Personal Identity

Identity and intercultural communication- Personal Identity

According to Martin & Nakayama (2009), personal identity is “who we think we are and who others think we are” (p.199). They also state that personal identity is constrained and influenced by contextual and external forces (Martin & Nakayama, 2009).

I recently read a psychology short passage on Psychology Today’s website, which is called “We Are What We Do”. It’s a fresh idea for me and I like the statement the author made on the first sentence of the passage: people become what they do. This statement means we often need to look to our behavior to figure out who we are, even from tiny actions and daily behaviors in our life (Wilson, 2012).  People’s traits and attitudes will determine behaviors and thoughts, but what if we reverse the order?  Just like the definition said, people’s personal identity is also influenced by contextual forces. This force can come from us. Here are some examples in the passage which illuminate we do things that we think they are right. People return a lost wallet because they are honest, recycle their trash because they care about the environment, and pay $5 for a caramel brulée latte because they like expensive coffee drinks (Wilson, 2012). Here are some examples illuminate that we become what we do. According to Wilson’s understanding, if we return a lost wallet, there is an upward tick on our honesty meter. After we drag the recycling bin to the curb, we infer that we really care about the environment. And after purchasing the latte, we assume that we are coffee connoisseurs (Wilson, 2012).

In the real world, I can use myself as an example. The external environments that influence me can be the United States’ culture, university’s environment and back home’s social environment. But the contextual forces that can influence me are more complicated. They could be the intercultural communication styles’ changes, the bilingual environment and how I suit myself into two totally different societies. I look myself as a bilingual girl with different hobbies and non-stable heart. But what will others think of me? I do not know all but they are not similar to what I think. The following is a video shows how current young people search for personal identity.

References:

Maritn, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2010). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (Fifth ed., pp. 185-187). New York, NY: Mcgraw-Hill.

Wilson, T. (2012), We Are What We Do, Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/redirect/201201/we-are-what-we-do-0