However, this past work didn’t identify whether the multifaceted identity mindsets needed to be identity-specific (as compared to just thinking generally about one’s self flexibly), or if merely thinking about someone else’s multiple identities would also lead to the same flexible thinking outcomes. And I previously showed that both multiracial adults, when reminded of their multiple racial identities, and monoracial adults, when reminded of their multiple social identities more generally (e.g., being a student, athlete and male), outperformed multiracial and monoracial individuals thinking about their average day (a control condition in which they did not consider their multiple identities) on two creativity tasks. A large amount of research also shows that bicultural individuals and others who have spent time studying abroad in other cultural contexts are more creative problem solvers because they have added experience reconciling their different cultural identities and social norms (e.g., Benet-Martinez, Lee & Leu, 2006 Madducx & Galinsky, 2009 Tadmor, Galinsky & Maddux, 2012). Moreover, some past work with adults has shown that people do in fact claim distinct and overlapping identities at different times (Crisp, Hewstone & Rubin, 2001 Goclowska & Crisp, 2014). Recent reviews suggest the need for the field to consider dual identities that straddle more traditional singular social categories (e.g., biracial, transgender Dunham & Olson, 2016 Gaither, 2018 Kang & Bodenhausen, 2015), and other work on intersectionality also make it clear that psychological science should be acknowledging the fact that people do not have just one ingroup or outgroup (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). The question I asked - does thinking about one’s self from a multifaceted angle shift your flexible thinking? However, psychology research has traditionally focused on the effects stemming from one identity (i.e., race OR gender), rather than trying to measure how belonging to multiple groups may actually shift our behavior or even perhaps change our results.
We all have multiple identities - race, gender, age, sexual orientation, occupation - the list goes on and on. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Charles Lafitte Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, and has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, BBC, Vox, Washington Post and Forbes. More specifically, she studies how contact with diverse others shapes social interactions, and how racial and gender identities (among others) influence behavior, social perceptions and bias from childhood through adulthood. Her research focuses broadly on how a person’s social identities and experiences across the lifespan motivate their social perceptions and behaviors in diverse settings. Sarah Gaither, PhD, is an assistant professor in the department of psychology & neuroscience and a faculty affiliate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and the Center on Health and Society at Duke University.
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