Identity development and the transition to adulthood under polycrisis: a one-year longitudinal study of emerging adults.

Abstract

Background: Contemporary emerging adults are navigating the transition to adulthood under conditions of prolonged societal uncertainty associated with multiple concurrent global crises. Although psychological stress has been extensively linked to poorer mental health, considerably less is known about its prospective associations with identity development and adulthood attainment.

Objective: This longitudinal study examined whether baseline psychological stress burden prospectively predicted identity development, adulthood attainment, and resilience-related resources over 1 year, and whether baseline resilience-related resources prospectively predicted identity and adulthood attainment independently of stress burden.

Methods: Data were drawn from a nationwide longitudinal panel of 831 Polish emerging adults (18-29 years) assessed at two time points separated by 1 year. Psychological stress burden was modelled as a latent factor indicated by perceived stress, adjustment-disorder symptoms, and polycrisis-related adjustment difficulties. Identity development was assessed using the five-dimensional model of identity formation, alongside measures of resilience-related resources and subjective and objective adulthood. Longitudinal hypotheses were examined using autoregressive structural equation models controlling for baseline levels of the respective outcomes and relevant sociodemographic covariates. Subjective adulthood was modelled as a binary outcome using probit structural equation modelling.

Results: All developmental outcomes showed significant rank-order stability across the follow-up period, while mean-level changes were generally small. Higher baseline psychological stress burden prospectively predicted greater ruminative exploration, lower commitment making, and lower identification with commitment, but was not significantly associated with exploration in breadth, exploration in depth, resilience-related resources, objective adulthood, or subjective adulthood. Higher baseline resilience-related resources prospectively predicted greater exploration in breadth, commitment making, exploration in depth, and identification with commitment, independently of baseline psychological stress burden, but did not significantly predict ruminative exploration, objective or subjective adulthood.

Conclusion: Psychological stress burden and resilience-related resources showed distinct prospective associations with identity development, whereas neither significantly predicted objective or subjective adulthood after accounting for baseline levels and covariates. Higher psychological stress burden was associated with greater ruminative exploration and weaker commitment-related processes, whereas resilience-related resources were associated with both adaptive exploration and commitment processes. These findings suggest that, over the one-year interval examined, prospective associations with psychological stress burden and resilience-related resources were concentrated primarily within identity development rather than broader adulthood attainment. Longer multiwave studies are needed to determine how these associations unfold across the transition to adulthood.