Cognitive and Behavioral Responses to the Identity Verification Process

We empirically test the concomitant cognitive and behavioral responses to identity verifying and non-verifying feedback. Based on identity theory, we expect that those who experience identity non-verification will enact behaviors aimed at resisting the non-verifying feedback, while at the same time their situated self-view will slowly change in the direction of that feedback (Burke and Stets 2009). Both responses co-occur as individuals behave to counteract the non-verifying meanings, even while their self-view shifts in the direction of the non-verifying meanings of the feedback. We examine these dual responses for people in structurally powerless positions who have less influence and perhaps greater difficulty effectively responding to identity non-verification. In a controlled laboratory experiment, actors who are either higher or lower in their dominant person identity, and whose dominance identity is either verified or not verified, bargain with two simulated actors over the distribution of a pool of resources. The results support the identity theory expectations that, in response to identity non-verification, people attempt to alter situational meanings as well as slowly accommodate to them.