The Predictability of Identity Importance and Identity Firmness to Depression: Developmental Changes across Adolescence

Abstract

Erik Erikson (1950) postulated that identity formation plays a critical role in adolescent psychopathology. This study examined how two features of self-identity - namely, identity firmness, referring to the sense of sameness and continuity of self-identity, and identity importance, referring to the personal needs for defining oneself - are associated with depression across three substages of adolescence. A total of 764 junior high school students, 805 senior high school students, and 274 college students filled out questionnaires on identity importance, identity firmness, and depression. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that all three aspects of identity firmness (i.e., the personal, social, and image identity) and the social and image aspects of identity importance corresponded to depressive symptoms in the junior high school sample. All three aspects of identity firmness, but only the social aspect of identity importance, corresponded to depression in the senior high school sample. Only the personal aspect of identity firmness predicted depression in the college sample. This study concluded that, during early and middle adolescence, identity importance significantly explained the variance of depression above and beyond the effect of identity firmness, which has been consistently revealed in prior studies as a robust predictor for adolescent adjustment. The developmental changes of the relation between different aspects of identity importance/firmness and depression across adolescence were also discussed.