Navigating identity threat: the role of identity salience and centrality in predicting attitude advocacy online

Abstract

When faced with a threat to one’s identity, people are motivated to defend against that threat. This defence response can manifest in different ways depending on the context. For instance, identity threat is known to lead to different patterns of ego-defensive responding depending on how central the aspect of identity is to one’s self-concept. However, such research has only been investigated in the context of individual and collective outcomes in the physical space. This study aims to contextualise these findings to the digital space. In this experiment, undergraduate students (N = 131) were randomly assigned to have either their personal or collective aspect of identity made salient and have that aspect of identity either threatened or affirmed. The centrality of each aspect to their self-concept was also observed behaviourally through participants’ submitted Instagram profiles. The likelihood of advocating for an attitude based on their salient identity in an online space was examined as the key outcome variable. As such, ego-defensive responses to identity threat were expected to manifest in the form of differing patterns of intentions to advocate for their attitude online. Specifically, participants were expected to be more likely to advocate for their attitude when the threatened identity was more central to their self-concept. Partial support for these predictions was found, as the hypothesised pattern of ego-defensive responses was observed when personal identity was threatened, but not when collective identity was threatened. Possible explanations for these inconsistent results and potential future directions were discussed.