Adult identity
Identity can remain stable, be reconsidered and evolve differently across life domains.
Fadjukoff, Pulkkinen & Kokko; Kroger et al.; Bakracheva.Research & Evidence
Making more of human capability visible
RIST studies how skills are developed through the roles people play and the life events they navigate — building a map of which roles and experiences develop which capabilities, and which behaviors put them into action. This greatly expands our understanding of so-called “soft skills”: what they are, where they are developed, and how they become visible in practice.
Ricco is the research-informed tool that activates recognition of those skills and generates the data that advances this research.
The question behind the work
What if the capability you need is already present — but active in another role?
A person may practise negotiation as a parent, judgment as a caregiver, coordination as a community organizer or resilience as an athlete — without recognizing those capabilities as relevant to what comes next.
RIST investigates how these connections can be identified, described and tested without reducing a person to a label.
Transilience
The capacity to move resources between roles
Transilience is the capacity to recognize resources developed in one role and intentionally bring them into another.
Role→Situation→Behaviour→Skill→Use in the next role
Recognition is the starting point, not proof that transfer has already happened. Seeing a possibility, intending to act, attempting transfer and using a capability effectively are different research outcomes.
An evidence base built over time
The research behind Transilience has been led by Riccarda Zezza since 2013. Its methodology was first presented in the 2014 book MAAM — Maternity as a Master and has since evolved through more than a decade of research, collaboration with research centres and universities, and data from more than 70,000 people.
This body of research provides the starting point for RIST’s scientific programme and for the continuing development of Ricco.
Scientific foundations
RIST does not rely on a single theory. The research connects findings from identity development, personality dynamics, self-efficacy, role enrichment, prior-learning recognition and learning transfer.
Whole Trait Theory
People can show relatively stable tendencies while behaving differently across situations and roles. Context is information, not noise.
Jayawickreme, Zachry & Fleeson.Self-efficacy and self-affirmation
Possessing a capability is not enough. People must also believe they can use it in a new context.
Bandura; Steele; Cohen; Critcher & Dunning.Multiple roles
Life roles can enrich one another, expand the resources available to a person and support a wider sense of self.
Self-complexity and role- enrichment research.Identity-based motivation
Action is more likely to feel possible and relevant when it is connected to an identity the person already recognizes as their own.
Oyserman & Destin.Recognition and transfer
Recognizing prior learning, intending to use it and demonstrating transfer are related but distinct outcomes.
OECD; UNESCO; Ardondi et al.Featured reading
Transilience
Riccarda Zezza
Transilience brings together more than ten years of research into identity, life roles and the movement of human capabilities between contexts.
Drawing on scientific literature, applied research and data from more than 70,000 people, the book presents a different way of understanding human complexity: not as a conflict between competing roles, but as a system of resources that can move.
Selected sources
- Identity Formation in Adulthood — Fadjukoff, Pulkkinen & Kokko
- Whole Trait Theory — Jayawickreme, Zachry & Fleeson
- Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change — Albert Bandura
- Identity-Based Motivation — Oyserman & Destin
- Benefits of Multiple Roles for Managerial Women — Ruderman et al.
- The Recognition of Prior Learning — OECD
- Recognition, Validation and Accreditation — UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning
What the evidence supports
- Roles provide useful access to different resources and behaviours.
- Behavioural examples are stronger evidence than isolated labels.
- Experience, care and self-efficacy matter.
- Looking across life roles reveals capabilities that work-centred assessments often miss.
What RIST is testing
- Whether role mapping helps people recognize more of their capabilities.
- Which evidence supports a credible skill hypothesis.
- When recognition leads to attempted and documented transfer.
- How meanings change across languages and cultures.
Research should help
People see more of themselves
Make capabilities developed across life visible, credible and easier to use in what comes next.
Organizations see people differently
Replace deficit-based narratives with richer evidence of capability, experience and potential.
Future AI see the whole person
Help future AI systems learn from a fuller representation of human capability — so that care, parenthood, migration, illness, volunteering, career breaks and other life experiences are not automatically interpreted as gaps or disadvantages.
With appropriate consent, privacy and governance, research can provide AI with better evidence about where and how human capabilities are developed.
The goal is AI that reproduces fewer historical biases, recognizes more forms of human contribution and supports fairer decisions about people’s potential.
Our research commitment
Research through activation
Research should create value for the people who make it possible.
Through Ricco, people do not simply contribute data. They gain a clearer view of the capabilities they have developed across their life roles and how those capabilities may help them move towards an objective.
A person’s identity map belongs to them. With their consent, anonymized and aggregated evidence can contribute to open research that people, researchers, organizations and AI systems can build on.
RIST is committed to using this research to widen the map of human capability — and to give future AI better information, so that it is less likely to reproduce the biases and exclusions of traditional education and employment histories.
The aim is to help more people be seen for what they can do, wherever and however those capabilities were developed.
Where this work began
2013–2014
In 2013, Riccarda Zezza and Andrea Vitullo created MAAM — Maternity as a Master. They needed a word for something they repeatedly observed: people could carry resources developed in one role into another. That word was transilience.
From 2015
From 2015 onward, the method was applied and studied through Lifeed with people and organizations, generating reflections and data about roles, identity and capability.
RIST and Ricco
The complementary capabilities of Riccarda Zezza and Saideep Raj made it possible to imagine and create RIST: a place to advance research and widen access to practical tools, particularly for people and communities whose capabilities are most often overlooked.
Ricco turns this research into a guided conversation that helps people explore the roles they play, recognise skills through concrete behaviours, and identify how those capabilities can support a new goal, context or job. Each guided experience also generates structured, anonymised data, allowing the research to grow through activation and the experience to improve as the evidence expands.
Help advance the research
RIST works with researchers, institutions, public-interest organizations and private organizations through partnerships that may widen access, help people find and secure work, enrich existing systems, advance open research, or change how human capability is understood and valued.
A collaboration may contribute evidence, new contexts, critical review, participant access, implementation capacity or support for open research.