In 1999, McGill psychology professors Taylor, Lydon, Koestner and Baldwin, along with their graduate students, joined together to form the Centre for Identity and Social Relations. Through weekly meetings and collaborative research, we seek to explore the functions of identity in social life, and delineate its effects both positive and negative.
Western, postmodern society has provoked for its constituents a psychological crisis that is as mysterious as it is debilitating and social and political philosophers from Allan Bloom to Charles Taylor have felt compelled to address this widespread "malaise." We argue that a genuine understanding of the entire spectrum of problems plaguing society, from divorce rates to academic underachievement, from alienation to suicide, from tribalism to gangs, requires coming to terms with the principles and dynamics of psychological identity. What is unique to humans is the cognitive ability to reflect on the environment, including the self, through symbolic representations. It is our position that identity is the most important cognitive concept and process designed to meet the individual's needs, as a member of a network of social relations.When people's identities do not lead them to act in ways that adequately meet their basic needs, they will experience negative emotions, relationship difficulties, amotivation, and insecurity. These negative psychological states lead, in turn, to the kinds of social ills making headlines daily.
Don Taylor's research has focused on the plight of disadvantaged groups, primarily in the Canadian North and inner-city America. His observations of people's suffering have led him to focus on the pivotal role of collective identity, the mental blueprint for selfhood provided by one's culture and group memberships. He argues that when a culture presents unclear, or conflictual, or overly diverse models of selfhood to its members, this can lead them to experience alienation and a loss of motivation. His research in the field is complemented by laboratory studies of how people negotiate their social identities in small group situations.
John Lydon is interested in processes of commitment: Once people have made a decision about their values, goals, and relationships, how do they regulate their thoughts and behaviours to maintain these commitments? His view is that such activities are key to psychological wellbeing, to goal attainment, and to relationship satisfaction. Research has focused on the commitments that people perceive as central to their identity, andthe impact these have on important aspects of their lives such as mental and physical health.
Richard Koestner is interested in motivation. His research has shown that people's consciously acknowledged motives often do not match upwith other motivational forces, outside of awareness, that implicitly shape much of behaviour. He has studied the processes whereby people integrate their interests and values, together with the values emphasized and demands imposed by the external social world, to form an identity that functions to meet basic needs of competency, autonomy, and social relatedness.
Mark Baldwin has examined the cognitive structures and processes producing feelings of insecurity in people's significant relationships. Since the sense of self is largely constructed in the context of such relationships, these same processes shape self-evaluations and resulting feelings of self-esteem. In some research he has studied the cognitive activation of certain relationships -- e.g., with a critical parent -- and the effect this can has on self-evaluations, for example during a later failure.
Graduate students explore their own research ideas, and collaborate with their advisors to form their work into a fully-developed research program. Topics currently under examination include such things as relationship commitment, linguistic identity, and self-esteem. Recent graduates of our program have gone on to teaching positions at Concordia University, York University, and Harvard University, to name a few.
See some pictures!
Read the Montreal Gazette article about CISR members' real-world application of identity and motivational principles.