| This dissertation contributes to the sociology of the professions, social psychology, and race/class/gender through an analysis of the socialization of students in professional schools of law and social work. In order to be successful in their chosen professions, students must internalize an appropriate professional identity. I explore how individuals' commitments to various personal identities---including gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, and religious and political identities---affect the ease with which new professional identities are incorporated. I show that when individuals have difficulty internalizing appropriate professional identities, their academic performance is usually impaired.; I propose the term "identity dissonance" to describe a problem faced by many professional students whose personal identities conflict in some way with the professional roles proffered to them during professional socialization. I conceptionalize identities as being comprised by a cognitive/ideological component, an emotional component, and the nonconscious and embodied elements of habitus. When cognitive/ideological elements of an individual's personal identities conflict with cognitive/ideological elements of his or her fledgling professional identity, the individual will suffer from cognitive dissonance, which is a well-studied phenomenon. Dissonance can also exist at the levels of emotional identity or habitus. All varieties of identity dissonance are uncomfortable, and those who suffer from identity dissonance must either resolve the dissonance or manage their discomfort.; To study identity dissonance I engaged in intensive qualitative research at a "top ten" law school and school of social welfare, including over 400 hours of participant observation, 72 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, historical research, and analysis of the physical institutional settings.; I found that all of the personal identity categories studied were associated with patterns of identity consonance and dissonance. Rates of identity dissonance were higher among professional students with nonprivileged personal identities (e.g. people of color) than among those with privileged personal identities (e.g. white). In addition, rates of identity dissonance were higher at the law school than at the school of social work. The effects of having nonprivileged personal identities were stronger than the school effect, producing a typical spectrum of comparative levels of identity dissonance, which corresponded with comparative academic performance. |
