Identity: personal AND social

Identity refers to how people answer the question, “Who are you?” This question may be posed explicitly or implicitly, at a personal or a collective level, to others or to oneself. Schools of thought within the identity literature tend to emphasize either personal or social contents and either personal or social processes. However, I argue here that identities are inescapably both personal and social, in their content and in the processes by which they are formed, maintained, and changed over time. The personal and social nature of identity gives the construct its greatest theoretical potential—namely to provide insight into the relationship between the individual and society. However, doing justice to this potential requires integrating perspectives on identity and self-processes from social and personality psychology, developmental psychology, cultural, critical and discursive psychology, and beyond. In this chapter, I outline some key parameters for such an integrative understanding of identity. I examine the extensive and interconnected nature of identity content, and then consider the confluence of sociocultural, relational and individual processes by which identities are formed, maintained, and change over time.