600 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
avoidable, and critically important part of 
life (Marcia, 1980; Robins, Noftle, Trzes -
niewski, & Roberts, 2005). In fact, although 
some changes in identity are triggered by 
events over which the target has no control, 
other changes are triggered by changes in the 
target him- or herself, some of which are in -
tentional. Here, we consider several different 
cases of volitional and nonvolitional identity 
change that reflect, to varying degrees, the 
five conditions of change listed earlier.
Sociocultural and  Idiosyncratic 
Contextual  Changes
Changes in widespread normative expecta -
tions may have a profound impact on how 
people construe their identity. For example, 
the Civil Rights and Women’s movements 
of the mid-20th century in the United States 
altered cultural expectations and behavioral 
norms for Black people and women, respec -
tively. More recently, increasing awareness 
of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender 
(LGBT) identities, combined with sweeping 
legal changes, such as the 2015 U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling that granted same-sex couples 
the right to marry, led to shifts in cultural 
attitudes and beliefs about members of the 
LGBT community. These changed expecta -
tions, norms, and beliefs subsequently impact 
the identities of members of these groups, as 
happened when the Women’s movement led 
men and women alike to relinquish stereo -
typed conceptions of women as weak and 
dependent (e.g., Spence, Deaux, & Helm -
reich, 1985). Widespread changes in gender 
stereotypes produced corresponding changes 
in girls’ and women’s identity-  relevant feed -
back, experiences, opportunity structures, 
and outcomes. To illustrate, young women 
showed steady increases in agentic self-views 
(e.g., assertive, effective) between 1973 and 
1994 (Twenge, 1997) that corresponded 
with women’s increasing entrance into pre -
viously male-  dominated workplace, educa -
tional, and political domains. Similarly, as 
cultural stigmatization of sexual and gen -
der minorities has declined over the past 
couple of decades in the United States, more 
and more people are publicly identifying as 
LGBT (Gates, 2013). These changes in self-
views and identity are then negotiated and 
renegotiated via the processes detailed here.People may also encounter changed ex -
pectations and behavioral norms when their 
immediate culture changes rapidly. A par -
ticularly dramatic example of such idiosyn -
cratic culture change occurs when people 
enter “total institutions” (Goffman, 1961), 
or institutions such as prisons, mental hospi -
tals, and military bases, in which all aspects 
of personal life are controlled and regulated 
by authorities. In total institutions, those in 
power theoretically isolate people from their 
families and friends, and systematically pro -
gram their environments so as to encourage 
adoption of a new identity (Berger & Luck -
man, 1966). In general, such institutions are 
rarely successful in transforming the core 
identities of those who are disinclined to 
change (Schein, 1961). Rather, the success of 
this approach is limited to relatively modest, 
short-term alterations of behaviors and iden -
tities that are of a more peripheral nature.
Environmental  Changes
Dramatic identity changes can occur when 
people shift their social networks by, for ex -
ample, entering college or moving to a new 
town or country (e.g., Iyer et al., 2008). Such 
shifts produce identity change for a variety 
of reasons (see Hormuth, 1990). First, as 
with the contextual changes described ear -
lier, new environments inevitably provide 
people with new expectations and norms 
that can produce corresponding changes in 
identity. Furthermore, novel environments 
tend to increase people’s self-  focused atten -
tion, which over time can bring about identi -
ty change as new self-  knowledge is acquired 
and new self-  standards are applied.
Finally, new environments may not af -
ford the opportunity structures that once 
nurtured and sustained an identity. In such 
cases, people who (for whatever reasons) 
fail to remoor  their identity to a new social 
structure that resembles the old one most 
likely experience identity change (Ethier 
& Deaux, 1994). For example, some (e.g., 
Sageman, 2004) have speculated that iden -
tity negotiation processes initiated the chain 
of events that led to the terrorist attacks on 
the World Trade Center in 2001. The pro -
cess was set in motion when a group of for -
eign students visited Europe and failed to 
receive the warm reception that their past 