Identity And Personal Identity

1645 Words7 Pages
“Identity is never a priori, nor a finished product; it is only ever the problematic process of access to an image of totality” (Bhabha 1994:51). Identities have many traits, characteristics, group memberships, relations with others which define who a person is. Identities can be related to the past, present or future depending on what a person was what a person is and what a person wishes to be. Togeth­er, identities make up one 's self concept variously described as what comes to mind when one thinks of oneself (Neisser, 1993 ; Stets & Burke, 2003; St ryker, 1980 ; Tajfcl, 1981 ), one 's theory of one 's personality (Markus & Cross, 1990) , and what one believes is true of oneself ( B a umeister, 199 8 ; Forgas & Williams, 2002). Identity plays an important role in everyday life. Knowing who you are lets you understand and know what you think and do and knowing who others are lets you predict and understand what they are and how they think. Identity can be used in various forms like social identity, ethnic identity, gender identity, collective identity, relational, personal identity, etc. People generally have a few understandings and conceptions about themselves (i.e. self-schemas). The self discrepancy theory by Higgins’s (1987) talks about three types of self schema: 1) The actual self- who we currently are, 2) Ideal self- who we would like to be and 3) ought self- who we think we should be. Social identity theorists like Tajfel and Turner (1979) have argued