ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the book’s central themes and offers closing observations. The book develops two main ideas. The first is that people makes claims, explicitly and implicitly, about the kind of people they are and they invest heavily in these claims. The second is that situations relevant to identity claims take two forms: one that provides the opportunity to affirm identity claims and one that tests the validity of identity claims. When we know whether people see identity-relevant situations as identity tests or identity opportunities, we can better predict (a) what they will do in those situations, (b) how they will feel in those situations depending upon what they do, and (c) how different incentives might affect their inclination to undertake various actions in those situations. The research reviewed in this book speaks both to the power of identity claims to motivate people to behave consistently with those claims and to induce them to rationalize and atone for behavior when it deviates from the dictates of their identity claims.
