Psychological research on identity has used both an 'insider viewpoint' and an 'outside viewpoint'. Illustrate this statement by giving an account of two theories of identity together with the research studies that support them.

DSE212 – TMA01

Question - Option A

Psychological research on identity has used both an ‘insider viewpoint’ and an ‘outside viewpoint’. Illustrate this statement by giving an account of two theories of identity together with the research studies that support them.

Answer

Being a scientific discipline, psychology also requires evidence-based research in order to underpin the findings made by researchers. The data collected by researches could be divided into two main categories, one is so called ‘insider viewpoint’ and the other is ‘outsider viewpoint’.

Insider viewpoint is about the perception of the subject himself. These include his inner experience, thoughts, values, emotion, beliefs and etc. From the word ‘insider’, it implies that the subject’s point of view could not be observed by outsider, and those data provided by the client are totally subjective and non-arguable; and normally in a detailed form. Typical examples for collecting insider viewpoint are through interview, introspection, self report and analyses people’s conversation. (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002)

In contrast, outsider viewpoint is relatively objective. For which subject(s)’ point of view could be seen by others, could be quantified and measurable. Researchers use methods, such as experiment or observation to analyses individuals’ behaviour or thinking, in terms of numbers, frequency, speed or categorize them into groups. Therefore their findings are relatively objective in a high extent.

To illustrate these two viewpoints deeply, we may use two theories that studying about identity to explain.

The first theory is named as Psychosocial which was developed by Erik Erikson (1902 – 1994). Erikson consider that there would be eight development stages of identity within our lifespan. (see Table 1)

Erickson’s eight development stages

Table 1 (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002, p. 54)

Psychosocial mean that children and adolescents’ identities are all influenced by the community they live. (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002) The main task for the development of identity of adolescents are to identify who we are.

Erikson argued that the most important stage was at the adolescence stage because the youths will faced several life decisions, e.g. employment, further study, partner and etc. By achieving such identity, they will granted for the secure feeling, Erikson named it as ‘Ego Identity’. (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002). If they are failing ...

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Table 1 (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002, p. 54)

But, how Erikson developed this theory? Yes, his studies are through clinical and naturalistic observations, ethnography and biographical work. (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002) Data collected from his clients are all from the insider viewpoint and are subjective.

While focus on adolescence identity, Erikson’s counterpart, James Marcia has conducted a study concerning about the identity on adolescence, to find out the “extent to which young people make active choices between possible alternatives before making commitments to particular roles” (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002, p.59).

The subjects are a group of male students with the age range from 18 to 25 years old. He used the method named as ‘Semi-structured Interview’ which the interview not only cover particular themes, but also have rooms for the researcher to ask free questions. And there is no boundary for both the questions and answers being asked and responded. In addition, as language is one of the crucial elements, it is always tape-recorded during the interview, so that the researcher could review client’s response, e.g. exact wordings used, speaking style as well as emotion. (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002)

During the interview, for example, Marcia will ask them “ ‘How willing do you think you would be to give up going into a new job?” (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002, p. 59). From Marcia’s view, exploration is inevitable when students make active choice. As a result, Marcia categorizes young people into four identities statues by the combination of two dimensions of Commitment and Exploration. They are Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Moratorium and Identity Achievement as well (see Table 2).

He concluded that each young people would belong to one of these identities statues and they will have their own ways to cater the world. He also agree with Erikson’s idea that identity status at adolescence is crucial for one’s later development.

Obviously, Marcia’s study are entirely relies on the youths’ personal experience and thoughts. Through one-to-one interview, third party could neither challenge to the subjects’ data provided nor their inner experience. And those data also non-measurable and non-observable. Thus, it is fully fit with the form of an insider viewpoint.

James Marcia’s approach

Commitment

Table 2 (Website : Standford University)

The other theory about identity is introduced by Henri Tajfel (1919-1982), called as Social Identity Theory (SIT). By the word ‘Social’, in contrast with personal identity, it is concerned the identity within group and intergroup relationship rather than on individual. As defined by Tajfel, “a social group should compose two or more individuals who share the same identity within groups or they treated themselves belong to the same group.” (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002, p. 62)

Under SIT, there are two sub-systems of identity, one is personal identity which the identity of the subject is quite personal, it seems that identity could not be shared with others, For instance, in a family, your personal identity would be either one’s parent or child; the other one is social identity which other individuals could share the same or similar identity with you, e.g. race, gender or nationality. Identities created from these two sub-systems, as argued by Tajfel, are all composed by the subject’s self-description, because what identity an individual belong to is subject to the discretion made by himself. The importance for attaining a social identity can improve one’s social status thus won with power and can maintain self-esteem.

In his ‘Minimal Group Experiment’, Tajfel try to prove that if under minimum condition, that is being a number of a group in enough in itself to promote identity with the ingroup and hostility/discrimate against the outgroup. (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002) In that experiment, the subjects are 14 to 15 years old school boys. He first divided boys into two groups, by telling them the division is based on their favour of two print artists. Each boy was worked alone in a cubicle and they are instructed to allocate points which representing monetary values, to their group members as well as the members in another group by the following three strategies :

1) give their own member as many points as possible provided that they also gave fairly high points to members of the other group;

2) to give equally high rewards to both groups; or

3) favour their group and gave the maximum difference between their group and the other group.

As a result, strategies number 3 was chosen by the boys. Similar experiments were performed , but boys were told that they were divided randomly, nonetheless, the outcome are the same, i.e. they maximized the difference between groups.

By the above experiment, Tajfel’s findings are based on the outcome of strategies which the boys opted, and that outcome also a statistical result which can be observed by third party, that means anyone who conduct the same experiment will obtained the same result. Besides, the researcher did not involved in the whole process, e.g. he did not ask any question to direct students to do so, without chance to let students to question about the purpose of that game. Therefore, we could graded the findings from this experiment are from the perceptive of outsider viewpoint.

In sum, while analyses identities, insider viewpoint research could provide individual’s inner experiences and feelings deeply and in a detailed form. In contrast, outsider viewpoint research could offer us a general idea of social/group identity. But those inner experiences can also be analyses so as to look for commonalities that are chosen by the searcher, from an outsider viewpoint. For instance, by collecting enormous self-reports from individuals, research could found out their common or similar features that revealed by their clients and categorize them in term of numbers or frequency, thus generated an objective findings, which would be from an outsider viewpoint analysis. So that, both viewpoint are also contribute to the psychological study on identity and they are also supplement to each other.