COP Seminar 20/10

We looked at an extract from Contemporary Sociological Theory on the subject of Identity.

The first half of the chapter focused on Sheldon Stryker's identity theory based on social hierarchies. His theory can be summarised thus, we have multiple identities and the identity or identities we choose to reveal depend on social and physical structures in place. These can include the people we are with, the place we are or our position/social status within society. Our many identities are held with different regard, the amount of commitment we place in specific identities is based on their position within our own salience hierarchies; the ones we deem the most important are at the top, the ones we deem less important, at the bottom. The position of an identity on the salience hierarchy is determined by outside validation, we seek approval of an identity from others and it is others who determine the effectiveness of our various identities. Because of this the more committed we are to a particular identity the more our self-esteem is tied up within it's validation, if we do not gain approval or validity from others it is a huge blow to our self esteem and our emotions. Stryker describes emotions as makers of adequacy, our emotions exist to inform us of whether or not our performance was successful or unsuccessful.They motivate individuals to play particular roles that revive positive reinforcement. 

The second part of the chapter looked into George McCall and John Simmons' ideas of identity. Unlike Stryker who believes identity is determined and pre planned by a set of structures, physical or social. They believe that identity or role performance is mostly improvised as a way to achieve goals and that this role reflects an idealised or imagined view of ourselves and is the driving force behind our behaviour. The validation sought out for this form of identity comes from ourselves rather than others and due to the high standards we set for ourselves we will always feel some sense of dissatisfaction in regards to our role performance. We review and validate our performances based off of the interpretation of gestures of others, due to ambiguous nature of gestures and social interaction there is plenty of room for this interpretation. The aim of reviewing our roles is in order to search for support of our chosen identities and several mechanisms are in play in order to maintain our vision of support, these include short term credit; looking back on previous experiences of validation to certify an identities effectiveness, the selective perception of cues; only noticing the responses that confirm the identity choice, selective interpretation of cue; seeing the social cues and interpreting them in a way that supports identity, withdrawing from interactions; moving from a situation that doesn't support chosen identity to one that does, switching role identity; changing from one identity to one that is more likely to bring support, scapegoating audiences; blaming audiences for lack of support as opposed to the chosen identity,  disavowing unsuccessful performances; rejecting blame and denying responsibility for failure and rejecting the audience if they withhold support for a performance. 

With many interactions being unambiguous, as mentioned earlier, other than personal interpretation, there is a degree of exchange negotiation and altercasting,  negotiating the position both parties will play. e.g. whose the leader, and attempting to persuade others to take specific roles. The reward methods for our role performances are both intrinsic and extrinsic, there are the obvious rewards of money, or perhaps pride, however McCall and Simmons argue that the largest reward is support and validation of a role performance. They go on to state that is our expectations of a role performance are met that our need for validation begins to decline, however if they fall short or over achieve what was expected then our need for the support and validation increases.

So how can those theories relate to or even inform graphic design? Well I have two theories, Stryker's theory relates to design driven by social confinement. The target market and what they expect to see is the driving force behind a design, where as is McCall and Simmons the driving force is the personal identity of the designer. They have an idea if what they want their design to look like and will seek all support they can to validate their belief in their own design identity. My second theory is similar to the idea for Stryker's theory, that identity is important for a designer to understand due to our need to please and design for a specific target audience. These theories allow us to understand the people we are targeting in order to best market our designs and products.

Linking Interactionalist Identity to Psychoanalysis 

There are some similarities and connections between the socialist and interactionalist identity and the theories of psychoanalysis, specifically those subjects related to ego, desire and the mirror stage. If we look at Freud’s idea of the ego ideal, we see a similarity with the ideal identity described in McCall and Simmons’s. The ego ideal is an ideal personality or identity perceived by an individual just as the role identity is described as an ideal or imagined version of self. Moving onto Lacan’s ideas of desire, that an object or person is considered desirable simply because others deem it so, we can see a striking similarity with the social identity described by Stryker. The identity we form can be a conclusion of understanding and imitating characteristics and identities deemed socially acceptable by a specific group. The characteristics we adopt within certain identities are only considered successful choices because others believe them to be and validate them to be so. The only reason we fully commit to certain identities is because we believe them to be the ones that people validate the most, they only become important to us because others deem them as best and in certain cases, the ones that fit best into societal structures determined by a majority.

We can also compare Freud’s theory of id, ego and superego to the social identity described by Stryker as well as the idealised self specified by McCall and Simmons. The id is our unconscious instinct the demands immediate satisfaction to instinctual feelings, such as anger, hunger or sexual desire; the ego is the partly conscious, partly subconscious realistic part of our brain, it aims to satisfy the id’s wants but it creates a realistic, however not moral strategy in order to do so; the super ego is the area of ourselves that holds the morals and the values, often influenced by parents and authority figures as children, it controls the id though conscience a way the ego alone cannot and punishes and rewards the id through emotions such as guilt or pride, it can withhold id satisfaction, and projects an ideal form of self for us to work and aim towards. The conscience can be linked to Stryker’s social identity, what is considered good or bad is determined by what others deemed good or bad, and often our behaviour is modified from what we want to do to what we shouldn’t do due to social pressure. You may want to jump on the table and have sex with the person opposite you, however sex is labelled as societally forbidden and so our conscience disallows us the right to do so through embarrassment and guilt. In the same way that we may have identities that we wish to display, but certain societal structures labels them as inappropriate so we don’t reveal them. The other half of the super ego, the ideal self, as mentioned earlier is just like the ideal or imagined identity we strive towards described by McCall and Simmons.

Finally we can look at the mirror stage, this is similar to the ideal self previously mentioned but relates on a more physical sense of self. As infants we enter a stage of development where we begin to recognise our own reflections and experience an external image of our bodies, this leads us to develop a mental representation of ourselves or “I” this perception of “I” becomes the basis for our identities. Due to the undeveloped condition of our body and the preconceived ideas of a body as a unified whole we begin to establish an ideal version of “I” that we will strive towards for the rest of our life. This is, once again, like the ideal or imagined identity from McCall and Simmons’s book; we have a perceived inner version of ourselves which we strive towards and which drives us to behave the way we do.