Prominence–Salience Combinations and Self-Esteem: Do Magnitude and Congruity Matter?

Identity theory research shows that prominence, or identity importance, positively predicts salience or likely identity enactment. Sometimes the association is strong, indicating close matches in magnitude, whereas other times, it is weak, indicating mismatches in magnitude. We build on this work by exploring prominence–salience combinations, paying attention to how congruity and magnitude relate to role-specific self-esteem. We test two competing arguments: cognitive consistency—matches are good, mismatches are bad—and uncertainty reduction—high and low scores are clearly defined and good, medium scores are ambiguous and bad. Using data from 1,899 participants with parent (or no children) and spousal (or single) identities, results favor uncertainty reduction: matching medium prominence–salience scores are worse for self-esteem than other matching scores and often even mismatching scores. This work is important because it considers the felt and lived components of identity, advancing understanding of how identity experiences relate to well-being.