Identity interventions are crucial in shaping developmental processes bysupporting individuals in constructing coherent and adaptive identities.The present article explores the theoretical foundations, implementationstrategies, and effectiveness of identity interventions across differentdomains, including ethnic-racial, educational, vocational, and social.Drawing on contemporary identity models, the article discusses the mechan-isms through which interventions facilitate identity exploration, commit-ment, and integration. Particular attention is given to the role of contextand culture in shaping intervention outcomes, emphasizing the need fortailored and inclusive approaches. As part of a special issue dedicated toidentity interventions, this article provides a comprehensive overview of keytrends in the current research and highlights both advances and persistentgaps in the field. By synthesizing findings from recent studies, the paperidentifies methodological and conceptual challenges, including the scarcityof long-term studies, the need for greater coherence across differentdomains of identity, and the underrepresentation of diverse populations.Additionally, the article offers recommendations for designing and imple-menting identity interventions that are theoretically grounded and adapta-ble to diverse contexts. Future directions emphasize the importance ofintegrating intersectionality, leveraging digital and ecological approaches,and expanding interventions beyond traditional educational settings.
Trust researchers have recently professed the dynamic nature of trust based on cognitive and affective considerations of the context – personal vs. professional. It presents that communal sharing (personal) cognition has a different formulation of trust than the market pricing (professional) mindset. Also, incidental processing of emotion impacts the level of trust differently than the integral one. Thus, we conducted a comprehensive literature review of experimental studies, based on PRISMA guidelines,—the first in the vein of similar efforts to address these two aspects particularly demonstrating the difference of personal vs. professional dynamics. Our review included 31 peer-reviewed studies published from 2004 to 2021, including over 5000 participants aged 18 to 83 years from 8 countries. Further, the theoretical integration of dimension of trust and Fisk’s model of relationships clarifies how trust varies across contexts. Also, we concluded that the influence of emotions is pertinent in communal and market processing, but incidental emotions encourage trust in market settings more than in communal or close interactions. Thus, the difference in two (personal vs. professional) institutions require distinctive understanding of trust and emotions for effective management.
Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) juggle between their feminine and professional identity goals. The present research views these struggles from the perspective of identity goal pursuits. Women in STEM may use different, sometimes even symbolic, ways to strive for the two identity goals, for example, by wearing outfits that reflect femininity, their profession, or both. In two studies, we tested to what extent these two goals overlap (are seen as similar) and whether the higher overlap between feminine and STEM professional identity goals is related to the preference for outfits that may serve two goals at the same time or only one of them. In Study 1 (N = 232), we found that willingness to wear an outfit serving both identity goals was positively related to the participant's identity goal overlap. Study 2 (N = 226) showed that overlap was related to the evaluation of the chosen outfits. Participants evaluating the chosen outfits as more multifinal reported higher overlap between the two identity goals.
