Abstract
Identity threats occur across diverse identities and situations, yet little is known about how responses to these threats relate to subsequent psychological costs across diverse identities, people, and situations. Across six studies capturing 22,000+ instances of identity threat experienced by 1,648 participants, we identify two prevalent identity distancing strategies: downplaying a threatened identity and emphasizing similarity to others. Correlational evidence (Studies 1–3) illustrates that greater downplaying of identities most strongly predicted feeling inauthentic, whereas greater downplaying and emphasizing similarly predicted disidentifying from the threatened identity. Identity distancing predicted felt inauthenticity regardless of social climate or concealability, whereas disidentification depended on these contextual factors, underscoring when identity distancing may be adaptive. Finally, both strategies indirectly predicted greater psychological stress and worse self-reported physical health through inauthenticity and disidentification. Extending beyond correlational findings, a longitudinal experiment (Study 4) demonstrated that randomly assigning participants to enact identity distancing strategies over a week increased inauthenticity and disidentification compared to an identity affirming strategy. Together, these studies provide a multiple-identity examination of distancing strategies across diverse threatened identities, people, and situations, revealing psychological consequences of managing identities in the face of myriad everyday situations.