The present brief report overviews developments in the field of ego identity status
research over the past 35 years and suggests directions for identity status research
as we enter the new millenium. In the mid 1960s, James Marcia (1966, 1967) expanded
Erik Erikson’s (1968) concept of ego identity to suggest four
qualitatively different styles by which late adolescents undertake identity-deifning
psychosocial commitments. Over the ensuing decades, identity status research focused
primarily on validating the identity statuses and finding associated personality
correlates, examining patterns of change over time, and investigating familial
communication patterns associated with each of the identity positions. Research in
the new millennium might fruitfully address the course and contents of identity
beyond late adolescence as well as predictors of developmental arrest. A greater
range of developmental contexts in which identity formation occurs is also in need
of examination. Ultimately, an individual’s interpretation of context and
further mediating events that may be associated with identity status resolutions are
critical to a more complete understanding of the identity formation process.
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