Identity Salience Of Identity

As people have a repository of group identities, they may also have various personal attributes with which they define themselves according to the context (Spears 2011, Burke and Stets (2009). They may be a manager, a student, an athlete, a mother, an Asian or anything else; or they may see themselves, for instance, independent, extrovert, shy, smart, reserved person. At any particular time, People can access only smart part of what they believe and view about themselves (McConnell 2011) to be an active or working identity (Markus and Wurf 1987). Because identity is highly malleable and situation-sensitive, which aspect of identity that is accessible is a dynamic product of what is chronically accessible and situational cued (Oyserman 2009, Forehand, Deshpande, Reed 2002). More specifically, the working self-concept is affected by identity importance or chronic identity (Deshpande, Hoyer, Donthu 1986, Reed 2004) and identity salience (Forehand, Deshpande, and Reed 2002, Reed 2004).
Identity literature suggest that some conceptions of the self are likely to be chronically accessible in many different situations because of their importance in identifying or defining the self. Those self-concepts represent self-importance or self-strength or chronic identity. It refers to a relatively enduring …show more content…
Bruner (1957), Oakes (1987) suggest that the salience of a given identity is a product of the “perceptual readiness” (or accessibility) of the relevant attribute or dimension and its “fit” to the underlying social reality (Spears 2011). According to Bruner and Oakes, salient identity must have a relatively high comparative fit and normative fit. Comparative fit is defined as perceived differences relative to available alternative in the context, while normative fit refers to the meaning or the content associated with the respective