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Why Identity Matters and How It Shapes Us

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

Verywell / Zoe Hansen

Defining Identity

• What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

Identity Development Across the Lifespan

The importance of identity, tips for reflecting on your identity.

Your identity is a set of physical, mental, emotional, social, and interpersonal characteristics that are unique to you.

It encapsulates your core personal values and your beliefs about the world, says Asfia Qaadir , DO, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at PrairieCare.

In this article, we explore the concept of identity, its importance, factors that contribute to its development , and some strategies that can help you reflect upon your identity.

Your identity gives you your sense of self. It is a set of traits that distinguishes you from other people, because while you might have some things in common with others, no one else has the exact same combination of traits as you.

Your identity also gives you a sense of continuity, i.e. the feeling that you are the same person you were two years ago and you will be the same person two days from now.

Asfia Qaadir, DO, Psychiatrist

Your identity plays an important role in how you treat others and how you carry yourself in the world.

What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

These are some of the factors that can contribute to your identity:

• Physical appearance
• Physical sensations
• Emotional traits
• Life experiences
• Genetics 
• Health conditions
• Nationality
• Race  
• Social community 
• Peer group 
• Political environment
• Spirituality
• Sexuality 
• Personality
• Beliefs 
• Finances 

We all have layers and dimensions that contribute to who we are and how we express our identity.

All of these factors interact together and influence you in unique and complex ways, shaping who you are. Identity formation is a subjective and deeply personal experience.

Identity development is a lifelong process that begins in childhood, starts to solidify in adolescence, and continues through adulthood.

Childhood is when we first start to develop a self-concept and form an identity.

As children, we are highly dependent on our families for our physical and emotional needs. Our early interactions with family members play a critical role in the formation of our identities.

During this stage, we learn about our families and communities, and what values are important to them, says Dr. Qaadir. 

The information and values we absorb in childhood are like little seeds that are planted years before we can really intentionally reflect upon them as adults, says Dr. Qaadir.

Traumatic or abusive experiences during childhood can disrupt identity formation and have lasting effects on the psyche.

Adolescence

Adolescence is a critical period of identity formation.

As teenagers, we start to intentionally develop a sense of self based on how the values we’re learning show up in our relationships with ourselves, our friends, family members, and in different scenarios that challenge us, Dr. Qaadir explains.

Adolescence is a time of discovering ourselves, learning to express ourselves, figuring out where we fit in socially (and where we don’t), developing relationships, and pursuing interests, says Dr. Qaadir.

This is the period where we start to become independent and form life goals. It can also be a period of storm and stress , as we experience mood disruptions, challenge authority figures, and take risks as we try to work out who we are.

As adults, we begin building our public or professional identities and deepen our personal relationships, says Dr. Qaadir.

These stages are not set in stone, rather they are fluid, and we get the rest of our lives to continue experiencing life and evolving our identities, says Dr. Qaadir.

Having a strong sense of identity is important because it:

• Creates self-awareness: A strong sense of identity can give you a deep sense of awareness of who you are as a person. It can help you understand your likes, dislikes, actions, motivations, and relationships.
• Provides direction and motivation: Having a strong sense of identity can give you a clear understanding of your values and interests, which can help provide clarity, direction, and motivation when it comes to setting goals and working toward them.
• Enables healthy relationships: When you know and accept yourself, you can form meaningful connections with people who appreciate and respect you for who you are. A strong sense of identity also helps you communicate effectively, establish healthy boundaries, and engage in authentic and fulfilling interactions.
• Keeps you grounded: Our identities give us roots when things around us feel chaotic or uncertain, says Dr. Qaadir. “Our roots keep us grounded and help us remember what truly matters at the end of the day.”
• Improves decision-making: Understanding yourself well can help you make choices that are consistent with your values, beliefs, and long-term goals. This clarity reduces confusion, indecision, and the tendency to conform to others' expectations, which may lead to poor decision-making .
• Fosters community participation: Identity is often shaped by cultural, social, political, spiritual, and historical contexts. Having a strong sense of identity allows you to understand, appreciate, and take pride in your cultural heritage. This can empower you to participate actively in society, express your unique perspective, and contribute to positive societal change.

On the other hand, a weak sense of identity can make it more difficult to ground yourself emotionally in times of stress and more confusing when you’re trying to navigate major life decisions, says Dr. Qaadir.

Dr. Qaadir suggests some strategies that can help you reflect on your identity:

• Art: Art is an incredible medium that can help you process and reflect on your identity. It can help you express yourself in creative and unique ways.
• Reading: Reading peoples’ stories through narrative is an excellent way to broaden your horizons, determine how you feel about the world around you, and reflect on your place in it.
• Journaling: Journaling can also be very useful for self-reflection . It can help you understand your feelings and motivations better.
• Conversation: Conversations with people can expose you to diverse perspectives, and help you form and represent your own.
• Nature: Being in nature can give you a chance to reflect undisturbed. Spending time in nature often has a way of putting things in perspective.
• Relationships: You can especially strengthen your sense of identity through the relationships around you. It is valuable to surround yourself with people who reflect your core values but may be different from you in other aspects of identity such as personality styles, cultural backgrounds, passions, professions, or spiritual paths because that provides perspective and learning from others.

American Psychological Association. Identity .

Pfeifer JH, Berkman ET. The development of self and identity in adolescence: neural evidence and implications for a value-based choice perspective on motivated behavior . Child Dev Perspect . 2018;12(3):158-164. doi:10.1111/cdep.12279

Hasanah U, Susanti H, Panjaitan RU. Family experience in facilitating adolescents during self-identity development . BMC Nurs . 2019;18(Suppl 1):35. doi:10.1186/s12912-019-0358-7

Dereboy Ç, Şahin Demirkapı E, et al. The relationship between childhood traumas, identity development, difficulties in emotion regulation and psychopathology . Turk Psikiyatri Derg . 2018;29(4):269-278.

Branje S, de Moor EL, Spitzer J, Becht AI. Dynamics of identity development in adolescence: a decade in review . J Res Adolesc . 2021;31(4):908-927. doi:10.1111/jora.12678

Stirrups R.  The storm and stress in the adolescent brain .  The Lancet Neurology . 2018;17(5):404. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30112-1

Fitzgerald A. Professional identity: A concept analysis . Nurs Forum . 2020;55(3):447-472. doi:10.1111/nuf.12450

National Institute of Standards and Technology. Identity .

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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Recent posts, subscribe here, more expert advice, let's get existential: how to write a college essay about identity.

When you’re a teenager, you’re probably too busy to sit down and think about your own identity. No one exactly assigns you “introspection time” as homework (though, if you’re my student, this has very likely happened). So when you start working on your college essays, it might be the first time you truly start thinking about how you can express who you are in a way that will help a group of strangers understand something about you. Let’s be honest—it feels like a lot of pressure to sum up your identity in 250 words or less. But we’re here to help.

There are many different types of application essays you’ll need to write, as my colleague Annie so perfectly laid out here . But we’re going to talk about one type in particular: the essays about identity and diversity. These are powerful college essays that give admissions officers an opportunity to glimpse into your daily life and understand your unique experiences. For some students, though, these essays can be daunting to think about and write.  

Ever wonder why colleges are asking these questions? Well, the simple answer is that they want to get to know you more. Aside from your academic interests, your activities, and your accomplishments in the classroom, there really isn’t that much space to talk about things like your ethnic background, religion, gender identity, or local community. And these are things colleges want to know about you, too!

How Do You Write a Good Identity and Diversity Essay?

Before you start writing, let’s define a few terms you might run into while drafting your college essays about identity and diversity.

Who are you? I know what you’re thinking—it’s way too early in the morning to get this existential. I hear you. But let’s break this down. Identity is made up of many qualities: personality, culture, ethnic or racial background, sexual orientation, gender, physical ability, and linguistic background, among others. Maybe you identify really strongly with the religion on Mom’s side of the family, but not Dad’s. Maybe you speak a language not typical of folks from your culture. Maybe you have recently come into your gender identity and finally feel like yourself. Why is that identity important to the way you define who you are? Think of it like this: If you’ve met someone new, and your goal is to help them get to know you in the shortest amount of time possible, how would you be able to accomplish this? What’s your tagline? That’s how you’ll want to tackle this type of college essay.

Diversity  

One individual person can’t be diverse. But when a college is referring to diversity, they’re usually looking to their student body and asking how you, as an individual with your own identity, can add to their diversity. What experiences have you had in your life that might help you make the student body more diverse? Have you dealt with dyslexia and come to terms with how best to learn, keeping your abilities in mind? If so, how can you contribute to other students who might learn differently? Did you grow up as the oldest of 10 siblings and have to take care of them on a daily basis? What kind of responsibilities did you have and how did that influence you? These don’t need to be visible qualities. The goal of the diversity college essay is to understand how these identifying factors can help you contribute to a school in a way they haven’t seen before.  

Let’s define community. You may associate it with the city or neighborhood you live in. But a community doesn’t have to be geographical. It doesn’t even have to be formal. Community can come from that sense of connection you have with like-minded people. It can be built with people you’ve shared experiences with. So, when we think of community in this sense, we could be thinking about the community that exists within your apartment complex. We could be thinking about the youth group at your mosque. We could be thinking about your little group of artists within your science and tech magnet school. Think about what communities you are a part of, and be prepared to talk about your place within them.

You might think that these questions are only being asked by small liberal arts schools—but that’s not true. Bigger schools and colleges also want to get to know all of the thousands of students they’re bringing to campus as part of their class.

Big Name Colleges that Care About Diversity

To give you a glimpse of the variety, here are a few examples of college essays where these identity and diversity may come into play:

University of Michigan

“Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it.”

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

“Expand on an aspect of your identity (for example, your religion, culture, race, sexual or gender identity, affinity group, etc.). How has this aspect of your identity shaped your life experiences thus far?”

Pomona College

“Tell us about an experience when you dealt with disagreement or conflict around different perspectives within a community.”

Sarah Lawrence College

“Sarah Lawrence College's community places strong value in inclusion and diversity. In 250-500 words, tell us about what you value in a community and how your perspective, lived experiences, or beliefs might contribute to your College community.”

Remember what these colleges are trying to understand: who you are and what has influenced you to become the person you are today (identity), where you come from (community), and how you might be able to add to the diversity of their college campus. Once you really get to the core and understand the intent of these types of college essays, you’ll absolutely be able to write in an earnest and genuine way. We say this frequently at Collegewise, but it’s worth repeating here, especially when it comes to essays about identity and diversity. Just be yourself.

About Us:  With more than twenty years of experience, Collegewise counselors and tutors are at the forefront of the ever-evolving admissions landscape. Our work has always centered on you: the student. And just like we’ve always done, we look for ways for you to be your best self - whether it’s in the classroom, in your applications or in the right-fit college environment. Our range of tools include  counseling ,  test prep ,  academic tutoring , and essay management, all with the support of our proprietary platform , leading to a 4x higher than average admissions rates. 

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Much of the debate about identity in recent decades has been about personal identity, and specifically about personal identity over time, but identity generally, and the identity of things of other kinds, have also attracted attention. Various interrelated problems have been at the centre of discussion, but it is fair to say that recent work has focussed particularly on the following areas: the notion of a criterion of identity; the correct analysis of identity over time, and, in particular, the disagreement between advocates of perdurance and advocates of endurance as analyses of identity over time; the notion of identity across possible worlds and the question of its relevance to the correct analysis of de re modal discourse; the notion of contingent identity; the question of whether the identity relation is, or is similar to, the composition relation; and the notion of vague identity. A radical position, advocated by Peter Geach, is that these debates, as usually conducted, are void for lack of a subject matter: the notion of absolute identity they presuppose has no application; there is only relative identity. Another increasingly popular view is the one advocated by David Lewis: although the debates make sense they cannot genuinely be debates about identity, since there are no philosophical problems about identity. Identity is an utterly unproblematic notion. What there are, are genuine problems which can be stated using the language of identity. But since these can be restated without the language of identity they are not problems about identity. (For example, it is a puzzle, an aspect of the so-called “problem of personal identity”, whether the same person can have different bodies at different times. But this is just the puzzle whether a person can have different bodies at different times. So since it can be stated without the language of personal “identity”, it is not a problem about personal identity , but about personhood.) This article provides an overview of the topics indicated above, some assessment of the debates and suggestions for further reading.

1. Introduction

2. the logic of identity, 3. relative identity, 4. criteria of identity, 5. identity over time, 6. identity across possible worlds, 7. contingent identity, 8. composition as identity, 9. vague identity, 10. are there philosophical problems about identity, other internet resources, related entries.

To say that things are identical is to say that they are the same. “Identity” and “sameness” mean the same; their meanings are identical. However, they have more than one meaning. A distinction is customarily drawn between qualitative and numerical identity or sameness. Things with qualitative identity share properties, so things can be more or less qualitatively identical. Poodles and Great Danes are qualitatively identical because they share the property of being a dog, and such properties as go along with that, but two poodles will (very likely) have greater qualitative identity. Numerical identity requires absolute, or total, qualitative identity, and can only hold between a thing and itself. Its name implies the controversial view that it is the only identity relation in accordance with which we can properly count (or number) things: x and y are to be properly counted as one just in case they are numerically identical (Geach 1973).

Numerical identity is our topic. As noted, it is at the centre of several philosophical debates, but to many seems in itself wholly unproblematic, for it is just that relation everything has to itself and nothing else – and what could be less problematic than that? Moreover, if the notion is problematic it is difficult to see how the problems could be resolved, since it is difficult to see how a thinker could have the conceptual resources with which to explain the concept of identity whilst lacking that concept itself. The basicness of the notion of identity in our conceptual scheme, and, in particular, the link between identity and quantification has been particularly noted by Quine (1964).

Numerical identity can be characterised, as just done, as the relation everything has to itself and to nothing else. But this is circular, since “nothing else” just means “no numerically non-identical thing”. It can be defined, equally circularly (because quantifying over all equivalence relations including itself), as the smallest equivalence relation (an equivalence relation being one which is reflexive, symmetric and transitive, for example, having the same shape). Other circular definitions are available. Usually it is defined as the equivalence relation (or: the reflexive relation) satisfying Leibniz’s Law, the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, that if x is identical with y then everything true of x is true of y . Intuitively this is right, but only picks out identity uniquely if “what is true of x ” is understood to include “being identical with x ”; otherwise it is too weak. Circularity is thus not avoided. Nevertheless, Leibniz’s Law appears to be crucial to our understanding of identity, and, more particularly, to our understanding of distinctness: we exhibit our commitment to it whenever we infer from “ Fa ” and “ Not-Fb ” that a is not identical with b . Strictly, what is being employed in such inferences is the contrapositive of Leibniz’s Law (if something true of a is false of b , a is not identical with b ), which some (in the context of the discussion of vague identity) have questioned, but it appears as indispensable to our grip on the concept of identity as Leibniz’s Law itself.

The converse of Leibniz’s Law, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, that if everything true of x is true of y , x is identical with y , is correspondingly trivial if “what is true of x ” is understood to include “being identical with x ” (as required if Leibniz’s Law is to characterise identity uniquely among equivalence relations). But often it is read with “what is true of x ” restricted, e.g., to qualitative, non-relational, properties of x . It then becomes philosophically controversial. Thus it is debated whether a symmetrical universe is possible, e.g., a universe containing two qualitatively indistinguishable spheres and nothing else (Black 1952).

Leibniz’s Law has itself been subject to controversy in the sense that the correct explanation of apparent counter-examples has been debated. Leibniz’s Law must be clearly distinguished from the substitutivity principle, that if “ a ” and “ b ” are codesignators (if “ a = b ” is a true sentence of English) they are everywhere substitutable salva veritate . This principle is trivially false. “Hesperus” contains eight letters, “Phosphorus” contains ten, but Hesperus (the Evening Star) is Phosphorus (the Morning Star). Again, despite the identity, it is informative to be told that Hesperus is Phosphorus, but not to be told that Hesperus is Hesperus (“On Sense and Reference” in Frege 1969). Giorgione was so-called because of his size, Barbarelli was not, but Giorgione was Barbarelli (Quine, “Reference and Modality”, in 1963) . It is a necessary truth that 9 is greater than 7, it is not a necessary truth that the number of planets is greater than 7, although 9 is the number of planets. The explanation of the failure of the substitutivity principle can differ from case to case. In the first example, it is plausible to say that “‘Hesperus’ contains eight letters” is not about Hesperus, but about the name, and the same is true, mutatis mutandis , of “‘Phosphorus’ contains ten letters”. Thus the names do not have the same referents in the identity statement and the predications. In the Giorgione/Barbarelli example this seems less plausible. Here the correct explanation is plausibly that “is so-called because of his size” expresses different properties depending on the name it is attached to, and so expresses the property of being called “Barbarelli” because of his size when attached to “Barbarelli” and being called “Giorgione” because of his size when attached to “Giorgione”. It is more controversial how to explain the Hesperus/Phosphorus and 9/the number of planets examples. Frege’s own explanation of the former was to assimilate it to the “Hesperus”/“Phosphorus” case: in “It is informative to be told that Hesperus is Phosphorus” the names do not stand for their customary referent but for their senses. A Fregean explanation of the 9/number of planets example may also be offered: “it is necessary that” creates a context in which numerical designators stand for senses rather than numbers.

For present purposes the important point to recognise is that, however these counter-examples to the substitutivity principle are explained, they are not counter-examples to Leibniz’s Law, which says nothing about substitutivity of codesignators in any language.

The view of identity just put forward (henceforth “the classical view”) characterises it as the equivalence relation which everything has to itself and to nothing else and which satisfies Leibniz’s Law. These formal properties ensure that, within any theory expressible by means of a fixed stock of one- or many-place predicates, quantifiers and truth-functional connectives, any two predicates which can be regarded as expressing identity (i.e., any predicates satisfying the two schemata “for all x , Rxx ” and “for all x , for all y , Rxy → ( Fx → Fy )” for any one-place predicate in place of “ F ”) will be extensionally equivalent. They do not, however, ensure that any two-place predicate does express identity within a particular theory, for it may simply be that the descriptive resources of the theory are insufficiently rich to distinguish items between which the equivalence relation expressed by the predicate holds (“Identity” in Geach 1972).

Following Geach, call a two-place predicate with these properties in a theory an “I-predicate” in that theory. Relative to another, richer, theory the same predicate, interpreted in the same way, may not be an I-predicate. If so it will not, and did not even in the poorer theory, express identity. For example, “having the same income as” will be an I-predicate in a theory in which persons with the same income are indistinguishable, but not in a richer theory.

Quine (1950) has suggested that when a predicate is an I-predicate in a theory only because the language in which the theory is expressed does not allow one to distinguish items between which it holds, one can reinterpret the sentences of the theory so that the I-predicate in the newly interpreted theory does express identity. Every sentence will have just the same truth-conditions under the new interpretation and the old, but the references of its subsentential parts will be different. Thus, Quine suggests, if one has a language in which one speaks of persons and in which persons of the same income are indistinguishable the predicates of the language may be reinterpreted so that the predicate which previously expressed having the same income comes now to express identity. The universe of discourse now consists of income groups, not people. The extensions of the monadic predicates are classes of income groups, and, in general, the extension of an n -place predicate is a class of n -member sequences of income groups (Quine 1963: 65–79). Any two-place predicate expressing an equivalence relation could be an I-predicate relative to some sufficiently impoverished theory, and Quine’s suggestion will be applicable to any such predicate if it is applicable at all.

But it remains that it is not guaranteed that a two-place predicate that is an I-predicate in the theory to which it belongs expresses identity. In fact, no condition can be stated in a first-order language for a predicate to express identity, rather than mere indiscernibility by the resources of the language. However, in a second-order language, in which quantification over all properties (not just those for which the language contains predicates) is possible and Leibniz’s Law is therefore statable, identity can be uniquely characterised. Identity is thus not first-order, but only second-order definable.

This situation provides the basis for Geach’s radical contention that the notion of absolute identity has no application and that there is only relative identity. This section contains a brief discussion of Geach’s complex view. (For more details see the entry on relative identity , Deutsch 1997, Dummett 1981 and 1991, Hawthorne 2003 and Noonan 2017.) Geach maintains that since no criterion can be given by which a predicate expressing an I-predicate may be determined to express, not merely indiscernibility relative to the language to which it belongs, but also absolute indiscernibility, we should jettison the classical notion of identity (1991). He dismisses the possibility of defining identity in a second-order language on the ground of the paradoxical nature of unrestricted quantification over properties and aims his fire particularly at Quine’s proposal that an I-predicate in a first-order theory may always be interpreted as expressing absolute identity (even if such an interpretation is not required ). Geach objects that Quine’s suggestion leads to a “Baroque Meinongian ontology” and is inconsistent with Quine’s own expressed preference for “desert landscapes” (“Identity” in Geach 1972: 245).

We may usefully state Geach’s thesis using the terminology of absolute and relative equivalence relations. Let us say that an equivalence relation R is absolute if and only if, if x stands in it to y , there cannot be some other equivalence relation S , holding between anything and either x or y , but not holding between x and y . If an equivalence relation is not absolute it is relative. Classical identity is an absolute equivalence relation. Geach’s main contention is that any expression for an absolute equivalence relation in any possible language will have the null class as its extension, and so there can be no expression for classical identity in any possible language. This is the thesis he argues against Quine.

Geach also maintains the sortal relativity of identity statements, that “ x is the same A as y ” does not “split up” into “ x is an A and y is an A and x = y ”. More precisely stated, what Geach denies is that whenever a term “ A ” is interpretable as a sortal term in a language L (a term which makes (independent) sense following “the same”) the expression (interpretable as) “ x is the same A as y ” in language L will be satisfied by a pair < x , y > only if the I-predicate of L is satisfied by < x , y >. Geach’s thesis of the sortal relativity of identity thus neither entails nor is entailed by his thesis of the inexpressibility of identity. It is the sortal relativity thesis that is the central issue between Geach and Wiggins (1967 and 1980). It entails that a relation expressible in the form “ x is the same A as y ” in a language L , where “ A ” is a sortal term in L , need not entail indiscernibility even by the resources of L .

Geach’s argument against Quine exists in two versions, an earlier and a later.

In its earlier version the argument is merely that following Quine’s suggestion to interpret a language in which some expression is an I-predicate so that the I-predicate expresses classical identity sins against a highly intuitive methodological programme enunciated by Quine himself, namely that as our knowledge expands we should unhesitatingly expand our ideology, our stock of predicables, but should be much more wary about altering our ontology, the interpretation of our bound name variables (1972: 243).

Geach’s argument is that in view of the mere possibility of carving out of a language L , in which the relational expressions, E 1 , E 2 , E 3 … are not I-predicates, sub-languages L 1 , L 2 , L 3 … in which these expressions are I-predicates, if Quine’s suggested proposal of reinterpretation is possible for each L n , the user of L will be committed to any number of entities not quantified over in L , namely, for each L n , those entities for which the I-predicate of L n ( E n ) gives a criterion of absolute identity. This will be so because any sentence of L will retain its truth conditions in any L n to which it belongs, reinterpreted as Quine proposes, but “of course, it is flatly inconsistent to say that as a member of a large theory a sentence retains its truth-conditions but not its ontological commitment” (1973:299).

The crucial premiss of this argument is thus that sameness of truth-conditions entails sameness of ontological commitment. But this is not true. The ontological commitments of a theory (according to Quine, whose notion this is) are those entities that must lie within the domain of quantification of the theory if the theory is to be true; or, the entities the predicates of the theory have to be true of if the theory is to be true. A theory is not ontologically committed, we may say, to whatever has to be in the universe for it to be true, but only to whatever has to be in its universe for it to be true. Thus there is no argument from sameness of truth-conditions to sameness of ontological commitments.

The later version of Geach’s argument needs a different response. The difference between the earlier version and the later one is that in the later (to be found in Geach 1973) Geach’s claim is not merely that Quine’s thesis about possible reinterpretation has a consequence which is unpalatable, but that it leads to an out-and-out logical absurdity, the existence of what he calls “absolute surmen” (entities for which having the same surname constitutes a criterion of absolute identity, i.e., entails indiscernibility in all respects). Because Geach is now making this stronger claim, the objection that his argument depends upon the incorrect assumption that sameness of truth-conditions entails sameness of ontological commitment is no longer relevant. In order to make out his case Geach has to establish just two points. First, that there are sentences of English supplemented by the predicate “is the same surman as” (explained to mean “is a man and has the same surname as”), which are evidently true and which, considered as sentences of that fragment of English in which “is the same surman as” is an I-predicate, when this is interpreted in the way Quine suggests, can be true only if absolute surmen exist. And secondly, that the existence of absolute surmen is absurd.

But in the end Geach fails to establish these two points. Quine would say that, for the fragment of English in question, the domain of the variables can be considered to consist of classes of men with the same surname and the predicates interpreted as holding of such classes. Thus, the predicate “is the same surman as” will no longer be true of pairs of men if we adopt Quine’s suggestion (I am writing, remember in English, not in the fragment of English under discussion), but rather of pairs of classes of men with the same surname – these then will be Geach’s “absolute surmen”. Now, Geach attempts to rule this out by the argument that “whatever is a surman is by definition a man.” But this argument fails. The predicate “is a man” will also be in the language-fragment in which “is the same surman as” is the I-predicate; and so it, too, will, be reinterpreted, if we follow Quine’s suggestion, as holding of classes of men with the same surname. Thus the sentence “Whatever is a surman is a man” will be true in the language fragment interpreted in Quine’s way, just as it is in English as a whole. What will not be true, however, is that whatever the predicate “is a surman” is true of, as it occurs in the language-fragment reinterpreted in Quine’s way , is a thing of which “is a man”, as it occurs in English as a whole , is true of. But Geach has no right to demand that this should be the case. Even so, this demand can be met. For the domain of the interpretation of the language fragment in which “is the same surman as” is the I-predicate can, in fact, be taken to consist of men, namely, to be a class containing exactly one representative man for each class of men with the same surname. Thus, as Geach says, absolute surmen will be just some among men (1973, 100). Geach goes on, “there will, for example, be just one surman with the surname ‘Jones’, but if this is an absolute surman, and he is a certain man, then which of the Jones boys is he?” But this question, which is, of course, only answerable using predicates which belong to the part of English not included in the language fragment in which “is the same surman as” is the I-predicate, is not an impossible one to answer. It is merely that the answer will depend upon the particular interpretation that the language fragment has, in fact, been given. Geach is, therefore not entitled to go on, “Surely we have run into an absurdity.” It thus seems that his argument for the non-existence of absolute identity fails.

Geach’s argument for his second thesis, that of the sortal relativity of identity, is that it provides the best solution to a variety of well known puzzles about identity and counting at a time and over time. The most well known puzzle is that of the cat on the mat, which comes in two versions.

The first version goes like this. (Wiggins 1968 contains the first appearance of this version in present-day philosophical literature; an equivalent puzzle is that of Dion and Theon, see Burke 1995.) Suppose a cat, Tibbles, is sitting on a mat. Now consider that portion of Tibbles that includes everything except its tail – its “tail complement” – and call it “Tib”. Tib is smaller than Tibbles so they are not identical. But what if we now amputate the cat’s tail? (A time-reversed, or “growing”, version can be considered in which a tail is grafted on to a tailless cat; the same responses considered below will be available, but may differ in relative plausibility.) Tibbles and Tib will now coincide. If Tibbles is still a cat, it is hard to see by what criterion one could deny that Tib is a cat. Yet they are distinct individuals, since they have different histories. But there is just one cat on the mat. So they cannot be distinct cats. They must be the same cat, even though they are distinct individuals; and so identity under the sortal concept cat must be a relative identity relation.

The second version (presented in Geach 1980, compare Unger 1980) goes as follows. Tibbles is sitting on the mat and is the only cat sitting on the mat. But Tibbles has at least 1,000 hairs. Geach continues:

Now let c be the largest continuous mass of feline tissue on the mat. Then for any of our 1,000 cat-hairs, say h n , there is a proper part c n of c which contains precisely all of c except the hair h n ; and every such part c n differs in a describable way both from any other such part say c m , and from c as a whole. Moreover, fuzzy as the concept cat may be, it is clear that not only is c a cat, but also any part c n is a cat: c n would clearly be a cat were the hair h n to be plucked out, and we cannot reasonably suppose that plucking out a hair generates a cat, so c n must already have been a cat. (Geach 1980, 215)

The conclusion, of course, is the same as in the previous version of the argument: there is only one cat on the mat so all the distinct entities that qualify as cats must be the same cat.

This version of the argument can be resisted by insisting that the concept of a cat is maximal, i.e. no proper part of a cat is a cat. The first version may be resisted in a variety of ways. Some deny the existence of the tail-complement at all (van Inwagen 1981, Olson 1995); others deny that the tail-complement survives the amputation (Burke 1995). Another possibility is to say that certain of the historical and/or modal predicates possessed by Tibbles and not Tib are essential to being a cat, so that Tib is not (predicatively) a cat (Wiggins 1980). Again, it can be accepted that both Tib and Tibbles are cats, but deny that in counting them as one we are counting by identity, rather, we are counting by “almost identity” (Lewis 1993). Another possibility is to accept that both Tib and Tibbles are cats, but deny that they are distinct: rather “Tib” and “Tibbles” are two names of the same cat-stage (Hawley 2001, Sider 2001).

There is, then, no very compelling argument for Geach’s sortal relativity thesis to be based on such examples, given the variety of responses available, some of which will be returned to below. On the other hand, no alternative solution to the puzzle of the cat on the mat stands out as clearly superior to the rest, or clearly superior to the sortal relativity thesis as a solution. We should conclude that this component of Geach’s position, though not proven, is not refuted either, and, possibly, that the linguistic data provide no basis for a decision for or against.

A notion that Geach deploys extensively, and which is also in common use by his opponents, is that of a criterion of identity, a standard by which identity is to be judged. This section will attempt to untangle some of the complexities this notion involves.

The notion of a criterion of identity was introduced into philosophical terminology by Frege (1884) and strongly emphasised by Wittgenstein (1958). Exactly how it is to be interpreted and the extent of its applicability are still matters of debate.

A considerable obstacle to understanding contemporary philosophical usage of the term, however, is that the notion does not seem to be a unitary one. In the case of abstract objects (the case discussed by Frege) the criterion of identity for F s is thought of as an equivalence relation holding between objects distinct from F s. Thus the criterion of identity for directions is parallelism of lines , that is, the direction of line a is identical with the direction of line b if and only if line a is parallel to line b . The criterion of identity for numbers is equinumerosity of concepts , that is, the number of A s is identical with the number of B s if and only if there are exactly as many A s as B s. The relation between the criterion of identity for F s and the criterion of application for the concept F (the standard for the application of the concept to an individual) is then said by some (Wright and Hale 2001) to be that to be an F is just to be something for which questions of identity and distinctness are to settled by appeal to the criterion of identity for F s. (Thus, when Frege went on to give an explicit definition of numbers as extensions of concepts he appealed to it only to deduce what has come to be called Hume’s Principle – his statement of his criterion of identity for numbers in terms of equinumerosity of concepts, and emphasised that he regarded the appeal to extensions as inessential.) In the case of concrete objects, however, things seem to stand differently. Often the criterion of identity for a concrete object of type F is said to be a relation R such that for any F s, x and y , x = y if and only if Rxy . In this case the criterion of identity for F s is not stated as a relation between entities distinct from F s and the criterion of identity cannot plausibly be thought of as determining the criterion of application. Another example of the lack of uniformity in the notion of a criterion of identity in contemporary philosophy is, in the case of concrete objects, a distinction customarily made between a criterion of diachronic identity and a criterion of synchronic identity; the former taking the form “ x is at t the same F as y is at t ′ if and only if…”, where what fills the gap is some statement of a relation holding between objects x and y and times t and t ′. (In the case of persons, for example, a candidate criterion of diachronic identity is: x is at t the same person as y is at t ′ if and only if x at t is psychologically continuous with y at t ′.) A criterion of synchronic identity, by contrast, will typically specify how the parts of an F -thing existing at a time must be related, or how one F at a time is marked off from another.

One way of bringing system into the discussion of criteria of identity is to make use of the distinction between one-level and two-level criteria of identity (Williamson 1990, Lowe 2012). The Fregean criteria of identity for directions and numbers are two-level. The objects for which the criterion is given are distinct from, and can be pictured as at a higher level than, the entities between which the relation specified holds. A two-level criterion for the F s takes the form (restricting ourselves to examples in which the criterial relation holds between objects):

If x is a G and y is a G then d ( x ) = d ( y ) iff Rxy

e.g., If x and y are lines then the direction of x is identical with the direction of y iff x and y are parallel.

A two-level criterion of identity is thus in the first place an implicit definition of a function “ d ( )” (e.g., “the direction of”) in terms of which the sortal predicate “is an F ” can be defined (“is a direction” can be defined as “is the direction of some line”). Consistently with the two-level criterion of identity stated several distinct functions may be the reference of the functor “ d ”. Hence, as emphasised by Lowe (1997: section 6), two-level criteria of identity are neither definitions of identity, nor of identity restricted to a certain sort (for identity is universal), nor even of the sortal terms denoting the sorts for which they provide criteria. They merely constrain, but not to uniqueness, the possible referents of the functor “d” they implicitly define and they thus give a merely necessary condition for falling under the sortal predicate “is an F ” (where “ x is an F ” is explained to mean “for some y , x is identical with d ( y )”).

On the other hand, the criterion of identity for sets given by the Axiom of Extensionality (sets are the same iff they have the same members), unlike the criterion of identity for numbers given by Hume’s Principle, and Davidson’s criterion of event identity (events are the same iff they have the same causes and effects (“The Individuation of Events” in his 1980)) are one-level: the objects for which the criterion of identity is stated are the same as those between which the criterial relation obtains. In general, a one-level criterion for objects of sort F takes the form:

If x is an F and y is an F then x = y iff Rxy

Not all criteria of identity can be two-level (on pain of infinite regress), and it is tempting to think that the distinction between objects for which a two-level criterion is possible and those for which only a one-level criterion is possible coincides with that between abstract and concrete objects (and so, that a two-level criterion for sets must be possible).

However, a more general application of the two-level notion is possible. In fact, it can be applied to any type of object K , such that the criterion of identity for K s can be thought of as an equivalence relation between a distinct type of object, K *s, but some such objects may intuitively be regarded as concrete.

How general this makes its application is a matter of controversy. In particular, if persisting things are thought of as composed of (instantaneous) temporal parts (see discussion below), the problem of supplying a diachronic criterion of identity for persisting concrete objects can be regarded as the problem of providing a two-level criterion. But if persisting things are not thought of in this way then not all persisting things can be provided with two-level criteria. (Though some can. For example, it is quite plausible that the criterion of identity over time for persons should be thought of as given by a relation between bodies.)

As noted by Lowe (1997) and Wright and Hale (2001) any two-level criterion can be restated in a one-level form (though, of course, not conversely). For example, to say that the direction of line a is identical with the direction of line b if and only if line a is parallel to line b is to say that directions are the same if and only if the lines they are of are parallel, which is the form of a one-level criterion. A way of unifying the various different ways of talking of criteria of identity is thus to take as the paradigmatic form of a statement of a criterion of identity a statement of the form: for any x , for any y , if x is an F and y is an F then x = y if and only if Rxy (Lowe 1989, 1997).

If the notion is interpreted in this way then the relation between the criterion of identity and the criterion of application will be that of one-way determination. The criterion of identity will be determined by, but not determine, the criterion of application.

For, in general, a one-level criterion of identity for F s as explained above is equivalent to the conjunction of:

If x is an F then Rxx

If x is an F then if y is an F and Rxy then x = y

Each of these gives a merely necessary condition for being an F . And the second says something about F s which is not true of everything only if “ Rxy ” does not entail “ x = y ”

Together these are equivalent to the proposition that every F is the F “ R -related” to it. By its form this states a merely necessary condition for being a thing of sort “ F ”. The one-level criterion of identity thus again merely specifies a necessary condition of being an object of sort “ F ”.

Hence, once the necessary and sufficient conditions of being an “ F ” are laid down, no further stipulation is required of a criterion of “ F ”-identity, whether one-level or two-level.

This conclusion is, of course, in agreement with Lewis’s view that there are no genuine problems about identity as such (Lewis 1986, Ch. 4), but it is in tension with the thought that sortal concepts, as distinct from adjectival concepts, are to be characterised by their involvement of criteria of identity as well as criteria of application.

A conception of identity criteria which allows this characterisation of the notion of a sortal concept, and which has so far not been mentioned, is that of Dummett (1981). Dummett denies that a criterion of identity must always be regarded as a criterion of identity for a type of object . There is a basic level, he suggests, at which what a criterion of identity is a criterion of, is the truth of a statement in which no objects are referred to. Such a statement can be expressed using demonstratives and pointing gestures, for instance, by saying “This is the same cat as that”, pointing first to a head and then a tail. In such a statement, which he calls a statement of identification, in Dummett’s view, there need be no reference to objects made by the use of the demonstratives, any more than reference is made to any object in a feature-placing sentence like “It’s hot here”. A statement of identification is merely, as it were, a feature-placing relational statement, like “This is darker than that”. A grasp of a sortal concept F involves both grasp of the truth-conditions of such statements of identification involving “ F ” and also grasp of the truth-conditions of what Dummett calls “crude predications” involving “ F ”, statements of the form “this is F ”, in which the demonstrative again does not serve to refer to any object. Adjectival terms, which have only a criterion of application and no criterion of identity, are ones which have a use in such crude predications, but no use in statements of identification. Sortal terms, as just noted, have a use in both contexts, and sortal terms may share their criteria of application but differ in their criteria of identity since grasp of the truth-conditions of the crude predication “This is F ” does not determine grasp of the truth-conditions of the statement of identification “This is the same F as that” (thus I can know when it is right to say “This is a book” without knowing when it is right to say “This is the same book as that”).

On Dummett’s account, then, it may be possible to accept that whenever a criterion of identity for a type of object is to be given it must be (expressible as) a two-level criterion, which implicitly defines a functor. Essentially one-level criteria (one-level criteria not expressible in a two-level form) are redundant, determined by specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions for being objects of the sorts in question.

As noted in the last section, another source of apparent disunity in the concept of a criterion of identity is the distinction made between synchronic criteria of identity and diachronic criteria of identity. Criteria of identity can be employed synchronically, as in the examples just given, to determine whether two coexistent objects are parts of the same object of a sort, or diachronically, to determine identity over time. But as Lowe notes (2012: 137), it is an error to suppose that diachronic identity and synchronic identity are different kinds of identity and so demand different kinds of identity criteria. What then is a criterion of identity over time?

Identity over time is itself a controversial notion, however, because time involves change. Heraclitus argued that one could not bathe in the same river twice because new waters were ever flowing in. Hume argued that identity over time was a fiction we substitute for a collection of related objects. Such views can be seen as based on a misunderstanding of Leibniz’s Law: if a thing changes something is true of it at the later time that is not true of it at the earlier, so it is not the same. The answer is that what is true of it at the later time is, say, “being muddy at the later time”, which was always true of it; similarly, what is true of it at the earlier time, suitably expressed, remains true of it. But the question remains how to characterise identity through time and across change given that there is such a thing.

One topic which has always loomed large in this debate has been the issue (in the terminology of Lewis 1986, Ch. 4) of perdurance versus endurance . (Others, for which there is no space for discussion here, include the debate over Ship of Theseus and reduplication or fission problems and associated issues about “best candidate” or “no rival candidate” accounts of identity over time, and the debate over Humean supervenience – see articles on relative identity, personal identity, Hawley 2001 and Sider 2001.)

According to one view, material objects persist by having temporal parts or stages, which exist at different times and are to be distinguished by the times at which they exist – this is known as the view that material objects perdure. Other philosophers deny that this is so; according to them, when a material object exists at different times, it is wholly present at those times, for it has no temporal parts, but only spatial parts, which likewise are wholly present at the different times they exist. This is known as the view that material objects endure.

Perdurance theorists, as Quine puts it, reject the point of view inherent in the tenses of our natural language. From that point of view persisting things endure and change through time, but do not extend through time, but only through space. Thus persisting things are to be sharply distinguished from events or processes, which precisely do extend through time. One way of describing the position of the perdurance theorist, then, is to say that he denies the existence of a distinct ontological category of persisting things , or substances. Thus, Quine writes, “physical objects, conceived thus four-dimensionally in space-time, are not to be distinguished from events, or, in the concrete sense of the term, processes. Each comprises simply the content, however heterogeneous, of some portion of space-time, however disconnected and gerrymandered” (1960:171).

In recent controversy two arguments have been at the centre of the endurance/perdurance debate, one employed by perdurance theorists and the other by endurance theorists (for other arguments and issues see the separate article on temporal parts, Hawley 2001 and Sider 2001).

An argument for perdurance which has been hotly debated is due to David Lewis (1986). If perdurance is rejected, the ascription of dated or tensed properties to objects must be regarded as assertions of irreducible relations between objects and times. If Tabby is fat on Monday, that is a relation between Tabby and Monday, and if perdurance is rejected it is an irreducible relation between Tabby and Monday. According to perdurance theory, however, while it is still, of course, a relation between Tabby and Monday it is not irreducible; it holds between Tabby and Monday because the temporal part of Tabby on Monday, Tabby-on-Monday, is intrinsically fat. If perdurance is rejected, however, no such intrinsic possessor of the property of fatness can be recognised: Tabby’s fatness on Monday must be regarded as an irreducible state of affairs.

According to Lewis, this consequence of the rejection of the perdurance theory is incredible. Whether he is right about this is the subject of intense debate (Haslanger 2003).

Even if Lewis is right, however, the perdurance theory may still be found wanting, since it does not secure the most commonsensical position: that fatness is a property of a cat (Haslanger 2003). According to perdurance theory, rather, it is a property of a (temporal) cat part. Those known as stage theorists (Hawley 2001, Sider 2001), accepting the ontology of perdurance theory, but modifying its semantics, offer a way to secure this desirable result. Every temporal part of a cat is a cat, they say, so Tabby-on-Monday (which is what we refer to by “Tabby”, on Monday) is a cat and is fat, just as we would like. Stage theorists have to pay a price for this advantage over perdurance theory, however. For they must accept either that our reports of the cross-temporal number of cats are not always reports of the counting of cats (as when I say, truly, that I have only ever owned three cats) or that two cat-stages (cats) may be counted as one and the same cat, so that counting cats is not always counting in accordance with absolute identity.

An argument against the perdurance theory that has been the focus of interest is one presented in various guises by a number of writers, including Wiggins (1980), Thomson (1983) and van Inwagen (1990). Applied to persons (it can equally well be applied to other persisting things), it asserts that persons have different properties, in particular, different modal properties, from the summations of person-stages with which the perdurance theory identifies them. Thus, by Leibniz’s Law, this identification must be mistaken. As David Wiggins states the argument: “Anything that is a part of a Lesniewskian sum [a mereological whole defined by its parts] is necessarily part of it…But no person or normal material object is necessarily in the total state that will correspond to the person- or object-moment postulated by the theory under discussion” (1980: 168).

To elaborate a little. I might have died when I was five years old. But that maximal summation of person-stages which, according to perdurance theory, is me and has a temporal extent of at least fifty years, could not have had a temporal extent of a mere five years. So I cannot be such a summation of stages.

This argument illustrates the interdependence of the various topics discussed under the rubric of identity. Whether it is valid, of course, depends on the correct analysis of modal predication, and, in particular, on whether it should be analysed in terms of “identity across possible worlds” or in terms of Lewisian counterpart theory. This is the topic of the next section.

In the interpretation of modal discourse recourse is often made to the idea of “identity across possible worlds”. If modal discourse is interpreted in this way it becomes natural to regard a statement ascribing a modal property to an individual as asserting the identity of that individual across worlds: “Sarah might have been a millionaire”, on this view, asserts that there is a possible world in which an individual identical with Sarah is a millionaire. “Sarah could not have been a millionaire” asserts that in any world in which an individual identical with Sarah exists that individual is not a millionaire.

However, though this is perhaps the most natural way to interpret de re modal statements (once it has been accepted that the apparatus of possible worlds is to be used as an interpretative tool), there are well-known difficulties that make the approach problematic.

For example, it seems reasonable to suppose that a complex artefact like a bicycle could have been made of different parts. On the other hand, it does not seem right that the same bicycle could have been constructed out of completely different parts.

But now consider a series of possible worlds, beginning with the actual world, each containing a bicycle just slightly different from the one in the previous world, the last world in the sequence being one in which there is a bicycle composed of completely different parts from the one in the actual world. One cannot say that each bicycle is identical with the one in the neighbouring world, but not identical with the corresponding bicycle in distant worlds, since identity is transitive. Hence it seems one must either adopt an extreme mereological essentialism, according to which no difference of parts is possible for an individual, or reject the interpretation of de re modal discourse as asserting identity across possible worlds.

This and other problems with cross-world identity suggest that some other weaker relation, of similarity or what David Lewis calls counterparthood, should be employed in a possible world analysis of modal discourse. Since similarity is not transitive this allows us to say that the bicycle might have had some different parts without having to say that it might have been wholly different. On the other hand, such a substitution does not seem unproblematic, for a claim about what I might have done hardly seems, at first sight, to be correctly interpretable as a claim about what someone else (however similar to me) does in another possible world (Kripke 1972 [1980], note 13).

An assessment of the counterpart theoretic analysis is vital not just to understanding modal discourse, however, but also to getting to the correct account of identity over time. For, as we saw, the argument against perdurance theory outlined at the end of the last section depends on the correct interpretation of modal discourse. In fact, it is invalid on a counterpart theoretic analysis which allows different counterpart relations (different similarity relations) to be invoked according to the sense of the singular term which is the subject of the de re modal predication (Lewis 1986, Ch. 4), since the counterpart relation relevant to the assessment of a de re modal predication with a singular term whose sense determines that it refers to a person will be different from that relevant to the assessment of a de re modal predication with a singular term whose sense determines that it refers to a sum of person-stages. “I might have existed for only five years” means on the Lewisian account “There is a person in some possible world similar to me in those respects important to personhood who exists for only five years”; “The maximal summation of person stages of which this current stage is a stage might have existed for only five years” means “There is a summation of person stages similar to this one in those respects important to the status of an entity as a summation of stages which exists for only five years”. Since the two similarity relations in question are distinct the first modal statement may be true and the second false even if I am identical with the sum of stages in question.

Counterpart theory is also significant to the topic of identity over time in another way, since it provides the analogy to which the stage theorist (who regards all everyday reference as reference to momentary stages rather than to perdurers) appeals to explain de re temporal predication. Thus, according to the stage theorist, just as “I might have been fat” does not require the existence of a possible world in which an object identical with me is fat, but only the existence of a world in which a (modal) counterpart of me is fat, so “I used to be fat” does not require the existence of a past time at which someone identical with (the present momentary stage which is) me was fat, but only the existence of a past time at which a (temporal) counterpart of me was fat. The problem of identity over time for things of a kind, for stage theorists, is just the problem of characterizing the appropriate temporal counterpart relation for things of that kind.

For a more detailed discussion of the topic, see the entry transworld identity . Whether de re modal discourse is to be interpreted in terms of identity across possible worlds or counterpart theoretically (or in some other way entirely) is also relevant to our next topic, that of contingent identity.

Before Kripke’s writings (1972 [1980]), it seemed a platitude that statements of identity could be contingent – when they contained two terms differing in sense but identical in reference and so were not analytic. Kripke challenged this platitude, though, of course, he did not reject the possibility of contingent statements of identity. But he argued that when the terms flanking the sign of identity were what he called rigid designators, an identity statement, if true at all, had to be necessarily true, but need not be knowable a priori , as an analytic truth would be. Connectedly, Kripke argued that identity and distinctness were themselves necessary relations: if an object is identical with itself it is necessarily so, and if it is distinct from another it is necessarily so.

Kripke’s arguments were very persuasive, but there are examples that suggest that his conclusion is too sweeping – that even identity statements containing rigid designators can be, in a sense, contingent. The debate over contingent identity is concerned with the assessment and proper analysis of these examples.

One of the earliest examples is provided by Gibbard (1975). Consider a statue, Goliath, and the clay, Lumpl, from which it is composed. Imagine that Lumpl and Goliath coincide in their spatiotemporal extent. It is tempting to conclude that they are identical. But they might not have been. Goliath might have been rolled into a ball and destroyed; Lumpl would have continued to exist. The two would have been distinct. Thus it seems that the identity of Lumpl and Goliath, if admitted, must be acknowledged as merely contingent.

One reaction to this argument available to the convinced Kripkean is simply to deny that Lumpl and Goliath are identical. But to accept this is to accept that purely material entities, like statues and lumps of clay, of admittedly identical material constitution at all times, may nonetheless be distinct, though distinguished only by modal, dispositional or counterfactual properties. To many, however, this seems highly implausible, which provides the strength of the argument for contingent identity. Another way of thinking of this matter is in terms of the failure of the supervenience of the macroscopic on the microscopic. If Lumpl is distinct from Goliath then a far distant duplicate of Lumpl, Lumpl*, coincident with a statue Goliath*, though numerically distinct from Goliath will be microscopically indistinguishable from Goliath in all general respects, relational as well as non-relational, past and future as well as present, even modal and dispositional as well as categorical, but will be macroscopically distinguishable in general respects, since it will not be a statue, and will have modal properties, such as the capacity to survive radical deformation in shape, which no statue possesses.

David Lewis (in “Counterparts of Persons and their Bodies”, 1971) suggests that the identity of a person with his body (assuming the person and the body, like Goliath and Lumpl, are at all times coincident) is contingent, since bodily interchange is a possibility. He appeals to counterpart theory, modified to allow a variety of counterpart relations, to explain this. Contingent identity then makes sense, since “I and my body might not have been identical” now translates into counterpart theory as “There is a possible world, w , a unique personal counterpart x in w of me and a unique bodily counterpart y in w of my body, such that x and y are not identical”.

What is crucial to making sense of contingent identity is an acceptance that modal predicates are inconstant in denotation (that is, stand for different properties when attached to different singular terms or different quantifying expressions). Counterpart theory provides one way of explaining this inconstancy, but is not necessarily the only way (Gibbard 1975, Noonan 1991, 1993). However, whether the examples of contingent identity in the literature are persuasive enough to make it reasonable to accept the certainly initially surprising idea that modal predications are inconstant in denotation is still a matter of considerable controversy.

Finally, in this section, it is worth noting explicitly the interdependence of the topics under discussion: only if the possibility of contingent identity is secured, by counterpart theory or some other account of de re modality which does not straightforwardly analyse de re modal predication in terms of identity across possible worlds, can perdurance theory (or stage theory) as an account of identity across time be sustained against the modal arguments of Wiggins, Thomson and van Inwagen.

A thesis that has a long pedigree but has only recently been gathering attention in the contemporary literature is the “Composition as Identity” thesis. The thesis comes in a weak and a strong form. In its weak form the thesis is that the mereological composition relation is analogous in a number of important ways to the identity relation and so deserves to be called a kind of identity. In its strong form the thesis is that the composition relation is strictly identical with the identity relation, viz. that the parts of a whole are literally (collectively) identical with the whole itself. The strong thesis was considered by Plato in Parmenides and versions of the thesis have been discussed by many historical figures since (Harte 2002, Normore and Brown 2014). The progenitor of the modern version of the thesis is Baxter (1988a, 1988b, 2001) but it is most often discussed under the formulation of it given by Lewis (1991), who first considers the strong thesis before rejecting it in favour of the weak thesis.

Both the strong and the weak versions of the thesis are motivated by the fact that there is an especially intimate relation between a whole and its parts (a whole is “nothing over and above” its parts), buttressed by claims that identity and composition are alike in various ways. Lewis (1991: 85) makes five likeness claims:

• Ontological Innocence. If one believes that some object x exists, one does not gain a commitment to a further object by believing that something identical with x exists. Likewise, if one believes that some objects x 1 , x 2 , …, x n exist, one does not gain a commitment to a further object by claiming that something composed of x 1 , x 2 , …, x n exists.
• Automatic Existence. If some object x exists, then it automatically follows that something identical with x exists. Likewise, if some objects x 1 , x 2 , …, x n exist, then it automatically follows that something composed of x 1 , x 2 , …, x n exists.
• Unique Composition. If something y is identical with x , then anything identical with x is identical with y , and anything identical with y is identical with x . Likewise, if some things y 1 , y 2 , …, y n compose x , then any things that compose x are identical with y 1 , y 2 , …, y n , and anything identical with x is composed of y 1 , y 2 , …, y n .
• Exhaustive Description. If y is identical with x , then an exhaustive description of y is an exhaustive description of x , and vice versa. Likewise, if y 1 , y 2 , …, y n compose x , then an exhaustive description of y 1 , y 2 , …, y n is an exhaustive description of x , and vice versa.
• Same Location. If y is identical with x , then necessarily, x and y fill the same region of spacetime. Likewise, if y 1 , y 2 , …, y n compose x , then necessarily, y 1 , y 2 , …, y n and x fill the same region of spacetime.

Clearly not all will agree with each of Lewis’s likeness claims. Anyone who denies unrestricted mereological composition, for example, will deny 2. And the defender of strong pluralism in the material constitution debate (i.e. one who defends the view that there can be all-time coincident entities) will deny 3. And some endurantists who think that ordinary material objects can have distinct parts at distinct times will deny 5. But there is a more general problem with 1, as van Inwagen has made clear (1994: 213). Consider a world w1 that contains just two simples s1 and s2. Now consider the difference between someone p1 who believes that s1 and s2 compose something and someone p2 who does not. Ask: how many objects do p1 and p2 believe there to be in w1? The answer, it seems, is that p1 believes that there are three things and p2 only two. So how can a commitment to the existence of fusions be ontologically innocent? One recent suggestion is that although a commitment to the existence of fusions is not ontologically innocent, it almost is: to commit oneself to fusions is to commit oneself to further entities, but because they are not fundamental entities they are not ones that matter for the purpose of theory choice (Cameron 2014, Schaffer 2008, Williams 2010, and see also Hawley 2014).

If one believes Lewis’s likeness claims one will be tempted by at least the weak Composition as Identity thesis. If composition is a type of identity this gives some kind of explanation of why the parallels between the two hold. But the strong thesis, that the composition relation is the identity relation, gives a fuller explanation. So why not hold the strong thesis? Because, many think, there are additional challenges that face anyone who wishes to defend the strong thesis.

The classical identity relation is one that can only have single objects as relata (as in: “Billie Holiday = Eleanora Fagan”). If we adopt a language that allows the formation of plural terms we can unproblematically define a plural identity relation that holds between pluralities of objects too. Plural identity statements such as “the hunters are identical with the gatherers” are understood to mean that for all x , x is one of the hunters iff x is one of the gatherers. But, according to the strong Composition as Identity thesis, there can also be true hybrid identity statements that relate pluralities and single objects. That is, sentences such as “the bricks = the wall” are taken by the defender of strong Composition as Identity to be well-formed sentences that express strict identities.

The first challenge facing the defender of the strong thesis is the least troublesome. It is the syntactic problem that hybrid identity statements are ungrammatical in English (Van Inwagen, 1994: 211). Whilst “Billie Holiday is identical with Eleanora Fagan” and “the hunters are identical with the gatherers” are well-formed, it seems that “the bricks are identical with the wall” is not. However, there is in fact some doubt about whether hybrid identity statements are ungrammatical in English, and some have pointed out that this is anyway a mere grammatical artefact of English that is not present in other languages (e.g. Norwegian and Hungarian). So it seems that the most this challenge calls for is a mild form of grammatical revisionism. And we have, at any rate, formal languages that allow hybrid constructions to be made in which to express the claims made by the defender of the strong Composition as Identity thesis. (Sider 2007, Cotnoir 2013) (NB The claims regarding Norwegian and Hungarian are to be found in these two papers.)

The second challenge is more troublesome. It is the semantic problem of providing coherent truth-conditions for hybrid identity statements. The standard way to provide the truth-conditions for the classical identity relation is to say that an identity statement of the form “ a = b ” is true iff “ a ” and “ b ” have the same referents. But this account clearly does not work for hybrid identity statements, for there is no (single) referent for a plural term. Moreover, the standard way of giving the truth-conditions for plural identity statements (mentioned above) does not work for hybrid identity statements either. To say that “ x is one of the y s” is to say that x is (classically) identical with one of the things in the plurality, i.e., that x is identical with y 1 , or identical with y 2 … or identical with y n . But then “the bricks = the wall” is true only if the wall is (classically) identical with one of the bricks, i.e. with b 1 , or with b 2 … or with b n , which it isn’t.

The third challenge is the most troublesome of all. In section 2 it was noted that Leibniz’s Law (and its contrapositive) appear to be crucial to our understanding of identity and distinctness. But it seems that the defender of strong Composition as Identity must deny this. After all, the bricks are many, but the wall is one. The onus is thus on the defender of strong Composition as Identity to explain why we should think the “are” in hybrid identity statements really expresses the relation of identity.

The second and the third challenges have been thought by many to be insurmountable (Lewis, for example, rejects strong Composition as Identity on the basis of them). But, in recent semantic work in this area, accounts have emerged that promise to answer both challenges. (Wallace 2011a, 2011b, Cotnoir 2013). Whether they do so, however, remains to be seen.

Like the impossibility of contingent identity, the impossibility of vague identity appears to be a straightforward consequence of the classical concept of identity (Evans 1978, see also Salmon 1982). For if a is only vaguely identical with b , something is true of it – that it is only vaguely identical with b – that is not true of b , so, by Leibniz’s Law, it is not identical with b at all. Of course, there are vague statements of identity – “Princeton is Princeton Borough” (Lewis 1988) – but the conclusion appears to follow that such vagueness is only possible when one or both of the terms flanking the sign of identity is an imprecise designator. Relatedly, it appears to follow that identity itself must be a determinate relation.

But some examples suggest that this conclusion is too sweeping – that even identity statements containing precise designators may be, in some sense, indeterminate. Consider Everest and some precisely defined hunk of rock, ice and snow, Rock, of which it is indeterminate whether its boundaries coincide with those of Everest. It is tempting to think that “Everest” and “Rock” are both precise designators (if “Everest” is not, is anything? (Tye 2000)) and that “Everest is Rock” is nonetheless in some sense indeterminate.

Those who take this view have to respond to Evans’s original argument, about which there has been intense debate (see separate article on vagueness, Edgington 2000, Lewis 1988, Parsons 2000, van Inwagen 1990, Williamson 2002 and 2003), but also to more recent variants. There is no space to go into these matters here, but one particular variant of the Evans argument worth briefly noting is given by Hawley (2001). Alpha and Omega are (two?) people, the first of whom steps into van Inwagen’s (1990) fiendish cabinet which disrupts whatever features are relevant to personal identity, and the second of whom then steps out:

(1) It is indeterminate whether Alpha steps out of the cabinet (2) Alpha is such that it is indeterminate whether she steps out of the cabinet (3) It is not indeterminate whether Omega steps out of the cabinet (4) Omega is not such that it is indeterminate whether she steps out of the cabinet (5) Alpha is not identical to Omega.

This argument differs from the standard version of Evans’s argument by not depending upon identity-involving properties (e.g. being such that it is indeterminate whether she is Omega) to establish distinctness, and this removes some sources of controversy. Others, of course, remain.

The debate over vague identity is too vast to survey here, but to finish this section we can relate this debate to the previously discussed debate about identity over time.

For some putative cases of vagueness in synchronic identity it seems reasonable to accept the conclusion of Evans’s argument and locate the indeterminacy in language (see the “Reply” by Shoemaker in Shoemaker and Swinburne 1984 for the following example). A structure consists of two halls, Alpha Hall and Beta Hall, linked by a flimsy walkway, Smith is located in Alpha Hall, Jones in Beta Hall. The nature of the structure is such that the identity statement “The building in which Smith is located is the building in which Jones is located” is neither true nor false because it is indeterminate whether Alpha Hall and Beta Hall count as two distinct buildings or merely as two parts of one and the same building. Here it is absolutely clear what is going on. The term “building” is vague in a way that makes it indeterminate whether it applies to the whole structure or just to the two halls. Consequently, it is indeterminate what “the building in which Smith is located” and “the building in which Jones is located” denote.

Perdurance theorists, who assimilate identity over time to identity over space, can accommodate vagueness in identity over time in the same way. In Hawley’s example they can say that there are several entities present: one that exists before and after the identity-obscuring occurrences in the cabinet, one that exists only before, and one that exists only after. It is indeterminate which of these is a person and so it is indeterminate what the singular terms “Alpha” and “Omega” refer to.

This involves taking on an ontology that is larger than we ordinarily recognise, but that is not uncongenial to the perdurance theorist, who is happy to regard any, however spatiotemporally disconnected, region as containing a physical object (Quine 1960:171).

But what of endurance theorists?

One option for them is to adopt the same response and to accept a multiplicity of entities partially coinciding in space and time where to common sense there seems to be only one. But this is to give up on one of the major advantages claimed by the endurance theorist, his consonance with common sense.

The endurance theorist has several other options. He may simply deny the existence of the relevant entities and restrict his ontology to entities which are not complex; he may insist that any change destroys identity so that in a strict and philosophical sense Alpha is distinct from Omega; or he may reject the case as one of vagueness, insisting that, though we do not know the answer, either Alpha is Omega or she is not.

However, the most tempting option for the endurance theorist, which keeps closest to common sense, is to accept that the case is one of vagueness, deny the multiplicity of entities embraced by the perdurance theorist and reject Evans’s argument against vague identity.

That this is so highlights the fact that there is no easy solution to the problem consonant in every respect with common sense. Locating the vagueness in language requires us to acknowledge a multiplicity of entities of which we would apparently otherwise have to take no notice. Whilst locating it in the world requires an explanation of how, contrary to Evans’s argument, the impossibility of vague identity is not a straightforward consequence of the classical conception of identity, or else the abandonment of that conception.

Finally in this entry we return briefly to the idea mentioned in the introduction that although the debates about identity make sense they cannot genuinely be debates about identity, since there are no philosophical problems about identity. This view has recently been receiving increasing attention. Lewis is the most cited defender of this view. In the context of discussing the putative “problem” of trans-world identity he says:

[W]e should not suppose that we have here any problem about identity . We never have. Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic. Everything is identical to itself; nothing is ever identical to anything except itself. There is never any problem about what makes something identical to itself; nothing can ever fail to be. (Lewis 1986: 192–93)

Lewis’s argument here might be expanded as follows: Consider any putative problem about the conditions under which a thing x is identical with a thing y . There are only two cases: either (i) x is identical with y , or (ii) x is not identical with y . Consider case (i). In this case the putative problem is about the conditions under which x is identical with itself. But there cannot be any such problem, because it is a conceptual truth that everything is identical with itself, and so x is identical with itself under all conditions. To ask for the conditions under which something is identical with itself is like asking ‘Under what conditions is one thing one thing, and not two things?’ There can be no informative answer because necessarily, if something is one thing then it is one thing, and not two things, and nothing more can be said. Now consider case (ii). The putative problem is now about the conditions under which a thing x is identical with a different thing y . But there cannot be any such problem, because it is a conceptual truth that one thing and a different thing are not identical, and so there are no conditions under which x and y are identical. To ask for the conditions under which one thing and a different thing are identical is like asking ‘Under what conditions are two things one thing, and not two things?’ There can be no informative answer because necessarily, if two things are two things, then they are two things, and not one thing, and nothing more can be said. And so, whether case (i) or case (ii) holds, there can be no problem about the conditions under which a thing x is identical with a thing y .

The argument seems persuasive, but anyone who accepts it is committed to it being possible to state problems that seem to be about identity (such as the “problem” of trans-world identity) in terms that make it clear that such problems are not in fact about identity. Furthermore, it seems that we do very often use the concept of identity, and an explanation of how and why we use it so often seems to be required if the argument above is sound.

Most seem to have accepted Lewis’s view (see, e.g., Akiba 2000, Hawthorne 2003, Noonan 2007, Noonan and Curtis 2018), but there are some who dissent (Gallois 2005, Shumener 2020, Azzano and Carrara 2021). The question of how and why we use the concept of identity was a central concern of Wittgenstein (see Fogelin 1983 for an overview), and has recently received attention from others (Burgess 2018).

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Identity, in itself, is difficult to define—let alone ourselves as a persona. It seems that identity is what we and others say we are. In this case, identity is flexible and fluid. It can change at a moment’s notice, as who we are is a story we and others tell ourselves. Identity is not a solid, carved-into-stone statement. Moment to moment, our identities are shaping and reshaping themselves.

Yet, if I was to try to define my identity concretely within a worldly view, I would say I am primarily a person focused on creativity and spirituality. Every day, I write poetry, play percussion, and sing. I regularly submit my poetry to journals, and perform in concerts as a percussionist. I enjoy singing sometimes in concerts, but mostly I sing for my own enjoyment at home and while on walks. In terms of spirituality, I meditate each morning and night, and listen to spiritual music during the day. I also enjoy pondering about spiritual philosophies from Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and many other religions and traditions. I try to remain in a meditative state throughout the day.

I can get more mundane and say that I am a 33-year-old Caucasian male, American, who was born in Seattle, Washington, and currently live there. I have a wife, no children, and a pug. I work as a content coordinator and editor. My favorite food is either Mexican cuisine or Italian cuisine. I am both an introvert and extrovert. I took an IQ test and got a near-genius score. I have had five surgeries. I have won awards for my writing. I like to occasionally play chess, and was crazy about this game in high school. My personality is a mix of bubbliness and introspectiveness. There is so much to list off, but I do not know how interesting it would be for readers to trudge through.

Examining my identity, I realized that yes, I am this surface identity that anyone can fill out in a personality test. However, underneath this layer of identity, I believe there is a more universal identity. Through meditation, I have experienced moments and spans of time when all my thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions were so far away from being perceived directly that I felt detached from them. The discovery that my identity could simply be consciousness was startling. In addition to being surprised, I realized that this state is available for all of us—that pure consciousness could be our universal identity.

What does that mean for identity itself? Well, I believe we might fooling ourselves that we are, say, a 33-year-old Caucasian male from Seattle who writes poetry every day and loves taking walks with his pug. This is only a superficial layer of identity that is constantly adapting and changing according to the environment, circumstances, and happenings. The universal identity of pure consciousness is always the same, and can be said to be the most secure form of identity. Also, if we view people as pure consciousness, then it is difficult to have prejudice or ill will for them. This body and all of its components are only a container for this pure consciousness. Do not ask me how and why this pure consciousness is there, though. I do not have enough knowledge to answer this question properly.

This is one example of a reflective essay. As you may have noticed, it’s a concise but comprehensive analysis of the chosen topic. If it’s your first time writing something like this, don’t be afraid to ask for help from the best assignment writers . It’s not an easy task and searching for guidance is a natural thing to be doing.

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How to Write an Essay on Identity

David stewart, 25 jun 2018.

Who are you? How do your peers and community view you? Thinking through the answers to those questions in an identity essay is a way to explore, discover and share your own identity perceptions. The purpose of an identity essay is to answer questions about who you are, how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you as well. For an identity essay to have impact, it should cover different facets of your identity from your name's origin to your character, principles and values. Your friends, family, community and culture are also part of your identity. They are a part of shaping your identity as well and an integral part to your essay. Exploring your personal life thoroughly helps you understand the impact of people and experiences in forming your own identity. A well-written identity essay tells the reader how you view yourself as well as the role in finding that identity related to the people and experiences in your life.

Explore this article

• Essay Thesis
• Essay Outline
• Essay Draft
• Essay Revisions

1 Essay Thesis

First, compose the thesis for your essay. The thesis is the central theme on which your whole essay will be based on. As you create your thesis, think about what aspect of your identity you want to explore. This thought process could include analyzing your cultural background or how you feel your peers view you as a person. Determine the relevance of the thesis idea you choose by analyzing how much it has contributed to the formation of your current identity.

2 Essay Outline

Next, prepare an essay outline. In this outline, consider and lay out a plan what you plan to include about yourself, your beliefs and your family to organize the overall structure and content of your essay.

3 Essay Draft

Write the first draft of your essay after you complete the outline. Start with the introduction revolving around your thesis and explain what you will be exploring in the essay. Fill out the body of the essay with more information and examples that provide background to the theme. Conclude the essay by looking back on and recapping what you included in the other sections.

4 Essay Revisions

Revise the essay as needed to create connections among ideas and a clear picture of yourself. Add transition phrases like "on the other hand" and "similarly" to illustrate relationships between included concepts and details. Develop your essay with strong details to express your thoughts on your identity and how you think people perceive you. Look at all the aspects of your life that contribute to your identity. Doing this will help strengthen the essay with supporting details that engage your reader.

5 Proofread

Review your essay after finishing. Have a friend or peer proofread it for spelling, grammar and clarity. While many written essays would also require a look at facts presented and research, an identity essay may also need that same reader to give you feedback on how you present yourself in the essay. If the editor you choose is open to the process, also ask her to give you feedback on the identify your portray for yourself in the essay. Integrate edits into your essay as you find them necessary and appropriate and then create the final draft.

• 1 Purdue Online Writing Lab: Essay Writing

About the Author

Hailing out of Pittsburgh, Pa., David Stewart has been writing articles since 2004, specializing in consumer-oriented pieces. He holds an associate degree in specialized technology from the Pittsburgh Technical Institute.

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Essays About Identity: 18 Writing Prompts for Students

Get inspiration for your essays about identity with these 18 inspiring writing prompts.

There are many times when a student needs to write an essay. Many colleges will ask for a personal essay when entering college, and the topic may be open-ended for these projects. You may also be asked to write a “who am I” essay for this.

Who am I essays are a great opportunity for self-reflection. You can delve into what makes you tick and what actions have defined your character over the years. Writing these essays also allows you to showcase your writing skills. However, this is one place where you have to do the writing yourself, not ask for help from a writing service with professional writers because you need to write about your own life and your experiences. Someone else cannot do this for you.

Essays about who am I can be challenging to write because they are so open-ended. Unless you have a clear direction from the assignment, you may need to get a little creative with the direction you take this essay. Here are some sample essay topics that deeply explore “who am I.” Consider using one to start your ideas flowing as you create an excellent personal essay.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

1. I Am a Good Leader

2.  exploring my future, 3. who i want to be, 4. who i am and how i change, 5. my likes and dislikes, 6. my worldview, 7. how i am similar to my father/mother, 8. who i am in three words, 9. i am a survivor, 10. my ethnicity, 11. i am more than just good grades, 12. my bravest moment, 13. how my childhood experiences made me, 14. i am a good friend, 15. why i will succeed, 16. i am a product of my choices, 17. i am a failure (and what i learned from it), 18. i am my role in the family.

Depending on the purpose of your who am I essay, describing your leadership skills could be a great option. You could explain how your life experiences have transformed you into someone with strong leadership potential. You could explore the character traits that lend themselves well to leadership.

This essay topic has a lot of room for interpretation. For example, even if you don’t see yourself as a leader, you might have much leadership potential when you dig into your character. So, pull out that leadership and build it into a personal essay.

This personal essay topic allows you to explore what you anticipate for your future. If you are writing an essay in high school as part of the college application process, you can incorporate why you are a good fit for the school into this essay to help your essay stand out.

When exploring your future in an essay, be sure to explore who you are as a person and why your future goals make sense based on your character traits and passions. This self-reflection will make for a powerful essay.

Not all who I am essays need to be about who you currently are. Instead, you can write a powerful essay about the person you hope to become. Every human being has tremendous potential, and you can showcase that potential in an essay sample.

Think about your character traits and life goals. What could you do with those traits to reach those goals? Exploring these ideas could create a strong essay example.

The human experience is all about change. We change as we grow and develop into more mature individuals. You could explore how you change in an essay that would talk about how your growth and development make you into a better person.

Exploring things that are the catalyst for change in your life can be a good starting point for a personal essay. Since you are unique, your changes will come from a different place than other people. There is quite a bit to talk about with this topic.

Your likes and dislikes are what make you who you are. If you are focused on personal essay writing, this can be a good place to start. Because you have many things that you like or do not like, this can be a lengthy essay topic idea.

Go beyond the surface here. While you could talk about foods you like and dislike, is there something deeper you could explore? Are there particular topics that inspire you and others that turn you away? The answers to these questions will help you explore this essay topic.

A worldview is a platform through which you view the world, politics, and social concerns. It could be religious, sociological, or even ethical. Spending time figuring out your worldview helps you understand your way of relating to the world.

Once you know what your worldview is, you will be able to expound on it in your essay. Explain what you believe, but also explain why. Being able to support your reasons with self-reflection and logic will make your final essay exceptional.

Do you take after one of your parents? Compare your character traits to theirs to see how you connect. Seeing yourself in another person is a great way to reflect on what makes you, you.

Again, this is a place to dig deep. Look beyond the surface like physical characteristics and look at your character traits and how they are similar to your parent. You might find that you have quite a bit in common as you start analyzing the answer to this question.

Can you describe yourself in just three words? This essay topic is an exercise in brevity, giving you the chance to hone in on who you are. But, of course, an essay is not just three words.

Once you decide what your three words are, you can expound on them. For example, if one of your words is “student,” you can explore what that means. Likewise, if you choose to state your race, you can discuss why that is a defining feature.

Have you survived something traumatic in your life? If so, you could write an engaging essay about how you are a survivor. Many people who go through traumatic circumstances suffer a victim mentality, but you could focus on how you are choosing to be a survivor, not a victim.

Focus on the trail a little, but discuss how the trial has grown you as a person. You can show in your essay how you can move past difficulties and embrace the change that they bring. This essay can clearly show your resistance as a human being.

A person’s ethnicity is an important part of who they are. This can be an engaging essay topic, as it gives you the chance to celebrate your ethnicity, beliefs, and family history.

This topic is quite fascinating to delve into, but be careful. You do not want to come across as being fully defined by your race alone. Be sure to weave other character traits into this particular essay topic so that you come across as a well-rounded, balanced person. Remember, your ethnicity is just a portion of who you are as a whole person.

The academic world often gets too focused on grades and reports. While grades are important, you should be more than just a grade card. Hard work should matter just as much as the actual score, especially if you have some challenges that make learning and test-taking more difficult.

If you are more than just good grades, what does define you? When writing this essay, make sure you define your character traits in a positive light. Keep the essay upbeat and show how your hard work will define you even when grades do not.

Is there a time when you expressed a significant amount of bravery? It does not have to be a mountaintop rescue or a near-death experience. It could be as simple as standing up in front of a class for the first time to deliver a speech.

Find an example of bravery from your life and expound on it in your essay. Explain what made you feel afraid and how you overcame the fear to do something truly brave. Use this exploration to showcase some characteristics that help you act bravely in frightening situations.

Most people have quite a bit of development from their personal childhood experiences. Can you find some of these and point to specific ways they influenced your character as an adult? This idea could be a great way to explore who you are today.

Are you a social person because you spent a lot of time with people when you were young? Are you more introverted because you did not? You might find that your childhood significantly impacts your character, giving you an engaging essay topic to explore.

If you are a good friend to others, it says quite a bit about your character. Can you showcase how you are a good friend to others in your essay? What makes you someone people want to spend time with?

Character traits that make you a good friend can also make you a good student. Are you trustworthy or particularly friendly? These traits will help you in the classroom and your social life, so highlight them in your essay.

Do you picture yourself as a success in the future? If so, explain why in your essay. For example, you may think that you will succeed in starting your own business . Or maybe you have specific skills that make you confident of your abilities in the classroom.

Showing your confidence in your essay is helpful as you try to promote yourself to your potential college or your high school teacher. First, spend some time evaluating what it is about you that means you are likely to succeed, then compile that into an essay that shows your skills in the best possible light.

Our choices define us. Can you turn that into an essay topic? Can you showcase how your choices have created the person you are today, or can you write about one particular choice that was defining in your life?

This essay topic gives you quite a bit of time for self-reflection. You can easily highlight a particularly good choice you made or focus on a mistake and how you overcame the consequences of that mistake. Either way, you can use the choices in your life to outline who you are and why.

We all have failures in our life. This essay topic shocks the reader and gets their attention, which can make it powerful, but it also gives room to discuss failure positively. Talk about one of the biggest failures you have had in life and what you learned from it.

You can use this essay topic to transform something negative into something positive. First, think about how that monumental failure defined you and how the lessons you learned from the failure have made you a better person today.

Are you a parent, sibling, or child? Are you the only child or one of many? These family dynamics can significantly impact who you are as a person, so consider exploring them as part of your essay.

Discuss how your role within your family has defined you and what it means for your future. Focus on the strengths that your role gave you rather than any drawbacks. Remember, your essay promotes you as a person and a writer, so keep it positive.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

99 Cultural Identity Essay Topics & Examples

Our experts have gathered identity essay topics that you can research or discuss in a class. See the list and find the perfect title here!

🏆 Best Cultural Identity Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

💡 interesting identity essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on cultural identity, ❓ research questions about cultural identity.

In high school or college, you might be assigned to write a cultural identity essay. Topics on the subject are quite easy to find, given that culture surrounds us everywhere we go. However, choosing one relevant idea can become an issue. Are you going to discuss an American or Canadian identity essay title? Or are you willing to talk about the history of pop culture around the globe? In either case, this article will be helpful for you.

• Cultural Identity and Heritage in the “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker In the broad context, Walker designs the story to underscore the conflict that African Americans faced concerning their cultural identity and heritage after the abolition of slavery.
• Racial and Cultural Identity Development Model At the stage of dissonance, a person is in a conflict between group-appreciating and depreciating within the attitude toward self as well as in a conflict between the emotions of shared experiences and group-depreciating views […]
• Cultural Identity in “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith Exploring the thematic significance of the novels title “White Teeth” it would be instrumental to argue that the title touches on the aspects of cultural identity.
• Cultural Identity: Problems, Coping, and Outcomes The intensification of the processes of globalization, cultural integration, and expansion of contacts between representatives of different countries led to the gradual blurring of boundaries between national cultures and the loss of cultural identity.
• What Role Does Food Play in Cultural Identity? From the point of view of cultural studies, such a model of nutrition speaks more about the absence of global roots, the absence of deep moral guidelines, and not about the convenience of the process.
• Cultural Identity Theory: “How to Be Chinese” by Celeste Ng Thus, while recognizing the role that the specified cultural signifiers have for Asian American people in their attempts to retain their cultural identity, Ng also demonstrates the urge to introduce immediate change to prevent the […]
• Hall Stuart: Questions of Cultural Identity Hall states that it is important to theorize the notion of identity to make it more applicable. However, Hall still claims that it is important to understand what identity is.
• Cultural Influences on Personality The basis of Indonesian culture and its ability to comply with a fixed standard, regulation, or requirement of societal norms is the importance put on honor and respect for the individual. This is a keystone […]
• Cultural Differences: Individualism vs. Collectivism The understanding of the relevant cultures helps in knowing where the people around us originate. The religion types are unique to the areas where they are found and exemplify the culture of people who participate […]
• Malay Muslim Traditions and Cultural Identity First I clearly expected that it if the parents and close family members who convey the identity to their children stayed together, then the conflict between mainstream expectations in the American way of life and […]
• Issues of Japanese Cultural Identity The other way the anime productions deal with the issues of the Japanese and their cultural identity is by presenting the aspects and ideas that define the people of Japan.
• Cultural Identity: “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker One of the instances of elements of life associated with identity is music. As such, blues music is not particularly popular throughout America, yet it remains a significant part and a distinctive aspect of the […]
• Cultural Identity and Justice in Early Learning Space One of the myths that interfere with the ability to talk about race and racism in early care and education settings is associated with the position that children do not see races.
• Transcending National and Cultural Identity Despite the Odds The success of Shakira in terms of her music is the first real evidence that a single individual can maintain multiple cultures and nationalities.
• Art Education Preserving Ethno Cultural Identity The image presents a fantasy of how sweet their fries and chicken are, and for some reason, some customers visit the place for the first time due to the visual art available.
• The Crisis of Cultural Identity of Luxembourg Due to Massive Immigration The possibility of a city-wide display exhibiting the workmanship and specialties of Luxembourg could be a method for opening the secret of the nation’s way of life. There is an incredible blend of individuals who […]
• Strong Cultural Identity Importance in Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks” She communicates with her audience in a playful manner, with the use of rhetorical techniques such as irony and hilarious analogies, to better illustrate her point.
• Arabic Cultural Identity: Sonallah Ibrahim His writing is also a constant reminder of the failures of the governments in standing up to the expectations of the Egyptian citizens.
• Gendered Cultural Identity and Globalization in Canada It should be well understood that the escalation of politics of cultural identities in Canada is a result of the background of the cultural nationalism that came before it.
• Cultural Borrowing: Ethnic Fashion Obscures Cultural Identity I write this article from the larger perspective of what kind of cultural items can be borrowed and the benefits of the same and at the same time the tendency to obviate the subtext.
• Cultural Identity vs. Ethnic Fashion A part of the modern lifestyle that looks hip and very happening without actually understanding the real meaning of the cultural item as it pertains to the ethnicity of the person.
• Cultural Identity: the Position in Society Here, the answer is “yes, I am” and the answer to this question is quite accurate in terms of the majority of the Arabic people.
• Asian Cultural Identity: Interview It will explore the individual’s definition of cultural identity, his family origin, most important cultural values, factors that contributed towards the development of cultural identity, and the interaction between the self and cultural identity.
• African-American Cultural Identity’ and Values’ Critique Despite the high levels of discrimination, they got themselves out of the slavery of writing for the whites by mastering the Anglo-American traditions.
• Cultural Diversity in Society: Reforms to the Way a Society Is Conducted The concepts of the diversity of the US culture that are shared in this article are important as they are address different elements of a culture that are important when it comes to determining how […]
• Social Identity in Social Psychology This essay shall use the movie, Grand Illusion to identify and explore three bases of group categorisation and apply social identity theories in order to explain whether the characters transcend or exposed to illusion in […]
• Australia: Being a Multicultural Society It is reported the between 2000 and 2005, there was significant public concern within the country due to the role of detention centers in the country.
• Culture and Self: Cultural Specifics Although both authors provide a fairly detailed account of the way in which cultural background and the development of self are intertwined, the latter research seems to focus on the application of the findings related […]
• Social Constructionism and Its Impact on Cultural Identity in a Society Ruled by a Strong Rhetoric of Risk and Health and Safety Regulations These include social constructionism, namely the development of this theoretical framework and how it relates to the view of the self using accountability as an example; the rise of the dominant discourse on health and […]
• Multicultural Psychology: Cultural Identity and Racism It is a branch of psychology that tries to comprehend and represent the psychology of different people, groups and organizations adequately for the purpose of equal treatment due to the fact that there is a […]
• Migration, Identity and Multiculturalism Equity in Ethnic Policy In the earlier years, discriminative policies had been enacted but the mid of the last century saw the eradication of these policies and the establishment of better ones that addressed the […]
• Influence of Cultural Identity the Way Middle School Students Learn The activities which students participate in and the interactions they have with peers, adults, and the physical characteristics of their learning environment all contribute to their motivation to learn and desire to engage.
• How Does Culture Affect the Self Identity Personal Essay The economic background, family relations and ethnic distinctions have contributed significantly to the personality trait of being a low profile person who is considerate of others.
• The Influence Of Modernity And Globalization On Cultural Identity
• The Family Tradition of Making a Huge Batch of Ravioli as a Cultural Identity
• Cultural Identity Of The Black Native, And Their Subsequent
• Racial Cultural Identity Developement Model
• The Importance of Cultural Identity and Socialization in Education
• Cultural Identity, Mobility, and Decentralization
• Maintaining Cultural Identity in the Face of Adversity
• The Effects Of Perceived Brand Globalness And Local Iconness On Brand Prestige And Perceived Quality: The Role Of Consumers’ Cultural Identity
• Cultural Identity and Intercultural Communication
• The Importance of Positive Cultural Identity
• Changes of Cultural Identity
• An Analysis of the Difficulties of Establishing a Cultural Identity for the United States of America
• The Cultural Identity Within Asian Writing Systems
• Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Identity
• The Connection Between Food Study and Cultural Identity
• Individuals Learn Of Cultural Identity Through The Acculturation Process
• An Exploration of Cultural Identity in Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• The Impact of Globalization to Cultural Identity
• The Effects of Language Extinction on Cultural Identity in Third World Countries
• The Harlem Renaissance and a New Cultural Identity
• Intercultural Communications and Cultural Identity
• Maintaining Cultural Identity In Design
• Importance Of Cultural Identity And Diaspora
• Multicultural Counseling and Cultural Identity Analysis
• Meaning of Life and Australian Cultural Identity
• Popular Music, Gender, Sexuality, and Cultural Identity
• A Look at the Cultural Identity in The Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Influence of Cultural Identity on Willingness to Pay Values in Contingent Valuation Surveys
• Self Awareness and Cultural Identity
• The Era Of New And Improved Cultural Identity
• An Interpretive Ethnographic Perspective on Negotiating and Leveraging Cross-Cultural Identity
• The Confiscation of Cultural Identity in North America
• The White Power Structure And Cultural Identity
• Cultural Identity Through Local Advertisement
• What Are The Most Important Parts Of Cultural Identity?
• An Analysis of Cultural Identity in Genre Films
• The Cultural Differences Between China and America
• The Differences (or Similarities) Between Ethnic identity, Cultural identity, and Acculturation
• Evaluating Cultural Identity Using Caryl Phillips Cambridge
• The Formation of Nation-State and Cultural Identity: A Georgian Perspective
• An Analysis of the Issue of Cultural Identity and the Cinematic Representation
• Did Americans Find Their Cultural Identity on the Eve of the Revolution?
• Do Cultural Identity and Understanding Influence Health Equity?
• Does Heritage Impact Culture Identity?
• Does Social Media Influence Cultural Identity?
• How Do You Maintain Your Cultural Identity?
• How and Why Does Culture Identity Affect the Idea of ‘Beauty’?
• How Cultural Identity and Understanding Influence Health?
• How Not Lose Your Cultural Identity While Living in a New Country?
• How Does Cultural Identity Impact American Culture?
• How Many Types of Cultural Identity Are There?
• How Does Art Embody Cultural Identity?
• Who Created the Cultural Identity Theory?
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• Why Is Cultural Identity Hard to Define?
• What Defines India’s Cultural Identity?
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• Where Does Cultural Identity Reside?
• What Are the Most Important Parts of Your Cultural Identity?
• What Are the Different Types of Cultural Identity?
• What Is Cultural Identity Development?
• What Are the Three Different Types of Identity?
• What Are Aspects of Cultural Identity?
• What Does Culture Identity Mean in Literature?
• What Are the Levels of Cultural Identity?
• What Is the Difference Between Cultural Identity and Identity?
• Social Work Essay Titles
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• Moral Development Essay Topics
• Cultural Competence Research Topics
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• Ethnocentrism Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
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Reclaiming Identity

"Identity" is one of the most hotly debated topics in literary theory and cultural studies. This bold and groundbreaking collection of ten essays argues that identity is not just socially constructed but has real epistemic and political consequences for how people experience the world. Advocating a "postpositivist realist" approach to identity, the essays examine the ways in which theory, politics, and activism clash with or complement each other, providing an alternative to the widely influential postmodernist understandings of identity. Although theoretical in orientation, this dynamic collection deals with specific social groups—Chicanas/os, African Americans, gay men and lesbians, Asian Americans, and others—and concrete social issues directly related to race, ethnicity, sexuality, epistemology, and political resistance.  Satya Mohanty's brilliant exegesis of Toni Morrison's  Beloved  serves as a launching pad for the collection. The essays that follow, written by prominent and up-and-coming scholars, address a range of topics—from the writings of Cherrie Moraga, Franz Fanon, Joy Kogawa, and Michael Nava to the controversy surrounding racial program housing on college campuses—and work toward a truly interdisciplinary approach to identity.

About the Author

PAULA M. L. MOYA, is the Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University. She is the Burton J. and Deedee McMurtry University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and a 2019-20 Fellow at the Center for the Study of Behavioral Sciences.

Moya’s teaching and research focus on twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literary studies, feminist theory, critical theory, narrative theory, American cultural studies, interdisciplinary approaches to race and ethnicity, and Chicanx and U.S. Latinx studies.

She is the author of  The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism  (Stanford UP 2016) and  Learning From Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles  (UC Press 2002) and has co-edited three collections of original essays,  Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century  (W.W. Norton, Inc. 2010),  Identity Politics Reconsidered  (Palgrave 2006) and  Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism  (UC Press 2000). 

Previously Moya served as the Director of the Program of Modern Thought and Literature, Vice Chair of the Department of English, Director of the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and also the Director of the Undergraduate Program of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. 

She is a recipient of the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, the Outstanding Chicana/o Faculty Member award. She has been a Brown Faculty Fellow, a Clayman Institute Fellow, a CCSRE Faculty Research Fellow, and a Clayman Beyond Bias Fellow. 

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Race and Ethnicity — American Identity

Essays on American Identity

Hook examples for identity essays, anecdotal hook.

Standing at the crossroads of cultures and heritage, I realized that my identity is a mosaic, a tapestry woven from the threads of my diverse experiences. Join me in exploring the intricate journey of self-discovery.

Question Hook

What defines us as individuals? Is it our cultural background, our values, or our personal beliefs? The exploration of identity leads us down a path of introspection and understanding.

Quotation Hook

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." These words from Ralph Waldo Emerson resonate as a testament to the importance of authentic identity.

Cultural Identity Hook

Our cultural roots run deep, shaping our language, traditions, and worldview. Dive into the rich tapestry of cultural identity and how it influences our sense of self.

Identity and Belonging Hook

Human beings have an innate desire to belong. Explore the intricate relationship between identity and the sense of belonging, and how it impacts our social and emotional well-being.

Identity in a Digital Age Hook

In an era of social media and digital personas, our sense of identity takes on new dimensions. Analyze how technology and online interactions shape our self-perception.

Identity and Self-Acceptance Hook

Coming to terms with our true selves can be a challenging journey. Explore the importance of self-acceptance and how it leads to a more authentic and fulfilling life.

An Analysis of Uncle Sam: Symbolism and Impact on American Identity

The way an american identity is created, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

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Characteristics that Shaped an American Identity

An overview of the evolution of the american identity, questioning the identity: the meaning of being an american, what does it mean to be an american citizen, let us write you an essay from scratch.

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The Rising of American Identity

What america means to me, the american identity and the role of the foreigner in american nation and other nations, an analysis of native american identity as a result of colonialism in sherman alexie's novel the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

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A Discussion on Latin Americans Developing Their American Identity

The view of frederick douglass on american identity, what it means to live in america, what it means to be an american today, the impact of class in social identity, representation of the american family in the works of roth and miller, my cultural identity: who i am, understanding the concept of the american dream, freedom as the root of what it means to be an american, what america means to you: education, rights, and equality, tocqueville on the toxicity of american ideals, american dream as an integral part of american ideals, the evolution of native american identity in joy harjo's poetry, establishment of american ideals during american revolution, the great gatsby: what it means to be an american in a negative connotation, italian-american identity in stallone's rocky, exploring america’s identity subjugation in "americanah", representation of toxic american masculinity in slaughterhouse-five by kurt vonnegut, discovering of what it really means to be an american, american enlightenment: a period that shaped american ideals.

National identity can be defined as an overarching system of collective characteristics and values in a nation, American identity has been based historically upon: “race, ethnicity, religion, culture and ideology”.

Relevant topics

• Media Analysis
• Personal Identity
• Sex, Gender and Sexuality
• Discourse Community
• Social Justice
• Cultural Appropriation
• Sociological Imagination
• Effects of Social Media

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Research: What Is American Identity and Why Does It Matter?

Why Does the American Identity Matter?

The most important reason for understanding American identity is related to white racial identification. It may not be prevalent in U.S. political attitudes, but it’s still an issue. A survey from 2012 asked white respondents to indicate if whiteness represented the way they thought of themselves most of the time, as opposed to identifying themselves as Americans . One fifth of the survey’s white respondents said that they preferred the term white to American when identifying themselves.

How to Analyze American Identity

• There’s no such thing as a universal identity, especially for an omni-cultural country such as the USA.
• Everyone has their own understanding of what it means to be American today, as citizens come from different religious, ethnic, ideological, and geographical backgrounds.
• Explaining the concept of American identity calls for an inclusive approach based on solidarity.
• Depending on how you discuss the concept, an academic essay may require arguments on modern-day immigration and immigrant policies. How do they fit within the common understanding of American identity?

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5 Key Ideas About Identity Theory

What is an identity and how does it work.

Posted January 25, 2019 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

1. Why are people motivated to be authentic? The ultimate goal for individuals is to develop and nurture those choices that are consistent with their true self (Waterman, 1984). Authenticity is the feeling that one is being one’s true self (Jongman-Sereno and Leary, 2018). To find more happiness in life means to live in harmony with one’s true self.

What does it mean to be who you are is a central question in identity theory. (Burke and Stets, 2009). Identity (self-views) relates to our basic values that determine the choices we make (e.g., relationships, career ). The meaning of an identity includes expectations for self about how one should behave. For example, an obstetrician delivering a baby in a hospital is expected to express feeling quite different than the parents of the newborn child.

2. Identity formation . However, few people choose their identities. Instead, they simply internalize the values of their parents or the dominant cultures (e.g., a pursuit of materialism , power, and appearance). Imagine how different you would become growing up in a different culture or different times. Society shapes the self and guide behavior. Children come to define themselves in terms of how they think their parents see them. If their parents see them as worthless or incapable, they will come to define themselves as worthless or useless-and vice versa.

3. Role identity. People also have many identities as they belong to different networks of organized relationships. For example, a person may hold various identities such as a teacher, father, or friend. Each role or position has its own meanings and expectations that are internalized as identity. For example, my role as a college professor involves a set of expectations (being knowledgeable and competent). I am also a father with a different set of expectations (being regarded as warm and loving).

Role conflict occurs when there are incompatible demands placed upon a person. For example, consider the challenge of presenting yourself in social media when you interact with friends, family, and coworkers. According to identity theory, the identity with a higher level of commitment will guide the behavior.

Having several identities provides a sense of purpose in life, especially when roles are chosen freely. People who are able to choose their identities are those who have control over their lives compared to others who are obligated by life circumstances into particular identities (e.g., being stuck at a bad job or relationship).

4. The desire to feel valued. People are motivated to verify or confirm their existing self-views (Swann, 1983). Identity verification produces positive feelings. That is why we prefer to associate with those who see us the way we see ourselves and avoid those who do not. Alternatively, one may display identity cues by looking the part (e.g., dressing a certain way, wearing a specific baseball cap, or using a particular speech style) to send a message so that others recognize their identities.

Failure to verify identity produces self-esteem problem. When social relationships do not contribute to identity-verification, individuals may leave such relationships and seek identity-verification and self-esteem elsewhere. For example, a study showed that when couples verify their spousal identities, their feelings of self-esteem and self-confidence are increased and their distress and depression decreased (Burke and Stets, 2009). Being with a partner who confirms your self-view as a spouse makes you feel better about yourself.

5. Identity change. The lack of abilities to confirm and verify an identity leads to a change in identity standards. For example, people’s identities change as a result of situational changes such as marriage , divorce , job loss, change of place to live, and illness. In marriage, people take on the spousal identity that their partner wanted them to have. Under these conditions, what it means to be who you are will change. What was me becomes not-me. They disengage from the social expectations of given roles and think of themselves apart from the people they were in the previous roles (Stets and Serpe, 2016). These slow and small changes add up over time so that in five or 10 years, you will look back and recognize how much you have changed.

Burke Peter J., Stets Jan E. (2009), Identity Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jongman-Sereno, K. P., & Leary, M. R. (2016). Self-perceived authenticity is contaminated by the valence of one’s behavior. Self and Identity, 15(3), 283–301.

Stets, Jan E. and Richard T. Serpe (Editors). 2016. New Directions in Identity Theory and Research. New York: Oxford University Press.

Swann, W. B., Jr. (1983). Self-verification: Bringing social reality into harmony with the self. In J. Suls & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Social psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 2, pp. 33-66). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Waterman, A. S. (1984). Identity formation: Discovery or creation? Journal of Early Adolescence, 4, 329-341.

Shahram Heshmat, Ph.D., is an associate professor emeritus of health economics of addiction at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

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The Big Ideas: What do we believe?

Julia Alvarez: What We Believe About Identity

Unearthing the many layers of a self can take a lifetime.

By Julia Alvarez

Ms. Alvarez is the author of “Afterlife,” a novel.

This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas , in which writers respond to a single question: What do we believe? You can read more essays by visiting The Big Ideas series page .

One of the baffling things that happened when my family arrived in the United States in 1960 was having to find a term for ourselves. No one seemed to know where the Dominican Republic was. Back then there weren’t that many Dominicans in the United States — the dictatorship made it difficult to emigrate. So when my family was asked where we were from, we couldn’t just say, “We’re Dominican, you know, like Sammy Sosa or Alex Rodriguez.” Our classmates often mistook our country for the other Caribbean nation of Dominica. “Oh, you lucky dog! We went there for spring break!” At least Dominica was in the same neighborhood of islands.

The hyphenated nationality (Dominican-American, Chinese-American, even African-American) hadn’t yet been invented. If we had to check a box, the sorry options we were given (“Negro,” “Eskimo,” etc.) didn’t include us. We were vaguely of “Spanish origin,” which was better than the more deprecating slurs of the playground: “spic,” “wetback,” “greaser.”

I was born in Nueva York, but my parents returned to their homeland when I was a month old. They immigrated again when I was 10. I was American, but not American. I was an immigrant but not really. From the get-go, my identity wasn’t easy to untangle. I didn’t know how to talk about who I was, but I knew what made me uncomfortable. The two models of Spanish origin in popular culture were Miss Chiquita Banana and Ricky Ricardo — one, an over-the-top Latina “bombshell” touting her wares, both her bananas and her curvaceous self, and the other the butt of jokes, who brought on an outpouring of canned laughter whenever he opened his mouth. (Needless to say, I did not love “I Love Lucy.”) The whole idea that I could be in charge of the nuances and complexities of my identity never occurred to me. All I knew were the either/ors.

There was no vocabulary to light up the margins where my outlier selves were camped, waiting for the borders to open and let more of my selves in. “To thine own self be true,” we read in my Shakespeare class, a mantra of my hippie friends. But which self? I wondered. I was large; I contained multitudes, like Señor Whitman. How to say so? English was still a tongue I was trying to negotiate, and I had yet to find a term for myself that felt exactly right.

A term like “female,” which described one aspect of myself, didn’t allow for the differences, contingencies and modifications that came from being the Latina variety of female. “Intersectionality” wasn’t a word anyone used, though the place it maps was where I was living. Only when I started writing did I find the space to explore, qualify and give nuance to the many selves of my self, the stories of my story.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, essays about personal identity.

Hi all! I'm thinking about writing an essay that focuses on my personal identity. What are some ways to make this type of essay engaging and interesting to colleges? Any examples I should check out for inspiration? Thanks in advance!

Hello! Writing an essay that focuses on your personal identity can be a powerful way to showcase your unique experiences, interests, and perspectives. To make this type of essay engaging and interesting to colleges, consider the following tips:

1. Be authentic and vulnerable: Share your true feelings, thoughts, and struggles as they pertain to your identity. By being open about your experiences, you create a deep connection with the reader.

2. Focus on a specific aspect: Instead of trying to cover every detail of your identity, choose one or two key facets that define you. Delving into particular experiences and emotions will allow you to demonstrate depth and create a more compelling narrative.

3. Use descriptive language and vivid imagery: Paint a picture for the reader by using descriptive words and vivid imagery. This will help them visualize and connect with your story on a deeper level.

4. Show rather than tell: Instead of simply stating your thoughts and feelings about your identity, use anecdotes and examples to illustrate your point. By showing the reader your experiences, you'll create a more compelling and engaging essay.

5. Incorporate growth and development: Demonstrate how your understanding of your identity has evolved over time, and how it has shaped you as a person. This could include personal challenges you've faced, accomplishments, or newfound insights.

6. Reflect on the impact: Discuss how your identity has influenced your decisions, interests, and relationships. This reflection will help demonstrate the importance of your identity and its role in your life.

For examples and inspiration, you can browse through essays shared by students who were admitted to top colleges. Just be mindful not to copy their ideas or writing styles. Instead, use these examples to inspire your own unique angle in exploring your personal identity.

Best of luck with your essay and application process!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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College essays that worked and how yours can too.

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CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS - JULY 08: A view of Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University on ... [+] July 08, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have sued the Trump administration for its decision to strip international college students of their visas if all of their courses are held online. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

The college essay is a pivotal piece of the college application showcasing your individuality and differentiated outlook to admissions officers. What makes an essay truly shine? Let’s dive into the words behind three standout essays highlighted by university websites and a school newspaper's brand studio so you can get into the right mindset for crafting your own narrative.

Embracing Differences: Finding Strength In Uniqueness

Essay Excerpt: ‘Bra Shopping ’ (Harvard)

Featured by the Harvard Crimson Brand Studio , Orlee's essay recounts a student's humorous and insightful experience of bra shopping with her grandmother, weaving in her unique family dynamics and challenges at her prestigious school.

What Works:

• Humor and Honesty: The student's humor makes the essay enjoyable to read, while her honesty about her challenges adds depth.
• Self-Awareness: She demonstrates a strong sense of self-awareness, embracing her uniqueness rather than trying to fit in.
• Resilience: Her narrative highlights resilience and the ability to find strength in differences.

For Your Essay : To write an essay that embraces your uniqueness, start by identifying a quirky or challenging experience that reflects who a key insight into your experience. Think about how this experience has shaped your perspective and character. Use humor and honesty to bring your story to life, and focus on how you have embraced your differences to become stronger and more resilient.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, finding connections: humor and self-reflection.

Essay: ‘Brood X Cicadas ’ (Hamilton College)

As an example on Hamilton's admissions website, Nicholas writes about the cicadas swarming his hometown every 17 years and draws a parallel between their emergence and his own transition to college life. He uses humor and self-reflection to create a relatable and engaging narrative.

• Humor: Nicholas uses humor to make his essay entertaining and memorable. His witty comparisons between himself and cicadas add a unique twist.
• Self-Reflection: By comparing his life to the cicadas’, he reflects on his own growth and readiness for change.
• Relatability: His narrative about facing new experiences and challenges resonates with readers who have undergone similar transitions.

For Your Essay: To infuse humor and self-reflection into your essay, start by identifying an ordinary experience or object and think about how it relates to your life. Write down funny or insightful observations about this connection. Use humor to make your essay more engaging, but ensure it still conveys meaningful self-reflection. This balance can make your essay both entertaining and profound.

Persistence and Multicultural Identity: Life Lessons From Tortilla Making

Essay: ‘ Facing The Hot Griddle ’ (Johns Hopkins University)

In this essay published by Hopkins Insider, Rocio uses the process of making tortillas to explore her multicultural identity and the challenges she has faced. Her story beautifully weaves together her Guatemalan heritage and her experiences growing up in the United States.

• Metaphor and Symbolism: The process of making tortillas becomes a powerful metaphor for the student’s journey and struggles. The symbolism of the masa harina and water mixing parallels her blending of cultural identities.
• Personal Growth: The essay highlights her perseverance and adaptability, qualities that are crucial for success in college.
• Cultural Insight: She provides a rich, personal insight into her multicultural background, making her story unique and compelling.

For Your Essay: To write an essay that explores your identity through a metaphor, start by thinking about an activity or tradition that holds significant meaning for you. Consider how this activity relates to your life experiences and personal growth. Use detailed descriptions to bring the activity to life and draw connections between the process and your own journey. Reflect on the lessons you've learned and how they've shaped your identity.

A winning college essay isn’t simply about parading your best accomplishment or dramatizing your challenges. It’s not a contest for which student is the most original or entertaining. Rather, the essay is a chance for you to showcase your authenticity, passion, resilience, social awareness, and intellectual vitality . By sharing genuine stories and insights, you can create an essay that resonates with admissions committees and highlights your unique qualities.

For you to have the best possible essay, mindset is key. Here’s how to get into the zone:

• Reflect Deeply: Spend time thinking about your experiences, challenges, and passions. Journaling can help you uncover deep insights.
• Discuss and Share: Talking about your stories with friends, family, or mentors can provide new perspectives and emotional clarity.
• Immerse Yourself: Engage in activities that you are passionate about to reignite the feelings and memories associated with them.
• Draft Freely: Don’t worry about perfection on the first try. Write freely and honestly, then refine your narrative.

The secret to a standout college essay lies in its authenticity, depth, and emotional resonance. By learning from these successful examples and getting into the right mindset, you can craft an essay that not only stands out but also provides a meaningful insight into who you are. Remember, your essay is your story—make it a piece of writing that you will always be proud of.

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Geo-linguistic Identity: An Alternative Way of Imagining a Nation in Multiethnic Contexts

Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Education, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.

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Awarding institution, year awarded, rights statement, usage metrics.

• Cultural geography
• Culture, representation and identity
• Cultural theory
• Cultural studies of nation and region
• Sociology of migration, ethnicity and multiculturalism
• South-East Asian languages (excl. Indonesian)

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A year after affirmative action ban, how students are pitching themselves to colleges

• Deep Read ( 13 Min. )
• By Olivia Sanchez, Nirvi Shah, and Meredith Kolodner The Hechinger Report

June 28, 2024

In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court banned the consideration of race in college admissions, students have had to give more thought to how they present themselves in their application essays – to what they will disclose.

Data from the Common Application shows that in this admissions cycle, about 12% of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups used at least one of 38 identity-related phrases in their essays, a decrease of roughly 1% from the previous year. The data shows that about 20% of American Indian and Alaskan Native applicants used one of these phrases; meanwhile 15% of Asian students, 14% of Black students, 11% of Latinx students, and fewer than 3% of white students did so.

Why We Wrote This

A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court barred affirmative action in college admissions. Students have since used their application essays as a place to explore identity.

To better understand how students were deciding what to include, The Hechinger Report asked newly accepted students from across the United States to share their application essays and to describe how they thought their writing choices ultimately influenced their admissions outcomes. Among them was Jaleel Gomes Cardoso from Boston, who wrote about being Black. 

“If you’re not going to see what my race is in my application, then I’m definitely putting it in my writing,” he says, “because you have to know that this is the person who I am.”   

In the year since the Supreme Court banned  the consideration of race in college admissions last June, students have had to give more thought to how they present themselves in their application essays .

Previously, they could write about their racial or ethnic identity if they wanted to, but colleges would usually know it either way and could use it as a factor in admissions. Now, it’s entirely up to students to disclose their identity or not.

Data from the Common Application shows that in this admissions cycle about 12% of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups used at least one of 38 identity-related phrases in their essays, a decrease of roughly 1% from the previous year. The data shows that about 20% of American Indian and Alaskan Native applicants used one of these phrases; meanwhile 15% of Asian students, 14% of Black students, 11% of Latinx students, and fewer than 3% of white students did so.

To better understand how students were making this decision and introducing themselves to colleges, The Hechinger Report asked newly accepted students from across the country to share their college application essays. The Hechinger staff read more than 50 essays and talked to many students about their writing process, who gave them advice, and how they think their choices ultimately influenced their admissions outcomes.

Here are thoughts from a sampling of those students, with excerpts from their essays. 

Jaleel Gomes Cardoso of Boston: A risky decision

As Jaleel Gomes Cardoso sat looking at the essay prompt for Yale University, he wasn’t sure how honest he should be. “Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected,” it read. “Why is this community meaningful to you?” He wanted to write about being part of the Black community – it was the obvious choice – but the Supreme Court’s decision to ban the consideration of a student’s race in admissions gave him pause.

“Ever since the decision about affirmative action, it kind of worried me about talking about race,” says Mr. Cardoso, who grew up in Boston. “That entire topic felt like a risky decision.” 

In the past, he had always felt that taking a risk produced some of his best writing, but he thought that an entire essay about being Black might be going too far. 

“The risk was just so heavy on the topic of race when the Court’s decision was to not take race into account,” he says. “It was as if I was disregarding that decision. It felt very controversial, just to make it so out in the open.” 

In the end, he did write an essay that put his racial identity front and center. He wasn’t accepted to Yale, but he has no regrets about his choice.

“If you’re not going to see what my race is in my application, then I’m definitely putting it in my writing,” says Mr. Cardoso, who will attend Dartmouth College this fall, “because you have to know that this is the person who I am.”                       

 – Meredith Kolodner

Essay excerpt:

I was thrust into a narrative of indifference and insignificance from the moment I entered this world. I was labeled as black, which placed me in the margins of society. It seemed that my destiny had been predetermined; to be part of a minority group constantly oppressed under the weight of a social construct called race. Blackness became my life, an identity I initially battled against. I knew others viewed it as a flaw that tainted their perception of me. As I matured, I realized that being different was not easy, but it was what I loved most about myself.  

Klaryssa Cobian of Los Angeles: A seminomadic mattress life

Klaryssa Cobian is Latina – a first-generation Mexican American – and so was nearly everyone else in the Southeast Los Angeles community where she grew up. Because that world was so homogenous, she really didn’t notice her race until she was a teenager.

Then she earned a scholarship to a prestigious private high school in Pasadena. For the first time, she was meaningfully interacting with people of other races and ethnicities, but she felt the greatest gulf between her and her peers came from her socioeconomic status, not the color of her skin. 

Although Ms. Cobian has generally tried to keep her home life private, she felt that colleges needed to understand the way her family’s severe economic disadvantages had affected her. She wrote about how she’d long been “desperate to feel at home.”

She was 16 years old before she had a mattress of her own. Her essay cataloged all the places she lay her head before that. She wrote about her first bed, a queen-sized mattress shared with her parents and younger sister. She wrote about sleeping in the backseat of her mother’s red Mustang, before they lost the car. She wrote about moving into her grandparents’ home and sharing a mattress on the floor with her sister, in the same room as two uncles. She wrote about the great independence she felt when she “moved out” into the living room and onto the couch.  

“Which mattress I sleep on has defined my life, my independence, my dependence,” Ms. Cobian wrote. 

She’d initially considered writing about the ways she felt she’d had to sacrifice her Latino culture and identity to pursue her education, but said she hesitated after the Supreme Court ruled on the use of affirmative action in admissions. Ultimately, she decided that her experience of poverty was more pertinent. 

“If I’m in a room of people, it’s like, I can talk to other Latinos, and I can talk to other brown people, but that does not mean I’m going to connect with them. Because, I learned, brown people can be rich,” Ms. Cobian says.  She’s headed to the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall.

– Olivia Sanchez

Essay excerpt: 

With the only income, my mom automatically assumed custody of me and my younger sister, Alyssa. With no mattress and no home, the backseat of my mom’s red mustang became my new mattress. Bob Marley blasted from her red convertible as we sang out “could you be loved” every day on our ride back from elementary school. Eventually, we lost the mustang too and would take the bus home from Downtown Los Angeles, still singing “could you be loved” to each other.  

Oluwademilade Egunjobi of Providence, Rhode Island: The perfect introduction

Oluwademilade Egunjobi worked on her college essay from June until November. Not every single day, and not on only one version, but for five months she was writing and editing and asking anyone who would listen for advice.

She considered submitting essays about the value of sex education, or the philosophical theory of solipsism (in which the only thing that is guaranteed to exist is your own mind). 

But most of the advice she got was to write about her identity. So, to introduce herself to colleges, Oluwademilade Egunjobi wrote about her name.

Ms. Egunjobi is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who, she wrote, chose her first name because it means she’s been crowned by God. In naming her, she said, her parents prioritized pride in their heritage over ease of pronunciation for people outside their culture. 

And although Ms. Egunjobi loves that she will always be connected to her culture, this choice has put her in a lifelong loop of exasperating introductions and questions from non-Nigerians about her name. 

The loop often ends when the person asks if they can call her by her nickname, Demi. “I smile through my irritation and say I prefer it anyways, and then the situation repeats time and time again,” Egunjobi wrote. 

She was nervous when she learned about the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision, wondering what it might mean for where she would get into college. Her teachers and college advisors from a program called Matriculate told her she didn’t have to write a sob story, but that she should write about her identity, how it affects the way she moves through the world and the resilience it’s taught her. 

She heeded their advice, and it worked out. In the fall, she will enter the University of Pennsylvania to study philosophy, politics, and economics. 

I don’t think I’ve ever had to fight so hard to love something as hard as I’ve fought to love my name. I’m grateful for it because it’ll never allow me to reject my culture and my identity, but I get frustrated by this daily performance. I’ve learned that this performance is an inescapable fate, but the best way to deal with fate is to show up with joy. I am Nigerian, but specifically from the ethnic group, Yoruba. In Yoruba culture, most names are manifestations. Oluwademilade means God has crowned me, and my middle name is Favor, so my parents have manifested that I’ll be favored above others and have good success in life. No matter where I go, people familiar with the language will recognize my name and understand its meaning. I love that I’ll always carry a piece of my culture with me.  

Francisco Garcia of Fort Worth, Texas: Accepted to college and by his community

In the opening paragraph of his college application essay, Francisco Garcia quotes his mother, speaking to him in Spanish, expressing disappointment that her son was failing to live up to her Catholic ideals. It was her reaction to Mr. Garcia revealing his bisexuality. 

Mr. Garcia said those nine Spanish words were “the most intentional thing I did to share my background” with colleges. The rest of his essay delves into how his Catholic upbringing, at least for a time, squelched his ability to be honest with friends about his sexual identity, and how his relationship with the church changed. He said he had striven, however, to avoid coming across as pessimistic or sad, aiming instead to share “what I’ve been through [and] how I’ve become a better person because of it.” 

He worked on his essay throughout July, August, and September, with guidance from college officials he met during campus visits and from an adviser he was paired with by Matriculate, which works with students who are high achievers from low-income families. Be very personal, they told Mr. Garcia, but within limits. 

“I am fortunate to have support from all my friends, who encourage me to explore complexities within myself,” he wrote. “My friends give me what my mother denied me: acceptance.”

He was accepted by Dartmouth, one of the eight schools to which he applied, after graduating from Saginaw High School near Fort Worth, Texas, this spring.

– Nirvi Shah

Essay excerpt:  

By the time I got to high school, I had made new friends who I felt safe around. While I felt I was more authentic with them, I was still unsure whether they would judge me for who I liked. It became increasingly difficult for me to keep hiding this part of myself, so I vented to both my mom and my closest friend, Yoana ... When I confessed that I was bisexual to Yoana, they were shocked, and I almost lost hope. However, after the initial shock, they texted back, “I’m really chill with this. Nothing has changed Francisco:)”. The smiley face, even if it took 2 characters, was enough to bring me to tears. 

Hafsa Sheikh of Pearland, Texas: Family focus above all 

Hafsa Sheikh felt her applications would be incomplete without the important context of her home life: She became a primary financial contributor to her household when she was just 15, because her father, once the family’s sole breadwinner, could not work due to his major depressive disorder. Her work in a pizza parlor on the weekends and as a tutor after school helped pay the bills. 

She found it challenging to open up this way, but felt she needed to tell colleges that, although working two jobs throughout high school made her feel like crying from exhaustion every night, she would do anything for her family. 

“It’s definitely not easy sharing some of the things that you’ve been through with, like really a stranger,” she says, “because you don’t know who’s reading it.”

And especially after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action, Ms. Sheikh felt she needed to write about her cultural identity. It’s a core part of who she is, but it’s also a major part of why her father’s mental illness affected her life so profoundly. 

Ms. Sheikh, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, said her family became isolated because of the negative stigma surrounding mental health in their South Asian culture. She said they became the point of gossip in the community and even among extended family members, and they were excluded from many social gatherings. This was happening as she was watching the typical high school experiences pass her by, she wrote. Because of the long hours she had to work, she had to forgo the opportunity to try out for the girls’ basketball team and debate club, and often couldn’t justify cutting back her hours to spend time with her friends.  

She wrote that reflecting on one of her favorite passages in the Holy Quran gave her hope:

“One of my favorite ayahs, ‘verily, with every hardship comes ease,’ serves as a timeless reminder that adversity is not the end; rather, there is always light on the other side,” Ms. Sheikh wrote.

Her perseverance paid off, with admission to Princeton University.

-- Olivia Sanchez

Besides the financial responsibility on my mother and I, we had to deal with the stigma surrounding mental health in South Asian culture and the importance of upholding traditional gender roles. My family became a point of great gossip within the local Pakistani community and even extended family. Slowly, the invitations to social gatherings diminished, and I bailed on plans with friends because I couldn’t afford to miss even a single hour of earnings.

David Arturo Munoz-Matta of McAllen, Texas: Weighing the risks of being honest

It was Nov. 30 and David Arturo Munoz-Matta had eight college essays due the next day. He had spent the prior weeks slammed with homework while also grieving the loss of his uncle who had just died. He knew the essays were going to require all the mental energy he could muster – not to mention whatever hours were left in the day. But he got home from school to discover he had no electricity. 

“I was like, ‘What am I gonna do?’” says Mr. Munoz-Matta, who graduated from Lamar Academy in McAllen, Texas. “I was panicking for a while, and my mom was like, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna drop you off at Starbucks and then just call me when you finish with all your essays.’ And so I was there at Starbucks from 4 until 12 in the morning.” 

The personal statement he agonized over most was the one he submitted to Georgetown University.  

“I don’t want to be mean or anything, but I feel like a lot of these institutions are very elitist, and that my story might not resonate with the admissions officers,” Mr. Munoz-Matta says. “It was a very big risk, especially when I said I was born in Mexico, when I said I grew up in an abusive environment. I believed at the time that would not be good for universities, that they might feel like, ‘I don’t want this kid, he won’t be a good fit with the student body.’”

He didn’t have an adult to help him with his essay, but another student encouraged him to be honest. It worked. He got into his dream school, Georgetown University, with a full ride. Many of his peers were not as fortunate. 

“I know because of the affirmative action decision, a lot of my friends did not even apply to these universities, like the Ivies, because they felt like they were not going to get in,” he says. “That was a very big sentiment in my school.”                       

– Meredith Kolodner  

While many others in my grade level had lawyers and doctors for parents and came from exemplary middle schools at the top of their classes, I was the opposite. I came into Lamar without middle school recognition, recalling my 8th-grade science teacher’s claim that I would never make it. At Lamar, freshman year was a significant challenge as I constantly struggled, feeling like I had reached my wit’s end. By the middle of Freshman year, I was the only kid left from my middle school, since everyone else had dropped out. Rather than following suit, I kept going. I felt like I had something to prove to myself because I knew I could make it.

Kendall Martin of Austin, Texas: From frustration to love

Kendall Martin wanted to be clear with college admissions officers about one thing: She is a young Black woman, and her race is central to who she is. Ms. Martin was ranked 15th in her graduating class from KIPP Austin Collegiate. She was a key figure on her high school basketball team. She wanted colleges to know she had overcome adversity. But most importantly, Ms. Martin says, she wanted to be sure, when her application was reviewed, “Y’all know who you are accepting.”

It wouldn’t be as simple as checking a box, though, which led Ms. Martin, of Kyle, Texas, to the topic she chose for her college admissions essay, the year after the Supreme Court said race could not be a factor in college admissions. Instead, she looked at the hair framing her face, hair still scarred from being straightened time and again. 

Ms. Martin wrote about the struggles she faced growing up with hair that she says required extensive time to tame so she could simply run her fingers through it. Now headed to Rice University in Houston – her first choice from a half-dozen options – she included a photo of her braids as part of her application. Her essay described her journey from hating her hair to embracing it, from heat damage to learning to braid, from frustration to love, a feeling she now hopes to inspire in her sister.  

“That’s what I wanted to get across: my growing up, my experiences, everything that made me who I am,” she says.

–  Nirvi Shah

I’m still recovering from the heat damage I caused by straightening my hair every day, because I was so determined to prove that I had length. When I was younger, a lot of my self worth was based on how long my hair was, so when kids made fun of my “short hair,” I despised my curls more and more. I begged my mom to let me get a relaxer, but she continued to deny my wish. This would make me so angry, because who was she to tell me what I could and couldn’t do with my hair? But looking back, I’m so glad she never let me. I see now that a relaxer wasn’t the key to making me prettier, and my love for my curls has reached an all-time high. 

This story about  college admission essays  was produced by  The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s  higher education newsletter . Listen to Hechinger’s  higher education podcast .

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