The Impact of Highly Stressful Events on Identity Functioning During Emerging Adulthood: Growth, Decompensation, and Relative Stability

A sample of 334 college students reporting a highly stressful event completed the Scales for Transformational Change, an instrument assessing transformative, positive, and negative changes from prior to the stressful event to the present. They also completed measures of the quality of identity functioning. Transformative change correlated positively with both positive and negative change and the stress level experienced. Transformative change was more strongly associated with positive as opposed to negative change. Cluster analysis revealed three patterns of change: (a) Positive Transformative Change, (b) Decompensational Change, and (c) Relative Stability. The Positive Transformative Change group was associated with reports of improved identity functioning and the Relative Stability group tended to improve as well. The Decompensational Change group showed only a modest decrease in identity functioning. The results indicate that experiencing stress is associated with subsequent positive identity functioning among emerging adults more so than disruptive decompensation.