Identity‐Based Motivation: Implications for Health and Health Disparities

Abstract

People aspire to be healthy but often fall short of this goal. Poor health is associated with macro‐level factors—social stratification and low socioeconomic position, including low education, low income, and low status racial‐ethnic group membership. These social determinants differentially expose people to health‐promoting (or undermining) contexts and to having (not having) choice and control over their lives. But social determinants cannot cause individual action directly. Identity‐based motivation theory addresses this gap, articulating how social determinants operate at the micro‐level to influence whether or not a behavior or choice feels congruent with important identities and how such identity‐congruence, in turn, influences which strategies are chosen and how difficulty is interpreted. Lack of choice and control make an interpretation of difficulty as meaning that effort is pointless and “not for people like me” (rather than important) more likely, reducing belief that one's action and effort matter.