The Relationship Between Identity and Intimacy in Early Adulthood

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Abstract
This investigation examined the relationship between identity and intimacy in young adults and determined whether prior measures of identity and intimacy status would be useful with subjects in this age range. Fifty 22- to 35-year-old men and women participated in structured interviews designed to assess identity and intimacy status. They also completed the Identity Status Incomplete Sentences Blank for Adults and several other paper-and-pencil inventories: the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, the Inventory of Psychosocial Development, the Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire, and the Yufit Intimacy-Isolation Scale. Results suggest that there is a relationship between identity status and intimacy in adults, that the interviews and the Identity Status Incomplete Sentences Blank for Adults are more closely related to each other than to other measures of theoretically similar constructs, and that these measures of identity and intimacy are useful with adults. In supplementary analyses few sex differences were obtained. Older subjects were more likely to be in committed relationship statuses than were younger subjects.