity and thus, had to decide to whom they would give without this information. Giving points did not result in givers losing points from their total. Following the instructions, the experiment began with individuals participating in a series of exchange opportunities with their two simulated exchange partners. The completion of each exchange resulted in participants receiving information about who gave them points and how many points they received. Total earnings were updated and reported. Participants did not receive any information about the profits earned by their exchange partners. Not having this information reduced the likelihood of equity effects (Cook & Emerson, 1978) and enhanced the uncertainty associated with the exchanges (Molm et al., 2000). With repeated interaction, personal attractions to specific exchange partners were possible, as subjects were able to make inferences about the character of their two exchange partners from their behaviors. These repeated exchange opportunities occurred in three phases, with the number of exchange opportunities varying in each phase. The first phase of exchange stopped after 100 exchange opportunities. Subjects were informed that they were part way through the experiment and asked to answer a few questions about their interactions with their two exchange partners. Questions asked about participants’ dyadic relationships and attraction to specific exchange partners. The second exchange phase began once they had answered these questions. This phase stopped after another 40 exchange opportunities. Participants were told they had been randomly selected for a unique opportunity: At some point in the next part of the experiment they could begin interacting with a new set of people should they want to stop interacting with the people with whom they had been interacting. The amount of information participants received about this alternative network varied by the condition to which they were randomly assigned, either low or high information.

4

That is, subjects exchanged in negatively connected networks.

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They then were asked to answer a battery of questions they were told might help them choose. Questions (described below) first evaluated group identity meanings by assessing how much participants felt attached to, obligated to, and a sense of belonging with the three other members in the network as a collective, and then each person’s interest in leaving the network. Once participants completed the second questionnaire, the third phase of exchange started. After another 20 additional exchanges, participants were given the opportunity to join the alternative network. The experiment ended as soon as they made the choice to leave or not. All participants were then debriefed and paid.

Programming of Simulated Actors To create the simulated actors, we modified a program used for a previous social exchange experiment (Molm et al., 2006). Simulated actors were programmed to behave in realistic and believable ways, appropriate to their structural position, and were informed by behavioral data from previous exchange experiments in which all actors were human subjects (Molm et al., 2000). Participants had one high power simulated exchange partner (the focal partner) and one low power simulated exchange partner (the other partner), each of which had another high power exchange partner in common. The behaviors of the focal partner were set to disadvantage the low power participant, so he or she received, on average, 5 points for every 7 points the simulated actor received from the participant. To create this 5/7 split between participants and focal partners, the program manipulated how often the simulated actor reciprocated the participant’s giving. Specifically, the focal actor was programmed to reciprocate the participant’s giving only 5 of every 7 times. To create this ratio, we adjusted the probability of the simulated actor giving after receiving and the probability of the simulated actor giving after not receiving. The probability of giving after receiving was set at 0.68 and the probability of giving after not receiving was set at 0.03 (i.e., 5/7 ffi 0.71). This created the desired 5 to 7 ratio. The behaviors of the other partner were programmed to create, on average, equal value exchanges between the low power participant and the simulated actor. To create this ratio, we relied on a stochastic tit-for-tat strategy, whereby the probability of the simulated actor giving after receiving was 0.85 and the probability of the simulated actor giving after not receiving was 0.15.

Manipulations Endorsement Participants were randomly placed into one of two endorsement conditions, which varied the amount of information participants had about the staying intentions of

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their exchange partners. In the no endorsement condition, participants knew nothing about the staying intentions of their exchange partners. In the endorsement condition, participants were told that when asked if they would leave the exchange network if given the chance to do so, all three of the other people in the network indicated that they would remain in it.

Alternative Network Information We randomly assigned participants to one of two information conditions, which varied the amount of information they were given about the alternative network. In the first condition, participants were told they could exchange in an alternative network, but they knew nothing about the structural dimensions of the network (the availability of alternative partners, the relative value of exchange with alternative partners, and the number of alternative partners). In the second condition, participants knew they could exchange in an alternative network that had the same structure as their existing one. That is, they knew that the only real difference between their existing network and the alternative network would be the people with whom they interacted.

Measures Exchange Frequency We measure the exchange frequency with the focal actor during each phase of the experiment by dividing the number of acts of giving to the focal actor by the total number of exchange opportunities. In this, we capture differences in reciprocity insofar as the simulated actors were programmed to respond to such giving in set ways. Exchange with the focal actor is more important, as it is where participants experience power disadvantage. Moreover, not exchanging with the focal actor meant exchanging with the other simulated actor. Thus, this measure allows us to assess how individual differences in the giving behaviors of structurally disadvantaged people sets the stage for processes we describe. Exchange frequencies ranged in value from 0 to 1 for each exchange relation.

Personal Attraction Personal attraction refers to interpersonal attachments to specific exchange partners. Participants independently evaluated each of their two dyadic exchange relationships along the following dimensions: divided/united, self-oriented/team-oriented, coming apart/coming together, and partners/adversaries (e.g., Molm et al., 2007). Responses for each item ranged from 1 to 7, with higher scores indicating greater

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relational solidarity. We created a relational solidarity scale for each participant’s two exchange relationships by averaging scores on the four items. The items for the focal exchange relationship were reliable (α = 0.83) as were the items for the other simulated actor (α = 0.87).

Group Identity Meanings We also measured participants’ self-meanings as group members. After participants were made aware of the alternative network, they were asked three questions designed to measure group identity meanings (Bargozzi & Lee, 2002; Savage & Sommer, 2016). All items ranged in value from 1 to 7, with higher scores indicating stronger group identity. One item had participants indicate whether they felt very unattached/very attached to the set of participants in their existing network. This is consistent with identity theory’s notion of affective commitment. A second item asked participants to describe how much obligation (very little/very much) they felt towards the other participants with whom they had been interacting. This item taps into understandings about what one ought to do as a group member (Marcussen, 2006). Third, participants indicated the extent to which they felt a sense of belonging (very low/very high) with the other participants who comprised their network. These items are reliable (α = 0.82),5 and while they diverge from traditional identity measures, they all tap into critical meanings associated with the group membership.

Staying Intentions Immediately after gauging group identification and before giving subjects the opportunity to leave their networks, we asked how interested (very interested/not interested) they were in leaving the set of people with whom they had been interacting to join a new set of people. Responses to this item ranged from 1 to 7, with higher values indicating the desire to stay in their existing network.

Staying Behaviors We assessed staying behaviors by having participants choose whether they wanted to join the alternative exchange structure or not (1 = chose to stay in their existing network; 0 = chose to leave).

A factor analysis with varimax rotation found the ‘belonging’ item loaded on both group formation and personal attraction for the focal partner. Nevertheless we retained this item because removing the item does not alter any substantive conclusions and it was used in Savage and Sommer (2016).

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Table 17.1 Means (and Standard Deviations) of variables by experimental conditions (N = 64) Measures Personal attraction Focal actor Other actor Group identity meanings Staying interest Staying behavior Exchange frequency with focal actor Phase 1b Exchange frequency with focal actor Phase 2 Exchange frequency with focal actor Phase 3

No endorsement Low info High info

Endorsement Low info High infoa

4.94 (1.04) 3.28 (1.20) 4.14 (1.04) 4.00 (2.00) 0.5 0.73 (0.11) 0.78 (0.16) 0.81 (0.19)

4.78 (1.28) 4.11 (1.44) 4.15 (1.30) 2.69 (1.54) 0.56 0.67 (0.12) 0.73 (0.14) 0.72 (0.19)

4.48 (1.22) 3.75 (1.19) 4.44 (0.97) 4.19 (1.91) 0.5 0.65 (0.15) 0.69 (0.18) 0.72 (0.17)

4.55 (0.91) 3.73 (1.09) 3.85 (1.48) 4.38 (2.09) 0.75 0.69 (0.12) 0.70 (0.20) 0.75 (0.20)

a Those in the high info conditions knew the alternative network had the same structure as their existing one. Those in the low info condition knew nothing about the structural dimensions of the alternative network b Mean proportion of opportunities on which the subject exchanged with the high-power simulated actor during that phase

17.6

Results

Table 17.1 presents descriptive statistics for each key measure by condition. These descriptive statistics offer a broad overview of the measures informing the theoretical model, but they do not speak to the actual processes as described in Fig. 17.1. To test our ideas about the antecedents of group identity as well as the direct and moderating effects of group identity on staying, we rely on a series of OLS and logistic regression analyses.6 We begin by establishing that differences in exchange behavior produce differences in group identity meanings following the exit opportunity. Our argument hinges on the idea that past exchange behaviors will affect how attracted disadvantaged actors are to their exchange partners, and that personal attraction will positively affect whether the exit opportunity triggers stronger group identity meanings. Moreover, because disadvantaged actors primarily interact with the structurally

6

An alternative modeling approach would be to test the entire causal model using a generalized structural equation model that allows for both binary and continuous endogenous variables. We ran such a model and the results (presented in Appendix A) mirror those we report here. Nevertheless, because of the complexity of this SEM relative to our sample size, we elected to present a series of regression analyses that meet conventional guidelines concerning sample size. That our findings do not change regardless of analytic strategy only strengthens confidence in these results.

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advantaged partner, we suspect that this relationship is more important for this process. OLS regression analyses confirm these predictions. Regressing a disadvantaged actor’s personal attraction for the advantaged (focal) partner on exchange frequency with that partner reveals a clear positive relationship. Specifically, for a unit increase in exchange frequency with the focal partner, personal attraction toward that partner increases by 3.66 ( p < 0.001, two-tailed), as Hypothesis 1 predicted. A second regression model reveals the consequence of this for the alternative partner, as a one unit increase in exchange frequency with the focal partner decreases personal attraction toward the other partner by 5.20 ( p < 0.001, two-tailed). Because the errors on these two outcomes are necessarily correlated, we also ran a seemingly unrelated regression. Results replicated those from the OLS regression. These personal attractions, in turn, affect group identity meanings. A regression analysis of group identity meanings on an individual’s personal attraction for each partner, controlling for exchange frequency with the focal partner, shows that following the exit opportunity, a one unit increase in personal attraction for the focal actor increased group identity meanings by 0.55 ( p < 0.001, two-tailed). The amount of information participants had about the alternative network had no effect on group identity meanings. Although this finding is generally consistent with our logic, our experimental design precludes us from concluding unequivocally that the relationship between personal attractions and group identity meanings is contingent on the exit opportunity. To better establish this, we rely on data from 18 individuals who completed 100 reciprocal exchange opportunities before responding to the question items and who did not receive the opportunity to leave the network. Regression analyses on these data show a relationship between exchange frequency and personal attraction for the focal partner ( p < 0.001, two-tailed), but not between personal attraction for the focal partner and group identity meanings (n.s.). This finding along with that of the previous experiment supports Hypothesis 2: following the opportunity to leave one’s network for another, disadvantaged actors’ personal attractions affect the strength of group identity meanings. That the exit opportunity produces differences in group identity meanings sets the stage for the remainder of our argument about how these meanings and endorsement affect disadvantaged actors staying in their networks. First, we assess whether group identity meanings and the amount of information about the alternative network affect interest in staying in one’s existing network. We report these results in Table 17.2. Consistent with Hypothesis 3, the results show the importance of group identity for in-group preferences, as actors with higher group identity meanings expressed more interest in staying in the network ( p < 0.001). As Hypothesis 8 predicted, actors expressed more interest in staying if they knew the alternative was structurally similar ( p = 0.009). Given these findings, we examine how these factors as well as endorsement influence whether disadvantaged actors ultimately stay. Table 17.3 presents results from two logistic regression models designed to test this part of our argument. Model 1 regresses staying on group identity meanings, interest in staying, endorsement, information, and exchange frequency with the focal

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Table 17.2 Unstandardized OLS regression coefficients for staying interest (N = 64) Independent variable Group identity meanings

Coefficient (S.E) 0.68*** (0.16) 1.16** (1.36) 1.41 (1.28) -0.61 (1.13)

Information Exchange frequency with focal actor at Phase 2 Constant *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 (two-tailed tests) Table 17.3 Logistic regression coefficients for staying (N = 64) Independent variable Group identity meanings (GI) Staying interest Endorsement Information about alternative Exchange frequency with focal actor at phase 3

Model 1 0.91** (0.34) 0.81** (0.27) 2.35** (0.85) 0.95 (0.79) 3.93+ (2.16)

GI x endorsement Constant Pseudo-R2 AIC BIC

-10.79*** (3.29) 0.41 63.85 76.81

Model 2 2.41* (1.03) 0.90** (0.32) 11.28* (5.26) 0.27 (0.89) 4.67+ (2.45) -2.04+ (1.13) -18.25** (6.21) 0.46 60.77 75.88

Model 3 2.48* (1.02) 0.91** (0.31) 11.80* (5.07)

4.56+ (2.43) -2.16* (1.07) -18.41** (6.28) 0.46 58.86 71.81

+p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 (two-tailed tests)

actor. Results support Hypotheses 4, 5, and 6, as group identity meanings, one’s initial interest in staying, and endorsement all affect staying in one’s network ( p = 0.007, p = 0.003, and p = 0.005, respectively [two-tailed test]). Information about the alternative network did not affect whether actors stayed. Although these findings support key components of our argument, they do not address whether group identity meanings moderate the effect of endorsement, nor do they determine whether initial interest in staying mediates some of the relationship between group identity meanings and staying. Hypothesis 7 predicted an interaction between endorsement and group identity meanings, such that endorsement would matter most among those who expressed weaker group identity meanings. Model

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Table 17.4 Logistic regression coefficients reduced model for staying (N = 64)a

Independent variable Group identity meanings Exchange frequency with focal actor at phase 3 Endorsement Constant Staying interest

Model 1b Coefficient (S.E.) 1.29*** (0.37) 3.16 (2.04) 1.99* (0.79) -8.11 (2.52)

Model 2 Coefficient (S.E.) 0.77* (0.31) 3.18 (2.04) 2.13** (0.80) -9.05 (2.69) 0.79** (0.25)

Change in β Coefficient (S.E.) 0.53* (0.21)

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 (two-tailed tests) a The change in coefficients was computed using the KHB method (N = 64) b The coefficients from this model differ from a standard logistic regression model because the residualized group identity meanings measure is included in the model. We do not report the coefficient for the residual

2 reveals the predicted negative effect ( p = 0.036, one-tailed test) supporting H7.7 This effect becomes significant at the 0.05 level using a two-tailed test when we remove the information variable from the model. Model 3 presents these results. With an AIC of 58.86 and a BIC of 71.81, this model fits the data better, strengthening our confidence in this finding. Finally, Hypothesis 5a predicts that initial staying interests will mediate the relationship between group identity meanings and staying. To test this, we use the KHB method for testing mediation effects in logit models (Karlson et al., 2012). We find that interest in staying partially mediates the relationship between group identity meanings and staying. Table 17.4 presents findings from a reduced model excluding the endorsement by group identity meanings interaction term. Adding the interaction does not change the finding, but it unnecessarily complicates the model. For that reason, we present the reduced model. It shows that initial interest in staying reduces the effect of group identity meanings by 0.53 ( p < 0.05) on staying, as anticipated. In confirming our hypotheses, these findings illustrate how exchange behaviors set the stage for the emergence of group identity meanings, which in turn positively affect the stability of power imbalanced social networks and perpetuate social inequality. They also illustrate that for behaviors that promote the perpetuation of a social network, social pressures matter most when group identity meanings are weakest. We now discuss the implications of these findings.

7 Given the small sample size and the relatively large coefficient for endorsement (that only appears when the interaction is included), we ran an exact logistic regression regressing staying on group identity meanings, endorsement, and their interaction. These results (available upon request) support our hypothesis that group identity meanings moderate the effects of endorsement.

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Discussion

Network exit involves completely severing existing network ties for new ones. This happens when people change jobs, leave one family structure for another, abandon friendship groups for new ones, and immigrate to new countries. Our paper examines how group identity meanings and peer influence can lead disadvantaged actors to forego opportunities to improve their situation by exiting their proximate social structures (Merolla et al., 2012). It therefore calls on theories of exchange, identity, and legitimacy to address a question that has prompted much social scientific theorizing and research: Why do disadvantaged actors forego opportunities to improve their situation even when they recognize their disadvantage (Della Fave, 1980; Shepelak, 1987)? We find that both stronger group identity meanings and the endorsement of staying increase the likelihood that disadvantaged actors will remain in their networks. We also find these two mechanisms interact such that endorsing the act of staying matters less as group identity meanings strengthen. These findings add to extant research about how identities shape exchange behavior (Savage & Sommer, 2016; Savage et al., 2017, 2019; Stets et al., 2018, 2020; Burke et al., 2021). Specifically, they advance knowledge about how exchange processes give rise to group identity meanings as well as what they mean for the stability of power imbalanced exchange networks. The study confirms the general logic of Savage and Sommer’s (2016) previous study about why disadvantaged actors stay in networks, while also offering new insights. First, it shows that in addition to the form of exchange, the frequency of exchange can operate in reciprocal exchange networks as a starting point for the general process Savage and Sommer (2016) described. Whether the exit opportunity triggers stronger group identity meanings for disadvantaged individuals and thus, the tendency to remain with one’s network, depends not just on whether actors use reciprocal exchange, but also the frequency of these exchanges with their advantaged partners. This finding offers important new insights into how interactions in social networks affect identity salience or the probability of an identity being activated (Stryker, 1968). The traditional argument made by identity theorists is that the number of people one relates to based on occupancy in a particular social position and the importance of the people to whom one is tied based on that position will affect identity salience. More recent research has added to this, drawing attention to the role of embeddedness (Walker & Lynn, 2013: 151), which we conceptualize here as the degree of reciprocity in interaction (Powell, 1990). We show that the frequency of giving in a reciprocal network primes how disadvantaged individuals respond to the exit opportunity. Frequent reciprocity creates personal attractions that prime disadvantaged individuals such that they are more likely to make “us versus them” comparisons when given the opportunity to exit the network. In this way, we document a basic process for how group identity meanings can emerge out of the social structure, adding yet another explanation for how local social structures and situational meanings shape the self in identity theory (Stryker et al., 2005).

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Second, this study begins to document how information about an alternative network affects exit. We do not find information to have a direct effect on staying, but we do find that it affects individuals’ general interest in staying, with individuals being less interested in leaving their networks for structurally similar alternatives. Taken together, these findings highlight how exchange processes shape how people experience and identify with the proximate social structures that shape daily experiences. Results also require us to revisit past research on how endorsement affects the stability of power imbalanced exchange relationships and the perpetuation of inequality. Johnson and Ford (1996) find that endorsement has little effect on whether subordinates threaten to leave an imbalanced exchange relationship. Our research suggests otherwise, and we suspect this is because of differences in what was endorsed. Johnson and Ford’s study manipulated the endorsement of the superordinate’s position, rather than act of staying, and examines the relationship between having an endorsed supervisor and commitment. In endorsing the act, rather than the position, our study finds endorsement to have a very real effect on staying behaviors, although the strength of this effect is conditioned by the strength of one’s group identity meanings. Social pressure to maintain network ties matters more for those without strong group identity meanings. This highlights the powerful effect of identity. When we create initial conditions that give rise to stronger group identity meanings, little is needed to compel group commitment. As identity theory predicts (Burke & Stets, 2009), people simply enact behavior consistent with the meanings of their group identity: they choose to stay in their existing networks. Only when group identities meanings are weaker must social pressures be called on to push structurally disadvantaged individuals to stay and behave in ways that sustain the group. Thus, by creating conditions at the outset that increase the propensity to form a group identity, it is possible to promote group-oriented behaviors without having to rely on other, potentially costly, social interventions. In this way, our research adds to prior research about how legitimacy processes can bring order by compelling or stymieing change (Stryker, 1994). Despite the importance of this finding, there is much this research does not address. First, the present study only examines reciprocal exchange in a weak power network. This is reasonable given the high prevalence of reciprocal exchange in social life (e.g., Blau, 1964). However, it remains to be seen whether these findings hold for negotiated exchange relations or in strong power networks. Second, this research only examines a small network where participants were led to believe that all three other members of the network endorsed staying. Future research should examine the effects of larger network structures and variations in levels of endorsement. Third, this research is silent about the role of emotions in this process. Positive emotions encourage commitment (e.g., Lawler & Yoon, 1993, 1996), and both identity verification and legitimacy can foster positive emotional reactions (Stets & Burke, 2014; Johnson et al., 2016). Given these findings, future research also should consider how positive and negative emotions inform the processes we describe here. These limitations, however, do not diminish the value or applicability of this research. By describing how endorsement interacts with group identity meanings to

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affect the choice to remain in an exchange network, this research adds theoretical understanding of the interactive processes that make actors more or less willing to stay in an exchange network. These insights could easily be applied to the study of organizational retention (Hirschman, 1970). Moreover, by examining how these processes affect the choices of disadvantaged actors, this research helps explain why disadvantaged actors would choose not to change their structural circumstances. In sum, our research offers new insights into how proximate social networks allow for the emergence of group identity meanings as well as into how these meanings and peer influence translate into actors bypassing opportunities to improve their situations. Hence, under well-defined conditions (i.e., power-imbalanced reciprocal exchange relations), this study helps explain the perpetuation of inequality. Acknowledgement This project was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the first author and Linda D. Molm, Grant #SES-1003281.

Appendix: Coefficients from a Generalized Structural Equation Model for Fig. 17.1 (N = 64) Dependent variable Attraction to focal actor

Independent variable Exchange frequency with focal actor

Attraction to other actor

Exchange frequency with focal actor

Group identity meanings (GI)

Attraction to focal actor Exchange frequency with focal actor (Phase 2)

Staying interest

GI Information Exchange frequency with focal actor (Phase 2)

Staying

Staying interest GI Endorsement (E) GI x E Exchange frequency with focal actor (Phase 3)

+

p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 (two-tailed test)

Beta (Standard error) 2.37** (0.76) -2.57** (0.86) 0.56*** (0.15) -0.01 (0.96) 0.68*** (0.14) 1.16** (0.41) 1.41 (1.23) 0.91** (0.31) 2.48* (1.02) 11.80* (5.07) -2.16* (1.07) 4.56+ (2.43)

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