The purpose of this study was to explore women's identity shifts as they navigate their postdivorce lives. We conducted in-depth, loosely structured interviews with 31 women who had been through at least 1 divorce. Interviews included questions about how women experienced life after divorce, specifically addressing changes they made to separate from the marriage and form a postdivorce identity. Patterns emerged regarding the process of identity change in 3 distinct domains: physical appearance, physical surroundings, and marital artifacts. Results are discussed in terms of the interplay between internal and external changes and the retrospective nature of the identity shifts.Women face unique challenges in the aftermath of divorce. Although both partners need to sort out finances, divide possessions, and reconfigure relationships, the act of changing one's marital status signifies a host of other changes that women face more often and more intensely than men. Among other differences, research shows that divorce results in more negative consequences for women than it does for men, particularly with respect to their
Previous research has shown that when asked to rate their agreement with statements regarding their attitudes towards participation in psychological experiments, students reported that their participation was of educational value (e.g., Bowman and Waite, 2003; Landrum and Chastain, 1995). We investigated what kinds of learning experiences students would report when prompted with open ended questions regarding their participation. Four open ended questions asked how seriously participants took the research experience, what participants gained from studies, what were commonalties among the studies and how their classroom experience helped with understanding the experiments. In addition to reporting that they took their participation seriously, students reported that they learned not only about psychological content but also about the process of conducting psychological research.
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