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Identity negotiation refers to the processes through which people reach agreements regarding "who is who" in their relationships. Once these agreements are reached, people are expected to remain faithful to the identities they have agreed to assume. The process of identity negotiation thus establishes what people can expect of one another. Identity negotiation thus provides the interpersonal "glue" that holds relationships together.
The idea that identities are negotiated originated in the sociological literature during the middle of the 20th century. A leading figure in this movement was Goffman (1959, 1961), who asserted that the first order of business in social interaction is establishing a "working consensus" or agreement regarding the roles each person will assume in the interaction. Weinstein and Deutschberger (1964), and later McCall and Simmons (1966), built on this work by elaborating the interpersonal processes that unfold after interaction partners reach an initial working consensus. Within psychology, these ideas were elaborated by Secord and Backman (1965) and Schlenker (1985). The actual phrase "identity negotiation" was introduced by Swann (1987), who emphasized the tension between two competing processes in social interaction, behavioral confirmation and self-verification. Behavioral confirmation occurs when one person (the "perceiver") encourages another person (the "target") to behave in ways that confirm the expectancies of the perceiver (e.g., Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968; Snyder & Klein, 2005; Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977). Self-verification occurs when the "target" persuades the "perceiver" to behave in a manner that verifies the target's firmly held self-views or identities (Swann, 1983; 1996).