How People Categorize Themselves

This is one I've been intending to explore for quite some time now- the draft was dated 28 FEB 2008!

It's not a new topic or anything. And I've been told about at least one study on the topic. Of course, I will od my best to bring a fresh, new perspective to the table.

The questions is: how do you subconsciously "label" or tag yourself? The follow-up questions are a) how you rank those characteristics, and b) whether you arrived at the characteristics and rankings based upon how others see you or how you see yourself (or some of both??). Another interesting question is whether you change your rankings depending on who you're speaking to.

For example, would Sarah (sp?) Palin use any of the following adjectives to describe herself: former AK Governor, hockey mom, Idaho-ian(?), woman, former US VP candidate, married, white, maverick(y), Republican, Alaskan, Tea Party-ier, bulldog with lipstick (her own words), conservative, fashionable, (norte) American, etc.

Assuming most of these are legit adjectives Ms. Palin would use to describe herself, question #1 is how she'd order those in importance. My point is that a person who sees themselves as Conservative, Republican, Tea-partier, American, former AK Governor, white, mom, woman, etc. would have a different belief set than if the ranking were woman, mom, N. American, former AK Gov, conservative, T-Partier (no, that's not a French word), etc. However, this is the same person. How do we arrive at our labels, but more importantly, our self-rankings?

Get my point? We'll have to come back and revist this one, as it could get lengthy.

Next up, Michelle Obama.

hasta pronto