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Social Psychology Quarterly 1995, Vol. 58, No. 2, 61-73 Identities and Self-Verification in the Small Group* ANNA RILEY PETER J. BURKE Washington State University This research examines the relationship between the meanings contained in one’s identity and the meanings attributed to one's behavior by both oneself and others in small-group interaction. The goal is to provide an empirical test of expectations derived from identity theory and from the structural symbolic interaction perspective concerning the link between persons’ identities, their behaviors, their own interpretation of their behaviors, and others’ interpretations of their behaviors. Of interest are three issues: whether others attribute the same meanings to one’s role performance as does the self, whether the meanings atiributed both by the self and by others verify (correspond to) the meanings contained in one's identity, and the consequences when these meanings fail to correspond. The results suggest that a shared meaning structure does develop among actors in a small group and altows all members similarly to interpret each other's behavior, and that this shared interpretation tends to verify the group members’ identities. In addition, it was found that when discrepancies exist berween the meanings of a group member’s role performance and the meanings of his or her identity, the group member is less satisfied with his or her role performance in the group. The implications of these results for identity theory are discussed. Both motivation and reflexivity are central components of the identity model as outlined in identity theory (Burke 1991). These two components become even more significant in applying identity theory to individuals in a group, because it is through them that a num- ber of important processes take place. In the group we must account not only for the link between a person's identity and his or her be- havior, but also for the maintenance of that link in the presence of other demands on the person’s behavior, these other demands take the form of others’ behavior and expectations, as well as the situational demands of the group in regard to attaining its goals. Reflexivity and motivation are keys to this account. Identity theory views reflexivity in terms of a contral system (Powers 1973) which takes ac- count not only of feedback about the self from the social environment, but also of self-views already incorporated into the identity standard. From a control system perspective, reflexivity is the self's way of taking account of both in- ternal self-standards and external self-relevant feedback from one’s current role performance to influence that role performance in ways that make the new self-relevant feedback consistent * This research was partially supported by grants from the Division of Social Sciences, National Science Foundation (NSF BNS 76-0838 1), and from the National Institutes of Health (MH 46828). We wish to thank Jan Stets and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. 61 with the internal self-standards (Burke 1980). The striving for consistency between one’s self- relevant feedback and one’s internal self- standards (also known as self-verification; see Swann 1983) is the motivational component of the identity model (Burke 1991), Thus persons can observe their own role performance as well as others’ reactions to it, and can continuously use both of those perceptions to modify their role performance so that it supports and is con- sistent with their identity standard. In this way, identity theory explains the relationship between identities and perfor- mances. Most of the research that examines this relationship, however, has been from the perspective of one person (the actor) and the behavioral choices made by the actor (Burke and Hoelter 1988; Burke and Reitzes 1981, 1991; Burke and Tully 1977; Swann 1987), Strictly speaking, the identity model is concerned only with the actor's identity, perceptions (feedback), and behavior, and thus is fairly psychological in its orientation; we must expand our model to consider sets of interacting persons or groups in order to deal with sociologically interesting issues. This expansion becomes possible by incor- porating additional ideas from the symbolic in- teraction framework. In that framework it is assumed that people share meanings and com- municate with significant (shared) symbols. Thus the meanings of one’s behavior to oneself should be “the same” as the meanings of that behavior 
