1.
Religious identity- with religions wanting the youth to figure
out what exactly they want achieving this becomes difficult due to the facts of
some people don’t want to worry about it as an adolescent and would much rather
worry about it when they are older. To me I find that this is something that
has been somewhat removed especially in our “American culture” because you have
so many who are focused on other things that they tend to say they are involved
in the religions of their parents when in reality they don’t commit the time
and efforts.
2.
Sexual/ Gender Identity- Erikson show in the
book that “although many adolescents aware temporarily confused about their
sexual identity, they would soon identify as men or women”. I found this very
interesting with how society is at present time. You have many gay couples now
that have a said “man and woman” in their relationships, sexually they are gay
and they do come to grips with what gender they are taking the role of.
3.
Political/ Ethnic Identity- Erikson use to think
that back in the day to achieve this you would simply chose your political
party. Now you hear of people modern day saying I chose a person not
necessarily a party. With that nowadays you deal with people also making these
choices based off of ethnicity for example, many black people regardless of
being involved with other political views may have chosen Obama because of his
ethnicity. I believe politics still to me are more based off of party thoughts
and not people. Generally speaking a lot of people are the same way due to what
their parents believe.
4.
Vocational Identity- is where people decide what
they are in society for employment. Most people cannot realize or make
decisions in this until about age 25, those who work jobs when they are younger
are vocationally molded.
With all of these being the basis of
achievement, I find it sad that most of these things are directly made possible
through the people’s parents or friends. I have always done what I had thought
to be what I wanted to stride for I haven’t devoted myself to something due to
family thinking it is what I should be doing. I have listened but I don’t follow
unless it seems to be the best fit for me.
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ReplyDeleteMicheal, interesting write up on Erikson. I was struck by your political assessment and thought I might share some information about the psychology of voting. I studied Political Science in undergrad and was fascinated by voter behavior, which is basically the psychology of voting. Surprisingly, people rarely vote for people per se. The biggest factor that has effected the success of the past 60 years of elections, since 1952, has been Economy. Lyn Vavreck wrote a great a book on this phenomenon, called The Message Matters. In the book she explains the quite remarkable fact that political scientist can predict elections based on a simple formula. They simple have to observe which candidate is held responsible for the success or failings of the economy. The candidate that can look best, either to maintain or save the economy will win the election. This is surprising when you think about all the reasons people vote, or appear to vote, but when you think about it, the common man experiences politics mostly through his wallet and people are largely uniformed on most political issues. Not only is economy what had driven the previous elections, including Obama, but Obama was actually overwhelming elected by white people, not black people as you stated. He won more white support than any other candidate in a two man race since 1976. There are many potential reasons for this, some involving race, some not. Overall, the Psychology and science of elections is often not what is assumed.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15297.html
Vavreck, Lyn. The Message Matters. Princton University Press. 2009