Identity Bargaining and Self-Conception

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Abstract
An essential feature of social interaction is negotiation as to the identities actors may assume. A role-playing experiment was designed in which this identity bargaining could be observed and its outcomes predicted. Male subjects interacted with female stooges who demanded that they assume a certain identity in order to accomplish a desirable goal (e.g., get a date). In half the cases the subject was altercast in an identity incompatible with his ideal self-conception; in the other half the altercast was irrelevant to his ideal self. Half the subjects interacted in private, while half believed themselves to have a peer audience. As predicted, subjects engaged in greater ceding of identity when the stooges' altercast was not aimed at a central feature of their self-conception. While measures of subjects' interpersonal strategies were not consistently differentiated when the episode had an audience, in relative privacy, however, subjects whose central feature of self was attacked proved to be relatively more defensive and derogatory toward the stooge, to project greater “secondariness,” to altercast the stooge into a support-seeking identity, and to project greater autonomy.

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