Abstract
As forming and evaluating commitments are stressful processes, adolescents who worry about their identity may exhibit psychosocial problems. However, there is a lack of prospective research regarding the direction of associations between the processes of identity and psychosocial problems in the future domain. This study examined the direction of relationships between future-oriented identity processes and psychosocial problems based on a five-dimensional identity process model. A total of 347 Japanese 14-year-old adolescents (53.3% female) participated in a three-wave longitudinal study with a one-year-interval assessment. Standard cross-lagged models indicated that pro-active identity exploration was negatively predicted by conduct problems, and ruminative exploration was positively predicted by depressive symptoms. Within-person cross-lagged models indicated that ruminative exploration positively predicted both depressive symptoms and conduct problems at the within-person level. These findings reveal how identity processes and psychosocial problems are interwoven during adolescence.
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Authors’ Contributions
K.H. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript; K.S. and K.L. conceived of the study, and participated in its design and coordination and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This manuscript’s data will not be deposited. The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available, but are available from the corresponding author upon a reasonable request.
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Hatano, K., Sugimura, K. & Luyckx, K. Do Identity Processes and Psychosocial Problems Intertwine with Each Other? Testing the Directionality of Between- and Within-Person Associations. J Youth Adolescence 49, 467–478 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01182-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01182-0