Self-Symbolization Across Identity Goals: Polish Catholics Creating a National Poster and Lighting Votive Candles

Symbolic self-completion theory describes how, when individuals face threats to their identity goals (e.g., goals defining the self as Catholic), they experience a state of incompleteness. Failing to perform an identity-relevant activity or noticing that one lacks a certain identity symbol (i.e., relevant qualifications, skills, and material possessions, but also relevant performances) prompts individuals to search actively for relevant identity symbols (i.e., to self-symbolize). We argue that when self-symbolizing in the area of a threatened identity goal is not possible, individuals are likely to attempt to acquire the symbols for a second aspired-to identity goal (i.e., to engage in cross-goal self-symbolization). However, these efforts would be only observed in people perceiving the two identity goals as overlapping (i.e., being similar in terms of what drives the two goals). In two experimental studies, Polish Catholics were made incomplete regarding their national (N = 254, Study 1) and religious (N = 268, Study 2) identity goals (i.e., being a Pole and a Catholic, respectively). Subsequently, they were provided with the opportunity to symbolize across identity goals. In both studies, “incomplete” participants with a higher identity goal overlap were more likely to cross self-symbolize than participants in a control group. In Study 1, incomplete participants lit more candles in the virtual church, whereas in Study 2, these participants designed a poster with more national symbols. These findings indicate that symbolization across religious and national identity goals is contingent upon higher levels of identity goal overlap among incomplete participants.