The role of reasoning processes and identity formation in decision making styles

Following Berzonsky’s socio-constructivist model, literature on identity formation has focused on its psychosocial correlates in terms of reasoning processes and decision styles in late adolescence and youth. For instance, Berzonsky and Ferrari (1996) analyzed the relationships between identity styles and decision processes styles: informational-oriented individuals relied on a vigilant decisional strategy, normative-oriented individuals adopted an automatic strategy in problem solving, and diffuseavoidant-oriented individuals were characterized by a pre-decisional panic, low cognitive confidence, procrastination, and maladaptive decisional strategies such as avoidance or excuse making. Recently, Ber- zonsky et al. (2013) investigated the association between identity formation and cognitive processes, i.e., intuitive and rational, according to Epstein et al.’s dual model (1996), showing that the informational style was positively associated with rational and intuitive reasoning; the normative style was positively correlated with intuitive reasoning processes; and the diffuse-avoidant style was associated negatively with intuition. In the light of these results and given the limited inves- tigations exploring simultaneously these constructs, the main goal of the present study was to assess the interrelationships between identity formation, reasoning processes and decision-making styles. 405 school and university students (Mage = 19.82, F = 366) completed a questionnaire including socio-demographic section, Identity Style Inventory 5, Rational-Experiential Multimodal Inventory, and Gen-eral Decision Making Style Inventory. Findings from structural equation modeling showed that the hypothesized model fit data well, χ2 = 549.85 gdl = 281, p < .05, SRMR = .06, CFI = .92, RMSEA = .05. In other words, informational and diffuse- avoidant styles played a mediational role on the relationship between reasoning processes and decision-making styles.