Labels......

[poltr1]

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?

Comments

[mooneflowerz.livejournal.com]

*giggles* I use two words to describe me...I'm ME! Labels affect us if we allow them to affect us, but sometimes we can't help it...I know I do that too...it's hard to change how we act sometimes...

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

A little of both. (Nothing like a little wishy-washy with one's answers.)
People take on labels because they are convenient for identifying one with a given group. And that identifying with that group is often assumed by others to also be a simultaneous acquisition of all the characterists of that group. And so, to remain accepted by that group (or to remain unaccepted by people outside that group, depending on your psychii), people will often become that set of characteristics, whether they were that to begin with or not. Call it Peer Pressure, if you'd like.

And so, yes, in the beginning, it reflects you. Then it consumes you and dictates you. And then, one hopes, you mature out of that space and come to that place where you take from the comunity (and give back to it) those core values that are important to you, and you leave behind the rest. Secure in the knowledge that people will still assume things about you, but that doesn't mean you have to bow to their assumptions.

Least, that's how I've seen it work in the groups I've been a part of. Look into psychology and social science journals about group dynamics and identitiy formation, and you'l find many studies trying to answer your question above. -H...