The Identities of College Students

AUTHOR: Katelyn Hobbs
FACULTY: Cara Laney
DEPARTMENT: Psychology

ABSTRACT

Personality tests have grown in society, giving people a way to reinterpret their identities. In the professional field, though, it is a common practice for therapists to utilize measures of symptoms to gauge clients' problems and choose the right diagnosis and treatment. Research has shown that taking such assessments can prime clients to view themselves in terms of their symptoms rather than their identities. Therefore, this particular study took an experimental approach to determine whether priming individuals to think about their personalities might give them a more integrated sense of self, and whether this may improve their well-being. Participants were separated into groups that either took a social personality measure, general personality measure, or a symptomatology measure. They were then tasked to choose from a list which traits applied to them in different contexts and relationships, and they finished with a general well-being measure. Preliminary results show that participants who took the social personality scale trended toward more cohesive identities than those who took the symptomatology or personality scales, but results were not significant, and there were no clear changes in well-being. Other possible patterns are discussed, including a possible upward trend in identity cohesion from freshmen to sophomores, with a dip in juniors, and an increase in seniors. Future research is warranted with more participants, but current results indicate that while a pattern exists, there is no significant relationship between measure taken, identity cohesion, and well-being. Even so, the trends shed light on the fact that self-perceptions might be affected by the tests we take, and our sense of identity may change as we progress through college.