When mere multiple group memberships are not enough: Individual self-expansion through involvement in social groups and self-efficacy belief

According to the self-expansion model, people are motivated to increase their sense of personal agency by expanding their sense of self through the acquisition of new identities. We conducted two studies to explore whether the feeling of self-expansion, resulting from multiple group memberships, is related to self-efficacy, and to test whether agentic and communal self-stereotyping mediated this relation. In Study 1 conducted in Poland (N1 = 102), and Study 2 among undergraduate students from Poland, Spain, and Sweden (N2 = 450), a significant indirect effect of self-expansion on self-efficacy through agentic (but not communal) self-stereotyping emerged.