Further Reading — Chapter 9: Identity and Self-Concept

Annotated resources for deeper exploration. Items marked with ★ are especially recommended as starting points.

Foundational Books

★ McAdams, D. P. (2006). The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford University Press. McAdams's accessible account of narrative identity and the specifically American cultural form of the redemptive narrative — stories of suffering that lead to growth and strength. Examines the cultural roots of this narrative pattern and its relationship to wellbeing, generativity, and meaning. One of the best introductions to narrative identity for general readers.

★ Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. Norton. Erikson's own extended treatment of his identity concept — more accessible than his earlier theoretical writings. Covers the adolescent identity crisis, the concept of psychosocial moratorium, and the relationship between individual identity and cultural context. Dense in places but essential for understanding where the concept came from.

Marcia, J. E., Waterman, A. S., Matteson, D. R., Archer, S. L., & Orlofsky, J. L. (Eds.). (1993). Ego Identity: A Handbook for Psychosocial Research. Springer-Verlag. The comprehensive handbook on Marcia's identity status framework — research methods, findings, applications across populations. Technical but comprehensive.

Primary Sources on Narrative Identity

McAdams, D. P. (1993). The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. Morrow. McAdams's foundational popular book on narrative identity — what a life story is, how it is structured, what it reveals about identity. Accessible and well-written. The book that introduced narrative identity to general readers.

McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St. Aubin, E., & Mansfield, E. (1997). Stories of commitment: The psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(3), 678–694. The key empirical paper establishing the relationship between redemptive narrative sequences and generativity. Demonstrates that highly generative adults tell stories with more redemption sequences than less generative adults.

Adler, J. M., Lodi-Smith, J., Philippe, F. L., & Houle, I. (2016). The incremental validity of narrative identity in predicting well-being: A review of the field and recommendations for the future. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(2), 142–175. The most comprehensive review of research linking narrative identity to wellbeing. Establishes what is and is not known about the relationship, and sets the agenda for future research.

On Social Identity

★ Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 7–24). Nelson-Hall. The foundational statement of social identity theory. Accessible and historically significant.

Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. Norton. Claude Steele's accessible account of stereotype threat — its mechanisms, its consequences, and evidence for what reduces it. One of the best bridges between social psychology research and practical application. Particularly important for educators and managers.

Tajfel, H. (1981). Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge University Press. Tajfel's own synthesis of his research program. More technical than popular accounts, but Tajfel's writing is unusually clear and his thinking is unusually rigorous.

On Possible Selves

Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969. The original paper introducing the possible selves concept. Brief, readable, and directly applicable. Essential if you want to understand the theory at its source.

Oyserman, D., Bybee, D., & Terry, K. (2006). Possible selves and academic outcomes: How and when possible selves impel action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(1), 188–204. Demonstrates how possible selves affect academic behavior — and identifies the conditions under which hoped-for selves actually motivate action vs. remaining aspirational fantasies. Practical for understanding motivation.

On Cultural Self-Construal

★ Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253. The landmark paper introducing the independent/interdependent self-construal distinction. One of the most cited papers in cultural psychology. Accessible and important.

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83. The influential critique arguing that behavioral science research overrepresents Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations. Essential context for interpreting any psychological research, including identity research. The paper that sparked extensive reconsideration of cross-cultural generalizability in psychology.

Memoir and Narrative Nonfiction

★ Coates, T. (2015). Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau. A meditation on race, identity, and the meaning of an embodied Black life in America. Not a psychology text, but an exemplar of narrative identity work — integrating personal history, social identity, and the stories we inherit and revise. Illuminates the social identity material in this chapter from the inside.

Rankine, C. (2014). Citizen: An American Lyric. Graywolf Press. Poetry that examines the cumulative experience of racial microaggressions and their effects on self-concept and identity. Particularly relevant to the stereotype threat material and the social identity costs not captured by standard research measures.

Kaysen, S. (1993). Girl, Interrupted. Vintage. A memoir of psychiatric hospitalization that raises searching questions about the relationship between identity, diagnosis, narrative, and institutional definition of the self. Directly relevant to the chapter's discussion of whose narrative about a person's life is authoritative.

On Identity Reconstruction

Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books. The foundational clinical account of how trauma disrupts identity and what recovery involves — including the narrative work of integrating traumatic experience. A landmark text in trauma psychology. Relevant to the chapter's discussion of identity reconstruction following disruption.

Frankl, V. E. (1946/1984). Man's Search for Meaning. Washington Square Press. Frankl's account of psychological survival in Nazi concentration camps, and the logotherapy framework he developed from it — the idea that meaning-making is a fundamental human capacity that can survive extreme adversity. Essential background for Chapter 28 (Meaning and Purpose) and a profound illustration of identity reconstruction under extreme conditions.