IDENTITY SALIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CENTRALITY - EQUIVALENT, OVERLAPPING, OR COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTS

Social psychologists currently conceptualize self as composed of many parts; often they visualize the parts as organized hierarchically by differences in salience or psychological centrality. We ask whether these concepts are equivalent, overlapping, or independent, and whether one concept ''works'' better in an identity theory context. Models relating commitment to role relations to salience and centrality, and salience and centrality to time spent in role, are estimated for four roles and identities related to university students. Results show that identity salience and centrality are independent for some roles, but overlap for others. When they are independent, both are predicted by commitment and both predict time in role, although salience ''works'' somewhat better in these terms. When they overlap, considerable commonality is present in the variance of time in role they explain. Salience again links somewhat better to commitment and time in role, but centrality again contributes to explaining time in role. This study considers when salience and centrality overlap in impact and when they do not, but no clear answer is at hand. Until an answer is available, researchers would be well advised to incorporate both salience and centrality into their designs.