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Mar 27, 2009 · Psychosocial literature covering theory and research on identity evolution in deaf and hard-of-hearing persons is relatively recent. This chapter presents extensive conceptual and theoretical perspectives on the formation of diverse deaf identity categories and how individuals may transition into and out of categories.
Mar 12, 2020 · This article examines the process of deaf people coming to identify as culturally Deaf—a distinction typically made in the literature as an identity belonging to those who use sign language to communicate—and how this identity process co-occurs with other social identities, namely sexuality and race. Through pairing Goffman's work with ...
- Laura Mauldin, Tara Fannon
- 2021
- Abstract
- Method
- Results
- Discussion
- Conflict of Interest
- Acknowledgments
The Identities of Individuals With Hearing Loss
The relevance of and academic interest in issues of identity among deaf individuals can be linked to the rise of the Deaf cultural minority movement in the 1970s (Leigh, 2009). Deaf people have protested against a disability view of deafness as an impairment that should be cured, and argued for Deaf culture as a unique culture and for sign languages as unique languages (Ladd, 2003). A central feature of the cultural minority movement has been protest against discrimination and marginalization...
Identity and Its Impact on Life Outcome
Questionnaire-based studies have investigated how each of the defined four deaf identities are associated with self-esteem, life satisfaction, and other factors indicative of life outcome. The overall finding is that those with a deaf or bicultural identity outperform the other groups. Bat-Chava (1993, 1994, 2000) found that those with a stronger deaf identity had higher levels of self-esteem. For example, Bat-Chava (2000)studied the association between the four identity groups and self-estee...
Factors Affecting Identity and Life Outcome
Further to the above, deaf identity research has explored the factors explaining why people with hearing loss end up with different identities; and, in turn, which factors are associated with different life-outcome factors such as self-esteem and life satisfaction. Nikolaraizi and Hadjikakou (2006) investigated how educational experiences affected the development of hearing, deaf, or bicultural identity by interviewing 25 individuals in Greece. The study found that the deaf person's identity...
Participants and Data Generation
Data were derived from a nationwide Danish cohort comprising 839 deaf people aged 16–64 years of age. Data were collected in 2014 by The Danish National Centre for Social Research (Larsen, Sommer, & Bengtsson, 2014). An online survey was created. The selection and wording of items were designed carefully for resonance with the deaf population. Participants were recruited through links posted on social media (e.g., Facebook) and email lists through hard of hearing and deaf associations, genera...
Measures: Identity
A single-item question was used to measure self-perceived identity. Of the 839 individuals, 742 responded to the question “Do you feel you have most in common with deaf or hearing people?” The response categories were: “Deaf people”; “Hearing people”; “Both deaf and hearing people”; and “Neither deaf nor hearing people”. This item was used to construct four deaf identity groups (deaf identity, hearing identity, bicultural identity, and marginal identity) reflecting research on the Deaf cultur...
Measures: Psychological Well-Being
The outcome variable for this study was the 5-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) (Topp, Østergaard, Søndergaard, & Bech, 2015). The WHO-5 Well-Being Index covers five positively worded items rated on a 6-point Likert scale from not present (0) to constantly present (5). The five items are: “During the last two weeks, I have felt cheerful and in good spirits”; “During the last two weeks, I have felt calm and relaxed”; “During the last two weeks, I have felt active and vigo...
Comparing the four identity groups (Table 1), it turned out that those with a marginal identity scored significantly lower with respect to psychological well-being than the three other groups. There were no significant differences between the other three groups. According to the recommended cut-off of 50 for the WHO-5 well-being scale (Topp et al.,...
Associations Between Identity Group and Psychological Well-Being
The aim of this study was to explore the association between deaf identity and psychological well-being in a national Danish context where a bilingual/bicultural approach has been celebrated for the last three decades. The findings here are in accordance with existing studies showing that those with a marginal identity are more likely to report low psychological well-being (Hintermair, 2008). Contrary to some existing studies, this study found no significant differences between those with a d...
The Importance of Identity, Additional Disability, and Feeling Discriminated Against
With regard to the other variables included, additional disability was found to significantly and independently explain the psychological well-being score. To our knowledge, this has not previously been reported in studies on adult deaf identity. In studies on deaf children's psychological well-being, the presence of additional disabilities is often reported to be of significance, and therefore the finding in this study is not surprising. For a review, see Bøttcher and Dammeyer (2013). This s...
Processes of Social Identification
One of the strategies that social identity theory posits for threatened or minority identities is social mobility, involving dissociation from a threatened social group and identification with a higher-status or majority group (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). This may be possible for some, but not all, individuals with hearing loss. For example, identification as hearing (and dissociation from deaf identity) is possible for some individuals treated with new hearing aid technologies, in particular coc...
The authors declare that there are no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this study.
We would like to thank the Danish National Centre for Social Research (SFI), Steen Bengtsson, Lena Bech Larsen and Mette Lindsay Sommer for access to data. Thanks to Klara Danø and Sofie Andersen for support with the review of the literature.
- Madeleine Chapman, Jesper Dammeyer
- 2016
As a child of deaf adults (CODA), this article traces my journey in the field of psychology and deafness, and points the way to developing a more culturally and socially responsive psychology that will be fully inclusive for deaf people.
Stigma, language and prejudice have contributed to the formation of the Deaf as a minority group. The disassociation from the majority group that inevitably resulted from this formation has fueled the discussion of whether or not deafness constitutes the basis for a culture.
The bulk of self-declared “tone deaf” individuals actually have music perception skills in the normal range. Persons with amusia have difficulty detecting small changes in pitch. If I were to...
Feb 8, 2021 · This second edition of Deaf People and Society is an updated and revised look at deaf culture from multiple perspectives, with the question, “What does it mean to be deaf?” at its center.
