COVID-19 marked a change in social life that disrupted interaction, including people’s ability to verify their identities. We examine how identity nonverification associated with COVID-19 exposure helps us understand some of the psychological distress individuals experienced. We assess the relationship between identity nonverification and depression and anxiety, controlling for respondents’ prior depression and anxiety and prior nonverification (both retrospectively obtained), their background characteristics, COVID-19 exposure, and coping strategies during the pandemic. We analyzed a U.S. sample of 620 respondents one year into the pandemic. Respondents indicated the identity they felt was most negatively affected by the pandemic. We studied the four most frequently mentioned identities (friend, romantic, family, and worker identities) across respondents and across four racial/ethnic groups (Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians). We found that exposure to COVID-19 was positively associated with (1) identity nonverification based on self-appraisals, (2) the coping strategy of disengagement, and (3) depression and anxiety. Unexpectedly, COVID-19 was negatively associated with identity nonverification based on reflected appraisals. In turn, identity nonverification based on self- and reflected appraisals was positively related to depression and anxiety, as was the disengagement coping strategy. There was little variation in the results across the four identities or the racial/ethnic groups.
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