IDENTITY

2. IDENTITY Defined: Identity refers to having a clear and stable sense of who you are and what you stand for like your values. You have an individual, social, and cultural identity.

3. Individual Identity • Refers to all the your personal characteristics including your name, gender, age, physical characteristics, talents, likes, emotions, beliefs, artistic activities, possessions, and educational interests. • Examples include: “My name is Carl and I’m a strong man in his forties who has his Bachelor’s Degree who enjoys sporting events and concerts and believes in God.”

4. Social Identity • Refers to how you identify yourself in relation to important people in your life, the roles you play, and the cultural, ethnic, and religious groups you belong to. • Examples include: “I’m a mother of 3 children who is Mexican Catholic, and close to my relatives.”

5. Cultural Identity • Refers to the behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, ethics, ways of expressing yourself and traditions shared by a large social group. • Examples include: “I’m an Accountant of a Jewish background. I’m a Democrat, upper middle class, and I believe we should all look out for each other and do good deeds.

6. Identity Statuses • Identity Conformity • Identity Experimenting • Identity Apathy • Identity Achiever

7. Identity Conformity • The person unquestioningly adopts the values, roles, beliefs, and expectations prescribed for them by their parents/culture/society. • They pursue the same career choices as the parent and conform to the parents’ religious and political leanings without trying to find the truth on their own. • RESULT: While staying sheltered, they do not enjoy the discovery of their potential and understanding of the world. They are cognitively rigid. Example: If you are an artist in a family that encourages your business major, your talent will be wasted and you’ll probably be unhappy.

8. Identity Experimenting • Between the ages of 12 and 20, the struggle to find one’s identity intensifies. There are 4 factors that for the person to experiment with different roles, beliefs, and values apart from parents are: • The physical changes of puberty • The start of Piaget’s formal operations in the brain. • The end of high school forces the person to make career/life decisions for their future. • 4) Peer pressure to decide to do drugs, date a particular person, become sexually active, politically involved , go to college, is felt. Attraction to rock, rap groups, etc., movie stars, and other charismatic figures provide a star like quality to achieve some personal identity apart from their parents. • RESULT: Struggling occurs because the exploration isn’t always accepted and they may be ridiculed or shunned.

9. Identity Apathy • The person experiences a lot of self-doubt and doesn’t appear to do anything about their career, commitments and give up in the process. • RESULT: If it lasts too long, the person stays in a confused and stagnate state of being. Their lack of commitment leads to an unproductive life in most aspects of life.

10. Identity Achievers • This preferred status marks that the person has successfully passed through an identity crisis and now is able to make a commitment to a career, belief structure, intimate partner, and a strong personal philosophy. Because they chose to experiment, research, observe both negative and positive influences, interacted with others, and tried to discover their own “inner” and worldly truth from a distance, they gain a more clear sense of reality. • RESULT: They are able to accept differences in others while remaining true to what they believe. They have a higher level of moral reasoning and ability to be emotionally intimate.