All work no play? Central Life Areas for Swedish Emerging Adults' Identity Exploration and Commitment

• This study explores central life areas for Swedish emerging adults’ identity development. First, 149 emerging adults (102 women, 40 men, 7 other/unknown; Mage=24.9 SDage=3.1) completed the DIDS (Luyckx et al., 2008), which assesses different aspects of identity exploration and commitment without referring to specific life areas. Then participants answered an open-ended question concerning which life areas they had been thinking about when answering the questionnaire. Thematic analysis showed that almost all participants had thought about work/education, but 11 other life areas were also reported by the participants (e.g. family life and living arrangements). The reported life areas were largely similar across demographical variables, such as gender and occupational status. However, compare with participants who reported thinking about several life areas those who reported only thinking about work/education scored higher on ruminative exploration and exploration in depth, and lower on commitment making. This indicates that when individuals’ identity processes concern more than one life area their sense of identity may be more secure. Based on these findings, suggestions for future research are to focus more on what life areas are central for peoples’ identity development and on how development in different life areas co-evolve across time.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

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