Cultural Influences on Identity Development

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The question we are answering is, how does culture influence identity development? By the end of this paper you would be able to conclude that no matter what the surroundings of an individual is it will have some sort of an effect on either the physical or mental aspects of an individual. In order to answer this question we must understand how identity is developed, what culture consists of and concluding how culture influences identity development.

First and Foremost in order to know what motivates identity development we must understand how identity is developed. Identity development starts with infants discovering of self which continues throughout childhood and become the focus of adolescence. According to Erik Erikson the goal of adolescence is achieving a coherent identity and avoiding identity confusion. Identity consists of many aspects; physical and sexual identity, beliefs, ethnics background and much more. Adolescence explores these aspects of identity as they move into early adulthood, although sometimes there are things that influence change in these aspects of their identity as life conditions and situations alter. Identity Development begins with children’s awareness and that the belief that they are unique individual’s and not exactly the same as their friends. This alertness is evident when infants start to recognize themselves. For example, a research experiment that Took place to support this idea was when researchers placed a red dot on a child’s nose, two year olds who see themselves in a mirror will touch their noses (Bullock and Lutkenhaus 1990),this shows that they recognize themselves in a mirror image . Also Words like “Me” and “I” and “Mine” are said very early in children’s language showing a sense of...

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... It allows adolescent’s to speak freely and to reveal their desired personalities that may at all not be true. Some adolescents do not realize that what they say lacks privacy and that their online profiles create a particular perception of Them, they may rarely think of their consequence , these consequences do not necessarily have to be outside factors , these consequences can Have drastic influences on themselves. These social networking sites hinder adolescents identity development, due To the fact that they allow adolescents to exaggerate and when the adolscent does so, this creates the pressure for the adolescent to form a new identity And force them to find a balance between their true nature and desired personaltities, simply altering who they are to meet what they want To be , could have positive influences or negative influences on identity development.

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