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Identity (social science)

Overview

Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, or expressions that characterize a person or a group.

Identity emerges during childhood as children start to comprehend their self-concept, and it remains a consistent aspect throughout different stages of life. Identity is shaped by social and cultural factors and how others perceive and acknowledge one's characteristics. The etymology of the term "identity" from the Latin noun identitas emphasizes an individual's "sameness with others". Identity encompasses various aspects such as occupational, religious, national, ethnic or racial, gender/sex, gender identity, generational, and political identities, among others, such as height, weight, name, etc. This reveals the polysemous nature of the word - the "sameness" of identity can be both objective or subjective, depending on the referent to which one is claiming or inhabiting "sameness," which can lead to confusion. For example, identifiable gender is objective and gender identity subjective.

Identity serves multiple functions, acting as a "self-regulatory structure" that provides meaning, direction, and a sense of self-control. It fosters internal harmony and serves as a behavioral compass, enabling individuals to orient themselves towards the future and establish long-term goals. As an active process, it profoundly influences an individual's capacity to adapt to life events and achieve a state of well-being. However, identity originates from traits or attributes that individuals may have little or no control over, such as their family background or ethnicity.

In sociology, emphasis is placed by sociologists on collective identity, in which an individual's identity is strongly associated with role-behavior or the collection of group memberships that define them. According to Peter Burke, "Identities tell us who we are and they announce to others who we are." Identities subsequently guide behavior, leading "fathers" to behave like "fathers" and "nurses" to act like "nurses".

In psychology, the term "identity" is most commonly used to describe personal identity, or the distinctive qualities or traits that make an individual unique. Identities are strongly associated with self-concept, self-image (one's mental model of oneself), self-esteem, and individuality. Individuals' identities are situated, but also contextual, situationally adaptive and changing. Despite their fluid character, identities often feel as if they are stable ubiquitous categories defining an individual, because of their grounding in the sense of personal identity (the sense of being a continuous and persistent self).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Identity (social science) is discussed.

Thus, the controversy concerning identity is not merely a dispute of words. For, when we attribute identity, in an improper sense, to variable or interrupted objects, our mistake is not confined to the expression, but is commonly attended with a fiction, either of something invariable and uninterrupted, or of something mysterious and inexplicable, or at least with a propensity to such fictions. What will suffice to…
David Hume, Philosophical Works, v. 1
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And to this I answer: First, This can be no question at all to those who place thought in a purely material animal constitution, void of an immaterial substance. For, whether their supposition be true or no, it is plain they conceive personal identity preserved in something else than identity of substance; as animal identity is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance. And therefore those who place…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
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The relation facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another, and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continued object. This resemblance is the cause of the confusion and mistake, and makes us substitute the notion of identity, instead of that of related objects.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
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It is the "_same_ continued life," "_identity_ of consciousness," that constitute them. We are, hence, introduced to no new principle. Identity is even in personality a matter of temporal and spatial relations.
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
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To the unsentimental mind there are but two sorts of identity,--total identity and partial identity. Where the identity is total, the things can be substituted wholly for one another. Where substitution is impossible, it must be that the identity is incomplete. It is the duty of the student then to ascertain the exact _quid, secundum_ which it obtains, as we have tried to do above.
William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
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Identity (social science)

Overview

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Philosophers who discussed Identity (social science)

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