IDENTITY STRUCTURES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING - GENDER AND MARITAL-STATUS COMPARISONS

ldentities refer to self-conceptions in terms of individuals' roles. The salience or importance of various identities should differ systematically by gender and marital status; highly salient identities should have greater impacts on psychological symptoms than less salient identities: and identities that are more salient to particular gender-by-marital status subgroups should benefit those subgroups more than other subgroups. Data come from structured interviews with a stratified random sample of 700 married and divorced urban adults. Contrary to expectations, the identity hierarchies of married and divorced men and women were remarkably similar. In most comparisons, identities valued more highly by one group than another did not benefit the group that valued it more highly. In general, the salience of an identity did not reduce psychological symptoms. Instead, more voluntary or easier-to-exit identities (e.g., friend, churchgoer) reduced symptoms, and difficult-to-exit identities (e.g., parent, son/daughter-in-law) reduced symptoms only when stress experienced in the role domain was low. Furthermore, the psychological impacts of identities depend on their combinations, and differently so by gender. Thus, psychological well-being does not depend on the number or salience of particular identities that individuals hold.