Waiting to Be Identified

There’s an old joke – How do you know someone’s a Vegetarian?

Punch line to this is - Don’t worry, they will tell you!

Being a vegetarian, I have lived this Joke. Moreover, telling people that I’m a vegetarian, clarifies that I don’t eat meat. This is just to identify myself, telling others of my choices.

But Identity, is much more powerful than this. The way we see ourselves, has a profound impact on how we deal with traction and distractions. Our perception about selves can largely impact our actions in future.

Christopher Bryan, along with his fellow psychology researchers from Stanford designed a study around this thing called Identity. The study was performed to test how thinking about ourselves can affect our actions.

He performed this study among two groups of voters. They were given a task to complete questions related to an upcoming election. Questions asked to one group included a verb to vote, for example “How important is it for you to vote?”

The second group answered similar questions included the noun Voter, instead of the verb, like “How important is it for you to be a Voter?”

The researchers cross referenced voting records to confirm whether they have actually voted. The results showed that a minor difference in words proved to make a big difference. It showed that being a voter were much more likely to vote than those who were asked how likely they were to vote!

Going beyond to ensure the results were correct, researchers conducted another election to confirm the validity, but the results were the same. The Voter group dramatically outperformed the to vote group.

The results concluded that individuals are more likely to act when that act is represented as an expression of them, like their personal self, character or behavior, in other words their Identity.

Nir Eyal, in his book Indistractable writes, “Identity is another cognitive shortcut that helps our brain make otherwise difficult choices in advance, thereby streamlining decision making. Our perception of who we are changes what we do.”

By thinking of yourself as a person with identity, YOU empower yourself and YOU trigger your actions!

You can also use this Identity as a rationale to tell others why you do what you do!

Use it wisely.

courtesy ~ Nir Eyal | From the Book InDistractable