Identity Integration, Psychological Coherence and Identity Threat: Linking Identity Process Theory and Notions of Integration

The goal of the current chapter is threefold, namely: (i) to explain how individuals, in times of change, come to integrate new identities intra-individually in their sense of self and maintain a feeling of psychological coherence in this process; (ii) to highlight how the identity principles proposed by identity process theory (IPT) come into play throughout this change process and how the satisfaction of these principles may actually facilitate the integration of new and multiple social identities in the self; and (iii) to identify some factors that may actively block the integration of these identities, namely feelings of identity threat and the social devaluation of certain identities relative to others. We base ourselves on different strands of research to make these points, and more specifically, the cognitive-developmental model of social identity integration (CDMSII; Amiot, de la Sablonnière, Terry, & Smith, 2007), IPT (Breakwell, 1986), and the concept of psychological coherence (Jaspal & Cinnirella, 2010). Throughout the chapter, an implicit goal is to build bridges between these different social psychological theories as they are each relevant to addressing these issues, and also provide a broad and integrative framework to understand how diversity can be reconciled subjectively and intra-individually – within each individual.