Have you ever consciously thought about the reason why we get into the relationships we get into? Well, other than our own personal qualities and the qualities of others, there are two things that drive us to talk to people; identity and attraction. Please keep in mind that in the field of interpersonal communication “attraction” is not only used in romantic relationships, but it is used as an adjective in the development of all relationships.
Now first and foremost, our identity is socially defined. What this means is that how we see ourselves must be agreed upon by our peers or even society as a whole. For example, I would not be identified as an ‘emo’ because I do not fit the criteria that society has placed on the emo culture. However, if I wore black and white makeup, got a specific haircut that fits with the emo culture, and dressed in all black clothing with a glum facial expression; I would obviously view myself as an emo, and so would society.
Our identities are also maintained through communication. People will start to identify us based on actual or imaginary conversations. For example, if I was to have a conversation with someone dressed very respectfully, I might expect them to speak with eloquence, however, if they begin to speak with a ton of slang and sound like they were raised by the streets, I would change my perception and identification of them. And on the imaginary side, if I think people say certain things about me relating to my identity, I may act to change what I think they are saying, or act to reinforce their idea of me.
Identity is often confused with self-esteem and ego, but the truth is that these are both built off of our identity. Self-esteem is how we perceive ourselves, and ego is when we compare our perception of ourselves to our perception of others. Depending on what our identity is, or what we want it to be, can affect our self-esteem and ego, but our self-esteem and ego cannot affect our identity.
Our identity gives us structure. It is impacted by feedback; we need confirmation by others to verify our identity. Our identities help us interpret the feedback we receive because we have general expectations of how some people will behave or communicate. Our identities also impact our self evaluation, our goals (how high we should reach, and our belief that we can reach that far), and our relational choices. Our identities will make us wonder if we are being treated they way we believe we deserve to be treated based on our identity. Similarly, we will ask ourselves if others look at us the way we look at ourselves. If somebody questions our identity, we may remove ourselves from that relationship, thus our identities are a key component in relational development.
There are some concerns about identity perception. We have all met people who we consider ‘fake’, is this a mistake in how we read their identity, or are they being deceptive in an attempt to fit in to society? Our identity is dependent on the social interactions we have with others, but to what extent are we influenced by these interactions? We all have different groups of friends for a reason, and we don’t spend time with these groups at the same time for the very same reason. Our friendship groups have different characteristics, as an extreme example; you would not mix your book club friends with your sports team friends. Obviously one group is going to be more extraverted than the other and there would be some serious personality clashes. We form these groups to give us an option of who to spend time with based on our mood or maybe even changes (temporary or permanent) in our identity. We are attracted to different qualities in different social situations. We would obviously look for different qualities in co-workers, friends, partners, and hook-ups.
We are attracted (not romantically) to everyone we share relationships with. There are different types of attraction for the earlier mentioned relationship types. These attraction types consist of; physical, social, task, sexual, relational, and fatal. With these attractions come expectations. We assume some type of reward from most relationships, based on subjective requirements within the relationship. Our expectations can be violated in both a positive and a negative manner. For example, if we have a professor who we expect to be a jerk, but they end up being really nice and informative, our expectations have been violated in a positive way. However, if we have the opposite expectation and they end up being a terrible professor with a bad attitude, our expectations have been violated in a negative way. Nevertheless, if we know we have to stay in that class for the whole semester, we will tolerate the bad professor and try to find positive traits about them because we feel like we have to.
Interactive and environmental qualities have a significant effect on our relational choices. Interactive qualities include similarity and complimentary behaviors. The “birds of a feather. . .” saying implies that we want to be around people similar to ourselves. We search for communicative and attitudinal similarity, physical similarity (research says we date people a similar ‘hotness’ to ourselves), and implicit egotism (share a birthday, went to the same school etc.). “Opposites attract” is of course the opposite of “birds of a feather. . .” As a final point on interactive qualities, the relational length plays a major role in attractiveness. The more time we invest in a person, the more attractive they become. The most common of the environmental qualities are networks and distance. If our social networks approve of our newfound relationships, we will most probably proceed with them. And finally, distance/proximity affects frequency of contact, and frequency of contact has the power to increase or decrease attraction.
So what is your identity? Does it match the identities of those who you are close with? Do you show different parts of your identity around different friends or different sexes? How often have you made a comment or observation when you have seen a couple walking down the street who are at different ends of the ‘hotness scale’? “How did HE get HER!?” is a common one, my friends and I call it ‘careering’. Maybe I should send that to Oxford English Dictionary. . .
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