The role of agentic personality, social capital, moral intelligence and psychological capital in predicting identity

According to the psychological theories, the priority of adolescence is the acquisition of identity, which is influenced by physical, psychological, socio-cultural and spiritual factors of this period. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the role of agentic personality, social capital, moral intelligence and psychological capital in identity prediction.

This study is a descriptive and correlation study. 633 undergraduate students of Tehran universities were selected by random sampling method in the academic year of 2018-2019 and completed the research tools included Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status II (EOM-EIS-II), Multi-measure Agentic Personality Scale (MAPS), the Social Capital Measurement Questionnaire, Moral Competency Inventory (MCI) and Psychological Capital Intervention (PCI). Data were analyzed with using Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression with SPSS-24.

Findings showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between achievement and moratorium identity states with personality agency, moral intelligence, social capital, and psychological capital. Also, these variables positively and significantly predicted the achievement and moratorium identity states. Conversely, the relationship between identity diffusion and these variables was negative. In relation to foreclosure identity, only social capital and psychological capital were positively and significantly related to it.

According to the findings of this study, it can be stated that different identity states have different relationship with individual constructs (personality agency, moral intelligence and psychological capital) and social (social capital) according to different levels of identity crisis and sense of commitment to personal identity.