Identity Styles and College Adaptation: The Mediational Roles of Commitment, Self-Agency and Self-Regulation

Identity processing styles (i.e., normative, informational, and diffuse-avoidant) refer to differences in how individuals engage or circumvent the challenge of processing self-relevant information and negotiating identity-relevant conflicts. The role identity commitment, personal agency, and self-regulation played in mediating relationships between identity styles and how successfully students were adapting to college was investigated. Measures of identity style, commitment, agency, self-regulation, and three indicators of adaptation (i.e., depressive symptoms, loneliness, and college adjustment) were completed by 402 college freshmen. A normative style was associated with an adaptive pattern; whereas the pattern for the diffuse-avoidant style was maladaptive. An informational style was only directly associated with college adjustment. All these relationships were mediated by personal agency and self-regulation. Commitment only uniquely mediated relationships with depressive symptoms. The findings suggest that identity commitment has a minimal to negligible impact on college adjustment independent from students’ sense of agency and regulatory resources. Implications of the role agency and self-regulation play in how freshmen students with different identity styles form identity commitments and adapt to college are considered.