Social identity integration

Every human being belongs to a multitude of social groups. When these various social groups are harmoniously integrated within a person’s sense of self, belonging to many groups can have positive consequences for both mental and physical health. Conflicting identities, on the other hand, can be a source of negative outcomes, including poor mental health, difficulties with social and cultural adaptation, and negative intergroup attitudes. Social identity integration – the coexistence of multiple social identities within the self – has been studied under different names and across different disciplines. For example, integration of ethnic and national identities has been extensively studied in (cross-)cultural psychology and immigration research under the labels of biculturalism and multicultural, transcultural, or intercultural identity. Developmental psychologists often use the term identity integration. social cognition researchers talk about identity complexity, management and organizational behavior researchers - about identity conflict and incompatibility, and sociologists and race and gender scholars - about intersectionality. We are conducting a systematic review of social identity integration literature, with the goal of systematizing this literature and providing an integrative conceptual framework. Specifically, the review will address questions of conceptualization, operationalization, and causes, consequences, and correlates of social identity integration. We have screened more than 14.000 articles for this review, and are currently extracting data from the 1.222 articles that met the inclusion criteria.