Take a look at how humans form their identities?

 

Introduction:

                           Identity is a trait that distinguishes a person or a thing from others. In this world full of familiar people it's our identity that makes us unique, which makes us recognizable. It helps us to stand out in the crowd. But how do humans form their identities? Do values play a role in forming identities? And the most important topic to discuss is how do we identify things? In this article, you will be able to get valuable knowledge regarding how humans form their identities and a deeper dive into values and identities with a bit of psychology and neuroscience.

Human identities:

                           Humans form their identities by valuing and practicing things on a day-to-day basis. Humans have two kinds of identities “given” and “created”. Let’s first take a look at what given and created identities. 

                        Given identities are those identities through which a person gets identified by the traits given to them by others. For instance, we get identified by our parent's sir name at the end of our name, and we get identified by the institute from which we have studied or currently studying. These are all the identities that are given to us by others’ characteristics.

                        Created identities are those traits that we create for ourselves by ourselves. These are the traits we develop from time to time to make ourselves different from others and unique. Constructed identities are not inspired by the traits or characteristics of others instead it's developed by the effort of a person. For instance, we create our identity as a happy person by always cheering ourselves up and appreciating ourselves and by smiling, we make our identity as a passionate person by working hard for our future, and we make our identity as a trustful person by keeping the secrets of others.

How identities are created?

                         We as humans can adopt identities and distinguish different identities. Our identities are not only created by ourselves, our society also plays a massive role in making our identities.

Our identities are formed at different levels. At the most basic level, it is how we view ourselves and how we question ourselves? The Meso level is at which close-knit communities like our families, friends and even our parents see us. And the macro level is a broader level at which the world recognizes us, at which the person who doesn't even know us identifies us. In forming identities values play a very crucial role.

Values form our identities:

                                Value is something to whom we give more importance as compared to other things in life. It is a kind of judgment that shows what is important to a person. Our values play a very important role in how we get identified. Let’s say you value money, then people will identify you as a materialistic person or maybe a person who is practical and has a rational mindset. Even while money is important in today's world, a lot of individuals also place a higher value on happiness. They believe that if they value money over happiness they can never be happy. And they view loving money as a sin that leads to a variety of issues.

                           In reality, our values are actually created from our past experiences and our relationship with our close ones. People who value happiness over money have past experiences which give them the view that they cannot be happy in chasing money. The people who value self-respect more are those who have suffered great disrespect in the past from their close ones. People who value money have experienced the pain of not having enough money. 

                           Most significantly, our values are founded on our beliefs as well. We only uphold the values in which we have a stronger conviction. 

                           So, our identification is greatly influenced by our values. Others' perspectives are shaped by these values. These ideals provide people an understanding of how to see us. People remember us by connecting our values to ourselves and by recalling the things we hold dear.

 “Our values aren’t just a collection of feelings. Our values are stories.”

By Mark Manson 

                                 

How do humans identify?

                               We can identify things when we get familiar with them or in other words when we are exposed to them more than one time. When we see a thing more than one time our brain creates neural connections. Like even something as simple as learning someone's name causes neural connections to form in the brain. These synapses essentially remap the brain by building new connections between nerve cells. Each of the brain's 100 billion nerve cells can have 10,000 connections to other nerve cells, giving the brain an inconceivable degree of flexibility.

                       Depending on how frequently we are exposed to an event, those synapses get stronger or weaker. The stronger the connections become, the more we are exposed to an activity (like a golfer practicing swing thousands of times). However, the connection weakens with less exposure, which is why it's so challenging to recall details like names after a first introduction. But we start to remember and identify a person after two to three times meeting them.

                        So, the identification of a person or thing is all about exposure. The more we are exposed to something the more we can easily identify it due to the neural connections in our brain.

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