The Dimensions of Personal Identity

In this paper I tackle the question of personal identity as to “what attributes define a person and make them who they are”.  The paper aims at informing cultural competency trainees and learning providers and therefore I shall not go into detailed discussions about what defines personhood, evidence of personhood, or about what persistence of personality is (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d.)

Lack of Consensus

Researchers and theoreticians in the fields of philosophy, psychology and social sciences, do not have a consensus regarding what factors define personal identity. While West & Zimmerman, for example, focused in their research on the effects of gender, Maddox studied ethnicity.  Cheryan & Monin’s work, on the other hand, focused on nationality and Proshansky introduced and studied ‘place identity’. Professor Vivian Vignoles, of the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, on the other hand proposes that identity has personal and social attributes. (Vignoles, n.d.).

Why comprehensiveness is necessary

The trend of considering that identity is defined by a small number of factors continues. Psychology Today for example mentions that “Identity encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that create one’s sense of self” (Psychology Today, n.d.). But these are only four dimensions that correspond to parts 2(i), 2(ii), 5(ii) and 3(i) of the taxonomy that I am proposing in this paper (See section The taxonomy: Dimensions of personal individual identity).  The four dimensions of the Psychology Today article therefore just form a small subset of the comprehensive taxonomy proposed in this article.   Some theoreticians, learning providers and other authorities may intentionally limit their research to a subset of the set of dimensions that define identity in order to focus on their purpose.  However, missing to mention the broader concept in full and lack of comprehensiveness continue to create misconceptions.  If we are to talk the same language, avoid problems that arise from miscommunication, and cover aspects that we need to be accurate and comprehensive as we define our terms. The reliability of any resource depends on how accurate, comprehensive and well categorised it is. I am therefore putting forward a fully comprehensive taxonomy of the dimensions of individual identity.

Constructing a taxonomy of attributes of personal identity

One way to build the taxonomy is by experiment; for example, actually asking people to answer the above two questions and categorising their answers.  Our experience tells us that when asked “who and what are you” most people usually start with stating their name which is actually just a social label. After stating their name, people’s answers differ in accordance with their situational priorities.  A medical doctor for example would in most cases mention their profession.  However, that same medical doctor would introduce herself as John’s mother if she were in a meeting with John’s teachers.  Politically active people may tell us about their affiliation.  If you record some voices and play them back to people who know the speakers, you would expect the listeners to say “Ah, this is Elias speaking” as they hear Elias’ voice.  But is Elias’ voice actually Elias or it is just one of the factors that define Elias?  Some person may say “John is a COVID survivor” focusing on John’s health as a determinant of john’s identity; others may state John’s religion.

Situational personal identity

While crossing into Syria from Lebanon in the 1980’s, I noticed that two of my students were being held up at a checkpoint.  When I asked the officer in charge why they are being held up he asked me “Why?? Well, what are they?”.  “My students”, I answered innocently, but I could immediately see dissatisfaction on his face.  He repeated his question this time aggressively!  Well at the time it was extremely dangerous for me to provoke a Syrian Army Officer but I actually did not know what angered him, or what he is trying to find out or to tell me!  I had answered the question to the best of my knowledge! I thought maybe he would like to know about their genders or how I know them.  My second attempt to provide him with the information was “they are a girl and a boy, teenagers, the children of my colleague Mr. Mansour, a school principal in the UAE!”.  The officer now looked quite provoked and he threatened me saying “Are you being witty? You either tell me what they are or I will send you to jail!”.  Well, he had the authority!  I was lucky that the next thing that came to my mind was their nationality. “They are Palestinians”, I said.  At the that moment the identity of these two children was almost limited to one factor: their nationality.  He had held them up at the border because they carried Palestinian travel documents -  an unwelcome identity! 

Categories of identity

The number of possible answers to the question “who or what are you?” is enormous. However, every possible response would fall within one of the categories included in the taxonomy that follows in the section The taxonomy: Dimensions of personal individual identity.  The taxonomy is more or less a comprehensive sorted list that does not does not completely agree with any one of the standard categorisations that I found in relevant literature.

A seven-dimensional concept

The taxonomy I propose for personal identity has seven independent categories or dimensions which are: the physical, the geographical/temporal, the personal, the cultural, the psychological, the social/ professional, and the intellectual.  Each of these major dimensions has subdimensions within it, as listed below.  I believe that every description of an individual would fall within the attributes that belong to these seven dimensions.  One exercise the reader may like to do is to see if there is anything about themselves that falls outside these dimensions, or if there is any of these dimensions that does not apply to them.

Identity versus sameness

The word identity originally comes from the Latin word idem, which means the same, hence when we speak of someone’s identity we are speaking of their constancy.    This constancy poses problems for many of the attributes of the list above undergo change; people change in height as they grow up, they gain experience and new memories with time, they change careers etc.  Without going into the philosophical question and analysing this problem, we are simply going to accept that there is ‘some essence’ that remains the same in a person keeping her/him the same person as she/he undergoes change with time!

The taxonomy: Dimensions of personal individual identity

1-    Physical

                                               i.     Race

                                             ii.     Health biometrics this would include blood type, blood pressure, etc.

                                           iii.     Sexual orientation (Gender)

                                            iv.     Appearance, voice and biometrics (size, height, weight, colour, etc.)

                                             v.     Biological links (to other individuals such as parents, children, siblings,…)

                                            vi.     Physical and artistic skills and abilities

2-    Geographical and temporal

                                               i.     Geographical (place of birth, places of work, travelled places, …)

                                             ii.     Temporal (date of birth [age], dates of other personal events …)

3-    Personal

                                               i.     Memories, experience and education

                                             ii.     Habits and hobbies

4-    Cultural

                                               i.     Beliefs (including religion), moral values, principles, priorities and preferences (including views on social status and social structures)

                                             ii.     Communication: language, body language, symbols, signs and ways of interpretation

5-    Psychological traits

                                               i.     Openness and agreeability

                                             ii.     Neuroticism (stability, joyfulness, ambition…)

                                           iii.     Conscientiousness

                                            iv.     Extraversion (social and emotional expressiveness, courage, charisma)

6-    Social and professional

                                               i.     Social Label (given names)

                                             ii.     Social affiliations, allegiances and nationality

                                           iii.     Social relationships (family, friendships, marital status)

                                            iv.     Social status, economic status and career

                                             v.     Social practices such as mannerism and customs (including socialising methods, celebrations, attire, cuisine, art, social activities)

7-    Intellectual and creative traits:

                                               i.     Intellectual (attentiveness, thoroughness, precision, scientific conceptualising, scientific perception, analytic and synthetic ways and abilities, systematicity and logic, …)

                                             ii.     Creativity

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing fluidity and temporality of personal identity

The answers to the questions ‘who are you?’ and ‘what are you?’ change with time leading us to doubt the existence of some constant that defines a person and that we can call ‘that person’s personal identity’.  Career is not a constant so should we for the sake of constancy of identity remove ‘career’ from the above list? Or should we keep it because when a person who is a teacher today changes her career, they do not become a different person? We know that people will never stop considering that being a journalist, a soldier, a mechanics etc. is a part of who they are!  People’s careers give them pride and determine many of their affiliations and a lot of their social life.  We do have a problem but the good news is that there is an easy solution that depends on accepting that in spite of change there is something that remains constant and keeps a person’s identity the as  some of its attributes change.

The power of “now” surfaces again

We all realise that we keep changing, but we also realise that there is something in each of us that keeps us the same person.  We do not want to delve deep in discussing what it is. In fact when we ask someone ‘who are you?’ or ‘what are you?’, we are actually interested in finding out ‘who are you now’ or ‘what are you now’!  The word now however, is implied and was hence removed; it is redundant.  If we try not to remove all implied words from everyday speech and seek absolute precision it becomes very difficult, or perhaps even impossible for us to communicate.  We always assume meaning as we communicate.  Even in science we accept conventions and brevity otherwise we would need to spend a lot of time in order to be precise.  For example, when we mention relativity, without having to be precise and say that we mean Einstein’s theory, we do imply it.  When a nurse tells you that “your weight is 60 Kilograms”, then she actually means to say “The reading that I see on the dial of these scales that you are standing on now is 60, hence my understanding is that your weight at the moment, and according to these scales not others, and at this location in the universe, is approximately 60 Kilograms” – Now that’s precise!  Well going to these lengths of precision is completely useless.

However, ‘who are you now?’ does not mean that your personal identity will change with time but that some attributes of it will do – we will keep considering that you are the same person as you change.

Personal Identity as a perception

Returning to the story of the Palestinian students who were stopped at the Syrian borders let us look into the nature of identity again.  Other than the temporal property of identity, ie its change with time, there seems to be a subjective property that is imposed by the subject whose identity is being looked into or by the outsider who is considering the subject. The perceptions of both, subject and the onlooker determine which factor of the identity is more prominent.  Hence it makes sense to say that our identity depends on our perception within the environment and at the moment and we need to realise that it is different from how identity is perceived by another person or even creature that is observing us even if it is at the same time and in the same environment!  From the preceding analysis the concept of fluid identity was born which poses the danger of identity being so fluid that it is meaningless to talk about it being a thing. 

Summary

In summary the personal identity of an individual is a concept that depends on who is perceiving that individual, when they do it and within what environment.  As a puma, for example, lurks in the woods watching you approaching the bush, it perceives you as a possible meal if she or her cubs are hungry, a threat if you were close to her den or an unwelcome intruder if you are scaring away the game she is hoping to catch.  At the same time your partner who is speaking to you over the mobile phone perceives you as a precious person.  A military pilot manoeuvring a surveillance drone observing you from his office far away, may perceive you as a potential terrorist that he needs to obliterate!