"I'm more than my sport": Exploring the dynamic processes of identity change in athletic retirement.

Retirement is one of the most impactful career transitions athletes face. Researchers recognise the role that athletic identity plays in this, but analysis of identity content and change processes is limited. Addressing this gap, we conducted a qualitative study exploring the experience of identity change in 21 competitive and successful elite athletes who had retired from sport. All participated in a one-session psychoeducational program that explored the challenges of transitioning out of sport before being interviewed about their understanding of identity in sport, and their experiences negotiating identity loss and change in retirement. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we identified three themes: (i) the role of identity and self-categorizations in shaping sport performance, (ii) adjusting to identity loss (with subthemes indicating that this experience varied depending on the extent to which a person had multiple or exclusive identities), and (iii) attempts to remoor identity in the transition (with subthemes of searching for a new identity and actively repurposing identity). We interpret these themes through the lens of the Social Identity Model of Identity Change and show that this provides a framework for extending our understanding the complexities of identity change associated with retirement from elite sport.

Data from four consecutive cohorts of students in Australia (2019-2022) show the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic and international university students' mental health.

INTRODUCTION: COVID-19 and related travel and social restrictions caused significant stress for university students in Australia and globally. Learning quickly moved online and many students (particularly international students) were separated from social and economic support. This study examined the impact of the pandemic from pre-pandemic (2019) to the COVID-19 Omicron wave (2022) on domestic and international students' mental health. METHODS: Participants were 1540 students (72% females, 28% international) in four first-year cohorts (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). We screened for mental health concerns (% positive) and symptom scores for depression, anxiety and somatic distress using the PsyCheck, and general wellbeing using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being scale. RESULTS: From pre-COVID (2019) to the first wave of COVID-19 (2020), the proportion of students screening positive for mental health problems rose in both domestic students (66-76%) and international students (46-67%). Depression symptoms and wellbeing were worse in 2020 than in 2019, 2021 and 2022. Anxiety symptoms increased from 2019 to 2020 and continued to rise in 2021 and 2022. Somatic symptoms did not show an effect of cohort. Contrary to expectations, domestic students reported higher distress and lower wellbeing than international students across cohorts. CONCLUSION: The pandemic was associated with a marked increase in psychological distress in first-year university students, not all of which settled with the easing of restrictions. Post-pandemic recovery in the Australian university sector must include university-wide access to mental health information and support for incoming students.

A latent profile analysis of the nature of social group memberships and their contribution to retirement outcomes.

Positive experiences of groups (e.g., the extent to which groups are important and supportive) tend to be associated with better retirement adjustment outcomes. However, group experiences are not always positive, and we know little about their varied contribution to adjustment outcomes. We addressed this gap by exploring the nature of social group memberships - in terms of varying positive and negative experiences of groups - to better understand how social group memberships shape retirement adjustment, life satisfaction and mental health. A latent profile analysis (using data from 489 retirees and their membership of 1887 groups) identified four profiles of social group memberships: optimal (63%), slightly straining (13%), low-supportive (18%) and ambivalent (6%). Subsequent regression analysis showed that these different profiles of group membership were differentially associated with retirement adjustment outcomes: belonging to more optimal groups was associated with better perceived adjustment, higher life satisfaction and better mental health, while belonging to slightly straining and ambivalent groups contributed to poorer adjustment, lower life satisfaction and greater depression. These findings have implications for theory and practice, not least because they advance our understanding of the diversity of people's group memberships and their contribution to retirement and health outcomes.

A longitudinal examination of the role of social identity in supporting health and well-being in retirement.

Social factors are major determinants of the success of retirement transitions. However, we do not yet fully understand the nature and basis of this impact, particularly as it relates to social group belonging. To address this issue the present article investigated the role that social group memberships play in supporting people's health and well-being in the early phase of transitioning to retirement. More specifically, we drew on the social identity model of identity change (SIMIC) to examine two pathways in which social group processes are theorized to influence adjustment to life change-social identity continuity and social identity gain. To test these pathways, a sample of Australian workers who had transitioned to retirement in the last 12 months (N = 170) were surveyed about their (a) preretirement multiple group memberships and postretirement maintained and new group memberships and (b) their perceived physical health, mental health, and life satisfaction after retirement. While preretirement group memberships did not affect retirement outcomes directly, they supported them indirectly by enabling people both to maintain some existing group memberships and to gain some new group memberships postretirement; as predicted by SIMIC. These findings confirm the importance of social factors and of social group membership in particular, for retiree health and well-being. Theoretically, they support the generalizability of SIMIC and its capacity to explain adjustment to diverse life changes including retirement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Developing engaged and 'teamful' leaders: A randomized controlled trial of the 5R identity leadership program.

The social identity approach to leadership argues that leaders' capacity to influence and inspire others is grounded in a shared sense of social identity (or 'us-ness') that those leaders create, advance, represent, and embed for the groups they lead. The approach therefore argues that a key task for leaders is to develop insights and skills of (social) identity leadership that allow them to motivate and mobilize groups and transform them into a potent social and organizational force. In contrast to other approaches and programs which focus on leaders' leader identity (their 'I-ness'), the 5R leadership development program supports the development of leaders' social identity by raising awareness of the importance of social identity ('we-ness') for leadership and taking leaders through structured activities that help them build engaged and inclusive teams. The present research assessed the benefits of facilitated and learner self-directed versions of the 5R program (Ns = 27, 22 respectively) relative to a no-treatment control (N = 27). Results (including those of an intention-to-treat analysis; N = 76) indicated that, relative to leaders in the control condition, those who participated in both forms of 5R reported large increases in identity leadership knowledge, as well as medium-sized increases in both team engagement (a compound factor comprised of team identification, team OCB, team efficacy, and work engagement) and 'teamfulness' (comprised of team reflexivity, team psychological safety, team goal clarity, and inclusive team climate). We reflect on the importance of teamfulness for leadership and team functioning and on the value of programs that help leaders develop this.

A world together: Global citizen identification as a basis for prosociality in the face of COVID-19.

How do global citizens respond to a global health emergency? The present research examined the association between global citizen identification and prosociality using two cross-national datasets-the World Values Survey (Study 1, N = 93,338 from 60 countries and regions) and data collected in 11 countries at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (Study 2, N = 5,427). Results showed that individuals who identified more strongly as global citizens reported greater prosociality both generally (Study 1) and more specifically in the COVID-19 global health emergency (Study 2). Notably, global citizen identification was a stronger predictor of prosociality in response to COVID-19 than national identification (Study 2). Moreover, analyses revealed that shared ingroup identity accounted for the positive association between global citizen identification and prosociality (Study 2). Overall, these findings highlight global citizenship as a unique and promising direction in promoting prosociality and solidarity, especially in the fight against COVID-19.

Double jeopardy: How lower levels of support during COVID-19 exacerbated the relationship between loneliness and distress.

While the relationship between loneliness and psychological distress is well documented, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are less clear. One factor known to be related to loneliness as well as psychological distress, is social support, with some studies suggesting that support-both received and provided-can serve as a mechanism to reduce the distress associated with loneliness. In this paper we examine the mediating role of both aspects of support in the relationship between loneliness and psychological distress in the COVID-19 context. We used a multi-country dataset collected at two timepoints during the pandemic; the first during the early stages (N = 6,842, 11 countries) and the second collected for a subset of countries (N = 1,299, 3 countries) 3 months later. Across all eleven countries, results revealed significant positive associations between loneliness and distress. Furthermore, using longitudinal data, we investigated the directionality of this relationship and found that increased loneliness over time was associated with increased psychological distress. The data also showed that both feeling unsupported and feeling unable to provide support to others mediated this relationship. These findings point to the need to facilitate people's ability to draw effective social support and help others-particularly at times when social connectedness is threatened-as a way of alleviating the psychological distress that commonly presents with loneliness.

Experiments make a good breakfast, but a poor supper.

Cesario's analysis has three key flaws. First, the focus on whether an effect is "real" (an "effects flaw") overlooks the importance of theory testing. Second, obsession with effects (a "fetishization flaw") sidelines theoretically informed questions about when and why an effect may arise. Third, failure to take stock of cultural and historical context (a "decontextualization flaw") strips findings of meaning.

"Let's get physical" - or social: The role of physical activity versus social group memberships in predicting depression and anxiety over time.

BACKGROUND: Physical activity is often promoted as a way to prevent and combat anxiety and depression in adolescents. However, very little research has sought to establish whether the benefits of exercise arise from the excercise itself or from the social context in which it takes place. We explore the hypothesis that it is not physical activity on its own, but rather adolescents' engagement in group life (as part of a sports group or otherwise), that accounts for positive mental health effects associated with physical activity. METHODS AND RESULTS: We conducted a longitudinal study that tracked 558 high-school boys and found that anxiety and depression over time was not predicted by (a) T1 physical fitness as determined by 7 speed and agility tests, or (b) engaging in multiple sports as co-curricular activies at T1. In contrast, multiple group memberships - irrespective of the activity - predicted reduced depression and anxiety over time, particularly when these were groups that adolescents identified with and experienced as compatible with each other. LIMITATIONS: Limitations relate to (a) physical fitness only being measured at T1, (b) the absence of a measure of frequency and duration of physical activity, and (c) the homogeneity of the sample. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that group memberships and the social identities that adolescents derive from these groups (including, but not restricted to, those involving sport) function as a psychological resource to reduce anxiety and depression over time.

Social identity makes group-based social connection possible: Implications for loneliness and mental health.

This review argues that a distinctly positive form of social connection is made possible by the social identities that people derive from psychologically meaningful group memberships. These connections have important implications for mental health by virtue of their distinct capacity to furnish people with a sense of collective meaning, purpose, support, and efficacy. This analysis suggests that loneliness and its toxic effects arise in part from the challenges of achieving this distinct form of social connection in contemporary society. However, it also suggests that a good way to tackle loneliness and support mental health is by building, restoring, and sustaining social identities through meaningful group-based connections. We conclude by reflecting on the success of interventions that do precisely this - most notably Groups 4 Health.

Unlocking collective cooperation in the midst of COVID-19: The role of social support in predicting the social class disparity in cooperation.

We examined whether (the lack of) social support can explain why researchers have found lower rates of adherence to follow public health guidelines amongst people who perceived themselves as coming from lower social class backgrounds during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this, we surveyed 5818 participants from 10 countries during the first wave of lock-down. Contrary to previous findings, social class was not related to general adherence to COVID-19 regulations or desire to engage in citizenship behaviours (e.g., showing initiatives to help others during the pandemic). However, we found evidence of an indirect effect whereby those who perceived themselves as higher social class were more likely to be both the recipient and provider of social support which in turn predicted greater adherence and desire to engage in citizenship behaviours during the earlier wave of the pandemic. Our findings highlight the importance of social support in unlocking potential for collective cooperation (i.e., adherence to COVID-19 rules and desire to engage in citizenship behaviours). They suggest that instead of enforcing strict regulations, government authorities need to address existing social support barriers within lower income communities to facilitate cooperation from everyone in the community.

GROUPS 2 CONNECT: An online activity to maintain social connection and well-being during COVID-19.

COVID-19 has had significant negative consequences for well-being. As well as the primary effects of the virus itself, secondary effects have resulted from the social isolation caused by the lockdowns imposed to slow the spread of the virus. Recognising the toxic effects of isolation, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers are conscious of the need to mitigate the negative effects of social distancing. Drawing on insights from a large body of research on the Social Identity Approach to Health, we devised an online activity-GROUPS 2 CONNECT (G2C)-aimed at helping people to maintain social connectedness when face-to-face interaction was not possible. Across four studies (N = 1021), we found that after completing the G2C activity, participants reported an increase in perceived quality of social connection, perceived ability to stay connected and well-being, with results showing that for two of the three longitudinal studies these uplifts were stable over time, and for all studies, the uplifts remained consistently higher for those who reported completing their social connection goals. These findings provide initial evidence of the value of G2C as a tool to support social connection, thereby reducing the risk of social isolation.

Identity Leadership in a Crisis: A 5R Framework for Learning from Responses to COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest global crisis of our lifetimes, and leadership has been critical to societies' capacity to deal with it. Here effective leadership has brought people together, provided a clear perspective on what is happening and what response is needed, and mobilized the population to act in the most effective ways to bring the pandemic under control. Informed by a model of identity leadership (Haslam, Reicher & Platow, 2020), this review argues that leaders' ability to do these things is grounded in their ability to represent and advance the shared interests of group members and to create and embed a sense of shared social identity among them (a sense of "us-ness"). For leaders, then, this sense of us-ness is the key resource that they need to marshal in order to harness the support and energy of citizens. The review discusses examples of the successes and failures of different leaders during the pandemic and organizes these around five policy priorities related to the 5Rs of identity leadership: readying, reflecting, representing, realizing, and reinforcing. These priorities and associated lessons are relevant not only to the management of COVID-19 but to crisis management and leadership more generally.

Rethinking the nature of the person at the heart of the biopsychosocial model: Exploring social changeways not just personal pathways.

Karunamuni et al.'s (2020) biopsychosocial-pathways (BPS-P) model provides an important framework for elaborating on Engel's (1977) biopsychosocial (BPS) model of health. In particular, the BPS-P model improves on Engel's by articulating and evidencing the multiple pathways between biological, psychological, and social influences on health and identifying mechanisms that might be implicated in these pathways. Yet its analytic treatment of these influences as "separate systems" means that, as with Engel's model, the BPS-P model is more a list of ingredients than an integrated whole. In this commentary, following Haslam et al.'s (2019) specification of a sociopsychobio model, we underscore the value of a synthetic appreciation of biology, psychology, and society as dynamically interdependent aspects of an integrated whole which is more than just the sum of its parts and the pathways between them. In particular, our alternative framework centres on an appreciation of people as social beings whose group memberships and associated social identities open up 'changeways' (not just pathways) that, as we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, can fundamentally restructure biology, psychology and society.

Social identity mapping online.

Social identities play an important role in many aspects of life, not least in those pertaining to health and well-being. Decades of research shows that these relationships are driven by a range of social identity processes, including identification with groups, social support received from groups, and multiple group memberships. However, to date, researchers have not had access to methods that simultaneously capture these social identity processes. To fill this void, this article introduces an online Social Identity Mapping (oSIM) tool designed to assess the multidimensional and connected nature of social identities. Four studies (total N = 721) featuring community, student, new parent, and retiree samples, test the reliability and validity of oSIM. Results indicate that the tool is easy to use, engaging, has good internal consistency as well as convergent and discriminant validity, and predicts relevant outcomes across a range of contexts. Furthermore, using meta-analytic findings, the tool is able to index a higher-order social identity construct, here introduced as a supergroup. This new concept provides holistic information about groups (reflecting an integrated index of several social identity processes) that are predictive of well-being outcomes, as well as outcomes related to successful adjustment to challenging life events. We discuss how the tool can be used to tackle key debates in the literature and contribute to theory by affording researchers the opportunity to capture the nuanced and contextual nature of social identity in action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

GROUPS 4 HEALTH reduces loneliness and social anxiety in adults with psychological distress: Findings from a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: Loneliness is a key public health issue for which various interventions have been trialed. However, few directly target the core feature of loneliness-lack of belonging. This is the focus of Groups 4 Health (G4H), a recently developed intervention that targets the development and maintenance of social group memberships to support health. METHOD: To investigate the efficacy of this intervention, a randomized controlled trial was conducted with participants (N = 120) assigned to G4H or treatment-as-usual (TAU) by computer software. Assessment of primary (loneliness) and secondary (depression, social anxiety, general practitioner visits, multiple group membership) outcomes was conducted at baseline and 2-month follow-up using mixed-model repeated-measures analyses. RESULTS: G4H produced a greater reduction in loneliness (d = -1.04) and social anxiety (d = -0.46) than TAU (d = -0.33 and d = 0.03, respectively). G4H was also associated with fewer general practitioner visits at follow-up (d = -0.33) and a stronger sense of belonging to multiple groups (d = 0.52) relative to TAU (d = 0.30 and d = 0.33, respectively). Depression declined significantly in both G4H (d = -0.63) and TAU (d = -0.34), but follow-up analyses showed this was greater in G4H among those not receiving adjunct psychopharmacological treatment and whose symptoms were milder. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that G4H can be a useful way to treat loneliness and highlight the importance of attending to group memberships when tackling this important social challenge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Construction at Work: Multiple Identities Scaffold Professional Identity Development in Academia.

Identity construction - the process of creating and building a new future self - is an integral part of a person's professional career development. However, at present we have little understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underpin this process. Likewise, we have little understanding of the barriers that obstruct it, and which thus may contribute to inequality in career outcomes. Using a social identity lens, and particularly the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC), we explore the process of academic identity construction among doctoral students. Through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 22 Ph.D. candidates, we observe that the identity construction process relies on a person's perception of a navigable pathway between their current self and their future self. Importantly, participants who were able to access multiple identity resources were more likely to perceive a navigable pathway to a future professional self (e.g., as an academic), unless they perceived these identities to be incompatible with those held by leading members of the profession (e.g., their supervisors). This research suggests that the identities that people are able to access as they progress in their careers may play an important role in their ongoing professional identity construction and career success.

An online paradigm for exploring the self-reference effect.

People reliably encode information more effectively when it is related in some way to the self-a phenomenon known as the self-reference effect. This effect has been recognized in psychological research for almost 40 years, and its scope as a tool for investigating the self-concept is still expanding. The self-reference effect has been used within a broad range of psychological research, from cultural to neuroscientific, cognitive to clinical. Traditionally, the self-reference effect has been investigated in a laboratory context, which limits its applicability in non-laboratory samples. This paper introduces an online version of the self-referential encoding paradigm that yields reliable effects in an easy-to-administer procedure. Across four studies (total N = 658), this new online tool reliably replicated the traditional self-reference effect: in all studies self-referentially encoded words were recalled significantly more than semantically encoded words (d = 0.63). Moreover, the effect sizes obtained with this online tool are similar to those obtained in laboratory samples, and are robust to experimental variations in encoding time (Studies 1 and 2) and recall procedure (Studies 3 and 4), and persist independent of primacy and recency effects (all studies).