Deaf Identity Centrality: Measurement, Influences, and Outcomes

Deaf Identity Salience: Tracing Daphne’s Deaf Identity Salience Through Switched at Birth

Mainstream television scarcely features Deaf persons. When they do, they are usually cameo, secondary, and rarely multidimensional characters. This paper examines Deaf identity of a main character, Daphne Vasquez, on the popular show Switched at Birth. We analyze moments where Daphne’s identity, a constructed Deaf identity, is showcased. We map how her identity is salient across seasons and then examine key moments of identity formation as Daphne negotiates her Deafness. We find a strong display of Deaf identity salience and impactful moments in the show that resulted in more positive, holistic representations of Deafness. In recent years, the media has come under increased scrutiny for limited representations of minority identities; this case study seeks to contribute to that conversation by studying a show explicitly focused on increased representation. This work is important as it not only examines a show which successfully features a character with a traditionally stigmatized identity but simultaneously quantifies how that identity is invoked as a message to viewers. This paper bridges cultural sociology with social psychology to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of identity representation in entertainment media and comments directly on the social impact of Daphne’s character on Deaf presence in 21st century media.

Chronic Patients' Emotions Toward Self-Managing Care IT

Patients’ emotions toward health IT can play an important role in explaining their usage of it. One form of health IT is self-managing care IT, such as activity trackers that can be used by chronic patients to adopt a healthy lifestyle. The goal of this study is to understand the factors that influence the arousal of emotions in chronic patients while using these tools. Past studies, in general, tend to emphasize how IT shapes emotions, underplaying the role of the individual user’s identity and, specifically, how central health is to the user’s self in shaping emotions. In this research, the authors argue that patients’ health identity centrality (i.e., the extent to which they consider health as central to their sense of self) can play an important role in forming their dependence on health IT by affecting their use of it directly and shaping their emotions around it.

Bringing the (disabled) body to personality psychology: A case study of Samantha

OBJECTIVE

Personality psychology has largely ignored the experiences of people with disabilities. This article strives to bring the thriving, interdisciplinary field of disability studies to personality psychology via a case study of Samantha (N = 1). Samantha feels that she grew up as a hearing person who could not hear and is now a deaf person who can hear.

METHOD

Narrative identity provides the theoretical, methodological, and analytical framework for the rich, qualitative examination of Samantha's life story, interwoven with approaches from disability studies and intersectionality theory. Two Life Story Interviews (McAdams, 2008), conducted 2 weeks prior to Samantha's cochlear implant surgery and again 7 weeks after the surgery, provide the foundation for this case study and are interpreted alongside additional self-report measures. Grounded theory methods were used to interpret Samantha's narrative identity.

RESULTS

Samantha's story demonstrates the ways in which narrative identity can serve as a foundation for meaning and psychological well-being, as well as a demonstration of the ways in which the study of identity can be enriched by perspectives from disability studies.

CONCLUSIONS

As an initial effort at integrating personality psychology and disability studies, this article sought to approach this task by privileging ethical representation over generalizability.

The Significance of Deaf Identity for Psychological Well-Being

Research has paid attention to how deaf identity affects life outcomes such as psychological well-being. However, studies are often carried out with small samples and without controlling for other variables. This study examined how different forms of identity-deaf, hearing, bicultural (deaf and hearing), and marginal (neither deaf nor hearing)-were associated with levels of psychological well-being and a number of other variables. The sample was 742 adults with hearing loss in Denmark. The study found that those with a deaf, hearing or bicultural identity had significantly higher levels of psychological well-being than those with a marginal identity. Further, it found that additional disability, educational level, and feeling discriminated against significantly and independently explained the degree of psychological well-being. Results are discussed here with respect to social identity theory and current deaf identity themes.