Self-identification to thoughts
How do people come to identify with their thoughts, memories, emotions, body, possessions, groups, and roles?
This idea treats the sense of self as partly constructed through identification. People may identify with the body, with personal objects, with memories, with current emotions and thoughts, with other people, with social roles, and with groups. These identifications may shape personality, agency, politics, intergroup relations, and openness to change.
Possible study designs:
- Develop a measure of self-identification across domains: body, thoughts, emotions, memories, roles, groups, possessions, and ideals.
- Test whether mindfulness reduces identification with thoughts without reducing values-based action.
- Examine whether identity salience changes behavior, moral judgment, or intergroup attitudes.
- Compare identification with thoughts to related constructs such as cognitive fusion, self-concept clarity, authenticity, and ego involvement.
Key risks:
- The construct overlaps with many existing literatures and needs careful boundaries.
- Reduced identification may be beneficial in some contexts but destabilizing or unhelpful in others.
Related ideas: