Core Identity Traits

Various traits of our self-concept plays a large role in what we do in life and who we are. Our core identity traits often become a part of us at a young age before we are even conscious of them. These traits play a central role in developing our identity. Gratitude and curiosity are part of my core identity traits. Having gratitude in my life has let me be appreciative for what I have and expressing it to others. My curiousness has led me to be eager to learn about topics I am interested in such as psychology. Both of these traits influence what kind of relationships I have and who I want to be. I have come to know these aspects in myself through my beliefs and the perception of others outside of myself. I also came to recognize these traits
in myself by paying attention to patterns of behavior. Self-perception theory is the idea that people draw inferences of who they are based on observing their own behavior (Kassin, Fein, Markus, 2013, p.59).
Our behavioral choices effect who we believe we are. Being grateful has led me to be a happier person. According to the self-perception theory the behavior of expressing graciousness to oneself or others comes first, with the thought of being grateful coming after. For example, after swimming almost wait deep in water I was able to move my car out of the O’Keefe parking lot. I thought about the students cars that were totaled due to the flooding and I felt lucky that I was able to salvage my car. Because I expressed the thought of gratitude to myself, I think that I have a grateful attitude. Being a curious person I notice myself always asking why type of questions. Because of this desire to always be learning it leads me to infer that I am a curious person. Social perception theory points out the idea that in order to find meaningful value in people, we must be engaging an activity that fulfills an external
reward. Self-awareness theory is a unique idea in its own perspective. The idea of self-awareness theory is that if people pay attention to their thoughts, they will evaluate themselves based on their values and others standards (Kassin et al., 2013, p.77). I have always thought of myself of being self-aware to a certain extent. I am a strong believer as well there are parts of ourselves that cannot be discovered through introspection. Self-awareness relates to some of my core traits in a variety of ways. Being grateful comes in a large part from my upbringing. Being aware of our environment and upbringing is important for having self-awareness. My parents are both gracious people which is most likely why I modeled this behavior after them. Gratitude is an important value for my parents and because of this I would think about some of my actions wondering if it aligned with their values. I most likely felt guilty if somehow I did not act in some type of correspondence with their values. Because I often matched my behavior to specific standards growing up, this increasing fueled my self-awareness. Being thankful in life is something I modeled from my parents, it also something I think they modeled from their parents as well. This shows people in my family often paid attention to their thoughts and as a result they attempted to reduce any self-discrepancy. Self-awareness theory relates to my curiosity because I pay attention to my thoughts of curiosity. A value of mine is having a willingness to learn. Because of this value my curiosity enabled me to meet my own standards. Our traits and characteristics can be more understood when looked through a self-awareness lens. Fundamental attribution error can be described as the tendency to overestimate someone’s internal characteristics and downplay the situational context (Kassin et al., 2013, p.123). Fundamental attribution error can lead to blurred interoperations of people. For example, I had given someone praise after a really good speech. I am not someone who just offers praise after every speech. The speech my classmate gave meant a lot to me and I expressed that to hm. The presenter thought at first I am just offering praise because it is the nice thing to do but in reality he was downplaying the impact his speech had on me. I don’t really know how to show gratitude without being genuine, and I told him that. I think that let him know, it was the situational context taking place that led me to express my thankfulness for his courageous act. The correspondent inference theory is the idea that peoples action make up their personality (Kassin, 2013, p.117).
I think this theory allows for people to get an accurate impression of me. This is the theory I notice myself using when someone makes an impression on me. Professors might notice I ask a lot of question in class. Because they notice I am eager to learn they could possibly infer I am a curious person. Multiple factors go into the correspondent inference theory. First is the freedom of choice, this relates back to me by me having the freedom of wanting to learn about psychology. Second is the expectedness as I think this plays an important role. In a school setting a professor might expect me to be curious about the class. Third is the intended effects or consequences of the behavior. Again by me being curious it could lead me to a higher participation grade which would be an added effect. I think most importantly it is important of being aware of how we interpret ourselves because that is most likely how we interpret
others.