Biography
- Faculty Advisor, Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology
- Campus Rep., Honor’s College, 2001-present
- Past President, International Society for Research on Identity
- Member, American Psychological Association
- Member, APA Division 7: Developmental Psychology
- Member, APA Division 53: Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
- Member, Society for Research on Adolescence
- Editorial Board Member:
- Child and Youth Care Forum
- Identity: An International Journal of Theory & Research
- Suma Psicologica
- Journal of Traumatic Stress Disorders & Treatment
For Students
Students may work in my lab for independent research credit or as volunteers, helping out in data collection and data entry. Students will be trained to conduct interviews and may serve as co-facilitators of identity development workshops. Students are encouraged and mentored in developing their own research project for an undergraduate Honor’s thesis or Clinical Master’s thesis. Graduate students are trained and supervised in running intervention groups.
Publications
Berman, S. L. (2020). Identity distress. In S. Hupp & J. Jewell (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development. Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Berman, S. L., Montgomery, M. J., Ratner, K. (2020). Trauma and Identity: A Reciprocal Relationship? Journal of Adolescence, 79, 275-278.
Berman, S. L. (2019). Making life choices: The psychology of personal and interpersonal growth. San Diego: Cognella Academic Publishing.
Crisanto, M., Wagaman, B., Kerr, E., McGinnis, J., & Berman, S. L. (2022). Avatars and alternate identities: Social media usage and its relation to identity and peer attachment. American Journal of Psychology, 135(2), 215-224.
Wagaman, B., Kerr, E., Branch, R., & Berman, S.L. Identity Distress among Immigrant Students During COVID-19. (2022). Societies, 12(2), 1-11.
Research Areas
My major area of research is Identity Formation, including the development of career goals, sense of self (ethnic identity, gender roles, sexual orientation), changing attachment patterns (family, friendships, romance), and values acquisition (morality, politics, religion). I am particularly interested in the anxiety and distress often associated with this developmental task. I have been developing intervention programs to help young people struggling with identity dilemmas and related symptoms of anxiety and distress.
I have published a measure of Identity Distress and been involved in the development and publication of a measure of Existential Anxiety. I have also been working on an intervention program aimed at facilitating identity development and reducing identity distress which has been piloted on university students, inner-city high risk high school students, and teenage children of migrant farm-workers. In addition I have been collecting cross-national comparative identity development data in Colombia, Japan, Taiwan and China.
Highlights
April 2013-May 2015: President, International Society for Research on Identity
August 2012-May 2016: Steering Committee Member, Southeastern US Region of Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology
August 2002-Present: Faculty Advisor, Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology
August 2001-Present: Campus Representative to the Burnett Honor’s College
