It Is Primarily Through Our Identification with Social Groups That We Define Ourselves.

The statement indicates that individual’s identity is largely shaped by the social groups he fits in. Living in a globalization era, individuals with diverse social and cultural backgrounds come together to compose multicultural societies. To fully understand people around, we need to differentiate them by examining their links with the society. Therefore, the importance of searching for such links jumps into the discussion.

Individual’s link with the society is generally expressed by the social groups they belong to.

Social groups refer to the collections of individuals who share common nationality, religions, professions or even beliefs. It is impossible for an individual to live in isolation, thus in order to fit in these social groups, we constantly seek for defining ourselves with characteristics that our peers in the group present.

The most general social group is the nation, where people who are born and raised in the same country would share the characteristic of having an identical nationality. An identical nationality is expressed by numerous things we are raised up to, ranging from the same language we speak, similar education process we go through to similar social norms we live up to. For example, an US national in general speaks English; has formal education that values experiment and interests and lives up to social norms that emphasize independent and democratic. Whereas a Chinese national in general speaks Chinese; has 9-year compulsory education that values scores and book knowledge and lives up to social norms that stress cooperation and conformity. A sharing nationality thus have potential impact on how people think and behave in all aspects. When we meet people with different nation groups, such different ways of thinking and behaving would be obvious, allowing us to differentiate them accordingly.

Moving on to the community level, which people are usually characterized by the professions they have. People have different roles in the society: professions like students, professors, doctors and lawyers have unique characteristics required by the