A C T Л U N I V E R S I T Ä T I S L O O Z I E N S I S FOLIA SOCIO LO GI CA 22, 1991
Part II
LIFE CYCLE. IDENTIFY AND INS T I T U T I O N S
Mirja T ol kki -Nikkonen
SOCIAL IOENTITY: SOME PRELIM I NAR Y C O M P A R I S O N S B ET WEEN F INLAND ANO POLAND
1. B ac kground of the study
The idea to study social identity, and p a r t i c u l a r l y the i d e n -tity of men and women, comes from an a rticle by Z. Bokszański, who analyse d the d es cri p tio ns given by d at in g se r v i c e c us tomers of themselves and the par tner they were hop in g to meet. Since we do not have this kind of dating ser vice in Finland, we drew our material from a d v ert i seme n ts of a p e n f r ie nd club! 160 a d v e r -tisements wr i tte n by men and 193 by women. A pilot study was first c arried out on the basis of p e r sona l ads in new s p a p e r s and magazines; this data was later co m p a r e d with our pe n fr i e n d m a terial. In addition, we used letters wri t ten by s t u d ent s p r e t e n d -ing they were look-ing for a par tn er through n e w s p ap er ads.
In the a d v erti s eme n ts we studied, the d e s c r i p t i o n s - w o m e n ’s d e s c rip tio ns of themselves and of men, and m e n ’s d e s c r ip ti ons of themselves and of women - sug ge st ed that the social identity of women is some wha t con tr adictor y, while the d e s c r i p t i o n s p r e s ented by men are more stereotyped. There were rather clear d i f -ferences bet ween w o m e n ’s sel f -im a ge and male d e s c r i p t i o n s of women, whereas m e n ’s image of th e mselves was very sim i lar to what wo men ex p ecte d or wan ted to find in men. D e s c r i p t i o n s of men, both by men themselves and by women, tend to be far mor e str a igh
t-forward than d es cr ip ti ons of women, whether these are by men or w o m e n .
The str uctures of the descrip t ions was similar to that found in the Polish ones. Women tended to emphasi ze their hob bies and leisure act ivities in descrip tions of themselves. These are rarely m en ti o n e d in d es criptions of women by men, who usually refer to w o m e n ’s character. Character also appears frequently in male des c rip ti ons of themselves, but men also mention their hobbies. Smo ki ng and drinkin g habits were among the main d i -men sions that were taken up, regardl ess of whether the person who wrote the adv e rti s eme n t smoked or drank alcohol. App arently this is some sort of a code system in personal contact ads through which people describe their so - c all ed character and even their hobbies; that is, their social rather than personal identity.
In spring 1987, as part of this some project, I also s u b -mitted a Twenty Stateme nts Test (TST) to some of my students; in
this paper I shall pri marily discuss the results of this test. Also, I shall attempt to make some pre limi nary com parisons b e -tween the Fin ni sh and Polish results. The latter are based on the lecture by Z. Bokszartski on The identity of Polish workers and engineers, w hi ch he pre s ent ed at the Uni versity of Tampere in a"tumn 1986.
2. The method
I shall begin by bri efly exp l ain in g the me thod I have used; at least my Fin ni sh col l eagues are probably not very familiar with it. The roots of the TST test trace back to the Iowa school, whose approach to und er st an din g human b eh av io ur rested mainly on M e a d ’s concept of the self. Kuhn and his stu dents were guided by the. belief that a proper und er st and in g of the structure of selves would be helpful in the d ev elopment of a general theory of social behaviour. The chief r es earc h tool d ev eloped by the Iowa school was a pencil and paper measure of s e l f - a t t i t u d e s , known as the Twenty St a teme nts Test (TST) [ K u h n , M c P a r t - 1 a n d, 1954]. Re s pondents are asked to give 20 answers to the que stion "Who am I"? in a period of 12 minutes.
One of the cri tici s ms against the m ethod is that the pencil and paper measure ignores the most basic feature of human social behaviour: temporal process. B u b a n [1 9 8 6 ] is also sharply critical of the method. He argues that for the study of i n t e r -action pr o cess es the large body of the TST resea rc h inspired by Kuhn is of virtually no value. It is true of c ou rse that pencil and paper measu re s such as the TST are of little uti l ity when facing the pr o b lem of how two or more persons fit their b e -haviours together to form an acting social unity. But on the other hand the TST allows the individual to und e r t a k e a self- -presentation pro cedure in an u n s t r uc t ure d position. Through a sy s tema t ic analysis of the results, cer ta in p a t t ern e d c h a r a c -teristics can be detected; for example, the ratio of defin it ive - -c a tego rial and att ribu tive s e l f - d e f i n i t i o n s , the o c c ur re nc e of social identity ele ment s and their c h a r a c t e r i s t i c combinations, and the sub ject ive imp ortance att r ibu t ed to the individual elements [s e e e.g. G o r d o n , 1968]. In other words, through the TST test we get a p ic ture of the s tr ucture of identity. To a cer t ain extent this picture may also be c r o s s - s e c t i o n a l and include references to transitory contact s and states (e.g. 1 am anxious about the exam we have tomorrow).
Problem s of data collection. Ori gina lly my pu r pos e was to submit the test to a total of 120 th i rd-y ear stu dent s of economics. However, since the number of student s of ec o nomi cs in one course is smaller than this at the U ni versity of Tampere, we also in-vited some stu dent s of busin es s eco nom i cs and social sc i ence s to take part. All in all, we o bt a ine d 95 com pl e t e d questio nnaires: 19 from students of economics, 58 from st u dent s of business eco nomics and 18 from students of social sciences. The low number of stu dent s of eco nomics was due to the fact that part of the teachers simply forgot to ask their student s to fill in the questionnair es. It was also clear that in differe nt subject s the s t u d e n t s ’ attitud es to the test was rather different: the e c o -nom ists were less e n t h u si as tic about it, w h e rea s the social scienti sts took the test seriously.
In a few q ue st io nna ir es the responses Were such that they could not be used, and some stu dents did not wri te anyth in g at all. At first I feared that the whole test did not "work" with
students, since I found some seemingly absurd sta tements such as "I am a meatball", "I am a refrigerator", "I am the spring and the sun", etc. However, there were not very many of these kinds of answers, and they were simply be c la ssified as uncodable, as ti o r d о n [ 1968] did with his own similar answers ("superman, a flower, the sea, a shell on the beach"), without attempting to interpret them. It was not until I had collected the whole material (actually for Z. Bokszartski) that I realized there were several different aspects from which it could be a p p r o a c h -ed .
3. Problems
I decided to focus on the following problem areas in my analysis of the material,
* What kind of charact eriza tions do students use when d e -scribing themselves in a 1ST test?
K u h n and M c P a r t l a n d [1 9 5 4 ] categor ized the answers to their TST test dic hoto mousl y either as consensual r e ferences or as s u b c o n s e n s u a 1 ones. These content cat egor ies d i s -tinguish between statements which refer to groups and classes vhose limits and conditions of mem bers hip are matters of common a o w l e d g e , i.e. consensual; and those which refer to groups, classes, attributes, traits or any other matters which would re- quiiw' interpretation by the res pondents to be precise or to place him relative to other people, i.e. s u b c o n s e n s u a l . Examples of the consensual variety are student, girl, husband, from Chicago, oldest girl, studying engineering; examples of the subconsensual category are happy, bored, pretty good student, too heavy, good wife, interesting.
The consensual (categorial represe ntati ons typically associate the respondent with others, and the subconsensual) att ributive generally serve to distinguish the respondent from others or at least describe him i n d i v i d u a l i s t i c a l l y . It Is therefore possible that categorial definitions represent social identity and a t -tributive def initions personal identity. Social identity can be concept ualiz ed as the i n d i v i d u a l ’s major role and social type
categorizations. There are also research results which suggest that social identity elements are being "replaced" by personal identity elements: P a t a k i [ 1987 3 found in his study of H un garians a clear shift from cat eg o r i a l d e f i n i t i v e self-de fini- tions towards att ributive ones. This trend was c h a r a c t erist ic above all of uni versity and hig h-school students. Pataki explains this by arguing that students have not yet acc o m m o d a t e d t h e m -selves to the order and roles of the social d iv isio n of labour; they are to a great extent affected by the international s u b -culture of youth and its exp ress ive sphere. He also considers it likely thai this trend might underlie the p h e nome non usually termed as the increase of identity dilemmas or loss of i d e n -tity .
Do the students first use cat egorial s e l f - d e f i n i t i o n s and then movo on to att ributive ones? Kuhn and M c P a r t l a n d say that from the ordering of the responses on the page, it was evident that respondents tended to exhaust all of the c o n sens ual r e f e r e n -ces they would make before making subconsensual ref eren -ces - if indeed they made any.
Do the answers by male and female students d if fer in any
essential respects? Do women tend to describe the mselves relative to something; do men refer to more "absolute" cat eg o r i e s ?
In a sense this q ue stio n is a sequel of our analysis of the penfriend ads, where we found that the social identity of women is somewhat con trad ictor y and that the d e s c rip tions of men are more stereotyped. Other d i f fere nces have also been reported. G i l l i g a n [ 1 9 8 2 ] dis cove red that in response to the r e quest to describe themselves, all the women des crib ed a r e l a t i o n -ship, dep icting their identity in the con n e c t i o n of future mother, present wife, adopted child, or past lover. In the w o m e n ’s descrip tions identity is defined in a context of relatio nship and judged by a standard of r es pons ibili ty and care. For men, the tone of identity is different, clearer, more direct, more distinct and sharp-edged. Rep laci ng w o m e n ’s verbs of attachment, men have adj ectives of separation. Thus the male "I" is defined in sep arat ion and seen as having "real contact s and deep emotions or otherwise, wishing for them". R o o s [ 19873 has made similar dis cov e r i e s in his stu dies of Fin nish biographies: w o m e n ’s
biographies often focus on des criptions of the family members, whereas men often present a consistent, clear account of their adversities and achievements, strictly in the first person; other people remain in minor roles.
In addition to the problems described above, we were also interested in what is known as act or-observer divergence. 3 o- n e s and N i s b e t t [1971] argue that there is a p e r vasive tendency for actors to attribute their actions to s i t u a -tional/external causes, whereas observers tend to attribute the same actions to stable personal dis posi tions or the causes i n -ternal to the actors. In other words, personality traits are things other people have, i.e. each individual perceives all other individuals as having more stable personality traits than he pos sesses himself. However, the individual ■ sees himself as acting in accord with the demands and opp ortu nitie s inherent in each new situation. In our study we attempted to trace sings of actor-observer divergence in the letters written by 11 male and 34 female students to the pen friend club. They were asked to imagine that they were actually looking for a partner through the club, and to describe themselves and the kind of partner they would like to meet.
4. Results
Studying formed an important corners tone of the s t u d e n t s ’ identity; it was men tion ed by the majority (88%) of the r e s p o n d -ents. On the other hand, when the students were asked to describe themselves, various personal charact erist ics were by far the most important category; about one third of all the charact eriza tions fell under this category.
In my study I have attempted as far as possible to use the same cat egories as Bokszański has in his Polish study. However, I must repeat they my com parisons are still somewhat tentative; one par ticular factor which should be borne in mind is that the Polish results concern worker? and engineers, while the Finnish results are based on studies of students. Even within one country different groups tend to respond in slightly different ways
Fig.
place of
living Ideological and
belief ref. / personal \ hobbies jc= characteristics4 V I student] л kinship \ r e f . to w o r k ^ ^ ties »oral appraisals friendship ties human
being sex " transitory contacts / nationality political views ' me, myself Finland (M. Tolkki- Nikko nen)
state citieenship hobbies friendship kinship tlee ties V \ nation religion personality traits moral appraisals political views transitory ь contacts interest in political life Poland (Z. Bokszartski)
1. Identity categories: Fin n i s h s tu dent s and Pol ish wor kers and eng ineers
friendship tie* ideological and belief ref. place of living personal Ny characteristics hobbies moral appraisals I studentl
ref. to work kinship ties human being transitory contacts / political views nationality religion me, myself place of living transitory contacts V moral appraisals kinship \ ties hobbles friendship ties personal , characteristics nationality human being ideological a n d / belief r«f. / political views me, myself religion Female
[cf. e.g. P a t a k i, 1987]; it has also been found that students do not always reply In the same way as other people.
Figure 1 shows the cat egor ies that wer e use d by Finnish students when des crib ing themselves, and also the results a c -cording to which the identity of Polish p eo ple is built around kin ship ties, reference to work and p e r s o n a l i t y traits. Among Fin nish students, the most important cat e g o r i e s were studies (including reference to occupat ional role, acc o u n t i n g for 18* in the category), personal characterist ics, hob bies and sex.
As can be seen from Fig. 1 and 2, the ana l y s i s of all the answers pri marily describes the male identity, b e c ause in women kin ship ties are a much more central e at egor y than in men, while hobbies and sex are less important.
Personal cha rac t e r i s t i c s and ref erence to work (studies) occupy a central positio n both in Fin land and in Poland. In Fin nish students, kinship ties are a more p e r i p h e r a l element of identity; one possible e xp lana tion of this is that s tu dent s are at a stage of life where studies play a very imp orta nt role. It is possibl e that this sit uation will change once they have c o m -p leted their studies, because stage of life is indeed a very
important factor in social identity. Ano ther fea ture that is c ommon to the Fin nish and Polish res po n d e n t s is the lack of p o -litical and religious references. In the case of F i n n i s h students, this might be a r e f lect ion of the cur rent h i s t o r i c a l stage we are living in: I assume that 20 years ago the results may have been different. An interes ting detail was that the few students who referred to their political stand were all stu d e n t s of e c o -nomics .
The variety of c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n s p r e s e n t e d by the r e s pond ents (60* men tion ed 20 and the maj orit y of least 15) was wide i n -deed. Almost half of all the c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n s occ u r r e d only once. Less than one third of the c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n s ref e r r e d to personal cha racteristics, 12% referre d to stu dies and work and 8% to kin ship ties, transitory c o n tact s and hobbies. Other c a -tegories o cc urre d less fre quently (see Appendix).
On the basis of our material it is dif fi c u l t to answer any other que stio ns except this basic issue of how the stu dent s d e -scribe themselves, although the ord e r i n g of the res po n s e s was
more or less in accordance with our expectations: con sensual/ca- tegorial d e f init ions came first and s u b c o n s e nsua l/att ribu tive sel f-de finit ions after them. However, the res pondents did not exhaust all the consensual references before making subconsensual ones. The most typical deviation from the normal order was a reversion from subconsensual definit ions to consensual d e f i n i -tions .
We also found some signs of actor-o bserv er divergence. That is, there was a slight tendency for the students to describe themselves in their letters by reference to situational f a c -tors. Their d es crip tions of themselves could not be reduced to static bodies of per sonality traits in the same way as their des crip tions of the kind of partner they would like to meet.
Did the identities of men and women dif fer . f r o m each other? Did women use relative categories in des cribing the mselves? As we have already seen, the identities of men and woman centre around slightly different elements. If it is accepte d that the central role of kin ship and friendship ties in sel f-de finit ions is indicative of relative descriptions, then we may conclude that women did indeed des crib e themselves in more relative terms than m e n .
5 . What do the results indicate?
How does the int egration of various identity elements o c -cur, whe ther in the case of role identity or group ide ntity? Does the individual integrate the knowledge he has obt aine d on his roles and group m e m b ers hip into a unified cog nitive system in the course of identity construction, or does he acquire it in a specific pat te r n e d form?
P a t a k i [ 1 9 8 7 ] points out that we have the concepts of identity rep ertoire [ B e r g e r , 1966], identity types [ B e r -g e r , L u c k m a n , 1966 ], library of identity scripts [T a j f e 1, 19B1 ], identity model [ R o b e r t s o n , H o l z - n e r, 1980 ], and identity project [ H a r r e , 1983 ], which, all refer to the same empirical fact. The l e t t e r ’s essence is
that the identities or identity elements take a c o m plet e p a t -terned and mod el-l ike shape in the e xi stin g culture, thus b e c o m -ing the content of s o c iali zatio n and the subject of individual identity construction.
Thus in the p r e v ail ing culture of any society there are not only separated, individual role patterns, group pre sen t a t i o n s and social categories, but also more int egrated and m o d el-l ike Identity patterns. These p at tern s are org anic parts of the c u l tural o b j e c t i vatio ns of society and thus c o m p one nts of the s y m -bolic "codes" of that society. In that cap acit y they offer s u b -stantial models for the individuals to ela bora te their identities that suit their positions. Ind ividuals living in mod ern society must work out and mai ntai n their identities more and more by their own efforts, by more or less con scio us sel ecti ons from d i f -ferent options, by facing rival identity p at tern s and while liv-ing in that medium.
Against this background, I would argue that the results of our study on the pen friend ads, acc ording to w h i c h there are c o n trad ictor y elements in the social identity of women, may be interpreted as indicating that women know their options. By con-i trast, m e n ’s image of women is static. In other words, the social identity of women has changed, but these new sel f- i m a g e s do not cor resp ond to reality.
In modern societies there are a l t erna tive rol et a k i n g p o s -sibilities. One student of busines s eco nomics wrote: "The answer to the question, Who am I?, depends c o m plet ely on the role I have taken on today". The social identity of stu dent s would seem to be more or less transitional (even mutable?), which is s u g -gested by the numerous transitory and tra nsitional references. On the other hand, about half of all the c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n s were attributive. The social science students in par t i c u l a r used attribu tive c a t egor ies to des crib e themselves, and existential, ind ivid uatin g cat egor ies (me, an individual, an exi s t i n g being, myself) and ref eren ces to mem b e r s h i p of an abs trac t one (a p e r -son, a human being). Are the elements of social identity d i s -a pp e-ari ng from the s t u d e n t s ’s s e l f - d e f i n i t i o n s ? Whether or not this is possibly hap peni ng in the case of other groups as well
is a question we cannot answer on the basis of the present m a terial. There is however some evidence which would seem to s u g g -est a change: in the 1950s, K u h n and M c P a r t l a n d [1954] argued that "The consensual (more directly socially a n -chored) component of the sel f-co ncept ion is the more salient component. Stated differently, consensually supported self- -attitudes are at the top of the hierarchy of s e l f - a t t i t u d e s " .
In the TST tests carried out with students, there was no tendency for personal charact erist ics to con centrate in certain conventional traits in the same way as in the pen friend club ads. A possible explanation here is that people in search of a spouse (such as those who write personal contact ads) are in-clined to describe themselves and the partner they hope to find in terms of what are normally regarded as typical gen der-based characteristics. Thus in our ads the writers des cribed the m-selves most often as honest, credible, trustworthy, tender, fond of children; they also have a sense of humor and hold the family and home in high regard. If one had to name certain traits that recur at least a few times in the students' responses, it would seem that the students of economics are determined, ambitious, s elfish and either diligent or lazy; the social science students
say they are empathie.
A cc ordi ng to the penfriend ads, "good" women should take an Aiłterest in dancing, literature, music, eve ning s at home, o u t -door life, nee d l e w o r k and travel; "good" men sho uld take an interest in music, literature, cars, out door activities, films and eve n i n g s at home. Our stu dent s of eco nomi cs were mainly interested in all sorts of sports (from glider flying, skiing and s h o otin g to various kinds of team games); female students p r e f err ed var ious outdoor activities, travel, and sports. Social science stu dents - the few who m e n t i o n e d any hob bies - said they liked going to the movies, r ea ding and spe ctat or sports. These " a c c u m u l a t i n g ” traits and hobbies are pro bably part of the s t e r e o -type of a student of a c er tain sub ject rather than of his actual personal identity.
A p p e n d i x Fre quency of cat egor ies used by students
in TST s e l f - d e scrip tions Detail N « 63 men % N s 32 women
4
N
» 95 all4
Personal c h a r a c t e r i -stics 263 29 124 25 387 28Students, ref erence
to work 99 11 73 15 172 12
Kinship ties 54 6 54 11 10B 8
Hobbies 93 10 19 4 112 8
Transitory contacts,
sit uational ref 65 7 41 8 106 8
Sex 3B 19 57 May of life 36 21 57 Nat ionality 38 16 54 Uncodable 39 14 53 Age 32 19 51 Human being 32 14
46
Place of r e s i d -ence 2B 14 42 Ideological ref 22 15 37 He, myself 13 17 30 Physical a p p e a r -ance 13 В 21Pol itical views 17 3 20
F r i e n d s h i p ties
a
8 16Home 3 7 10
Rel igio n 6 4» 6
I d o n ’t kno w who
'I am - 4 4
Moral a p p r ais als 1 - 1
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Mirja Tolkki- Nikko nen TOŻSAMOŚĆ SPOŁECZNA:
WSTĘPNE PORÓWNANIE F IŃSKO-POLSKIE
Prz edst awion e badania mają swoje źródła w s t u d i u m spo łecz nej tożsamości m ę ż cz yz n i kobiet w świetle o s o b i s t y c h kontaktów. U s t a -lono, że tożsamość społeczna kobiet jest jakby w e w n ę t r z n i e s p r z e -czna, podczas gdy opisy prz e ds t a w i o n e przez m ęż c z y z n są bar dzie j stereotypowe. Str uktura opisów jest bardzo zbl iżon a do po l skic h aut ocha ra kte ry sty k , a n a l izo w any c h przez Z. Bokszartskiego. 100 fiń skich stu den t ów wy p eł n i ł o k w e s t i o n a r i u s z e testu 20 zdań w i o s -ną 1987 r.
Na podstawie tego m at eri a łu w artykule p od ano a u t o c h a r a k t e r y -styki studentów, użycie kategorii i aut o de f i n i c j i cz yli s p o ł e c z -ne i osobiste def inicje tożsamości, różnice mię d zy m ę ż c z y z n a m i i kobietami. R ez ultaty testu 20 zdań (TST) pok azują, że studenci opisują siebie głównie przy pomocy c zt e r e c h ka t egor ii: praca (st udencka i zawodowa), cechy osobiste, h o b b y i płeć. O d n i e s i e nia moralne, pol ityczne i religij ne n ależą do k a t e go r i i p e r y f e -ryjnych. Studia i cechy oso biste są wy m i e n i a n e zar ówn o przez m ę ż -czyzn, jak l kobiety, ale mężczyź ni głównie podaw al i hobby i płeć, podczas gdy kobiety - więzi rodzinne. Kobiety również d e f i n i o w a -ły, bardz ie j niż mężczyźni, w ter m ina ch relatywnych. Jed nakże na pytanie o n a j waż n iejs z ą kat eg or ię aut ode f i nic j i od p owiadano, że jest nią cecha osobista, tzw. charakter. We w s z y s t k i c h s p o ł e c z e ń st wach i k u l t ura c h znaleźć można m o d ele tożsamo ści, kt óre s t a n o -wią k o m pon e nty s y m boli c zny c h "kodów" do m in u j ą c e j k u l t u r y dan ego spo łeczeństwa. Jednym z takich wz o rów jest praca, bądź świadom y wybór własnej drogi.
W badaniu ogł osze ń poś w i ę c o n y c h p os z u k i w a n i u p a r t n e r ó w ( p r z y -jaciół) sil niej szy nacisk kła d zio n o na sp o ł ecz n ą niż na i n d y w i -dualną toż samość - na to co zwykle traktuje się jako typowe c e -chy płci, podczas gdy w wy p o w i e d z i a c h s t u d e nt ów na cisk p o ł o ż o -no na ind ywid u alną tożsamość. Poj aw ia się pyt ani e czy eleme nt y toż samości sp o łecznej w s t u den c kic h a u t o d e f i n i c j a c h r z e c z y w i -ście zanikają?
