Identity, Intimacy and Sex Differences

Ego identity and intimacy statuses were determined for 88 college students, 44 men, and 44 women, and related to each other and to measures of intimacy-isolation, loving and liking, Sex differences were also investigated. Identity achievement subjects were more likely to be engaged in intimate relationships. Students having foreclosure. moratorium. and diffusion identities were variable in their intimacy statuses. A stronger association exists between intimacy and loving than intimacy and liking. While no significant sex differences were found on the overall ego identity and intimacy comparisons, sub scale differences were noted. The evidence suggests identity achievement status is predictive of highly intimate relations while foreclosure, moratorium and diffusion identities are highly variable

Identity development and forgivingness: tests of basic relations and mediational pathways

Adaptive identity development leads to increases in personality traits that allow for social well-being. The current study tested this claim with respect to forgivingness, a dispositional tendency to forgive others. In a sample of university undergraduates (N = 214), we examined the relations between forgivingness and two indicators of identity development: commitment and exploration. Forgivingness uniquely positively related with both identity variables, controlling for the other. Next, we tested mediational models to examine the mechanisms underlying these relationships. Our results suggest that, in part, the association between identity development and forgivingness is mediated by levels of agreeableness and neuroticism, as measured by the Big Five Inventory

Computational methods for the assessment of empathic synchrony

The synchronization of physiological signals between persons is a well-known proxy of empathy. However, it is also influenced by physiological and environmental factors that should be discriminated to correctly characterize the empathy component. We discuss a framework to compute synchrony and introduce physynch, an open-source package developed to easily replicate its computational procedures. We adopted physynch to study the synchrony of the electrodermal activity in 61 male-female dyads with different types of relationship: strangers (18 dyads), friends (23 dyads) and lovers (20 dyads). The findings confirm previous results on Heart Rate Variability synchrony and suggest that synchrony is influenced by the type of relationship and is stronger in dyads of strangers. physynch is made available for download and use for researchers interested in measuring physiological synchrony.Accepted versio

A construção da identidade em adolescentes: um estudo exploratório Adolescent's identity construction: an exploratory study

De acordo com a teoria psicossocial de Erikson, a tarefa mais importante da adolescência é a construção da identidade. Partindo desse pressuposto, este estudo, abrangendo 25 estudantes (de 15 a 17 anos) de Ensino Médio, comparou empiricamente informações fornecidas pela GIDS - The Groningen Identity Development Scale (escala que avalia o desenvolvimento de identidade) e pelo YSR - Young Self Report (checklist auto-aplicável que rastreia problemas mentais). A maioria dos adolescentes encontrava-se nos estados iniciais no desenvolvimento da identidade: difusão e execução de identidade. Foi ainda observada uma relação significativa do ponto de vista estatístico entre baixo comprometimento e problemas de comportamento.<br>According to Erikson's psychosocial theory, the most important task during adolescence is identity construction. Based on this assertion, this study, undertaken with 25 high school students (15 to 17 years old), compared the Groningen Identity Development Scale (GIDS), a identity evolution scale, with the Youth Self-Report (YSR), a screening mental problems checklist. Most of the teenagers were on two initial identity phases: diffusion and foreclosure. A significant relationship between low commitment and behavior problems was also found