¿Quién soy? El papel del apoyo social percibido en la formación de la identidad desde una perspectiva de género

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the perceived social support of the emerging adults’ environment and two variables related to the process of identity development: commitment making and identification with commitment from a gender perspective. Identity is a complex construct that has been widely studied and defined by Erikson and Marcia in the last century as one of the most important and necessary developmental achievements that let people reach adulthood. It has strong ties with psycho-social and cultural processes that are the cornerstone of the identity development. The adolescence has been considered the stage of psychosocial moratorium where teens can shape this search of identity (Erikson, 1968). Due to the socio-economic changes of our era, that stage has been extended into emerging adulthood. The process of defining who you are and what commitments are you assuming has been delayed to the third decade of life. Luyckx, Goosens, and Sonenens (2006) extended Erikson and Marcia`s classical identity-formation model into dual-cycle identity-formation model. The new model defines ego identity formation as a continuous process that includes making a commitment and identifying with it. Due to the psycho-social and cultural nature of this processes, two variables which influence identity formation are social support and gender; both of them determine the way young people approach this path of making “choices” and identify/integrate them as a part of who they are. A sample of 1,502 undergraduate students (903 women and 599 men) from the Transition to Adulthood in Spain’s project (Mean age = 20.32, SD = 2.13) was interviewed in two Spanish universities (U. Sevilla y UPV/EHU). Participants fulfilled the subscales of family, friends and romantic relationships of Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988) and subscales commitment making and identification with commitment from the Luyckx et al (2008) Identity Developmental Scale. The result shows that social support positively correlates with the mentioned dimensions of identity. Moreover, correlations of the three types of perceived social support (family, friends or partner support) differs according to gender. Regression analysis shows that romantic and family social support predicted male commitment making. Romantic, family and peer social support predicted male identification with commitment. For females, only romantic social support predicted commitment making and family and romantic social support, identification with commitment. The results are discussed in terms of gender differences that still remain in our society and the role of close relationships to the emerging adults’ identity formation.