Personal Statement On Social Identity Essay

I think it’s incredibly crucial to be aware of my social identities at all times. To name them (decreasing in size): gay, white, cis-female, educated,middle-class, able-bodied, and atheist. The social identity wheel forces one to acknowledge our social identities, even if we haven’t put much thought into them prior to the exercise.

No matter how much a person desires to live according to their personal autonomy, he or she will never escape the influence of societal forces. Explicitly or subtlety, these forces shape our individuality. One intriguing manner that these societal forces manifests itself in is our name. As Ruth Graham writes, “It’s becoming increasingly clear today that names carry a wealth of information about the world around us, the family we arrived in, the moment we were born—and that they mark us as part of cultural currents bigger than we realize.” Names alone provide evidence that individuals are made by interactions with social institutions and groups. Ultimately, the inescapable nature of society’s influence demands individuals to ponder how much personal autonomy is actually autonomous and to what extent does the pursuit of personal autonomy lead to a life of emptiness and vanity.

My father is Mexican, and my mother is White. I was born in California, however, when was 4 yrs. old we moved to Mexico. We did not returned to the United States till I turned 15 yrs. old. Although my first language was English, once I moved to Mexico, I became fluent in Spanish. Life coming back to America was hard, I did understand English perfectly since my mother always spoke to us in English, however, and I could no longer speak it. I was placed in ELL classes, and although I was very smart in many subjects, because I did not speak English, I was placed in easy classes, where we did nothing. They focus so much on learning the language that they fail to teach you. I survived; however, I knew the other classmates looked down at us. They would not speak to us, and they will make rude racial comments when referring to any of us.

A person’s identity is shaped by many different aspects. Family, culture, friends, personal interests and surrounding environments are all factors that tend to help shape a person’s identity. Some factors may have more of an influence than others and some may not have any influence at all. As a person grows up in a family, they are influenced by many aspects of their life. Family and culture may influence a person’s sense of responsibilities, ethics and morals, tastes in music, humor and sports, and many other aspects of life. Friends and surrounding environments may influence a person’s taste in clothing, music, speech, and social activities. Personal interests are what truly set individuals apart. An individual is not a puppet

Further, identity is constructed by drawing boundaries: One boundary that is the same as others and one that is different from everyone else. Self-categorization is the first classification in which one identifies with the characteristics shared by those with whom one psychologically belongs. This is referred to “identifying as”, connoting a perceived self-location in a group. This self-identification can be based on a number of things, such as biology, culture, religion, and ethnicity, and can be both optional and imposed. The second classification is “identification with”, which underscores the potential significance of shared values, often outside of those that are sociologically similar. This also entails learning a group’s defining customs, expectations, and values, and making them one’s own. These core values and ideas make up the third component of identity, which is content. The unique content of a group identity is socially constructed because it is these consensual decisions that shape and reinforce the accepted criteria for membership in the group. While social identities are not automatically political, they can be politicized when

The social identities label people and separate them into groups during the social contact. People tend to contact with people who have similar identities. In fact, the various identities are not equally weighed. It is common that someone also makes friends with those who have quite different characteristics because he or she may consider the distinct identities less important than the ones attract him or her. Personally, the ethnicity, religion and social class are the identities that play a great role in social connection. Those factors usually represent or reflect somehow the culture, background, world view, living view and worth view. By comparison, some social identities are not that critical such as gender, race and age. Those factors

Social identity is a person’s sense of who they believe there are based on their group membership. In the film The Company Men Bobby and Gene both had a social identity. If we look at Bobby, at work he belonged to a certain group which he was a part of and he would only talk with that certain group. Bobby would sometimes try and find negative

Identity today carries the notion that it is affected by the social environment. Everything connected to social affects behavior and cognitive aspects – dreams, aspirations, habits and ways of life – of an individual. The asserted identity of individuals influences the way they form their beliefs, behavior, and dispositions. Hernandez et al (2007) added that place identity is a process by which people describe their sense of belonging to a place as people interact with their place, and thus making place identity as part of personal identity.

Identity in a sociological sense is more than individual genetics or individuality. Self identity is made up by many characteristics including; our personal experiences, beliefs, socio-economic status and other factors. Society plays a huge role in determining identity, although true identity generally isn’t a true reflection of an individual’s self identity. Over the generations there have been

from the other types of social identity, all of which are typically regarded more positively.

Social identity theory is the idea that we, as humans, have the need to categorize ourselves into in-groups ‘us’ and out-groups ‘them’ in order to give ourselves a positive social identity to protect and enhance our self-esteem.

Taylor (2012, p 167) defines social identity as ‘an identity given by connections to other people and social situations. (Often contrasted with personal identity). Some examples are group and collective identities, situated identities, given by the immediate situation so liable to change, and relational identities, usually given by a two-sided, possibly unequal, relationship’. Taylor (2012) argues that a collective identity can be that of gender, race, age and many more. However, this does not mean that once a collective identity has been formed that all the people within that collective identity have something in common or share the same interests. People who form part of a collective identity will still have a personal identity ‘an idea of who she or he is’ (Taylor, 2012, p 170). Taylor (2012) argues that social identity is not completely separate from personal identity. For example some people would argue that being socially

Within social psychology, the social identity tradition (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971) argues that individuals possess more than their characteristic personal identities, which are activated during interpersonal contact with others; in addition, people can engage in intergroup behavior as informed by their social identities (Gudykunst & Bond, 1980). Such social identities comprise memberships in any psychologically relevant grouping with which an individual identifies, including kin, peers, profession, nation, and cultural identity (Galang, Quiñones, Adriano, Portillo, & Carvajal, 2015). The ingroup identification afforded by social identities then allows individuals to distinguish between people belonging to and excluded from the ingroup (Brewer & Yuki, 2007), and to bolster one’s self-concept through affiliation with high-status groups and individuals (Gudykunst & Bond, 1980). In addition, these social identities are created and manifested in different ways across cultures as a function of the values endorsed by society, the ways in which society’s members construe themselves, and the manners in which their interpersonal relationships are structured (Feitosa, Salas, & Salazar, 2012).

According to a theory known as social identity theory, self-concept is composed of two key parts: personal identity and social identity. Our personal identity includes such things as personality traits and other characteristics that make each person unique. Social identity includes the groups we belong to including our community, religion, college, and other groups.

How do you define your own identity? This is a question I have never had to consider much before. In the beginning I just simply though, I am who I am. But soon after, I began to deeply contemplate this question over and over and over again in my mind. I started to peel back the layers of me and tried to understand what defined me as me, both to myself, individual identity, and the outside world, group identity.