La astronomía y algunos valores morales en la literatura

Identity Theory emphasizes the importance of self, the language of presentation and interaction.

It draws heavily on the early work of Mead (1934), James (1890), Cooley (1902) and Stryker (1980) and later developments from Burke and Stets (2009).

Mead (1925) proposed that self-identity had three stages and reacted to social experiences and environmental issues. He theorized that individuals, when young, develop an independent sense of self (or ‘I’) as well as understanding of the self that is determined by social rules and external expectations (‘me’). He argued that identity was role-oriented and developed from identity negotiation (interpersonal interactions). These ideas still remain at the core of Identity Theory (Burke & Stets 2009).

James (1890) acknowledged the complexity of identity. He recognized that people can hold multiple roles and therefore have multiple identities. Identity Theory is related to the roles that individual’s play in life. The example that Burke and Stets (2009, p. 24) gave is that an individual can be ‘a teacher, a wife, a mother, a friend, a PTA member and so on’. Each of these roles has its own meanings and expectations that are internalized as identity. This is reiterated by Stryker (1980) and emphasized by Burke and Stets (2009) who stated that individuals have an internalized positional designation for each of the different roles they hold in society.

McCall and Simmons (1978) were also central in the creation of Identity Theory that focussed on the concept of role identity. A role identity is an individual’s imaginative view of themselves as they like to think of themselves being and acting in a social position (McCall & Simmons 1978).

To keep the idealized concept of themselves, individuals need to enact role performances. Role identity exists in the differences in perceptions and actions that accompany a role as it relates to other roles (Stets & Burke 2000). McCall and Simmons (1978), supported by Burke and Stets (2009, p. 39), see identities as ‘improvised and negotiated’ rather than ‘normative and conventional’. This applies to all the multiple roles that an individual holds.

Stryker (1980) supported this concept of multiple identities and observed that individuals have a hierarchy of identities. The more salient an identity is for the situation at hand then the higher up the hierarchy. If an individual can use the identity across many situations and environments then it has more salience (Burke & Stets 2009). Whitbourne and Connolly (1999) contend that self is not only the physical and cognitive abilities, reasoning and decision making but is also emphasized by the social roles of an individual such family member, employee and citizen.

Stryker (1980) also highlighted the importance for a social context for identity and this was supported by Cooley (1902) who stated that the individual and society are two sides of the one coin.

Self-meanings are an important part of Identity, and the emphasis on internal dynamics of identity is of particular focus in the work of Burke (Stryker and Burke 2000). The meanings behind our identity provoke our behavior and the behavior then confirms the identity (Burke and Stets 1980). Burke (1980) and Stets and Burke (2005) state that self-meanings develop from the reactions of others; and over time, a person responds to themselves in the same way that others respond to them, such that self-meanings become significant or shared by all.

Emphasizing the importance of interaction and support of others, Burke and Stets (2009) assert that an individual will stop accessing a specific role identity if it is not supported by others.

Individuals are influenced by the society that they live in and in return society is influenced by the individuals that create it (Burke & Stets 1980). This is supported by Tredinnick (2008) who sees Identity as constructed by the individual and imposed by the external social forces, people, social system and structures. Identity is constructed by who we think we are and what others assume they know about us from that information.

According to Stets and Burke (2005) the salience of an identity is influenced by the degree of commitment one has to the identity. Commitment has two dimensions: a quantitative and qualitative aspect (Stryker & Serpe 1994). Firstly, it is influenced by the individual’s ties to the social structure and is reflected in the number of persons that they are tied to through an identity. The more people that are involved the greater the commitment. Secondly, when the ties to an identity are stronger or deeper than the ties to other identities then a higher commitment to that identity occurs.

As the theory of Identity developed it highlighted the importance of role identity, identity salience and commitment. However, understanding the ties to structural symbolic interaction gives a more in-depth understanding of the concept of identity creation. The self-system is both an array of self-relevant knowledge, the tool we use to make sense of our experiences, and the processes that construct, defend, and maintain this knowledge (Adrian 2008). The next section looks at these notions and those of the self, language and interaction in more detail.

Burke and Stets (2009) emphasize the importance of Structural symbolic interaction to the definition of self and in the development of Identity Theory. While not the entire nature of Identity Theory, it illustrates the importance of the individual in the process of creating the self.

By discovering the individual’s interpretations of themselves, others, and the individual’s situations we can better understand social behavior.

There are a number of different layers to creating self. The first is internalized through projecting the self, the next is the symbols we use to project these ideas and finally there is the interaction between others that create identity. Mead (1934) states that the self develops beyond

the mind as it interacts with its environment (to sustain life). The control that individuals have over their identity stems from the ability to create meanings and to specify the meaning both to the self and to others. The meaning comes from symbols such as language that is shared with others (Burke & Stets 2009).

According to Burke and Stets (2009, p. 9) the self originates in the mind of the persona and has the ‘ability to take itself as an object, to regard and evaluate itself, to take account of itself and plan accordingly, and to manipulate itself as an object in order to bring about future states’. The self characterizes an individual’s consciousness of their own identity.

The meaning of self is a shared meaning (Burke & Stets 2009). McCall and Simmons (1978) claim that selfhood is achieved when the individual acts towards their identity in the same way they act towards other people. This means that the self, when it merges perspectives with other individuals becomes prevalent and this interaction is facilitated by the meaning of shared symbols.

The meaning of symbols is a response to stimulus, and a good example of this is Pavlov’s dogs (Pavlov 2003). We expect meaning from a response to specific objects or interactions. In Pavlov’s example he conditioned dogs to expect food when a bell rang; which meant that they salivated whenever a bell was chimed. This shows that the object itself does not have the meaning but rather the response to it. The bell does not give Pavlov’s dog the food but the response is the same. By sharing information of self using language, signs and symbols meaning can be conveyed to others beyond the simple stimulus response pattern (Burke & Stets 2009). Symbols are words, language, signs, and discourse (Besley & Peters 2007). Herbert Blumer (1962) claimed that symbolic interaction would bring order to a chaotic world.

The meaning behind symbols comes from social groups where the response to an object can be the same for different people. Language is one of the most important symbols and allows for easy shifting of meaning between individuals. If an individual typed ‘sad’ then their feelings would be automatically understood by another individual, and in the online world if they typed the emoticon
it would have the same meaning. Baym (2010, p. 109) reiterated the importance of language in creating identity online for ‘in textual media, the use of written language is a significantly more powerful force in making and forming impressions’ than it is when people

were face to face. The concept of multiple selves as presented initially by James (1890) was discussed earlier in the chapter; these selves emerge as we interact with others, with each identity behaving differently within the different contexts (Burke & Stets 2009).

Interaction is the third phase of Structural symbolic interaction. Blumer (1962) observed that in order to interact with others, we must first establish both who they are and who we are.

Interaction between different individuals is not about the whole person but between aspects of individuals as part of their role. When an individual speaks to their doctor they speak to them in that role not as the doctor’s other roles such as mother or cyclist. Therefore the context and

‘structure’ of the interaction is important.

When presenting self, or our identity, there must be meaning attached to the role we are addressing. The meaning and classifications come from the symbols, particularly language, and from the social context in which we live (Burke & Stets 2009). In this section the ideas of personal and Identity Theory, particularly the individual presentation of the self have been addressed.

While not an exhaustive reference list of Identity Theory it encapsulates the essence of how individuals create self, and also presents the function of interaction in the development of meaning for identity. It is therefore appropriate to also discuss the psychological theory of Social Identity as it is one of several types of identity a person possesses (Cheek et al. 2002; Ellemers et al. 2002; Weigert et al. 1986).