EPISTEMOLOGICAL IDENTITY THEORY: RECONCEPTUALIZING COMMITMENT AS SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

This article presents Epistemological Identity Theory (EIT) that explains how individuals enhance their knowledge of self and the world by creating and maintaining identities. Using cognitive and affective processes previously ignored by identity theorists, this theory reconceptualizes commitment to an identity as the degree to which that identity organizes and clarifies one's experience of the world and him/herself. The theory is derived from two previously developed theories by Demerath based on epistemological principles. First, Knowledge-Based Affect Theory describes our affective response to gains and losses in meaning, and identifies the determinants of meaningfulness as frequency, stability, and impact. Second, Epistemological Culture Theory extends those principles, arguing individuals actively increase meaningfulness by creating culture as they collaboratively articulate, typify, and orient their experiences to create shared meaning. Extending these principles to commitment, EIT asserts that individuals are committed to organizations, roles, or experiences to the extent those experiences are frequent, stable, and impactful, and to the extent those experiences have been articulated, typified, and oriented. This article outlines the theory in the course of showing how it builds on the insights of previous conceptions of commitment, while providing determinants that are more precise and more unified and grounded theoretically.

Notes

¹The distinction between status and identity can be noted here. Status can be defined as a socially shared perception of a position within social structure and identity as an individually held perception of such a position, including the way it relates to the self's overall constellation of identities. This allows us to view identities as varying between individuals who occupy the same statuses. This variation may occur due to differences in the combinations of statuses individuals occupy, or differences in their life histories, their stages in the life course, etc.