 27. Identity Negotiation  591
Although the foregoing discussion may 
imply that identity negotiations typically 
consist of equally weighted contributions on 
the part of each negotiator, this is often not 
the case. At times, targets may be strongly 
invested in identities that perceivers are re -
luctant to honor. At other times, perceivers 
may enter interactions with strongly held ex -
pectations about a target’s identity, only to 
discover that the target has different ideas 
about who he or she is. In such cases, coop -
eration is still possible, provided that both 
parties are able and willing to be flexible. In 
general, to the extent that a target’s invest -
ment in a given identity is high, cooperation 
is facilitated by the perceiver’s willingness to 
offer identity-  consistent appraisals. To the 
extent that a perceiver is strongly invested 
in his or her expectations, cooperation is fa -
cilitated by the target’s willingness to con -
form to those expectations. When both the 
perceiver and target are strongly invested in 
conflicting perceptions of the target’s iden -
tity, cooperation may not be possible, and 
both parties are likely to be dissatisfied with 
the outcome of the negotiation.
Continuity
People expect their relationship partners to 
be fairly predictable and consistent over time 
(Rempel, Holmes, & Zanna, 1985). Thus, in 
addition to honoring the identities that they 
negotiate within the context of a given in -
teraction (the cooperation principle), people 
maximize interpersonal harmony if they 
also negotiate identities that are stable over 
time; that is, people should remain faithful 
to the identities that they negotiate in the 
context of ongoing relationships with spe -
cific others.
A challenge to the continuity principle 
may occur when people mature, shift sta -
tus, or change in some way. Such changes 
can pose problems for relationship partners, 
because they are forced to choose between 
assimilating the new identity to an existing 
one, renegotiating a new identity, or leav -
ing the relationship. Often, such transitions 
are finessed through cognitive gymnastics 
that are designed to maximize the appar -
ent overlap between the old and new identi -
ties (at least from the perspective of the one 
undergoing the change). One such strategy is discussed by McAdams (1999), who sug -
gests that people may organize multiple 
identities around overarching cognitive or 
affective themes. For example, people may 
imbue their various identities with a com -
mon affective tone such as humor or pessi -
mism, thereby providing psychological unity 
to the multiple roles that they enact. Using 
such higher-  level schemas, people may per -
ceive continuity between two or more identi -
ties that outside observers might construe as 
conflicting. We elaborate on this idea in the 
next section.
Cognitive gymnastics notwithstanding, 
problems may emerge when sudden iden -
tity changes occur that cannot be finessed, 
or when interaction partners disagree about 
the degree to which a given identity is con -
tinuous. For example, when one partner 
suddenly loses an interpersonal asset such 
as a job or status, that partner may become 
financially dependent on the other partner. 
Such reversals may turn the power dynamic 
in the relationship on its head, and this shift 
may have important reverberations for the 
respective identities of each partner. If such 
identity discontinuity cannot be repaired 
fairly quickly, then partners are forced to re -
negotiate the relevant identities.
Compatibility
Often, people know one another in differ -
ent contexts that call for distinct identities. 
For example, married people may know one 
another not only as spouses but also as par -
ents, colleagues, and salsa dancing partners. 
When negotiating distinct identities with 
a given partner, targets should ensure that 
these identities are compatible with one an -
other and with previously negotiated iden -
tities. Given the premium that people place 
on predictability and consistency in their 
relationship partners, someone who elicits 
appraisals of “bookworm” in one context 
and “party animal” in another context may 
be perceived as unreliable and therefore 
undesirable as a partner. If targets seek to 
negotiate different identities with the same 
perceivers, they can do so successfully only 
insofar as the appraisals associated with the 
different identities are not inconsistent either 
logically (e.g., Democrat vs. Republican) or 
emotionally (e.g., friend vs. foe).