Where do I belong? - this is a common question asked by adolescents, and one that exemplifies Erik Erikson's (1959) fifth stage of psychosocial development: identity vs role confusion.
At this stage of development, a young person, in the face of dramatic physiological and cognitive change, also undergoes an intense search for individual identity. This stage is sometimes interrupted by role confusion or perhaps an identity crisis where the adolescent might withdraw or become stuck trying to make decisions about the future. According to Erikson, the adolescent's ability to resolve such a crisis will depend on how successfully the early stages of his model had been completed.
Recent research has shown that a adolescent's healthy sense of identity might act as a protective factor against the more negative aspects of peer pressure, such as risk-taking behaviour (Dumas, Ellis, & Wolf, 2011).
Considering the adolescent's egocentric focus on the self, psychologist David Elkind (1967) coined two key terms: