Labels......

I often hear people using one or two words to describe themselves, like, "I'm pro-choice", or "I'm Christian", or "I'm high maintenance" or "I'm painfully liberal', or "I'm Scandinavian.", or "I'm a Republican". These are labels. We use them on ourselves, and on others. I know I tend to categorize people based on the labels they use, and I'm probably not the only one. My question is.....do these labels *reflect* our personality/attitude/behavior, or do they *dictate* them?