Different types of identities

• Race/Ethnicity: While race often refers to physical characteristics like skin color and genetic traits, ethnicity involves shared culture, language, religion, and traditions.
• Gender: Involves self-identification and expression (e.g., male, female, nonbinary), distinct from sex, which is a biological classification.
• Age: Reflects chronological age versus one’s subjective sense of how old they feel.
• Sexual orientation: Pertains to whom a person is attracted.
• Class: Related to wealth or the degree of respect afforded to someone, sometimes for reasons beyond money.

Formation of identity

Theories of identity development (e.g., gender, moral, psychosexual, social)

• Moral development

  • A key part of socialization, moral development describes how people learn what their society defines as “good” or “bad,” which helps maintain social order. Lawrence Kohlberg introduced a theory of moral development with three stages: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.
    • Preconventional: Young children, who have limited cognitive abilities, experience the world largely through their senses. At this stage, morality is based on punishments and rewards.
    • Conventional: Typically develops in adolescence. People begin to consider how their actions affect others’ feelings, and they define right and wrong in terms of social conformity and law and order.
    • Postconventional: Involves more abstract moral reasoning. People recognize that what is legal is not always what is moral, and they emphasize social contracts and universal ethical principles.

• Gender

  • Carol Gilligan noted that Kohlberg’s research included only males, which could introduce gender bias. She found that boys often adopt a justice perspective, emphasizing rules and laws, while girls often show a care and responsibility perspective, focusing on the reasons behind behaviors that might appear morally wrong.
  • Gilligan argued that these differences reflect gender socialization rather than innate moral differences. Kohlberg treated the justice perspective as the superior approach; Gilligan argued that neither perspective is inherently “better.” She suggested that boys are often socialized for work settings, where rules support efficiency, while girls are often socialized for home environments, where flexibility supports caregiving and nurturing.

• Psychosexual

  • Sigmund Freud introduced psychosexual development, arguing that children’s pleasure-seeking focuses on a particular erogenous zone during each of five stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.

Freud’s stages of psychosexual development

Table adapted from OpenStax

• Psychosocial
  • Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory emphasizes the social side of personal growth. Freud argued that personality forms only during childhood, but Erikson argued that development continues across the lifespan. He introduced the idea of ego identity, highlighting how social relationships shape how we understand ourselves.

Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development

Table adapted from OpenStax

Influence of social factors on identity formation

• Influence of individuals

  • Charles Cooley’s looking-glass self explains how self-concept partly develops from your sense of how others view you. Early in life, imitation is especially important: children copy the behaviors of people around them (e.g., parents, teachers). Later, in the play stage, children practice social roles - such as doctor or teacher - based on what they’ve observed.

• Influence of groups

  • A reference group provides a standard for comparison. In the United States, peer groups often serve this role. Many people also compare themselves to multiple reference groups - such as family or cultural communities - which can sometimes create competing norms and expectations.

Influence of culture and socialization on identity formation

• Culture includes a society’s entire way of life, from everyday interactions to deeply held values and traditions. Sociologists use the sociological imagination (a term coined by C. Wright Mills) to connect personal experiences to broader social forces. In this way, culture shapes the choices, interpretations, and viewpoints that contribute to identity formation.