Identification (psychology)
Identification is a psychological process in which a person adopts or experiences another person’s traits, roles, or thoughts as part of the self.
Social learning theory: A theory that explains learning through observation, imitation, and consequences. It explains how observing a model can lead someone to adopt that person’s behavior.
Sigmund Freud: An Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed influential theories of unconscious mental life. Freud made identification central to accounts of the ego, group bonds, and development.
Gender identity: A person’s internal sense of their gender, which may or may not match sex assigned at birth. Identification with gendered roles or figures can contribute to some developmental accounts of gender identity.
Introjection: A psychoanalytic process in which qualities or attitudes of another person are taken into the self. The term overlaps with identification, though psychoanalytic traditions distinguish their mechanisms and uses.
Superego: In Freud’s structural model, the mental agency associated with internalized standards, ideals, and prohibitions. Freud traced parts of the superego to identifications with parental figures.
Internalization: The process by which external rules, values, or ideas become part of a person’s own mental framework. Identification can turn another person’s attitudes or standards into self-guiding beliefs.
The Ego and the Id: Sigmund Freud’s 1923 work distinguishing the ego, id, and superego in a structural model of the mind. Freud describes identification as a process through which the ego takes shape.
Group identification: The experience of belonging to a social group and incorporating its membership into one’s self-concept. It applies identification to the formation of collective identity and group attachment.
Conformity: A change in behavior or expressed belief to align with a group’s norms. Conformity can change public behavior without making the group’s qualities part of the self.
Social identity: The part of a person’s self-concept derived from perceived membership in social groups. Group identification contributes to the broader phenomenon of social identity.