Trajectories in sense of identity and relationship with life satisfaction during adolescence and young adulthood.

Abstract

Previous research on identity development among adolescents has focused on the processes involved. However, it is unclear how the sense of identity (synthesis and confusion) develops and how it relates to life satisfaction. This study aims to examine the relationship between sense of identity and life satisfaction among Japanese youth living in the urban Kanto, Kansai, and Chubu areas. A total of 5,047 Japanese youth (49.7% female; Time 1 M age = 17.08 years, range = 12-22 years) in four age groups (early adolescence, middle adolescence, late adolescence, and young adulthood) participated in a threewave longitudinal study. Latent growth modeling (LGM) analysis revealed that from early to middle adolescence, synthesis continued to be higher than confusion, whereas from late adolescence to young adulthood, confusion tended to be higher than synthesis. The results of the LGM further showed that the change in synthesis was positively related to the change in life satisfaction and the change in confusion was negatively related to it in all age groups. Using latent class growth analysis (LCGA), five identity classes were extracted: high synthesis-low confusion, low synthesis-high confusion, high synthesis-high confusion, low synthesis-low confusion, and moderate synthesis-moderate confusion. LCGA revealed that youth in the high synthesis classes had a higher sense of life satisfaction than did youth in high confusion classes. These findings provide critical insights into trajectories of identity formation and the relationship between identity development and life satisfaction among Japanese youth that can inform future research and programs designed to facilitate their identity formation.

Profiles of Emotional Separation and Parental Trust from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: Age Differences and Associations with Identity and Life Satisfaction

“…Participants were 14,428 adolescents and youth living in Japan, including 1739 early adolescents (41.6% girls), 1803 middle adolescents (32.4% girls), 1609 late adolescents (60.6% girls), 4641 early emerging adults (61.1% women), and 4636 middle emerging adults (61.1% women). The present sample was taken from the International Adolescent Psychology Project in Japan ( http://web.hyogo-u.ac.jp/nakama/iappj/src/index.html ; Hatano et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Moreover, most participants resided in the Kanto, Chubu, and Kansai districts, which are large urban centers in Eastern, Central, and Western parts of Japan, respectively. These areas are more populated and have greater income inequality, more educational institutions (schools and universities), and higher tertiary education enrollment rate than other areas (Hatano et al, 2022 ).…”

Trajectories of adaptive and disturbed identity dimensions in adolescence: developmental associations with self-esteem, resilience, symptoms of depression, and borderline personality disorder features

“…Studies investigating the longitudinal development of a sense of identity synthesis or confusion in adolescence are scarce and have produced inconsistent findings. A recent three-wave longitudinal study indicated that young individuals’ sense of identity synthesis first decreased and then increased towards the end of adolescence, whereas their sense of identity confusion linearly increased throughout adolescence ( 8 ). Differently, results from a cohort-sequential study by Schwartz et al ( 9 ) indicated no significant changes in identity synthesis and a linear decrease in identity confusion throughout adolescence.…”

“…In addition to these variable-centered results, researchers have also adopted person-centered approaches to identify different developmental pathways of identity formation. Previous research on the development of a sense of identity in adolescence is limited to one study, which extracted five classes: a stable high synthesis and low confusion trajectory (20.4%), a stable low synthesis and high confusion trajectory (14.8%), a stable low synthesis and low confusion trajectory (4.7%), a high synthesis and high confusion with increases in synthesis and confusion trajectory (3.2%), and a moderate synthesis and moderate confusion with a slight increase in confusion trajectory (56.9%) ( 8 ). Whereas the first three classes seem to represent individuals who are, respectively, in a state of identity synthesis, identity confusion, or neither (possibly because they are (still) unconcerned with identity questions), the high synthesis and high confusion class may include adolescents who are actively working on their identity with strong conflict, whereas the moderate synthesis and confusion class may include adolescents who deal with a milder degree of conflict.…”

“…Consistent with leading theories on psychosocial development ( 2 , 25 , 26 ), research has evidenced the close interconnectedness of identity and psychological well-being. For instance, adolescents who experience high levels of identity synthesis or who have made certain identity-related choices are more likely to experience high levels of life satisfaction ( 8 ), self-esteem ( 14 , 27 ), and warm and supportive relationships ( 28 ) than adolescents who experience high levels of identity confusion or who have not yet enacted stable identity commitments.…”