Stage factors relating alienation and self-role diffusion
Abstract A study, controlling for age, sex, and vocational commitment of 290 adolescents (ages 17–19 and 20–22), was conducted to determine the relationship between self- and social alienation attitudes and the identity-role crisis of the adolescent stage. Specific subscale differences due to age and sex for social alienation were found. Younger adolescents expressed greater self-alienation than older males, who were significantly more self-satisfied than both younger and older females and younger males. The hypothesis suggesting that self-alienation reflects conflict and dissatisfaction emerging from identity-role discrepancies during the adolescent stage of psychosocial development, and would decrease with vocational commitment was supported for males but not females.