J. Iedema et al., THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATIONAL AND RELATIONAL MENTAL INCONGRUITY ON IDENTITY FORMATION, Social behavior and personality, 24(4), 1996, pp. 393-404
We elaborated an integrated theoretical model of identity within Nurmi
's general framework of adolescent life-planning by combining concepts
of Tazelaar's mental incongruity theory and Marcia's identity model.
Mental incongruity is what people experience when there is a discrepan
cy between how they think a situation should be (the standard) and how
they experience the actual situation or their own behavior (the cogni
tion). The mental incongruity theory is domain specific which connects
well with Marcia's domain specific identity model. We studied the inf
luence of adolescents' standards -how they would like their educationa
l status to be or how they would like their social relations to be - a
nd mental incongruity on the development of identity in the respective
domains. By means of Lisrel, we tested hypotheses on a sample of 1230
Dutch adolescents, between the ages of 15 to 24. As expected, a highe
r standard led to more exploration and commitment and thus to a more d
eveloped identity, but also to more mental incongruity. More mental in
congruity led in its turn to a less developed identity. Thus, a higher
standard directly led to a more mature identity, but caused indirectl
y - via mental incongruity - a less mature identity. Furthermore, a lo
w relational mental incongruity induced a low educational mental incon
gruity, and likewise a high relational identity somewhat increased the
educational identity. Finally, the expected crisscross effects of the
standard in one domain decreasing the mental incongruity in the other
domain were found.