Abstract
People often experience change within their romantic relationships, and the ways that they understand themselves can be critical within this context. This chapter examines the bidirectional links between self-concept clarity, people’s subjective sense of understanding who they are, and self-concept change within relationships. We review the literature on self-concept clarity and self-change across the life span of a romantic relationship, from initial attraction to ongoing relationships to relationship dissolution. Within each of these stages, we consider how (a) self-concept clarity predicts self-change and (b) how self-change predicts self-concept clarity. The literature on self-concept clarity predicting self-change suggests that people with low self-concept clarity resist changing in their relationships and attempt to stop their partners from changing as well. Work on self-change predicting self-concept clarity tends to find that positive changes in relationships promote higher self-concept clarity and that negative changes (especially breakup) tend to undermine it. However, this effect depends on several key moderators, including attachment anxiety, self-change in the previous relationship, and self-change after breakup. Throughout, we examine how the interplay between self-concept clarity and self-change shapes well-being, for individuals and for their relationships. We end by focusing on promising areas for future research at each relationship stage—relationship formation, ongoing relationships, and relationship dissolution.
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A National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to Lydia F. Emery supported the writing of this chapter.
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Emery, L.F., Gardner, W.L. (2020). Who in the World Am I? Self-Concept Clarity and Self-Change in Relationships. In: Mattingly, B.A., McIntyre, K.P., Lewandowski, Jr., G.W. (eds) Interpersonal Relationships and the Self-Concept. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43747-3_6
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