Chapter 1 - Identities and Diversities

Question 1

Introspectionism

Answer 1

Method for gaining indirect access to people’s mental processes through their verbal reports. (William James and Wilhelm Wundt)

Question 2

Embodiment

Answer 2

Indicates that we live in and through our bodies and that we simultaneously experience our bodies physically and biologically as well as socially and psychologically.

Question 3

Neuropsychological approaches

Answer 3

These study brain function by examining damaged brains, the structure of the brain and neural activity.

Question 4

Social model of disability

Answer 4

A model that considers that people with physical impairments are as disabled by the limitations imposed by society as by their impairments.

Question 5

Psychosocial

Answer 5

Psychosocial identity recognizes the influence of both personal and social factors on identity development.

Question 6

Core identity

Answer 6

The central identity that individuals have to achieve from different aspects of their identities if they are to be psychologically healthy.

Question 7

Ego identity

Answer 7

Erikson’s term for a secure feeling of who and what one is. It suggests the psychosocial nature of identity.

Question 8

Psychosocial moratorium

Answer 8

A socially approved period in which young people can try out different social roles and so find their own niche in society.

Question 9

Identity crisis

Answer 9

A period in which some young people find it impossible to make commitments to adult roles and many experience some difficulty.

Question 10

Role diffusion

Answer 10

The failure to achieve a secure ego identity.

Question 11

Semi-structured interviews

Answer 11

Interviews designed to cover particular themes that allow flexibility in how questions are asked.

Question 12

Identity diffusion

Answer 12

Period in which young people are neither exploring social roles nor committed to a consistent set of values and goals.

Question 13

Identity foreclosure

Answer 13

Period in which young people commit themselves to identities without having explored other options.

Question 14

Moratorium

Answer 14

An active process in which young people search for the identity to which they want to be committed.

Question 15

Identity achievement

Answer 15

Young people have experienced and resolved their adolescent identity crisis by going through a period of moratorium.

Question 16

Social Identity Theory (SIT)

Answer 16

A theory of the social processes by which people come to identify with particular groups and separate themselves from others.

Question 17

Experimental method

Answer 17

The most commonly used psychological method. It examines causal relationships between variables by controlling factors that may affect the results.

Question 18

Ingroup

Answer 18

People who belong to the group to which we consider we belong.

Question 19

Outgroup

Answer 19

People who do not belong to our group.

Question 20

Minimal groups

Answer 20

Groups set up in Social Identity Theory research to identify the minimum conditions necessary for group identities to form.

Question 21

Social categories

Answer 21

The division of people on the basis of characteristics, such as gender, ‘race’, nationality, class, occupation, religion, etc., that have differential power and status.

Question 22

Social mobility

Answer 22

Process by which members of groups improve their status by leaving behind their (previous) social group.

Question 23

Social creativity

Answer 23

A process of positive redefinition of a devalued social group in order to improve the social identity of its members.

Question 24

Social competion

Answer 24

Strategies that advance social change by demanding alternative social arrangements based on new ways of thinking about social groups.

Question 25

Social construction

Answer 25

Theory that the ways in which we understand the world are not just ‘natural’, but are ‘constructed’ between people in everyday social interactions.

Question 26

Discourses

Answer 26

The ways of thinking and talking about issues currently available in our culture – that is, the processes by which people construct meanings.

Question 27

Blue eyes/brown eyes experiment.

Answer 27

Teacher Jane Elliot segregated the class according to eye colour to observe ungroup/outgroup relationships and performance in school work.

Question 28

20 Statements test

Answer 28

Kuhn and McPartland (1954) devised a test which asked the participants to write 20 answers to the question ‘Who am I’. The answers were then categorised into characteristics, social roles, personality, interests, attitudes and current state. Objective was to find which self descriptions are most important to identity.

Question 29

Erikson’s Psychosocial theory of identity

Answer 29

Erik Erikson’s theory split identity development into eight stages. Identity is achieved in the fifth stage (adolescence).

Question 30

The identity status model

Answer 30

Developed from Erikson’s theory of identity, James Marcia proposed a variant which could be used to assess how adolescents identity changed over the long period of adolescence.