Suni Aguilar Gasca
Proffesor Barlett
LAL 102- Comp. II
05, February 2016
Achieving An Identity
Adolescents and young adults often strive to create and achieve a coherent identity. We look for cues from others and within ourselves to form a view of ourselves that seems stable and consistent. Clear identities help us navigate the world, guide our own behaviors, and make predictions about what we will and won’t like. Personality tests may give us information we feel is useful or we deem more accurate than knowledge obtained through self-examination this in order to form a more coherent view about ourselves. In addition, when we have an identity goal for ourselves such as being an athlete or feminist, we may use personality tests to help us feel we have attained that goal. Research on identity goals suggests we can engage in a variety of activities to claim that we have attained our goals, such as acquiring skills relevant to the identity or describing ourselves in ways consistent with the identity. Perhaps taking personality tests may be one way to obtain assurance of the identity we want to have. But aren’t we the experts on ourselves? Why should we need to take these tests to figure out who we are?
The results of personality tests aren’t usually that deep or insightful but somehow that doesn’t stop us from taking them. This is likely because it is the process of gaining information that we already know that we enjoy. Psychologists have learned that people prefer to receive feedback that confirms their identity than feedback that doesn’t. When we get a result from a personality quiz that aligns with our own self-view we feel good because are being recognized for who we are. Although, we don’t pay attention at the fact that a computer is recognizing us, that this is a computer made up test designed by a human. This stating that a human himself would come up with the same perception of us based on the same information. All we would have to do is talk....