The Importance Of Social Identity

Identity is a group of characteristics, data or information that belongs exactly to one person or a group of people and that make it possible to establish differences between them. The consciousness that people have about themselves is part of their identity as well as what makes them unique. According to psychologists, identity is a consistent definition of one’s self as a unique individual, in terms of role, attitudes, beliefs and aspirations. Identity tries to define who people are, what they are, where they go or what they want to be or to do. Identity could depend on self-knowledge, self-esteem, or the ability of individuals to achieve their goals. Through self-analysis people can define who they are and who the people around them

Identity is anything that can provide us with a way of answering what we are. I believe that there is a core basis of

In his 1971 paper “Personal Identity”, Derek Parfit posits that it is possible and indeed desirable to free important questions from presuppositions about personal identity without losing all that matters. In working out how to do so, Parfit comes to the conclusion that “the question about identity has no importance” (Parfit, 1971, p. 4.2:3). In this essay, I will attempt to show that Parfit’s thesis is a valid one, with positive implications for human behaviour. The first section of the essay will examine the thesis in further detail and the second will assess how Parfit’s claims fare in the face of criticism.

Identity is one’s perception that shapes one’s mind. It reflects the outer aspect of personality and the life choices we make as an individual. In Anthem by Ayn Rand, a dystopian futuristic novelfuture, Equality talks about how society is integrated to try to control his mind, body, and spirit. In “Don’t. The secret of self control” by Jonah Lehrer, a nonfiction article, Lehrer explains an experiment where children are determined to be a high or low delayers. Furthermore, In “Who Holds The Clicker” by Lauren Slater, a nonfiction article, Slater explains analyzes the fear of how brain implants can treat intractable mental illness. The formation of identity is created when a person is tied to the choices he makes,

Later on, the fourth dimension of identity called the salient was developed. Centrality and salient dimension address the importance of the race of an individual according to his or her own perspective. Centrality dimension entails the way individuals normatively define themselves in relation to their race. It determines whether an individual values their race or not. Salient on the other hand, involves the degree in which the individual’s race is the relevant part of their self-concept at the specific moment in their time.

Based on the results given in the Zimbardo experiment, Zimbardo (1975) contended that identity contrasts of the subjects were substantially less vital than the social circumstance. Zimbardo went considerably more further with his experiment than Milgram had by rejecting the significance of identity qualities for a large portion of one’s behavior in regular day to day existence: He states, Individual behavior is largely under the control of social forces and environmental contingencies rather than personality traits, character, will power or other empirically invalidated constructs. Thus, we create an illusion of freedom by attributing more internal control to ourselves, to the individual, than it actually exists. Thus underestimating the power and pervasiveness of situational controls over behavior because: 1) they are often non-obvious and subtle, 2) we can often avoid entering situations where we might be so controlled, and 3) we label as “weak” or “deviant” people in those situations who do behave differently from how we believe we would. (p. 115)

Personal identity is essential in the human experience. Identity is complex and can be broken down into two main groups: introspective identity, and bodily identity. Introspective identity is based off of the groups, mentalities, or beliefs that you align yourself with, and bodily identity is based off of the physical side of yourself. Whether physical or introspective, your identity impacts every action you take. Whether choices ranging from what colors you prefer to which college you want to attend are primarily based off of your introspective identity, which is a combination of both memory and consciousness, physical identity impacts how others perceive you. Consciousness is mainly the awareness of bodily identity as well as continuous introspective identify, while memory is awareness of introspective identity. These two different facets of identity are imperative in the distinction between bodily identity and introspective identity. In means of personal identity introspective identity (which is evident in memory), is essential, while bodily identity (based partially in consciousness) has less credit.

Limited work has been done in the field of philosophy concerning how identity and choice interact. However, Kwame A. Appiah puts forth an account of identity in his book The Ethics of Identity (2010) that sheds light on how one’s choices may be effected by the identities they chose. The following will describe Appiah’s view of identity and how it influences choice, and conclude by providing commentary concerning how effective Appiah’s account of identity is and how it can be improved.

According to Klar’s research (2013), when an individual has two competing identities, the identity that gets primed, especially through the use of threat primes, tends to change how strongly they incline towards a policy. This means that each identity can be primed, resulting in an increased awareness of that identity, which increases interest in issues related to that specific identity. For instance, in her research, Klar primed the identities of democrat parents to either think of their identity as parents or as democrats. The results showed that depending on which identity was primed, the individuals would be more prone to support policies congruent with that identity. Parents tended to be more supportive of

In contemporary identity theory, individuals work to create a single self-structure that reflects a hierarchical “organization of the various identities they hold” (Stets and Serpe 2013) One model of this hierarchy posits that identities are arranged according to identity centrality, or how important the component identities are to people from their own perspectives (Rosenberg 1979). More explicitly, identity centrality is “the subjective value or worth to persons of a given identity relative to that of other identities”(Brenner, et al. 2014). Identity centrality is relatively stable across situations.

The results of the study showed that when primed for a certain identity, the participant based their decision on the set of values congruent with that identity, even when the decision was incongruent with another of their identities (LeBoeuf, 56). As well, while salience manipulation requires that an individual hold the identity being evoked, the study found that salience manipulation can have the reverse effect on those who do not hold the identity being evoked. Meaning that for individuals disconnected from the identity, they would make decisions against the value set for that identity (LeBoeuf, 56). Finally, the study found that even though saliency is a “transient state”, the choices made when that identity was salient are personally binding even under later re-evaluation (LeBoeuf,

Contemporary identity investigation generally embraces an interactionist model, whereby qualities and situationally-determined states associate in affecting behavioural results. On the other hand, some backing for the causal way of the Big Five has been anticipated. Case in point, it has been contended that people fluctuate on every five attribute measurements in accordance with the ordinary bend dispersion and that the components are in any event in part hereditarily pre-determined (Jang et al., 2002; Loehlin et al., 1998). Moreover, research within the structure of developmental brain research has additionally given some proof that these five identity measurements may have impacted social adjustment and regular determination (Buss, 1996), although it is probable comparative cases could be made about any putative set of identity trait measurements.

According to Watson and Frankfurt the phenomenon of “identification” is meant to explain a distinction between what is “more truly me” and what is less so. The “more truly me” are those desires that are internal and relate to self, while those that which are less so are

Identity formation means that early primitive identifications are replaced overtime by selective identifications in which only those aspects of the object relation that are in harmony with individual identity formation are internalized. These partial identification are of people who are loved and admired in a realistic way.

Numerous are growing interested in what makes them who they are, along with how exactly they fit into society. In fact, a variety of concepts exist that individuals commonly apply to their own identity. Aiding people, the ideas help explore who they truly are as well as help understand themselves better. But at the same time, they can either be helpful and relate to you with your identity, or do the complete opposite. Of the broad amount of concepts to the identification of people, there are three that exist named Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Adler’s Birth Order, as well as learning styles.