An Integration Of Ideal-self And Real-self: Based On Emotion And Cognition

Identity Integration is a new research idea in the field of identity study. It measured the individual differences in people who have more than two different identity at the same time how to view the relationship between their two(more than) identity. The research of Identity Integration originate from Bicultural Identity Integration, which has a positive relationship with mental health and creativity. The concept of identity integration has been expanding to the study of race and gender, etc. This study tries to examine the relationship between the ideal self and real self from the Angle of identity integration. And try to use two ways of the emotional and cognitive processing to make individual’s ideal self and real self identity integration change.We first adapted Bicultural Identity Integration Scale- version 1, BII- 1 to Ideal Self and Real Self Integration Scale, to measure individual difference of the integration of ideal self and real self.Second, we want to study the emotional valence’s impact on the ideal self and real self identity integration. Participants first filled out the Ideal Self and Real Self Integration Scale, and participants were then randomly assigned into one of two recall tasks. in the positive condition and in the negative condition, respectively. After finishing the recall task, the participants filled out the Ideal Self and Real Self Integration Scale again. The results showed that positive emotions about memories successfully improved the ability of low integration individual’s ideal self and real self integration.And our third study is to find cognitive style’s impact on the ideal self and real self identity integration. Participants were randomly assigned into one of two Cognitive processing style tasks, respectively. And the results showed that global(vs. local) processing successfully improved the ability of low integration individual’s ideal self and real self integration.