The identity questions are pervasive in the experience of every human being. They are specifically prominent in developmental periods, such as adolescence, in which individuals change substantially their body, achieve new cognitive abilities, and enlarge their social network (Lerner & Steinberg, 2009). Because of these multiple changes, young people urge to understand who they are, who they want to become, what makes them to be distinct from others, and what gives a sense of continuity despite the ongoing changes (Kroger, 2007). The same issues are highly relevant across other moments of the life span, especially when individuals face transitions that imply renegotiating their identity (e.g., the transition to parenthood, the transition from school to work, or the transition to retirement). Given this centrality of identity in the human experience, it is clearly understandable why identity is one of the most studied constructs in the social sciences (Côté, 2006). As an evidence of this, a search in the bibliographic database Web of Science (in the Social Sciences Citation Index, SSCI) of the references with “identity” indexed in the title yields 37,941 results (data retrieved on May 30, 2018). More than one-third of them are from Psychology (26.44%) and Sociology (12.49%). If we focus on psychological articles (9,350 records), we can note all psychology areas are represented (e.g., experimental psychology, neurosciences, psychometrics, educational psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, applied psychology, and clinical psychology), with most references coming from social psychology (23.89%) and developmental psychology (14.69%) journals. When a topic is so complex and investigated in different fields, as it is the case for identity, while on the one hand the high number of studies being conducted provides new insights and increases the understanding of the topic, on the other hand it risks producing a fragmentation of the scientific knowledge. In fact, when more refined models are developed they can become very sophisticated and proceed on parallel tracks, with limited areas of intersections. As a result, the scientific knowledge of identity is highly specialized but fragmented (Vignoles, Schwartz, & Luyckx, 2011). This special issue aims at advancing the identity literature by addressing this shortcoming. In fact, the common denominator of the six reviews that are presented is to propose integrative views, in which multiple components and facets of identity are considered. Thus, the purpose of each contribution is to set theoretical bridges between identity models and theories that are, so far, poorly connected.

中文翻译：

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身份的多面性

身份问题普遍存在于每个人的经历中。它们在青春期等发育阶段特别显着，在该阶段中，个体会大大改变自己的身体，获得新的认知能力，并扩大他们的社交网络（Lerner＆Steinberg，2009）。由于这些多重变化，年轻人敦促要了解自己是谁，他们想成为谁，是什么使他们与众不同，以及在不断变化的情况下具有连续性的感觉（Kroger，2007）。在人生的其他时刻，同样的问题也非常重要，尤其是当个人面临暗示重新谈判其身份的过渡（例如，过渡为父母身份，从学校过渡到工作或过渡为退休）时。鉴于身份在人类经验中的核心地位，可以清楚地理解为什么身份是社会科学中研究最多的结构之一（Côté，2006年）。为了证明这一点，在书目数据库Web of Science（在社会科学引文索引，SSCI中）中对标题中带有“身份”的参考文献进行搜索会产生37,941个结果（数据于2018年5月30日检索）。其中三分之一以上来自心理学（26.44％）和社会学（12.49％）。如果我们专注于心理学文章（9,350条记录），我们可以注意到所代表的所有心理学领域（例如，实验心理学，神经科学，心理学，教育心理学，发展心理学，社会心理学，应用心理学和临床心理学），其中大多数是参考文献来自社会心理学（23。89％）和发展心理学（14.69％）期刊。当一个主题如此复杂并在不同领域中进行研究时（例如身份认同），一方面进行的大量研究可以提供新的见解并增进对该主题的理解，另一方面也有可能产生科学知识的碎片。实际上，当开发出更精细的模型时，它们会变得非常复杂，并在相交区域有限的平行轨道上进行。结果，身份的科学知识高度专业化，但却是零散的（Vignoles，Schwartz和Luyckx，2011年）。本期专刊旨在通过弥补这一缺陷来推进身份文献的发展。实际上，提出的六项评论的共同点是提出整体观点，其中考虑了身份的多个组成部分和方面。因此，每一个贡献的目的都是为了建立身份模型和迄今为止联系不紧密的理论之间的理论桥梁。