THE PLACE OF EMOTION IN IDENTITY

Two studies are presented that examine the place of emotion in self-construct models. The first study (N = 20 female subjects; age range: 15 to 25 years) presents the three categories of adolescent identity types produced with the self-construct models: connected, contracted, and expanded. The second study (N = 49 male and female subjects; age range: 10 to 17 years) verifies that the contracted and expanded categories are more typical of adolescents than of children or adults. Contracted models of adolescent identity do not contain active negative emotion. Both the connected and expanded models contain both negative and positive emotion, but the expanded models contain more negative. Within the identity constructs, there is an indication of emotional change accompanying identity change in adolescence.