Exploring Exploration: Identity Exploration in Real-Time Interactions among Peers

In this short-term longitudinal study, we examine specific examples of identity exploration in real-time interactions among peers. The participants included 12 first-year students majoring literature, social sciences, and humanities at a national university Japan (Mage = 18.2; SD 0.39; 83.3% female). They were divided into four triads that participated weekly 20-minute discussions for nine successive weeks around three domains: learning, romantic relationships, career. Transcripts analyzed using grounded theory approach. Seven characteristics identified interactions: support, open disclosure, meta-exploration, investigating, creating an idea, conflict, demotivating. addition, these generated major overarching patterns advanced exploration: safe environment exploration, clarification elaboration the idea embedded support essential promoting combination finding keyword repeating it on border between discovering aspect identity. Overall, our results reveal peers did not involve fixed sequence characteristics; rather, was vitalized by mutual affirmation, going back forth different while taking small steps.