Identity, behaviour and wellbeing

Social psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and recently economists, have been trying to understand the significance of personal and social identities across different domains – gender, ethnic and racial background, religion, nationality, occupation, and so on (Baarth 1969, Tajfel 1981, Turner et al 1994, Akerlof and Kranton 2010). While identity on an individual level is expected to be associated with higher self-esteem and wellbeing as well as adherence to certain behavioural norms, social identity, that is identification with groups, is often linked with behaviour that is favourable towards the in-group and biased against out group. This project aims to (i) understand how individual characteristics , experiences particularly adversities and contextual factors are associated with identity across different domains, (ii) examine patterns of identity acculturation in a multicultural society across ethnic minorities and majority, (iii) estimate the relationship between identity across different domains and mental health and wellbeing, and (iv) estimate the role of identity on labour market activities and educational attainment.

This project contributes to this field by testing whether and to what extent theories developed and then tested on small sample surveys or using experiments hold when tested on a large nationally representative sample, specifically the UK. This project builds on previous work on the measurement of ethnic identity and identity across other domains of life. That led to identity measures being included in Understanding Society, the largest UK household longitudinal survey and the only data source for longitudinal analysis of ethnicity and migration related research.

Outputs

Journal articles

Working papers

Ongoing

  • “Ethnic identity in context: the influence of forms of contact on majority and minority social identities” (with L. Platt). This paper looks at how contact (vs) exposure with members of own and other ethnic groups influences the salience of an individual’s ethnic identity, and how this differs for UK’s majority and minority group members.