Not Always a Straight Path: College Students’ Narratives of Heterosexual Identity Development

Research has recently begun to examine heterosexual identity development, providing preliminary evidence of variation within
a sexual identity category that has frequently been conceptualized as uniform and unremarkable. The current study sought to
classify and describe young adult participants’ narratives on their heterosexual identity development using Worthington et
al. (2002) heterosexual identity status model. Participants included 1,051 heterosexually-identified undergraduates (632 women; 419
men) from two public universities in the western United States who provided written narratives about their sexual identity
development. Responses were analyzed for levels of identity exploration and commitment, which were used to create five identity
status categories. The majority of participants described identity commitment with passive exploration, with more men in this
category than women. A significant subset of participants described identity commitment with active exploration, with more
women in this category than men. Smaller numbers of participants described active exploration without commitment, unexplored
commitment, and identity diffusion. More women were in the active exploration without commitment status than men; no gender
differences emerged in the other two statuses. Participants classified into statuses with active exploration and higher commitment
also evidenced higher scores on quantitative measures of sexual identity exploration and commitment, respectively. Men evidenced
higher quantitative scores than women on identity commitment; there were no gender differences in the quantitative assessment
of identity exploration. Findings support the existence of variations and systematic gender-based differences in young adults’
heterosexual identity development.