Final answer:
Identity conflicts emerge during important life decisions due to cognitive dissonance, where one's sense of consistency is disturbed. Erik Erikson's model highlights developmental struggles, such as older individuals overcoming despair and adolescents developing self-identity. The societal context, including minority group definitions and decision-making biases, also affects identity formation and conflicts.
Step-by-step explanation:
Important and difficult life decisions are often accompanied by identity conflict. Identity conflict is the psychological discomfort that arises from a clash in a person's behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that oppose one’s positive self-perception. This is known as cognitive dissonance, which causes discomfort because it disturbs our sense of consistency. Cognitive dissonance is a sign of intellectual growth, representing a mental act of re-evaluating beliefs, requiring a decision on which beliefs to keep or discard.
In Erik Erikson's developmental stages, the challenge older people struggle with is overcoming despair to achieve integrity. Adolescents face the task of identity versus role confusion, forming a sense of self and confronting questions about their personal identity and future.
Issues such as polarization in collective decision-making, recognition of minority group features, and understanding the bias towards the status quo shed light on how societal influences shape individual identity and group dynamics.