Social Construction of Identity, Stereotypes, and Self

Introduction

People are social beings: they seek out others for conversation, support, love, communication, and even for contention. They adapt, conform, criticize, change, and reflect and project the values and norms that flow between and around them, from person to person, society to society, culture to culture. As a result, people and their identities are constantly undergoing revision, which most call natural development or growth — but "we forget that these things that appear natural were actually socially constructed," as DeLamater, Myers, and Collett (2015:6) put it.

The Socially Constructed Human Being

This paper explains how people are socially constructed, both inside and out — that is, in the way they construct their internal identities and in the way they behave outwardly, dress, and either conform to societal expectations and norms or reject them by conforming to a subculture or "non-conformist" social group. In the end, the same phenomenon is occurring: the social construction of human identities and norms.

So much of the way in which people behave, think of themselves, and determine what is important is an effect of the world around them that it has become a staple of sociological thought that media, peers, and groups are the primary input providers in the construction of one's identity. For example, Schweingruber, Anahita, and Berns (2004) show that people who intend to "pop the question" — that is, propose marriage — will do so in a way that generally conforms to the societal standards and expectations of their culture. It is a ritual that people adhere to because there is the sense that they must perform this role in order to meet others' expectations. They perceive that they are being judged on how they go about the proposal, and they want to be judged acceptable. They construct their performance based on their understanding of what the situation requires and what is anticipated of them. They socially construct themselves to fit that role — and so they become the character they think they are supposed to be, in line with what the occasion demands.

By extension, all human behavior is predicated on the idea that what one does is in conformity with some internal conception of what one should be. If one conforms to conventional norms, one does so because this is the role one believes one should play. If one rejects those same norms and embraces other standards, the same logic applies. Justifications and excuses — what Scott and Lyman (1968) call accounts — are what people use to explain their behavior, choices, actions, and identity. They give accounts to themselves and to others to rationalize their social construction of identity.

Life is not so simple that accounts can be given flawlessly, which is why Festinger developed his cognitive dissonance theory. It essentially states that "people try to make sense out of their environment and their behavior — and thus try to lead lives that are (at least in their own minds) sensible and meaningful" (Aronson 1999:220). The social construction of human identity is based on people's need to make sense of their own lives, and what is commonly understood as human development is really the reaction people have to their own cognitive dissonance. They want consistency, and when consistency does not happen they must change something to resolve the dissonance they experience — so they change a perception, change themselves, or change their reality by influencing it in some way.

The social reality of human life is that there is a constant two-way interaction among people who are continuously engaged in various stages of dealing with cognitive dissonance. Because people grow up under all manner of influences, they carry all manner of beliefs, expectations, and attitudes within themselves that guide their wills and shape their impulses. These can be as simple as a proverb absorbed from one's grandmother that creates an expectation about how one should live or behave (Epstein 1997). People form expectations for themselves and live their lives by attempting to conform to them. They socially construct their identities based on inputs they have received from society. Not only do they construct their own identities, however, but they also construct those of others by projecting onto them preconceived ideas about who those others are.

Conclusion

The social construction of human beings is part of life. People receive inputs from all around them about who they are, who others are, who they should be, and why they are the way they are. They receive or reject these inputs based on others that were already present — ones that came from books, parents, teachers, or peers from one's past. These notions may be exchanged, confirmed over time, or altered to resolve feelings of cognitive dissonance — but all the while the person is constructing an image of the self in the mind.