A study on ego identity related to self-concepts

Abstract

The purpose of the present study uas to define operationally the concept of ego identity and to demonstrate that the discrepancy between the individual norm and the respective norms of a family, a society and a nation, gave rise to identity confusion. An identity confusion questionaire was made of 33 items regarded as the identity constructs based on the partsymptoms described by Erikson. Eight self-concepts were measured by 12 pairs of adjectives from Nagashima et al.(1967) They were composed of “the real I &”, “the I my family sees”, “the I the members of the university sees”, “the I the society see”, “the ideal I”, “the I my family wishes for”, “the I the members of the university wish for”, “and the I the society wishes for”. The discrepancies between the I and family, university and society were used with regard to real and ideal “I” categories. They were also used as the indexes of the normative discrepancies. The main results were as follows; (1) The discrepancy between the individual norm and the familial norm made identity confusion. (2) The discrepancy between the individual norm and the social norm made identity confusion. (3) The discrepancy between the individual norm and the national norm made identity confusion. © 1979, The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. All rights reserved.