personal essays on identity

93 Personal Identity Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best personal identity topic ideas & essay examples, ⭐ interesting topics to write about personal identity, ✅ simple & easy personal identity essay titles, ❓ research questions about identity.

• How Does Culture Affect the Self Identity Personal Essay The economic background, family relations and ethnic distinctions have contributed significantly to the personality trait of being a low profile person who is considerate of others.
• Personal Identity Under the Influence of Community In other words, how individuals are raised in society is essential in facilitating the ability to predict the conduct and even future roles within the group. The community values that are embraced and respected are […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Music Role in Personal and Social Identities Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to answer the question ‘How does music contribute to personal and social identities?’ In answering this question, the paper will develop a comprehensive analysis of a number of […]
• Bernard Williams The Self and the Future and Psychological Continuity Theory of Personal Identity The researches and ideas of Bernard Williams are focused on the necessity of personal awareness about the experiment; “they [Person A and Person B] may even have been impressed by philosophical arguments to the effect […]
• Exploring a Personal Identity: What Defines Me as an Individual However, due to openness to new ideas and the ability to retain my cultural values, I have managed to shape my personal identity in a unique way that included both the core values of my […]
• Personal Identity & Self-Reflection In the reflection, Ivan examined his past life and the values that he had lived by in all of his life.
• Music and the Construction of Personal and Social Identities Despite the relative difference between the current and the past music experience, it is clear that music has increasingly been used in the construction of the youths’ identities.
• Respect and Self-Respect: Impact on Interpersonal Relationships and Personal Identity It is fundamental to human nature to want to be heard and listened to.indicates that when you listen to what other people say, you show them respect at the basic level.
• Recognizing Homosexuality as a Personal Identity According to Freud, all human beings are inherently bisexual, and homosexuality results from a malfunction in the process of sexual development.
• Personal Identity and Teletransportation Moreover, according to his views, one soul can live in several bodies in different lives, which resembles the concept of reincarnation, but at the same time, a person is not the same.
• Personal Identity Description The topic of personal identity has been presenting a matter of interest for numerous philosophers throughout the whole history of humanity.
• Leisure and Consumption: Cell Phones and Personal Identity Foley, Holzman, and Wearing aim to confirm the improvement of the quality of human experiences in public spaces through the application of cell phones.
• Personal Troubles: Deviance and Identity It is therefore a violation of social norms and failure to conform to these norms that are entrenched in the culture of the society.
• The Trouble Distinguishing Personal Identity From Perception of Reality The play of Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman is a brilliant example of how perception of reality influences personal identity.
• Sexuality and Personal Identity Deployment by Foucault Thesis Statement: Foucault suggests that the “deployment” of sexuality is closely connected with the deployment of integrity, which is the main principle of the social and political welfare of the state.
• Cultural and Personal Identity: Mothers and Shadows Memory knots, as the term, have been employed to refer to sites of humanity, sites in time, and sites of physical matter or geography.
• Importance of Personal Identity The first stated that the continuity of personality is reliant on the sameness of the body, while the opposing view proclaimed that only the sameness of the soul could signify the sameness of a person.
• Personal Identity Change and Identification Acts It appears that, instead of being referred to as the agent of ‘identity change’, the act of ‘identification’ should be discussed as one among many strategies, deployed by people on the way of trying to […]
• Personal Information Use and Identity Theft The study provided a national scale analysis of identity theft patterns in the United States between 2002 and 2006. The form of government documentation and benefits of fraud have contributed to the increase in identity […]
• Influence of the Fashion Attributes on the Social Status and Personal Identity In the end, the primary goal of the paper is to propose the suitable methodology and analysis of the information to find the relevant answer to the research question.
• A.A. Bronson’s Through the Looking Glass: His Personal Identity as a Canadian Artist Thus, his work Through the Looking Glass is the one of the best works that reflect the author’s vision of reality and the one that reflects the author’s sense of Canadian identity.
• Locke and Hume’s Discussions of the Idea of Personal Identity He argues that, the identity of a soul alone in an embryo of man is one and same that is the identity of it in a fully grown up man.
• Ship of Theseus and Personal Identity Regarding the Ship of Theseus, the ship changed a lot but it remained the same in terms of its properties. Equally, Y could be said to be the same as Z in terms of properties.
• Human Freedom and Personal Identity In demonstrating a working knowledge of psychoanalysis theory of consciousness and personal identity it is clear that being conscious of my personal endowments, gifts and talents, in addition to the vast know how and skill […]
• Psychological Foundations Behind Personal Identity
• Behind the Scenes: The Effects of Acting on Personal Identity
• Psychology: Personal Identity and Self Awareness
• The Personal Identity and the Psychology for the Child Development
• Defining Yourself and Personal Identity in Philosophy
• Personal Identity Challenges and Survival
• Cultural Diversity, Racial Intolerance, and Personal Identity
• Identification Process: Personal Contiguity and Personal Identity
• Personal Identity and Career Management
• Habits: Bridging the Gap Between Personhood and Personal Identity
• Personal Identity and Psychological Continuity
• Gender Roles and Personal Identity
• Personal Identity and Social Identity: What’s the Difference
• Three Theories of Personal Identity: The Body Theory, Soul Theory, and the Conscious Theory
• Personal Identity and the Definition of One’s Self
• Creative Industries and Personal Identity
• Psychological Continuity Theory of Personal Identity
• Generation Gap: Family Stories and Personal Identity
• How Antidepressants Affect Selfhood, Teenage Sexuality, and Personal Identity
• Personal Identity, Ethics, Relation, and Rationality
• Philosophical Views for Personal Identity, Inventory, and Reflection
• The Role and Importance of Personal Identity in Philosophy
• Personal Identity and Its Effect on Pre-procedural Anxiety
• Self-Discovery, Social Identity, and Personal Identity
• Psychological Continuity: Personal, Ethnic and Cultural Identity
• Person and Immortality: Personal Identity and Afterlife
• Cultural Norms, Language, and Personal Identity
• Socialization, Personal Identity, Gender Identity, and Terrorism
• Personal Identity: Bundle and Ego Theory
• Society and the Importance of a Unique Personal Identity
• Political Issues Through Personal Identity
• Conflict Between Personal Identity and Public Image
• Difference Between Personal Identity and Online Identity
• Noninvasive Brain Stimulation and Personal Identity: Ethical Consideration
• Personal Identity and Psychological Reductionism
• Bodily, Psychological and Personal Identity
• Memory Role in Personal Identity
• Unique and Different Types of Personal Identity
• Capabilities and Personal Identity: Using Sen to Explain Personal Identity in Folbre’s ‘Structures of Constraint’ Analysis
• Genetic Memory and Personal Identity
• Does Group Identity Prevent Inefficient Investment in Outside Options?
• Does Student Exchange Program Involve a Nations Identity?
• How America Hinders the Cultural Identity of Their Own Citizens?
• Are Education Issues Identity Issues?
• Are Persons With Dissociative Identity Disorder Responsible for Bad?
• How Do Advertisers Shape the Identity, Values, and Beliefs of Any Culture?
• What Factors Affect the Development of Ego Identity?
• Can Social Identity Theory Address the Ethnocentric Tendencies of Consumers?
• How Are Adolescents Responsible for Their Own Identity?
• Did the Mongols Create a More Diverse Islamic Identity?
• Why Corporate and White Collar Crimes Rarely Dealt in Criminal Courts Culture and Identity?
• What’s the Relationship Between Communication and Identity?
• Does Globalization Affect Our Culture Identity?
• What Does Ethnicity Affect a Person’s Identity?
• Does Trauma Shape Identity?
• What Does Identity Tell Us About Someone?
• How Beauty Standards Have Shaped Women’s Identity?
• How Has Bisexuality Been an Ambiguous Sexual Identity?
• What Does Identity Mean?
• How and Why Does Ethnic Identity Affect the Idea of ‘Beauty’ Cross-Culturally?
• Can Consumption and Branding Be Considered a Part of a Person’s Identity?
• What Has Caused Britain to Lose Its Sense of Identity?
• How Antidepressants Affect Selfhood, Teenage Sexuality, and Our Quest for Personal Identity?
• Does Identity Affect Aspirations in Rural India?
• Do Identity Contingencies Affect More Than Just One Race?
• Does Identity Incompatibility Lead to Disidentification?
• Does Social Inequality Affect a Person’s Identity?
• Why Is Identity Important in Education?
• Can People Choose Their Identity?
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• Chicago (N-B)

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Why Identity Matters and How It Shapes Us

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

Verywell / Zoe Hansen

Defining Identity

• What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

Identity Development Across the Lifespan

The importance of identity, tips for reflecting on your identity.

Your identity is a set of physical, mental, emotional, social, and interpersonal characteristics that are unique to you.

It encapsulates your core personal values and your beliefs about the world, says Asfia Qaadir , DO, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at PrairieCare.

In this article, we explore the concept of identity, its importance, factors that contribute to its development , and some strategies that can help you reflect upon your identity.

Your identity gives you your sense of self. It is a set of traits that distinguishes you from other people, because while you might have some things in common with others, no one else has the exact same combination of traits as you.

Your identity also gives you a sense of continuity, i.e. the feeling that you are the same person you were two years ago and you will be the same person two days from now.

Asfia Qaadir, DO, Psychiatrist

Your identity plays an important role in how you treat others and how you carry yourself in the world.

What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

These are some of the factors that can contribute to your identity:

• Physical appearance
• Physical sensations
• Emotional traits
• Life experiences
• Genetics 
• Health conditions
• Nationality
• Race  
• Social community 
• Peer group 
• Political environment
• Spirituality
• Sexuality 
• Personality
• Beliefs 
• Finances 

We all have layers and dimensions that contribute to who we are and how we express our identity.

All of these factors interact together and influence you in unique and complex ways, shaping who you are. Identity formation is a subjective and deeply personal experience.

Identity development is a lifelong process that begins in childhood, starts to solidify in adolescence, and continues through adulthood.

Childhood is when we first start to develop a self-concept and form an identity.

As children, we are highly dependent on our families for our physical and emotional needs. Our early interactions with family members play a critical role in the formation of our identities.

During this stage, we learn about our families and communities, and what values are important to them, says Dr. Qaadir. 

The information and values we absorb in childhood are like little seeds that are planted years before we can really intentionally reflect upon them as adults, says Dr. Qaadir.

Traumatic or abusive experiences during childhood can disrupt identity formation and have lasting effects on the psyche.

Adolescence

Adolescence is a critical period of identity formation.

As teenagers, we start to intentionally develop a sense of self based on how the values we’re learning show up in our relationships with ourselves, our friends, family members, and in different scenarios that challenge us, Dr. Qaadir explains.

Adolescence is a time of discovering ourselves, learning to express ourselves, figuring out where we fit in socially (and where we don’t), developing relationships, and pursuing interests, says Dr. Qaadir.

This is the period where we start to become independent and form life goals. It can also be a period of storm and stress , as we experience mood disruptions, challenge authority figures, and take risks as we try to work out who we are.

As adults, we begin building our public or professional identities and deepen our personal relationships, says Dr. Qaadir.

These stages are not set in stone, rather they are fluid, and we get the rest of our lives to continue experiencing life and evolving our identities, says Dr. Qaadir.

Having a strong sense of identity is important because it:

• Creates self-awareness: A strong sense of identity can give you a deep sense of awareness of who you are as a person. It can help you understand your likes, dislikes, actions, motivations, and relationships.
• Provides direction and motivation: Having a strong sense of identity can give you a clear understanding of your values and interests, which can help provide clarity, direction, and motivation when it comes to setting goals and working toward them.
• Enables healthy relationships: When you know and accept yourself, you can form meaningful connections with people who appreciate and respect you for who you are. A strong sense of identity also helps you communicate effectively, establish healthy boundaries, and engage in authentic and fulfilling interactions.
• Keeps you grounded: Our identities give us roots when things around us feel chaotic or uncertain, says Dr. Qaadir. “Our roots keep us grounded and help us remember what truly matters at the end of the day.”
• Improves decision-making: Understanding yourself well can help you make choices that are consistent with your values, beliefs, and long-term goals. This clarity reduces confusion, indecision, and the tendency to conform to others' expectations, which may lead to poor decision-making .
• Fosters community participation: Identity is often shaped by cultural, social, political, spiritual, and historical contexts. Having a strong sense of identity allows you to understand, appreciate, and take pride in your cultural heritage. This can empower you to participate actively in society, express your unique perspective, and contribute to positive societal change.

On the other hand, a weak sense of identity can make it more difficult to ground yourself emotionally in times of stress and more confusing when you’re trying to navigate major life decisions, says Dr. Qaadir.

Dr. Qaadir suggests some strategies that can help you reflect on your identity:

• Art: Art is an incredible medium that can help you process and reflect on your identity. It can help you express yourself in creative and unique ways.
• Reading: Reading peoples’ stories through narrative is an excellent way to broaden your horizons, determine how you feel about the world around you, and reflect on your place in it.
• Journaling: Journaling can also be very useful for self-reflection . It can help you understand your feelings and motivations better.
• Conversation: Conversations with people can expose you to diverse perspectives, and help you form and represent your own.
• Nature: Being in nature can give you a chance to reflect undisturbed. Spending time in nature often has a way of putting things in perspective.
• Relationships: You can especially strengthen your sense of identity through the relationships around you. It is valuable to surround yourself with people who reflect your core values but may be different from you in other aspects of identity such as personality styles, cultural backgrounds, passions, professions, or spiritual paths because that provides perspective and learning from others.

American Psychological Association. Identity .

Pfeifer JH, Berkman ET. The development of self and identity in adolescence: neural evidence and implications for a value-based choice perspective on motivated behavior . Child Dev Perspect . 2018;12(3):158-164. doi:10.1111/cdep.12279

Hasanah U, Susanti H, Panjaitan RU. Family experience in facilitating adolescents during self-identity development . BMC Nurs . 2019;18(Suppl 1):35. doi:10.1186/s12912-019-0358-7

Dereboy Ç, Şahin Demirkapı E, et al. The relationship between childhood traumas, identity development, difficulties in emotion regulation and psychopathology . Turk Psikiyatri Derg . 2018;29(4):269-278.

Branje S, de Moor EL, Spitzer J, Becht AI. Dynamics of identity development in adolescence: a decade in review . J Res Adolesc . 2021;31(4):908-927. doi:10.1111/jora.12678

Stirrups R.  The storm and stress in the adolescent brain .  The Lancet Neurology . 2018;17(5):404. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30112-1

Fitzgerald A. Professional identity: A concept analysis . Nurs Forum . 2020;55(3):447-472. doi:10.1111/nuf.12450

National Institute of Standards and Technology. Identity .

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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Home Essay Samples Philosophy

Essay Samples on Personal Identity

Personal identity encompasses the fundamental question of “Who am I?” It delves into the complex layers of our individuality, examining the factors that define and distinguish us as unique beings. Exploring personal identity involves introspection and contemplation of various aspects, such as our beliefs, values, experiences, and relationships. It invites us to unravel the intricacies of our self-perception and the influences that shape our identities in personal identity essay examples.

How to Write an Essay on Personal Identity

When crafting an essay on personal identity, it is essential to begin by defining the term and setting the stage for further exploration. Establish a strong thesis statement that outlines your perspective on the topic. Consider incorporating personal anecdotes or real-life examples to illustrate your points effectively. Remember to maintain a logical flow of ideas, guiding your readers through the intricate terrain of personal identity. Conclude your essay by summarizing key findings and offering thought-provoking insights or suggestions for further exploration of the topic.

To create an engaging and comprehensive personal identity essay, delve into various philosophical, psychological, and sociocultural perspectives on personal identity. Explore influential theories, such as John Locke’s bundle theory or David Hume’s notion of the self as a bundle of perceptions. Analyze the impact of cultural and societal factors on shaping personal identities, highlighting the interplay between individual agency and external influences.

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Drawing upon reputable sources and research studies will lend credibility to your essay, allowing readers to explore different perspectives and deepen their understanding of personal identity.

Whether you are seeking free essay on personal identity or aiming to develop your own unique viewpoint, our collection of essays will serve as an invaluable resource.

How Does Society Shape Our Identity

How does society shape our identity? Society acts as a powerful force that molds the intricate contours of our identities. As individuals, we are not isolated entities; we are products of the societies we inhabit. This essay explores the dynamic interplay between society and identity,...

• Personal Identity

How Does Family Influence Your Identity

Family is a powerful force that weaves the threads of our identity. The relationships, values, and experiences within our family unit play a significant role in shaping who we become. This essay delves into how family influences our identity, from the formation of core beliefs...

Exploring the Relationship Between Illness and Identity

In this essay I will be exploring the relationship between illness and identity, drawing on specific examples documented in the article ‘Disrupted lives and threats to identity: The experience of people with colorectal cancer within the first year following diagnosis’, by Gill Hubbard, Lisa Kidd...

Evolving Identities: The Concept of Self-Identity and Self-Perception

For centuries psychologists, like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung have discussed the concept of self-identity and self-perception. In social sciences, identity refers to an individual's or party's sense of who they are and what defines them. As the human condition, we have evolved to form...

• Self Identity

Free Cultural Identity: Understanding of One's Identity

The term ‘identity’ is vaguely defined or given a specific definition which means that we, as people, are constantly on this quest for identity, a validation of who we are. We do not want to be influenced or touched by society’s ideas or its ways...

• Cultural Identity

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My Cultural Identity and Relationship with God

Cultural identity influences every characteristic of a person, both outward and inward. My cultural identity consists of various factors. I was born and raised in the United States, specifically in Tennessee. While I was born in Nashville, I lived most of my life in Athens....

My Cultural Identity and Preserving Ancestors' Traditions

I'm a multicultural person living in the United States. Born in the Philippines; I was wrongly recognized as a Latino in my school from time to time. Both of my parents are Filipino, and I both speak fluent English and Tagalog, but I don't speak...

Gregor Samsas` Burden In "The Metamorphosis" By F. Kafka

Everyone has dreamed of a crazy dream that made them go crazy as it was unbelievable, but what you will do if that dream turned out to be a reality that you are living? “The metamorphosis” is a short novella written by Franz Kafka which...

• The Metamorphosis

Reflections On Personal Intercultural Experience

Intercultural experience has introduced me to new ideas, revealed layers of concepts I was previously familiar with, and modified my original perceptions of particular notions. The course has allowed me to re-establish my feelings, thoughts, and opinions comprehensively, by encouraging reflection on my instinctive communicative...

• Intercultural Communication

Literature of African Diaspora as a Postcolonial Discourse

Literature of diaspora as a postcolonial discourse addresses issues such as home, nostalgia, formation of identity and to the interaction between people in diaspora and the host society, the center and the margin. Sufran believes that ‘diaspora’ is used as a ‘metaphoric designation’ to describe...

• African Diaspora
• Anthropology

The Ideology of Giving People Status or Reward

A meritocratic society is based on the ideology of giving people status or reward based on what they achieve rather than their wealth or social position. However, it could be argued that a meritocratic is just, and arguments that a meritocratic society is not just....

• Just Society

Features And Things That Shape Your Identity

“Who am I?”, “What is my identity?” these are the two inquiries I frequently ask myself. In my opinion, identity can be described as who you truly are or what distinguished from others. I am no different from my classmates. I go to school, eat,...

• Individual Identity

Identity Crisis: What Shapes Your Identity

Your Identity is your most valuable possession, protect it (Elastic Girl). Once in our lifetime, we ask ourselves this question that is difficult to answer. Who are we? What makes up my personality? These type of self-questions make us think about ourselves. Knowing our identity...

• Finding Yourself

My Passion And Searching What You Are Passionate About

What does being passionate even mean well being passionate means showing or caused by strong feelings or a strong belief. In that case, the music is what I’m passionate about. I’ve loved listening to music for as long as I can remember. Personally I feel...

The Importance Of Inner Beauty Over Outer Beauty

Human beings identify items or other human beings as beautiful if they possess traits that they commend, would like to possess, or features they find remarkable. Substance is beautiful if it is special in a favorable way; if it is interesting to look at; something...

• Physical Appearance

The Exterior Beauty Is Superior To Inner Beauty

The word ‘beauty’ looks just like a simple word, but it has a complex meaning; people give it a lot of definitions based on their own prejudice. This word is a magic world of characteristics which make each person unique; attributes that make us special...

What Book Of Matthew Teaches About Being Ourselves

Matthew 9:9-13 It's easy to go through life wearing different masks. We pretend that everything is ok. We’re more concerned about the outside, what people are going to think, our image. It takes a lot of work to deal with the inner issues: character, motives,...

• Being Yourself
• Biblical Worldview

Theme of Self-Identity in the Graphic Novels American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

The coming of age genre is reflective of the life-changing moments in the lives of every growing adolescent. The stories share a mixture of minor yet pivotal events that allow the readers to see themselves in a moment where they are experiencing numerous emotions that...

• American Born Chinese

Factors That Affected the Formation of My Personal Identity

Personal identity is a difficult topic, especially in the current time where we are assailed by internet trends challenging us to compromise and change our identity to fit in. One of the biggest facets of my identity is the fact that I have lived in...

How Child Beauty Pageants Ruin Self Image of Younger Population

Self image is a big problem today, especially with social media being such a big part of our lives. Beauty pageants are a big part of this problem and is making it even worse. Beauty pageants can cause a lot of mental problems. It must...

• Child Beauty Pageants
• Child Psychology

Fictional and Cultural Analysis of Obasan in Japanese Culture

Holistic thinking allows for the highest benefit in all areas of a healthy life and planning for or taking action to support the healthiest outcome with balance in all areas. The term 'holistic thinking” in the Japanese culture refers to a picture of mentality in...

The Speaker’s Conflict with Identity in Neruda’s “We Are Many”

The problem of self-identification is a frequent topic for reflection by philosophers and psychologists. Each person can express himself in different ways in different conditions and situations. The speaker of Pablo Neruda’s “We Are Many” is very puzzled by his own uncertain identity and wants...

• Pablo Neruda

House of Mirth: The Causes of Failure in the Narrative

Lily Bart is a terrible person. She's a single-minded buffoon characterized by hypocrisy, gluttony, and greed. She's not only ignorant and lazy but proud of her ignorance and defensive of her laziness. So, how do I think I can get away with talking about her...

• The House of Mirth

Self-Acceptance and Identity in The House of Mirth

My thoughts when it comes to the subject of 'Is House of Mirth feminist?' is that this is ultimately the wrong question to ask because when you're looking at anything and asking 'Is ______ feminist?', you are asking the wrong question. This is the wrong...

The Effects of Anger on Other Human Emotions

Anger is like a drug, addictive. Everyone gets those feelings everyday of jealousy or comparison; or maybe someone says something that rubs you the wrong way. Anger can have many effects on a person. While mainly effecting someone’s emotions, anger can also cause a strain...

• Human Nature

The Search for the True Identity of Richard III in a Play

Looking for the resonances and dissonances between texts allows audiences to understand a textual conversation, which acts as a vehicle through which we evaluate changes in contexts, values and interpretations of texts. The resonances between William Shakespeare's tragedy King Richard III (1592) and Al Pacino's...

• Richard III

The Search for Identity in What You Pawn I Will Redeem

In the story, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie, the author describes Jackson’s notion of Identity by introducing himself as a homeless, middle-aged, alcoholic Indian man. When he describes his life before becoming homeless, he doesn’t glamorize about his past. Before talking...

• Sherman Alexie
• What You Pawn I Will Redeem

My Journey Of Learning To Love My Body And Believe In Myself

My smile is like the sun, warm and bright. My eyes, a deep brown, as brown as the color of the earth after torrential rains. My skin, as rich and swarthy as the earth’s soil. Freckles, scattered in the most random places; on my back,...

• Believe in Myself
• Personal Life

Forensic Psychology: Offender Profiling and Human Identification

The application of forensic psychology into investigation, prosecution and working with victims has undergone several theories. The psychology of detection has used many methods including Offender Profiling, Eyewitness Testimony and Interviewing. Offender profiling was initially introduced by Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) supplying a possible description...

• Forensic Psychology

Themes of Perseverance and Identity in The Secret Life of Bees

“The nation saw itself in the midst of a new war in Vietnam, and culture wars were being fought at home, with the civil rights movement escalating and new youth subcultures emerging that rejected the values of the past...Over the course of the decade, public...

Moonlight: Influences on the Formation of Protagonist's Identity

Moonlight – a movie directed by Barry Jenkins was one of the most beautiful and heart – wrenching masterpiece that I have ever seen. The film is set in Miami in 1980s, the peak ages when abject poverty, drug addiction, violence and social degradation occurred...

Making a Statement of One's Identity in 'A&P'

John Updike’s short story entitled, “A & P,” is written through the eyes of the main character Sammy, who is a nineteen-year-old checkout clerk at the local grocery store. Throughout the story, Sammy is very descriptive in his introduction of the other characters that come...

Brave New World: Loss of Human Identity Due to Technological Progress

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a dystopian novel published in 1932 in England. This unorthodox view of society and government led this book to be banned in Ireland and Australia and is currently within the top 10 most wanted banned books in America....

• Brave New World

The Relationship Between Illness & Person’s Identity

Bibliographical disruption of illness can be understood as how illness affects a person’s identity, social life and how you view yourself (Sontag, 1979). The essay will be focusing on greater sense of those identities with which illness may interact, including the way such identities may...

How Identity Is Presented In TCP And Sula

Identity is a factor that the characters of both texts lack due to their oppressive states. Oppression which hinders the characters from attaining their self-identity. It is through the relationships that the characters form with each other is what enables them to attain their sense...

• The Color Purple

Taking Judgement In A Positive Way

Most people judge others based on their own inner insecurities. This has been a universal issue which causes most specifically body issues. These issues grow based on how one presents themselves. Every individual has their own story and own experiences which enables the way one...

• Personal Qualities
• Positive Psychology

An Event In My Life Having Impacted My Identity

A big influence that really made an impact in my identity formation is my dad leaving us. Him not being there made it really hard, not only on me and my sister but my mom as well. My dad isn’t the best person in the...

• Personal Experience

Analysis Of Risk Attitudes And Financial Decisions Of Millennial Generation

As a result of the financial turmoil at the beginning of the twenty first century, literature has prompted growing interest in how young individuals, that just started to interact with credit markets and accumulate assets, have fared in the wake of Great Recession. In more...

• Decision Making
• Millennial Generation

Breakdown Of The Constructed Masculine Ideals

These constructed notions of masculine identities were broken soon when these men came face to face with the dehumanizing horrors of the war. The psychological torture due of the trench warfare was something that they had never witnessed before. One poem that describes the breakdown...

• Masculinity

Individual’s Identity versus Social Norms: Why Do We Get Judged

Defined by the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, personal identity is the subject that deals with the philosophical questions that stem out about oneself as a result of that person being human. Personal identity is a complex cocktail of different components that are always being stirred...

My Social Identity: Analysis and Reflection

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Best topics on Personal Identity

1. How Does Society Shape Our Identity

2. How Does Family Influence Your Identity

3. Exploring the Relationship Between Illness and Identity

4. Evolving Identities: The Concept of Self-Identity and Self-Perception

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9. Reflections On Personal Intercultural Experience

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August 26, 2022

College Admissions: Mining Identity for College Essays, Personal Statements

Langston Hughes begins his poem “Theme for English B” this way:

The instructor said:

Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you- Then it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

“Tell us about yourself”

When colleges instruct you to “Tell us about yourself,” it may sound simple, but it is not. Sarah Myers McGinty, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, conducted a study in 1998 to determine the importance of the college application essay and students’ ability to complete it successfully. She found that while admissions officials viewed the essay as “somewhat important,” students found themselves unprepared to write it. In The Chronicle of Higher Education (1/25/02), McGinty says, “I knew that students felt comfortable talking about the most significant event in the life of Jay Gatsby. But many felt ill-at-ease when asked about the most significant event in their own lives.” After all, as many students will attest, they have never done anything like this before. Students are rarely asked to write personal narratives.

So how do you tell admissions officers about yourself in a true and convincing way? First, you need to “mine” various areas of your identity to discover what makes you an individual . We’re not talking strip-mining, where you just pull up whatever’s on the surface. We’re talking about digging to see what’s below the surface. That takes time and commitment, but in the end, you may strike gold.

Writing is discovery. You cannot write an essay without first discovering what you have to say. You are setting out to discover what has made you who you are. Keep a journal as you explore your past and your present. These jottings and written wanderings are not your essay, but some will serve as the essay’s building materials. (Others might be valuable points for reflection more generally!) 

9 aspects of identity

Some areas of your identity to explore include:

• Sexual Orientation

Events in a college essay

The events of your life, whether big and small, successful or failed, shape you as an individual. 

In other words, your identity is, in part, formed through a series of events, which can be narrated to tell a story that gives the reader a glimpse of who you are. Telling a good story involves strong description (including the colors, sounds, and smells of your life), action (including movement, dialogue or internal monologue, etc); and reflection (including decisions you made, thoughts or feelings you had during an event, and your reflection afterwards). 

Help transport your reader into your story by showing what it was like. And, tell the reader what this anecdote says about you as a person.

Which experience to pick? Looking at a few colleges’ essay questions may provide you with some ideas (emphases added):

• The Common Application asks you to: “Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?’
• The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission?
• Dartmouth: The Hawaiian word mo’olelo is often translated as “story” but it can also refer to history, legend, genealogy, and tradition. Use one of these translations to introduce yourself.
• Columbia students take an active role in improving their community, whether in their residence hall, classes or throughout New York City. Their actions, small or large, work to positively impact the lives of others. Share one contribution that you have made to your family, school, friend group or another community that surrounds you.

Your experience does not have to be massively life-altering (not all of us have huge turning points in our lives), but can be one of the many little events in our lives that make us see ourselves and the world a bit differently. The time your classmates offered you a stolen test and you refused it. Seeing the ocean for the first time at age 15. Learning to drive or ski or swim. Notice, too, that all of the essay questions ask you both to tell the story of an experience and also to reflect on the significance or impact of the event.

Here are some ideas for getting started on these and related prompts:

Passions in a college essay

Your passion for certain causes or issues, as well as your hobbies or interests, show who you are. How do you spend your free time? What excites you? Concerns you? Enrages you? What have you done to translate this passion into action? I know a student whose concern over the Middle East conflict led him to distribute to all of his classmates bracelets commemorating those who have died in the conflict. His essay on the topic worked because his passion led him to action, and his writing conveyed his passion. Another student explored how his childhood Lego hobby was a springboard to his building robots in national competitions. I taught a young woman whose frustration over male-female relations in her school led her to start a Gender Issues discussion group. I know people who could write fascinating essays on their obsession with beads, their rock collection, or bike riding. Perhaps you think it’s less-than-admirable to say that you spend every Saturday afternoon watching classic movies, but if you can intelligently reflect on why you love old movies and what it shows about you, it could be a worthwhile topic.

People in a college essay

Begin by listing people in your life who have nurtured your identity. In addition to your family members, you may list instructors, coaches, teachers, or neighbors. After you make a list, decide which person or people you could write about most engagingly. Some applications ask you to write about a person; some just leave the door open for you by telling you to explore a topic of choice. You might begin your exploration by reflecting on your family and how it has affected who you have become. Focus on the details of one or two members of your family-their appearance, their habits, their activities, and their interactions with you. Think of a story that encapsulates a relationship. Consider exploring your family’s cultural heritage, traditions, or foods. Bring the people you depict to life, and give them color, personality, a voice. Provide anecdotes about these family members or other important people in your life.

Places in a college essay

Perhaps a place has gotten under your skin because you’ve spent so much time there. Perhaps you’ve worked on your grandfather’s farm in Wisconsin each summer since you were ten. Perhaps you attend a school unlike most schools in the nation, one in an unusual setting or with an unusual philosophy. Perhaps you spent a semester on sabbatical with your parents in Zimbabwe, and once you came back, everything looked different. Place can be a character, and you can tell a vivid story about how it helped shape you . Conversely, you might have spent time in a place only briefly (one night on a camping trip, for example); or, the place you visited or lived in might have been lousy: decrepit, dirty, scary, upsetting. All of the above are fair game: the point is to use the experience as a vehicle for talking about who you are and how you experience the world around you.

Religion in a college essay

For some people, religion is integral to their lives and identities. Even so, you may consider religion a “touchy” subject. You may fear that the reader won’t like your religion. Don’t let that stop you if you have honest stories and reflections to relate. Consider writing a personal statement that reveals your thoughts about religion through a vivid story or series of anecdotes.

Race in a college essay

For some, their racial identity- and perhaps the persecution they’ve experienced or the minority status they have had- is an important part of who they are. Writing about moments of challenges and what you did to be a leader, to hold your ground, or to educate others, can let the reader get a glimpse of your strongest qualities. Colleges seek students from diverse backgrounds and in possession of strong characters, so don’t be afraid to let both of those qualities shine through.

Gender in a college essay

Does your gender identity feel significant to who you are– to your experiences, your community, your identity? For some, being a woman, being transgender, or being genderqueer can be essential to who they are and their experiences. You might consider writing an essay about going to an all girls’ Catholic school; being the only boy in a household of many sisters; experimenting with multiple pronouns. Just remember: this essay should be about more than a certain experience alone; it is also about what your thoughts, decisions, and actions say about who you are and what is important to you.

Disability/different abilities in a college essay

While so often viewed as a setback, your life with a disability – whether since birth or due to an illness or an event later in life– can help distinguish you or a sea of similarly-abled peers. How have you embraced, overcome, or given voice to your disability or those of others? What abilities have you cultivated or discovered because of it? How have you both coped, and strived , with your disability, and what does this say about your character and commitments?

Sexual orientation in a college essay

Perhaps your sexual identity has played a role in your life, inspiring you to form interests in certain writers or ideas; to work on an inclusive marriage campaign; to lead your school’s Gay Straight Alliance. Whether your identity or that of a loved one, be sure to keep yourself center-stage as you use the idea of sexual orientation to speak to your values, passions, and interests.

You care about your essay because it will help you get into Wonderful U. Fair enough. But you will also gain a bonus along the way: self-realization as you step across the threshold from childhood to adulthood; A sense of who you are and what made you that way; some insight into your desires for the future. Happy digging.

(Once you’ve mined for ideas, visit other sections of the Accepted website, which offers lots of essay writing tips and sample student essays to help you pull your essay together.)

If you would like the guidance and support of experienced college admissions consultants as you explore your identity and develop an application strategy, Accepted is here to help. We offer a range of services that can be tailored exactly to your needs. Our singular goal is to help you gain admittance to the college of your choice!

Accepted has helped applicants gain acceptance to top colleges and universities for 25 years. Our team of admissions consultants features former admissions committee members and highly experienced college admissions consultants who have guided our clients to admission at top programs including Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, University of Chicago, and Yale.  Want an admissions expert  to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:

• Different Dimensions of Diversity , a podcast episode
• The Essay Whisperer: How to Write a College Application Essay
• Common App Essay Prompts 2022-2023: Tips for Writing Essays That Impress

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Cultural Identity Essay

27 August, 2020

12 minutes read

Author:  Elizabeth Brown

No matter where you study, composing essays of any type and complexity is a critical component in any studying program. Most likely, you have already been assigned the task to write a cultural identity essay, which is an essay that has to do a lot with your personality and cultural background. In essence, writing a cultural identity essay is fundamental for providing the reader with an understanding of who you are and which outlook you have. This may include the topics of religion, traditions, ethnicity, race, and so on. So, what shall you do to compose a winning cultural identity essay?

Cultural Identity Paper: Definitions, Goals & Topics 

Before starting off with a cultural identity essay, it is fundamental to uncover what is particular about this type of paper. First and foremost, it will be rather logical to begin with giving a general and straightforward definition of a cultural identity essay. In essence, cultural identity essay implies outlining the role of the culture in defining your outlook, shaping your personality, points of view regarding a multitude of matters, and forming your qualities and beliefs. Given a simpler definition, a cultural identity essay requires you to write about how culture has influenced your personality and yourself in general. So in this kind of essay you as a narrator need to give an understanding of who you are, which strengths you have, and what your solid life position is.

Yet, the goal of a cultural identity essay is not strictly limited to describing who you are and merely outlining your biography. Instead, this type of essay pursues specific objectives, achieving which is a perfect indicator of how high-quality your essay is. Initially, the primary goal implies outlining your cultural focus and why it makes you peculiar. For instance, if you are a french adolescent living in Canada, you may describe what is so special about it: traditions of the community, beliefs, opinions, approaches. Basically, you may talk about the principles of the society as well as its beliefs that made you become the person you are today.

So far, cultural identity is a rather broad topic, so you will likely have a multitude of fascinating ideas for your paper. For instance, some of the most attention-grabbing topics for a personal cultural identity essay are:

• Memorable traditions of your community
• A cultural event that has influenced your personality 
• Influential people in your community
• Locations and places that tell a lot about your culture and identity

Cultural Identity Essay Structure

As you might have already guessed, composing an essay on cultural identity might turn out to be fascinating but somewhat challenging. Even though the spectrum of topics is rather broad, the question of how to create the most appropriate and appealing structure remains open.

Like any other kind of an academic essay, a cultural identity essay must compose of three parts: introduction, body, and concluding remarks. Let’s take a more detailed look at each of the components:

Introduction 

Starting to write an essay is most likely one of the most time-consuming and mind-challenging procedures. Therefore, you can postpone writing your introduction and approach it right after you finish body paragraphs. Nevertheless, you should think of a suitable topic as well as come up with an explicit thesis. At the beginning of the introduction section, give some hints regarding the matter you are going to discuss. You have to mention your thesis statement after you have briefly guided the reader through the topic. You can also think of indicating some vital information about yourself, which is, of course, relevant to the topic you selected.

Your main body should reveal your ideas and arguments. Most likely, it will consist of 3-5 paragraphs that are more or less equal in size. What you have to keep in mind to compose a sound ‘my cultural identity essay’ is the argumentation. In particular, always remember to reveal an argument and back it up with evidence in each body paragraph. And, of course, try to stick to the topic and make sure that you answer the overall question that you stated in your topic. Besides, always keep your thesis statement in mind: make sure that none of its components is left without your attention and argumentation.

Conclusion 

Finally, after you are all finished with body paragraphs and introduction, briefly summarize all the points in your final remarks section. Paraphrase what you have already revealed in the main body, and make sure you logically lead the reader to the overall argument. Indicate your cultural identity once again and draw a bottom line regarding how your culture has influenced your personality.

Best Tips For Writing Cultural Identity Essay

Writing a ‘cultural identity essay about myself’ might be somewhat challenging at first. However, you will no longer struggle if you take a couple of plain tips into consideration. Following the tips below will give you some sound and reasonable cultural identity essay ideas as well as make the writing process much more pleasant:

• Start off by creating an outline. The reason why most students struggle with creating a cultural identity essay lies behind a weak structure. The best way to organize your ideas and let them flow logically is to come up with a helpful outline. Having a reference to build on is incredibly useful, and it allows your essay to look polished.
• Remember to write about yourself. The task of a cultural identity essay implies not focusing on your culture per se, but to talk about how it shaped your personality. So, switch your focus to describing who you are and what your attitudes and positions are. 
• Think of the most fundamental cultural aspects. Needless to say, you first need to come up with a couple of ideas to be based upon in your paper. So, brainstorm all the possible ideas and try to decide which of them deserve the most attention. In essence, try to determine which of the aspects affected your personality the most.
• Edit and proofread before submitting your paper. Of course, the content and the coherence of your essay’s structure play a crucial role. But the grammatical correctness matters a lot too. Even if you are a native speaker, you may still make accidental errors in the text. To avoid the situation when unintentional mistakes spoil the impression from your essay, always double check your cultural identity essay. 

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65 Personal Identity Examples

Personal identity refers to a sense of self that a person develops over their life. Your personal identity is a mix of how you see yourself and how others perceive you.

Key examples of personal identity include your personality, achievements, gender, ethnicity, nationality , social status, social class, beliefs, values, and culture. Combined, these features (along with others – see below) make us all unique individuals.

Personal Identity Examples

• Ability and Disability
• Achieved Status
• Ascribed Status (Born Status Features)
• Aspirations
• Awards and Recognition from Society (See Also: Achieved Status)
• Birth Order
• Career and Profession
• Citizenship Status
• Childhood Experiences
• Cultural Practices
• Cultural Values
• Current Occupation
• Educational Level
• Emotional Intelligence
• Family Role
• Family Traditions
• Friend Groups
• Geographical Identification (Rural, Ocean, City, etc.)
• Group Memberships
• Health Status
• Hopes and Dreams
• Immigrant Status
• Indigenous Status
• Intelligence
• Languages Spoken
• Nationality
• Optimism (or Pesimism)
• Parental Status
• Past Occupations
• Personal Achievements
• Personal Preferences
• Personality
• Philosopical Beliefs
• Physical Characteristics (Appearance)
• Professional Achievements
• Relationship Status
• Sociability (e.g Introvert vs Extravert)
• Social Class
• Social Expectations
• Social Roles
• Social Status
• Spirituality
• Sporting Skills and Interests
• Subcultural Idenficiation
• Personal Values

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Real Life Personal Identity Analysis: Queen Elizabeth II

As the longest-serving ruler of England, Queen Elizabeth II will be a character remembered through the history books for many hundreds of years.

There are some interesting aspects of the Queen’s personal identity that make her a good case study. No one is quite like her.

She has some features that overlap with many other people. But she has some that are remarkably unique.

Let’s start with the more common identity features of the Queen

Personal Identity of the Queen

The Queen was assigned female at birth and accepted this as her gender identity throughout her life.

Her gender affected her life profoundly. For one thing, she would only have been able to become the Queen because she did not have any brothers who, at the time, would have overriden her claim to the throne because they were male.

In smaller ways, her gender affected her personal identity. For example, the way she would dress was normal only for women and not men (she wore many famous flowing dresses, for example).

2. Race/Ethnicity

The Queen is of a white Western European ethnicity. She has Germanic, English, Scottish, Hungarian, French, and Irish blood.

Clearly, the Queen was of privileged social status. Her family’s race would, in history, have been a prerequisite for them ruling England. Today, the white European British ethnicity remains an ethnicity of privilege in Europe.

3. Social Class

The Queen was at the very tip of the social class hierarchy. Born into wealth and high social status, she was seen as being of the upper class.

This influenced her personal identity from a very young age. The Queen’s posh accent, for example, developed from her cultural surroundings. Similarly, she never experienced financial hardship or the need to go out and seek a trade (although, interestingly, she did serve as a mechanic during the 1940s).

4. Marital Status

The Queen was married to Prince Phillip. Her marital status would likely have been central to her sense of self.

The Queen would not only have seen herself as a wife, but also a mother. Like most married parents, these two identity features were probably at the core of her sense of self.

Most people’s status as a husband, wife, or parent, can affect how they think (always keeping their loved ones in their thoughts when they make decisions) and act (for example, many people insist they can’t quit their job because they have family who rely on them!).

5. Ascribed Status

Ascribed status refers to a social status that you were given at your time of birth. Of course, for Queen Elizabeth, she was ascribed her royal status by birthright.

In fact, the queen almost had to become the queen. She could have abdicated her right, like her uncle did, but this is highly frowned upon in Royal circles. Her uncle left Britain and moved to the United States to get away from his ascribed status!

6. Achieved Status

Achieved status refers to your personal accomplishments in life.

For the Queen, this includes being the longest ruling British monarch in history. She wasn’t born with this status, she achieved it through her life.

Similarly, the Queen might claim her ability to unite England, Wales, and Scotland under her for over 70 years as an accomplishment of sorts.

Normal people would often identify things like a university degree or their profession as their personal accomplishments.

7. Family Role

The Queen also has a very interesting family role which underpins her personal identity.

In Western Europe, women did not traditionally take the family role of decision maker and authority figure. But the Queen’s unique status as Queen meant that she became the matriarch of her family.

Famously, all family decisions had to be passed through her, and she even had the authority to decide which family members could (and couldn’t) use the royal title and get money from her personal trust fund.

Definition of Personal Identity

A personal identity is the collection of unique identifying factors that a person develops over time that make up who they are.

Your personal identity is unique to you because no one has the exact same mix of features , memories, habits, emotional dispositions, and knowledge that you have.

Personal identity is similar to social identity, but personal identities are about all of your unique features whereas your social identity usually only counts your sociological categorizations ( social identity examples include: gender, race, social class).

How we Develop a Personal Identity

Your personal identity begins to be formed even before you were born.

Everyone is born with a history: who their parents are, genetic factors, and socially ascribed status features that are assigned at birth (e.g. gender).

As we enter middle childhood , our sense of self emerges in ernest. We start learning about our personal tastes, preferences, and hobbies.

As children, we also get feedback from our surroundings (other children’s reactions to us, our parents disciplining us) which shape who we are as well. Some children meet these identity challenges and develop self-confidence and independence, while others may be scarred by their early rebukes and setbacks.

Into adolescence , we start to develop aspects of our identities like mindsets, ideologies, philosophies, and romantic relationships that will underpin our futures. Adolescents often explore different subcultural and countercultural identities to ‘try on’ ways of behaving.

The identity features that resonate with any individual may become a lifelong identity feature (e.g. ‘a lover of rap music’ or ‘a long-distance runner’).

In adulthood , our personal identities come to revolve around career and family status. We become concerned with creating a legacy and making a sustainable and happy life for ourselves and our loved ones.

Why is Personal Identity Important?

Developing a sense of who we are is essential for developing self-efficacy, morality, and happiness.

Self-efficacy refers to belief in yourself. People who grow up to be competent, optimistic, and self-reliant have high self-efficacy. These people can navigate challenges and obstacles they face in everyday life. It sets them up well for success, builds resilience,  and prevents burnout or social withdrawal.

Our morality refers to our sense of right and wrong. When you know who you are and what your personal standards are, then you’re able to set boundaries about what you will and will not do. Morality comes in part from our family and culture, but it’s also developed through our own thought processes as we move through adolescence and adulthood.

Happiness will often come from having a clear sense of who we are, what we want out of life, and whether we have achieved it. People who don’t know who they are and don’t have purpose in life will often be unhappy. This is because they don’t have a clear moral core. By contrast, people with a clear sense of their own personal identity will often be able to find happiness by taking up pursuits that fulfil their sense of purpose.

There are countless factors that influence our personal identity. Above, I’ve outlined some of the most important elements that people might point to when trying to define what’s unique about themselves.

Developing a personal identity can make you confident and self-assured. When you know who you are and are comfortable with that, you can begin to develop happiness and contentment.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

2 thoughts on “65 Personal Identity Examples”

I struggle to understand Identity and how to change that what your not happy with. How do you actually change identity, obvs we can’t change race, gender, etc., but if you wanted to change beliefs, how you see yourself etc? how do you change it without an experience? I say that because some experiences changes our way of thinking, but how to change without an experience ?

It’s hard. I would probably start with reading books and listening to podcasts about mindset, exploring new hobbies, going out of your comfort zone – in other words, manufacturing the experiences that are required to create those identity changes.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, essays about personal identity.

Hi all! I'm thinking about writing an essay that focuses on my personal identity. What are some ways to make this type of essay engaging and interesting to colleges? Any examples I should check out for inspiration? Thanks in advance!

Hello! Writing an essay that focuses on your personal identity can be a powerful way to showcase your unique experiences, interests, and perspectives. To make this type of essay engaging and interesting to colleges, consider the following tips:

1. Be authentic and vulnerable: Share your true feelings, thoughts, and struggles as they pertain to your identity. By being open about your experiences, you create a deep connection with the reader.

2. Focus on a specific aspect: Instead of trying to cover every detail of your identity, choose one or two key facets that define you. Delving into particular experiences and emotions will allow you to demonstrate depth and create a more compelling narrative.

3. Use descriptive language and vivid imagery: Paint a picture for the reader by using descriptive words and vivid imagery. This will help them visualize and connect with your story on a deeper level.

4. Show rather than tell: Instead of simply stating your thoughts and feelings about your identity, use anecdotes and examples to illustrate your point. By showing the reader your experiences, you'll create a more compelling and engaging essay.

5. Incorporate growth and development: Demonstrate how your understanding of your identity has evolved over time, and how it has shaped you as a person. This could include personal challenges you've faced, accomplishments, or newfound insights.

6. Reflect on the impact: Discuss how your identity has influenced your decisions, interests, and relationships. This reflection will help demonstrate the importance of your identity and its role in your life.

For examples and inspiration, you can browse through essays shared by students who were admitted to top colleges. Just be mindful not to copy their ideas or writing styles. Instead, use these examples to inspire your own unique angle in exploring your personal identity.

Best of luck with your essay and application process!

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First, Second, and Other Selves: Essays on Friendship and Personal Identity

Jennifer Whiting, First, Second, and Other Selves: Essays on Friendship and Personal Identity , Oxford University Press, 2016, 261pp., $74.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199967919.

Reviewed by David O. Brink, University of California, San Diego

This is the first of three volumes of Jennifer Whiting's collected papers and focuses on issues about personal identity and friendship. The volume's eight essays are all previously published, but in disparate venues, so the volume allows the reader to see the cumulative force of ideas developed piecemeal and recurrent themes. Whiting herself identifies three such themes. First, she focuses on psychic contingenc y and variability , which is sometimes a symptom of pathology but often a reminder that familiar assumptions of moral psychology are neither universal nor necessary. Second, she explores Aristotle's conception of the friend as another self and its significance for our understanding of intrapersonal and interpersonal relations and concern. Her third theme emerges from the second and involves a non-egocentric perspective on self-love and love of others. She treats the interpersonal case as prior in explanation and justification to the intrapersonal case.

Her outside-in strategy contrasts with the inside-out strategy that goes with an egocentric assimilation of the interpersonal case to the intrapersonal case. This leads her to defend an ethocentric , or character-based, conception of both prudential concern and friendship. There are important kinds of historical influence and inspiration in these essays, including Whiting's exploration of Aristotle's conception of friendship, her discussion of Platonic love, and her discussion of Plato's conception of the soul in the Republic . However, most of the essays concentrate on systematic, rather than historical, issues and debates. Apparently, the other two volumes of essays will be more historical, focusing on the metaphysical and psychological basis of Aristotle's ethics.

These essays are long and densely argued, defying easy summary. But they are extremely rewarding and repay careful study. They display philosophical imagination and give expression to an independent voice. Whiting's essays are also deeply personal, reflecting ongoing conversations with her philosophical mentors, colleagues, and friends. Whiting is engaged in dialogue with Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Sydney Shoemaker, Derek Parfit, Annette Baier, and Terence Irwin, among others, and one comes away with a strong sense of her as a philosophical interlocutor . Her essays on personal identity and friendship are among the most important work on these topics in the last three decades. Her defense of a broadly psychological reductionist conception of personal identity is a worthy successor to the contributions of Shoemaker and Parfit, and her ethocentric conception of friendship and self-love is an important and original contribution to the literature on love and friendship. Anyone interested in these philosophical topics will profit from reading these essays together.

In what follows, I summarize the contributions of individual essays and then turn to raising some questions about her claims about personal identity and friendship.

In traditional debates about the nature of personal identity, Locke, Bishop Butler, and Thomas Reid agree that personal identity is a forensic concept, tied to backward-looking normative concerns about responsibility and desert and forward-looking ones involving the special concern one has for one's own future that is different from the sort of concern one has for others to whom one stands in no special relationship. In "Friends and Future Selves" Whiting explores the worry that Butler and Reid raise that Lockean conceptions of personal identity cannot explain and justify special concern, because they recognize identity in only a "loose and popular," not a "strict and philosophical," sense.

Though she raises questions about whether personal identity is sufficient for special concern, her main claim is that it is not necessary. Interpersonal relationships, such as friendship, also display a form of special concern that does not presuppose personal identity. In fact, friendship allows us to stand the normal assumption that special concern requires personal identity on its head -- it's not just that special concern does not presuppose personal identity but rather that personal identity presupposes special concern. Just as special concern for one's friend is part of what makes that person a friend, so too special concern for oneself is part of what establishes psychological continuity within one's own life. Presumably, special concern involves not only positive affective regard for its target but also a suite of behavioral dispositions to make various investments and sacrifices for the sake of that person. Whiting's claim is that special concern is not the product of personal identity so much as an essential constituent of it.

Friendship is the focus of "Impersonal Friends," where Whiting examines Aristotle's claim that the friend is "another oneself" ( Nicomachean Ethics 1161b 19, 28-35, 1169b4-6; Magna Moralia 1213a2-23) and defends her ethocentric interpretation that the ground of the best sort of friendship is the friend's virtuous character. She defends this kind of impersonal friendship for another's virtue against Gregory Vlastos's objections and against an egocentric interpretation defended by Irwin and myself, according to which friendship makes the beloved's interests an extension of the agent's own interests. [1] Both the egocentric and ethocentric interpretations agree that friends stand to each other in psychological relations much as a person stands psychologically to his own future self and that friends should care for each other as they care for themselves. But whereas the egocentric interpretation reads these claims from the inside-out -- extending claims from the intrapersonal case to the interpersonal one -- Whiting's ethocentric interpretation reads these claims from the outside-in -- drawing lessons for the intrapersonal case from the interpersonal one. She thinks that the outside-in strategy is to be preferred, in part because she thinks the egocentric approach supports a "colonial" attitude toward friends. [2]

In "Trusting First and Second Selves", Whiting examines Baier's claims about the importance of trust among friends. She subjects Baier's claims to friendly amendment in which she argues that a certain amount of distrust or at least a willingness to distrust is a mark of healthy relationships to friends and to oneself. She leverages Virginia Woolf's concerns in Three Guineas to raise questions about whether we ought to trust ourselves fully. Presumably, these forms of distrust are also justified in response to blindspots and implicit bias. We can't imagine theoretical or practical reasoning without some substantial degree of trust in our earlier selves, but that trust needs to be balanced with a healthy dose of fallibilism. Presumably, these reasons to adopt a fallibilist attitude toward ourselves apply to friends and others. Common projects won't succeed without considerable trust, but that trust should be leavened with a willingness to question the assumptions and commitments of our friends.

In "Back to 'The Self and the Future'" Whiting revisits a debate between Shoemaker and Bernard Williams over the possibility of "body swaps" of the sort discussed by Shoemaker in the famous Brownson case, in which Brown's brain is transplanted into Robinson's body. [3] To separate psychological continuity and sameness of brain, we might modify the Brownson case so that Brownson is psychologically continuous with Brown without having Brown's brain. We could do this by scanning Brown's brain states and then reconfiguring Robinson's brain so as to realize Brown's psychology. Brownson would then be psychologically, but in no way physically, continuous with Brown. Even Williams initially agrees with Shoemaker that Brownson seems to be Brown, because he inherits Brown's mental life. But Williams thinks that our intuitions here are unstable. If we re-describe such a case in terms of psychological changes that will be induced in you prior to the person in your body being tortured, Williams claims, we will find that we still experience special concern for the psychologically discontinuous person who will be tortured, revealing that our criteria of identity are physical or bodily.

Whiting does a nice job of reconstructing the dialectic and pointing out ways in which Williams begs the question against Shoemaker and psychological continuity. Moreover, she invokes her comparison of friends and future selves to motivate the idea, which Williams must deny, that personal identity can be indeterminate. Interpersonal associations come in degrees, with the result that some associations are clearly friendships, some are clearly not, and some have an indeterminate status. If intrapersonal relations are relevantly like friendship, we should be receptive to the idea that some forms of psychological continuity are sufficient for personal identity, some are insufficient, and some have an indeterminate status.

"Personal Identity: The Non-Branching Form of What Matters" is an excellent exposition and defense of a broadly psychological reductionist claim that personal identity consists in non-branching psychological continuity. Whiting usefully distinguishes two strands in this tradition -- a reductionist strand, which she associates with Parfit, and a non-reductionist strand, which she associates with Shoemaker and defends. This distinction might also be understood as a contrast between two different kinds of reductionism with different objects. Shoemaker and Parfit both accept psychological reductionism about personal identity insofar as they both think that persons P1 and P2 are identical insofar as the later one is related to the earlier one by non-branching psychological continuity. [4] Notice that the definiens of reductionism about personal identity invokes the concept of a person. Parfit and Shoemaker part company over whether to accept reductionism about persons, with Parfit embracing reductionism about persons and Shoemaker denying it. Parfit thinks that persons can be reduced to (or perhaps eliminated in favor of) mental happenings that need not be ascribed to a person or thinker ( Reasons and Persons §81), whereas Shoemaker thinks that mental states should be understood functionally as states of a system -- a person -- with characteristic inputs, outputs, and relations to other internal states of the system. Whiting plausibly suggests that the debate between Shoemaker and Parfit can be traced to two different strands in Locke's views about personal identity. Parfit's reductionism about persons fits best with the passive dimensions of Locke's focus on experiential memory, whereas Shoemaker's non-reductionism about persons fits best with Locke's emphasis on the forensic role of persons and the connection between persons and agency.

"One is Not Born but Becomes a Person: The Importance of Philosophical Mothering" engages some of Baier's reflections about the limitations in traditional rationalist conceptions of persons as anti-naturalistic, individualistic, and intellectualist. Whiting wants to endorse many aspects of Baier's naturalism about persons and her emphasis on the way in which normative maturation is dependent on proper nurture from another. But she wants to embrace these claims while rejecting Baier's critique of the method of cases and thought experiments prevalent in the literature on personal identity.

"Love: Self-Propagation, Self-Preservation, or Ekstasis?" looks at the analysis of interpersonal love in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus , comparing three different kinds of readings -- Irwin's egocentric conception, Harry Frankfurt's identificationist conception, and her own ecstatic conception, in which the lover literally transcends himself. Whiting thinks the ecstatic conception is necessary to explain the claims the beloved makes on the lover and the reciprocity that one finds in the best sort of love.

"Psychic Contingency in the Republic " is a discussion of Plato's claims about the human soul in the Republic . Whiting contrasts a realist reading that takes seriously Plato's talk of parts of the soul and identifies the person with the rational part of her soul with a deflationist reading that understands parts of the soul to be simply different aspects of an agent. This debate seems bound up with how many parts of the soul Plato recognizes and which parts these are. Some commentators think that Book IV's understanding of akrasia requires a deflationist conception of the parts of the soul so that we can understand the agent acting against her own better judgment, but they also think that the discussion of deviant constitutions and souls in Books VIII-IX requires taking seriously the idea that different parts of an agent's soul act as independent agents. Both realists and deflationists tend to assume that we need a consistent reading of the soul and its parts throughout the Republic and that Plato accepts a tripartite division of the soul throughout.

Whiting questions these assumptions. She argues that when Plato talks about the relations among the parts of the soul in virtuous and non-virtuous people the number and identity of the relata and the nature of the relation can vary. In the virtuous person, there is a reason-responsive harmony between reason, emotion, and the appetites, so that it is misplaced to think of faction and rule of one part by others. By contrast, in non-virtuous persons there is psychic conflict, and the number and identity of the factions will depend on the ways in which the individual is reasons-responsive or not. This leads Whiting to defend a hybrid reading of Books II-IV and VII-IX in which deflationists are roughly right in their treatment of the appetites in II-IV and the realists are roughly right about the parts of corrupt souls in VIII-IX. Her case for contingency and variability in Plato's moral psychology in the Republic is exceptionally rich and interesting and repays careful reading.

Any reader should find these essays rewarding and stimulating. Different readers will be drawn to different themes and will assess Whiting's claims differently. I'll close by raising some questions about Whiting's contrast between egocentric and ethocentric conceptions of intrapersonal and interpersonal unity, and her defense of the ethocentric conception.

Both intrapersonal and interpersonal unity are matters of psychological continuity, and what separates intrapersonal and garden-variety interpersonal cases is a matter of degree, not kind. The egocentric conception adopts an inside-out approach, claiming that interpersonal psychological continuity extends the person's interests, even when it does not extend her life. Fission in which Tom's psychology is transferred to two persons -- Dick and Harry -- is the limiting form of interpersonal psychological continuity, because the degree of continuity is, by hypothesis, maximal. Here, Tom does not literally survive fission, because identity is a one-one relation and psychological continuity is a one-many relation, but nonetheless we can see Tom's interests preserved in the lives of Dick and Harry. Tom has posthumous interests in the lives of Dick and Harry. Of course, fission is a thought experiment. But there are real forms of interpersonal psychological continuity all around us, notably in relationships between friends and loved ones who share experiences and discussion with each other, influence each other psychologically, and care about each other. We often talk about the interests of the beloved as part of the interests of the lover, and the egocentric conception asks us to take this seriously.

By contrast, the ethocentric conception adopts an outside-in approach, claiming that self-love should be understood on the model of love of another. In particular, the ethocentric conception claims that the basis of interpersonal love is love of the character -- in particular, the virtuous character or perhaps the capacity for virtuous character -- of another. This is a kind of impersonal love. When we extend this conception to the intrapersonal case, we see that even love of one's future self is not egocentric but is or should be an impersonal love of the virtuous character of one's future self. Rather than loving another as myself, I should love myself as I love another.

As we have seen, Whiting defends her ethocentric conception both as an interpretation of Aristotle's conception of friendship and as a systematic proposal in part because she thinks that the egocentric approach imparts an objectionably colonial attitude toward interpersonal love and friendship. I am skeptical of both claims. I think that Aristotle's eudaimonism commits him to the egocentric conception, that his claims about the friend as another self conform to the inside-out approach ( EN 1170b6-9), and that treating the good of another as a complete, but not unconditionally complete, good can avoid taking a colonial attitude toward others. [5] I have argued for these claims elsewhere but don't want to re-litigate them here. Instead, I want to raise a concern about Whiting's ethocentric conception and mention an alternative to both egocentric and ethocentric conceptions that she might find congenial.

The basis of ethocentric concern for another is the other's valuable traits. This explains one's reasons for becoming friends with another on account of the other's traits. But it seems more problematic as the ground for concern for another who is already one's friend. If my reason for caring for my friend consists in her virtuous or valuable traits, then it seems that I care about her virtue, rather than herself. The ethocentric conception has difficulty explaining why I should care more about my friend than other virtuous people with whom I am not friends or why I shouldn't be willing to "trade up" from my virtuous friend to a still more virtuous stranger. Whiting does offer pragmatic reasons for privileging one's virtuous friends over virtuous strangers -- epistemic and causal factors allow one to better promote virtue with those one already knows and associates with (p. 61). But like Henry Sidgwick's similar pragmatic utilitarian justification of special concern and special obligations and John Perry's impersonal justification of personal projects, these pragmatic rationales for special concern may seem insufficient to underwrite robust special concern for oneself and one's friends. [6]

We can avoid these worries about ethocentric special concern by claiming that it is the shared history with the individual who is a friend that grounds an agent-relative form of special concern for her that one doesn't have for a stranger, however virtuous. One form of agent-relative concern is egocentric. But we can make sense of agent-relative concern that is not egoistic. Let us stipulate that prudence and egocentric concern presuppose personal identity, inasmuch as both assume that reasons are grounded in self-interest. Fission teaches us that we can have agent-relative special concern in the absence of personal identity, provided there is psychological continuity. But then we can formulate agent-relative concern that presupposes continuity, rather than identity. Taking a page from the Lockean reply to Butler's circularity worry, we might call this special concern quasi-prudence and treat it as a quasi-egocentric conception. Once we see that there is interpersonal psychological continuity to be found outside of fission cases in more familiar forms of association, we can see how we might defend a quasi-egocentric conception of friendship. This quasi-egocentric conception would be different from the egocentric conception in not viewing the friend through the lens of self-interest, but it would also be different from the ethocentric conception in assigning intrinsic, and not just pragmatic, significance to the shared history between friends.

We might compare the quasi-egocentric conception of special concern with C.D. Broad's doctrine of self-referential altruism in his unjustly neglected essay "Self and Others." [7] Broad was reacting to the reductionist tendencies in Sidgwick's two methods of ethics -- egoism and utilitarianism. Broad thought that egoism cannot do justice to our duties to others and that utilitarianism cannot do justice to our special obligations. So, he introduced an agent-relative alternative between these extremes that he thought better reflected ordinary views about special concern for others. Self-referential altruism recognizes non-derivative reason to benefit others but it says that

each of us has specially urgent obligations to benefit certain individuals and groups which stand in certain special relations to himself , e.g. his parents, his children, his fellow-countrymen, etc. And it holds that these special relationships are the ultimate and sufficient ground for those specially urgent claims on one's beneficence. ("Self and Others," 279-80).

Self-referential altruism is a hybrid of two non-derivative elements: an agent-neutral concern for anyone it is in one's power to affect for better or worse and an agent-relative special concern for those to whom one stands in special relationships. The quasi-egocentric conception stands to egocentric and ethocentric rivals much as self-referential altruism stands to egoism and utilitarianism. Because it is a hybrid of inside-out and outside-in elements, a quasi-egocentric conception may have virtues that its purebred rivals don't. Perhaps the take-home message from "Friends and Future Selves" should be a hybrid conception, rather than the ethocentric conception we find in "Impersonal Friends."

[1] See Gregory Vlastos, "The Individual as Object of Love in Plato" in Platonic Studies (Princeton University Press, 1981) and Terence Irwin, Aristotle's First Principles (Clarendon Press, 1988), ch. 18. I have defended the egocentric interpretation in "Rational Egoism, Self, and Others" in Identity, Character, and Morality , ed. O. Flanagan and A. Rorty (MIT Press, 1990); "Self-love and Altruism" Social Philosophy & Policy Social Philosophy & Policy 14 (1997): 122-57; "Eudaimonism, Love and Friendship, and Political Community" Social Philosophy & Policy 16 (1999): 252-89; and "Eudaimonism and Cosmopolitan Concern" in Virtue, Happiness, and Knowledge: Themes from the Work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin , ed. D. Brink, S. Meyer, and C. Shields (Clarendon Press, forthcoming).

[2] I find it puzzling that Whiting thinks that I badly misread her "Friends and Future Selves" (1986) in my "Rational Egoism, Self, and Others" (1990) as presupposing a form of rational egoism (pp. 9, 198). I explicitly acknowledge that we come to the intrapersonal/interpersonal comparison from different perspectives: "On the surface, her position is just the reverse of mine; she wants to model the justification of self-concern on concern for one's friends, whereas I want to model the justification of concern for one's friends (and others more generally) on self-concern. I'm less clear that our different routes to this comparison between self-concern and concern for one's friends require us to disagree on the substance of the comparison." ("Rational Egoism, Self, and Others," 373). So not only do I not presuppose that she is a rational egoist, I deny it, but nonetheless wonder if we could agree on the substance of the comparison. To put it in terms of the metaphors introduced here, I acknowledge that while my approach is inside-out and hers is outside-in, I wonder if we could nonetheless meet somewhere in the middle.

[3] See Sydney Shoemaker, Self-knowledge and Self-Identity (Cornell University Press, 1963), esp. pp. 22-25 and Bernard Williams, "The Self and the Future" reprinted in Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, 1973).

[4] Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Clarendon Press, 1984), Part III and Sydney Shoemaker, "Personal Identity: A Materialist's Account" in S. Shoemaker and R. Swinburne, Personal Identity (Blackwell, 1984).

[5] See my essays mentioned in note 1. However, as Whiting points out (p. 10), Magna Moralia 1212b18-20 can be read so as to support the outside-in reading.

[6] Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics , 7 th ed. (Macmillan, 1907), esp. pp. 431-39 and John Perry, "The Importance of Being Identical" in The Identities of Persons , ed. A. Rorty (University of California Press, 1976). Interestingly, Whiting's pragmatic rationale for special concern in "Impersonal Friends" seems in tension with her criticism of Perry's pragmatic rationale for personal projects in "Friends and Future Selves" (pp. 35-38).

[7] C.D. Broad, "Self and Others" in Broad's Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy , ed. D. Cheney (George Allen and Unwin, 1971).

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Personal Identity and Ethics

What justifies our holding one person over another morally responsible for a past action? Why am I justified in having a special prudential concern for one particular future person over all others? Why do many of us think that maximizing the good within a single life is perfectly acceptable, but maximizing the good across lives is wrong? For these and other normative questions, it looks like any answer we come up with will have to make essential reference to personal identity. So, for instance, it seems we are justified in holding X responsible for some past action only if X is identical to the person who performed that action. Further, it seems I am justified in my special concern for some future person only if he will be me. Finally, many of us think that while maximization within a life affects only one person, a metaphysical unity, maximization across lives affects many different, metaphysically distinct, persons, and so the latter is wrong insofar as it ignores this fundamental separateness of persons.

These are among the many issues relevant to an investigation into the relation between personal identity and ethics. “Ethics” here is broadly construed to be about the way(s) in which we ought to live our lives, and so it includes both self-regarding and other-regarding practical concerns. Among the self-regarding concerns for which personal identity seems relevant are those about the nature and grounds of survival and immortality, rational anticipation, advance directives, and general prudential concern. Among the other-regarding concerns for which personal identity seems relevant are those about the nature and grounds of moral responsibility, compensation, interpersonal moral relations, abortion and embryonic research, population ethics, and therapeutic treatments for dissociative identity disorders. A leading approach to exploring the relation between identity and ethics, then, is to start with an investigation into the nature of personal identity and see how conclusions in that metaphysical realm might apply to these sorts of practical concerns. After starting with a brief discussion of notable historical accounts taking this approach, we will do so as well, surveying the main theories of personal identity on offer and then seeing what, if anything, they might imply for several self-regarding and other-regarding ethical concerns. We will then turn to discuss several new approaches to discovering the relation between personal identity and ethics, alternatives that have breathed fresh life into the debate.

1. Historical Highlights of the Relation

2.1 the psychological view, 2.2 the biological view, 2.3 the narrative view, 2.4 the anthropological view.

• 2.5 The Identity Doesn't Matter (IDM) View

2.6 Assessing Theories of Personal Identity in Light of Fission

2.7 nonreductionism, 2.8 four-dimensionalism, 3. prudential and moral units, 4. identity and normative ethics, 5. identity and moral responsibility, 6.1 embryonic research and abortion, 6.2 advanced directives, 6.3 other issues in applied ethics, 7. methodological alternatives, 8. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

For the most part, the philosophical history of the relation between identity and ethics up until the 17 th Century is about the relation between identity and self-regarding practical concerns. Plato is a prime example. He held in the Phaedo that I (and all persons) will survive the death and destruction of my body insofar as what I essentially am is a simple, immaterial soul, something whose own essence is being alive. This yields the direct implication that, insofar as I will survive the death of my body, I am justified in anticipating post-mortem experiences. Lucretius, on the other hand, while also focused solely on the relation between identity and prudential concerns, denied the Platonic view that I would be justified in post-mortem anticipation, simply because “if any feeling remains in mind or spirit after it has been torn from body, that is nothing to us, who are brought into being by the wedlock of body and spirit, conjoined and coalesced” (Lucretius 1951, 121). In other words, I am essentially a union of body and soul, and so even if my soul lives on, and even if it is capable of having experiences, I am not justified in anticipating them given that my body – an essential component of me – will have disintegrated. For both, however, identity is thought to be what grounds prudential concern: the difference between Lucretius and Plato is only over what identity consists in (although for a contrasting interpretation of Lucretius, see Martin and Barresi 2003, 10).

It was not until John Locke that there was an explicit attempt to connect personal identity with broader ethical concerns. Locke famously called “person” a forensic term , “appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of a law, and happiness, and misery” (Locke 1694, 50–51). This means that an account of the identity of persons across time will have forensic – normative – implications. And so it does.

Locke's account of personal identity appealed to what seems a crucial condition of moral agency, namely, self-reflective consciousness. On his view, a person – a moral agent – Y at t 2 is identical to a person X at t 1 just in case Y 's consciousness “can be extended backwards” to X ( Ibid ., 39), and this is typically taken to mean that Y remembers X 's thoughts and experiences. This is what we might call a relational account of identity, for it maintains that persons at different times are identical to one another in virtue of some relation(s) between them, where such relations might be psychological or physical. Locke thus rejected what we might call a substance-based view of identity, which maintains that persons at different times are identical to one another in virtue of their consisting in one and the same substance.

Now once we have Locke's relational account of identity in hand, we can see what implications it will have for various normative issues. Start with prudential rationality. On Locke's view, I am appropriately concerned, both for the past stage of myself to whom my consciousness extends, but also to some future person – me – to whom my consciousness will extend. This is the mechanism by which I would be justified, for example, in anticipating the afterlife, just in case at the resurrection there will be someone to whom my present consciousness extends. This person would be me even though he might have a very different body than I have now ( Ibid ., 44). It should be unimportant to me, on this view, what substance (body or soul) I find my consciousness – myself – attached to. If, for example, my little finger were cut off and my consciousness adhered to it, “that would be the same self which was concerned for the whole body yesterday, as making part of itself, whose actions then it cannot but admit as its own now” ( Ibid ., 46).

It is this sort of remark – about my ownership of certain actions – that yields a connection between identity and moral responsibility (“accountability,” for Locke), for one is justifiably held accountable only for those actions performed by a self to whom one's present consciousness extends, that is, it is only for those actions I remember performing that I can justifiably be held accountable. As Locke puts it, if I am punished for the actions of a self whose thoughts and experiences I do not remember, “what difference is there between that punishment, and being created miserable?” ( Ibid. , 51) Thus, on the Day of Judgment, “The sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all persons shall have, that they themselves, in what bodies soever they appear, or what substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same that committed those actions, and deserve that punishment for them” ( Ibid. ).

The key for Locke is that what grounds both prudential concern and moral responsibility is the personal identity relation, a relation uniquely unifying temporally distinct person-stages via consciousness. And it was because Locke prized apart personal identity from biological identity, and any other sort of substance-based identity, that later philosophers like Joseph Butler and Thomas Reid objected to it. So, for example, Butler accuses Locke of a “wonderful mistake,” which is that he failed to recognize that the relation of consciousness presupposes identity, and thus cannot constitute it (Butler 1736, 100). In other words, I can remember only my own experiences, but it is not my memory of an experience that makes it mine; rather, I remember it only because it's already mine. So while memory can reveal my identity with some past experiencer, it does not make that experiencer me. What I am remembering, insists Butler, are the experiences of a substance, namely, the same substance that constitutes me now.

Similarly, Reid affirms Butler's objection and then adds a few of his own. One is that Locke's criterion implies the contradictory position that someone could both be and not be identical to some past stage, an objection illustrated by the Brave Officer Case. Suppose that as he is stealing the enemy's standard, a forty-year-old brave officer remembers stealing apples from a neighbor's orchard when he was ten, and then suppose further that when he is eighty years old, a retired general, he remembers stealing the enemy's standard as a brave officer but no longer remembers stealing the neighbor's apples. On Locke's account the general would have to be both identical to the apple-stealer (because of the transitivity of the identity relation: he's identical to the brave officer, who himself is identical to the apple-stealer) and not identical to the apple-stealer (given that he has no direct memory of the boy's experiences) (Reid 1785, 114–115).

Another objection is based precisely on the link between identity and ethics: how can identity – sameness – be based on a relation (consciousness) that changes from moment to moment? A person would never remain the same from one moment to the next, “and as the right and justice of reward and punishment are founded on personal identity, no man could be responsible for his actions” ( Ibid ., 117). But such an implication must be absurd. And Butler concurs, expanding the point to include considerations of prudential concern:

[If Locke's view is correct,] it must follow, that it is a fallacy upon ourselves, to charge our present selves with any thing we did, or to imagine our present selves interested in any thing which befell us yesterday, or that our present self will be interested in what will befall us to-morrow; since our present self is not, in reality, the same with the self of yesterday, but another like self or person coming in its room, and mistaken for it; to which another self will succeed tomorrow (Butler 1736, 102).

Both Reid and Butler, then, wind up rejecting Locke's relational view in favor of a substance-based view of identity. (And Reid's objection in particular anticipates Derek Parfit's “Extreme Claim,” to be discussed later.)

What Butler and Reid retain in common with Locke, though, is the belief that identity grounds certain of our patterns of concern, both prudential and moral. As Reid puts it, “Identity . . . is the foundation of all rights and obligations, and of accountableness, and the notion of it is fixed and precise” (Reid 1785, 112). What they disagree over is just what identity consists in. Notice, though, the methodological assumption here: a theory of identity's plausibility depends significantly on how well it accounts for our practical concerns. So if Locke's view were right, say Reid and Butler, it would require a host of radical changes to our practices of responsibility attribution and prudential deliberation. But, continues the argument, because making such changes would be crazy – we are strongly committed to the correctness of our current ways of doing things – Locke's view cannot be right. And although Locke disagrees that the implications of his view are crazy, he does agree to the basic methodology. So while he admits that he has made some suppositions “that will look strange to some readers” (Locke 1694, 51), he is also at pains to show that our practices are actually already in conformity with the implications of his view, e.g., human law emphasizes the necessity of continuous consciousness, “not punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did” ( Ibid ., 47). And this is a methodological assumption that has been retained by most theorists on identity and ethics since.

Both Butler and Reid believe Locke's view implies that no one exists beyond the present moment, i.e., that Locke's view is just the following: X at t 1 is identical to Y at t 2 just in case Y 's consciousness is one and the same as X 's consciousness. But because consciousness changes from moment to moment, X 's consciousness could never be identical to Y 's. Unfortunately, this seems a misunderstanding of the theory (even though Locke does sometimes use the phrase “same consciousness,” which doesn't foster clear understanding). Instead, X and Y are, on Locke's actual view, identical just in case X and Y are related via consciousness, i.e., just in case Y remembers the thoughts and experiences of X . But if that is the view, then identity could be just as strict, fixed, and precise as both Butler and Reid seem to want, for Y could be identical to X only in case that relation obtains, no matter how strongly or weakly.

Nevertheless, even if this objection to Locke is thwarted, the others remain in force. For one thing, memory does seem to presuppose personal identity, and so cannot constitute a criterion of it. For another, identity is a transitive relation, while memory isn't, so the latter can't be a criterion of the former. Finally, there is the obvious worry that identity seems to persist through the loss of memory: it's hard to believe that I would cease to exist were I to undergo amnesia. It's for all these reasons that contemporary theorists working in the Lockean tradition have had to make significant changes to the theory to make it viable.

2. Contemporary Accounts of Personal Identity

There are four general accounts of personal identity that have been taken to have some relevance to ethics by contemporary theorists: psychological, biological, narrative, and a new one to be labeled “anthropological.” After discussing these four, as well as a fifth view that identity doesn't matter for ethics, we will evaluate the views in light of a challenging thought experiment: fission. After that, we will discuss the relevance of both souls and a four-dimensionalist ontology to the issues at hand.

By far the most popular view of personal identity, until quite recently, has been a significantly amended version of Locke's relational memory criterion. To make such a view plausible, though, the three objections just detailed need to be addressed. Start, then, with Butler's complaint that memory presupposes identity, that I can remember only my own experiences, so memory just reveals to me my identity relation to some past experiencer and cannot constitute that relation. Following Sydney Shoemaker (1970) and Derek Parfit (1984), one can introduce a more inclusive memory relation, called quasi-memory , or q-memory, defined so that it does not presuppose identity. I have a q-memory of some past experience just in case that experience occurred to someone and my memory of the experience was caused in the right sort of way by the experience I now remember. Regular memory, then, would just be a subset of q-memory (applying to ordinary instances when I was the person to whom the remembered experience occurred), and q-memory could be the relevant relation incorporated into the theory of identity in a way that avoids Butler's objection.

The second objection was Reid's, about transitivity of identity in the Brave Officer case. What gets Locke in trouble is that memories fade, so someone may no longer be capable of having direct memories of what is clearly his earlier life. But one may certainly have direct memories of some past stage that itself had direct memories of an earlier stage, and so on, until every stage in the life is linked by a chain of overlapping direct memories. What one can then insert into the criterion of identity across time is a continuity of direct (q-)memories, so that the retired general is the same person as the apple-stealer insofar as he directly remembers the experiences of the brave officer, who himself directly remembers the experiences of the apple-stealer. Of course, one direct memory of some past experience won't be sufficient to establish identity, it seems. Suppose I volunteered to have your memory trace of walking in Antarctica implanted in me (and I myself had never been there), and I woke up having that q-memory of walking in the bitter cold and deep snow. Surely this would not make me you, even though there is a direct memory connection between us, so theorists taking this route will talk about the need for strong memory connections, where this just consists in a significant number of such connections (Parfit 1984, 205–206, 219–223).

The third objection was that someone could persist through a loss of memory, a claim Locke's view denies. What can be done to render the Lockean view more plausible, then, is to incorporate more psychological features than just memory into the identity-preserving relation. So not only are there present-past relations of memory that are relevant to my identity, but there may also be present-future relations such as intentions fulfilled in action, relations that persist across time such as beliefs, goals, and desires, and resemblance relations such as similarity of character.

Putting all these replies together, then, we have The Psychological Criterion of Personal Identity : X at t 1 is the same person as Y at t 2 if and only if X is uniquely psychologically continuous with Y , where psychological continuity consists in overlapping chains of strong psychological connectedness, itself consisting in significant numbers of direct psychological connections like memories, intentions, beliefs/goals/desires, and similarity of character (Parfit 1984, 207). We will see the meaning and importance of the “uniqueness” clause later.

This criterion of identity (and its variants) has been taken to fit particularly well with our practical concerns, both self-regarding and other-regarding. For instance, what seems to matter for self-concern and rational anticipation is that my psychological life continue. Anticipation and self-concern are psychological states, as are their objects (future experiences), so a theory of identity that ties those states together by virtue of tying distinct stages of me together seems initially quite plausible. In addition, concerns having to do with moral responsibility are also about the relations between various psychological states – including intentions to perform actions, memories of past doings, desires and beliefs explaining actions, and so forth – and so if personal identity is a necessary condition for moral responsibility, the Psychological Criterion provides a plausible and satisfying account of that condition: I cannot be responsible for the actions of some person if I'm not the inheritor of that person's psychology.

What could motivate alternative approaches to our identity, then, given the seeming successes of the Psychological Criterion? One important problem stems from worries about our essence . For instance, I am many things, including an adult, a professor, a driver, a voter, and so forth. None of these is my essence, however, for I either did or could exist without being them. If we could identify my essence, however (and generally the essence of individuals like me), we would be able to identify the conditions for my persistence across time as well. Now the Psychological Criterion seems to imply that personhood is my essence, that I couldn't exist without being a person, and given that personhood is a psychological matter, psychological continuity is what preserves my identity. But as Eric Olson and others have pointed out, this seems quite wrong (Olson 1997a, 1997b, DeGrazia 1999a, 1999b, Carter 1982, Snowdon 1990, Wiggins 1980). After all, just as I was once a teenager, and before that an adolescent and a child, wasn't I also an infant, and ultimately a fetus? Furthermore, suppose I were in a horrible accident and went into a permanent vegetative state (PVS). Wouldn't I then be in a PVS? If so, then if personhood necessarily involves having a certain sort of developed psychology (e.g., a psychology capable, at the least, of self-reflection), it can't be my essence; instead, being a person would be like being a child, or a teenager, something one becomes and may also outlive (called a “phase sortal” in the literature).

If personhood isn't my essence, then what is? The most plausible answer seems to be that I am a biological organism, a human animal. And if this is my essence, it will also provide the conditions of my persistence across time. From this move, then, we get the Biological Criterion of Personal Identity : if X is a person at t 1 , and Y exists at any other time, then X = Y if and only if Y 's biological organism is continuous with X 's biological organism (Olson 1997b, DeGrazia 2005). Note that Y may or may not be a person, which allows that X might be one and the same as a fetus or someone in a PVS. This view is also sometimes called animalism (e.g., Noonan 1998, Olson 2003, Blatti and Snowdon 2016).

Consider, then, this criterion of our identity. While it obviously does well with the essence question, it seems to do less well when we consider its relation to ethics. Again, what seems to ground the rationality of my anticipation of future experiences is the fact that that future person will be the inheritor of my psychology. That he's also the inheritor of my biological organism seems irrelevant. Indeed, our reactions to certain thought experiments strongly suggest that we think rational anticipation, self-concern, moral responsibility, and the like can be justified even in the absence of biological continuity. We can see this most dramatically in considering the transplant intuition (Olson 1997b, 43–51, DeGrazia 2005, 51–54). Suppose my cerebrum were transplanted into a different living body and the resulting person turned out be exactly like me psychologically. Suppose also that my cerebrum-less organism were kept alive. What would have happened to me? Most people share the intuition that the recipient of my cerebrum would be me, simply because he would have my psychology and survival of my psychology seems to be what matters in my survival. The advocate of the Biological Criterion, however, has to maintain that I remain the cerebrum-less donor, essentially in a PVS, while the other person – the person who seems to remember my experiences, and seems to be carrying out my intentions, and seems just like me psychologically in every respect – is just a deluded imposter. But this is hard to believe. Suppose further that I had committed some crime and then donated my cerebrum in this way. The person who woke up would seem to remember my crime and anticipate enjoying getting away with it for a while, but if identity is what's necessary for responsibility, he could not be responsible for my actions, on the Biological Criterion, and so he wouldn't deserve blame or punishment for the crime. Again, this seems hard to believe. What accounts for the practical concerns we have seems to be grounded in psychological relations, and the Biological Criterion thus targets a relation for identity that is just irrelevant for those concerns (a key exception will be discussed later, however).

There are a couple of replies here. DeGrazia, for one, admits that the transplant intuition is a thorn in the side of the Biological Criterion (DeGrazia 2005, 54). But when it comes to that criterion's seemingly poor fit with our practical concerns generally, he suggests that, “in the world as we know it,” there's much less of a problem than we might think (DeGrazia 2005, 60–61). After all, in nearly all everyday cases, a necessary condition for the psychological continuity grounding our practical concerns is biological continuity. So if the grounding for our practical concerns requires psychological continuity, but psychological continuity (ordinarily) presupposes biological continuity, then the grounding for our practical concerns (ordinarily) requires biological continuity as well.

This reply, however, seems to overlook the original motivation, which was to find a somewhat closer relation between identity and our practical concerns than this. While biological continuity may track the patterns of ethical concerns, it doesn't provide any real explanation for them. It may be rational for me to anticipate only the experiences of my biological continuers, for instance, but it won't be in virtue of my biological continuity with them that it's rational to do so; rather, it seems rational only in virtue of the psychological relations they are expected to bear to me. And so one might be tempted to reject the Biological Criterion of identity because of this poor explanatory fit with our practical concerns.

Nevertheless, there is another reply available for the advocate of the Biological Criterion, namely, to deny that personal identity has this purported fit with our practical concerns at all. Instead, while biological continuity preserves our identity across time (this advocate might say), psychological continuity is the relation grounding our practical concerns. This move would still preserve the thought that identity has an impact for ethics, just not the one we thought. As Olson, puts it, if it's right that “the relations of practical concerns that typically go along with our identity through time are closely connected with psychological continuity …, then the Biological Approach does have an interesting ethical consequence, namely that those practical relations are not necessarily connected with numerical identity” (Olson 1997b, 70). Obviously, this would be very surprising for theorists like Butler, Reid, and even Locke to hear, but if we had overwhelming metaphysical reasons to adopt the Biological Criterion, it could well be true. This stance is a version of the Identity Doesn't Matter (IDM) view, to be discussed later.

Thus far we have been assuming that the criterion of identity relevant to our practical concerns will answer to what Schechtman 1996 calls a reidentification question : What are the conditions under which a person at one point in time is properly reidentified at another point in time? Answering this question calls for a criterion of diachronic numerical identity , a criterion of what makes something one and the same thing as itself at different times. But according to Schechtman, what is actually more appropriate for the relation between identity and ethics is an answer to the characterization question : What are the conditions under which various psychological characteristics, experiences, and actions are properly attributable to some person?

One reason to turn to this question may stem from recognizing the difficulties various theories of numerical identity run into, both metaphysically and in terms of fitting with our practical concerns (Schechtman 1996, 26–70). But another may be the natural fit between the characterization question and our practical concerns. So in searching for an account of the rationality of anticipation, we seem to be asking, “What makes those expected experiences mine?” Or in searching for an account of the special concern we have only for ourselves, we seem to be asking, “What makes those future states I'm specially concerned about mine ?” And the same seems true of responsibility and compensation: “What makes those actions for which I'm responsible, or those burdens for which I'm to be compensated, mine ?” And in each case, what makes some feature mine may be a non-numerical type of identity, the type of identity we are thinking of when addressing the familiar question of an identity crisis: “Who am I really?” This is the question of identity as proper attributability, an account of the nature of one's deep or true self and the various attributes genuinely belonging to it. (For early and influential discussion of proper attributability and identification, see various essays in Frankfurt 1988; for discussion of different theories of the deep/true self over the years, see Shoemaker 2015).

So what is the right account of this sort of identity? According to theorists attracted to this general approach, it is the Narrative Criterion of Personal Identity : What makes an action, experience, or psychological characteristic properly attributable to some person (and thus a proper part of his or her true self) is its correct incorporation into the self-told story of his or her life (MacIntyre 1984, 1989, Taylor 1989, Schechtman 1996, DeGrazia 2005). Narrative identity is thus really about a kind of psychological unity, but not just an artless or random unity. Imagine, for instance, a subject of experiences to whom various experiences merely happened over time. The events would be unified in a purely passive respect, simply as the experiences contained within the life of that subject of experiences. But for that subject to be a person , a genuine moral agent, those experiences must be actively unified, must be gathered together into the life of one narrative ego by virtue of a story the subject tells that weaves them together, giving them a kind of coherence and intelligibility they wouldn't otherwise have had. This is how the various experiences and events come to have any real meaning at all – rather than being merely isolated events – by being part of a larger story that relates them to one another within the context of one life (Schechtman 1996, 96–99).

This view purports to account for our practical concerns in a far more adequate way than the previous accounts of numerical identity. So it makes sense for me to rationally anticipate some future experiences only if they will be mine, where what makes them mine is that they will fit coherently and accurately into my own ongoing self-told story. What explains my special sort of concern for myself is that I'm in fact an extended narrative ego – not some present time-slice concerned about the well-being of some different future time-slice – and I'm constantly extending that narrative into the future, so my concern is global , a concern for the whole self I'm creating via this story, the whole self whose various parts are mine . And as for responsibility, the Narrative Criterion implies that what makes some past action mine (for which I'm eligible for praise or blame) is that it flowed from my central values, beliefs, and experiences, that there's a coherent story I may tell uniting it to the other elements of my life. And a similar story may be told to account for compensation (Schechtman 1996, 136–162).

There are, nevertheless, problems with the account. For one thing, it is not entirely clear why a self-told narrative is necessary to unite the various experiences and events of one's life into a coherent whole. I may have robust psychological unity without having told myself any kind of story. But even if we allow for hypothetical narratives to do this work, it remains unclear just what role a narrative actually plays in our practical concerns. After all, some narratives get it wrong – it can't just be that whatever I say about the way the events of my life fit together is what goes – and if we correct for that, then it seems we must admit that it isn't the narrative itself that makes the various events and experiences united with one another; rather, they must be united with one another independently, and the (correct) narrative just serves as a kind of post hoc overlay, an aesthetic articulation of the pre-existing metaphysical unity.

But perhaps the most serious worry comes from the fact that, as it stands, narrative identity depends on numerical identity (as DeGrazia 2005, 114, admits). What matters to us with respect to all of our practical concerns is that we ourselves continue to exist: it's a necessary presupposition of my rational anticipation, self-concern, possibilities for compensation, and so on that I myself persist, but this is an issue of numerical identity. Another way to put this point is that one can't be a person, on the narrative view, unless one gathers up the various experiences one has as a subject of experiences into a coherent narrative, but then the identity of that subject of experiences must be preserved across time for its experiences to be so gathered up. If narrative identity presupposes numerical identity, though, then we still need a plausible account of numerical identity first, one that can ground an answer to the characterization question the narrative view was built to address. But given the problems of both the Psychological and Biological views, is there a way to do so? A recent addition to the literature is promising.

Some have attempted to respond to the worry about bad or false narratives by introducing a reality constraint to narrative views, one that's buttressed by appeal to third-person storytelling (Lindemann 2001; Schechtman 2014, Ch. 3). But allowing third-person narratives into the mix causes a sea change in our enterprise, for it greatly broadens the range of identity-related practical concerns we will need to explain. To see this important point, suppose that we start with a purely subjective, first-person narrative account of my identity, according to which I gather together various experiences in my life as mine so that I can tell a sensible story unifying the actions for which I'm morally responsible, the experiences I can rationally anticipate having, the burdening experiences for which I can justifiably be compensated with benefits, and the expected future benefits or burdens I may prudentially care about. Notice that telling this unifying story both requires a robust set of psychological capacities and incorporates just those actions and experiences I have had (or will have) while in possession of that robust set of psychological capacities, i.e., the story is just about my life as a Lockean person .

Now I may tell a one-sided or downright false story. To correct the story, therefore, we may have to check it against third-person narratives of my life. But third-person narratives are not going to be restricted just to what happened to me while I was a Lockean person. They will also include things I did or that happened to me when I was an infant, or even a fetus (“You kicked so hard during that last month of pregnancy,” says my mother). And they may well include what happens to me after falling into a PVS (“I visited him every day and talked to him,” says my mother). These are social treatments that also seem grounded by attributions of identity, such as he was my son , or she's still my mom . But neither the Psychological Criterion nor the Biological Criterion can account for them in a straightforward way.

The Psychological Criterion requires sophisticated psychological capacities, sufficient to sustain continuities of memory, intentions, beliefs, desires, and character. As neither infants/fetuses nor those in PVS have such capacities, this criterion cannot ground these forms of social treatment.

Now one might think the Biological Criterion could easily handle such cases, but it can't. That's again because it's not in virtue of her being the same human animal that we continue to treat someone in a PVS or in the end stages of dementia, say, as identical to her pre-PVS self. Rather, it's in virtue of her being the same human animal that we do so. This is the core of what we may call the Anthropological View , recently advanced and defended by Marya Schechtman (Schechtman 2014). (Schechtman herself calls this the “person-life view,” but this label is misleading for our purposes, as what she means by “person” isn't Lockean; for instance, she assigns personhood even to fetuses and those in a PVS. It is preferable, therefore, to stick with the anthropological label for the sake of clarity and distinction from the other views on the table.)

On the Anthropological View, we are human beings, with ways of life organized around a particular paradigm: We are creatures who typically develop in certain ways and are treated in certain ways not only with respect to our inborn biological and psychological features but also with respect to our socially shaped capacities (e.g., being empathic and sociable requires nurturing). Among these capacities are the “forensic” capacities Locke and many others have focused on, having to do with responsibility and prudential concern. But we are also born into families and societies whose members treat us in various ways, giving us names, dressing us, singing to us, taking walks with us, and so on. These concerns all track the very same metaphysical unit that gradually becomes responsible and concerned for its own future. We thus cannot say that the later responsible unit is a different thing, or even a different kind of thing, from the infant from which he or she developed.

Insofar as this is an account that draws from paradigmatic cases of humanity to identify our identity conditions, it can allow that, while there are non-paradigmatic cases of humans that may not be a target of all our practical concerns, they are nevertheless individuals like us and so are certainly appropriate targets of some such concerns (like being named, dressed, and sung to). This explains why humans with profound intellectual disabilities and those in a PVS or with Alzheimer's dementia are still individuals like us, units whose identity is also defined by the web of our practical concerns (Schechtman 2014, Chs. 5–6)

Individuals like us, then, are human animals with a particular form of life, one whose practices of pregnancy, birth, development, social interaction, personhood, and death both shape and are shaped by the particular attributes and capacities of the individuals living it. These human animals are the locus of all of our “person”-related practical concerns, and what makes any such individual at one time the same as an individual at a later time is just that they are living the very same human life.

If successful, this Anthropological View would reveal an extremely tight relation between our practical concerns and personal identity. Before we assess it, however, we must first examine its polar opposite, a view abjuring any such relation between practical concerns and personal identity.

2.5 The Identity Doesn't Matter View

Derek Parfit was among the first contemporary theorists to explore the relation between identity and ethics explicitly, first in his seminal early 1970s articles, “Personal Identity” and especially “Later Selves and Moral Principles,” and then in his restatement and development of the view in Part III of his 1984 book Reasons and Persons (from which the present exposition is taken). Parfit's is, in many respects, a Lockean account of personal identity, although there are significant departures. He is a “reductionist,” according to which the facts about persons and personal identity consist in more particular facts about brains, bodies, and series of interrelated mental and physical events (Parfit 1984, 210–211). The denial of reductionism is called “nonreductionism,” according to which the facts about persons and personal identity consist in some further fact, typically a fact about Cartesian egos or souls.

While Parfit's arguments against nonreductionism and in favor of reductionism are striking and important, for our purposes what matters is how he articulates and develops reductionism and how he argues for the surprising conclusion that the identity relation is in fact not what matters in survival. To begin, he suggests at times that the most plausible reductionist criterion of personal identity is the Psychological Criterion. As we saw earlier, this criterion maintains that in order for X to be identical to Y , X must be uniquely psychologically continuous with Y . Psychological continuity is potentially a branching, one-many relation, i.e., it could conceivably hold between me-now and more than one person in the future. But identity is an equivalence relation – it is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive – so it holds only one-one. Thus only by including a “no branching” clause can this criterion of identity avoid a crippling contradiction.

By way of explanation, consider the case Parfit uses in support of his claim that identity is not what matters: fission ( Ibid ., 254–255). Suppose both of my brain hemispheres are functional duplicates of the other, and that each of my other two triplet brothers has suffered irreversible brain damage. A brilliant neurosurgeon can transplant one of my brain hemispheres into each brother, and so each survivor (we will stipulate) will be fully psychologically continuous with me upon waking up. What has happened to me? If we lack the “no branching” clause, we are forced to say that, because both brothers are psychologically continuous with me, they are both me. But then (given the transitivity of identity) both survivors would also have to be identical to each other , which seems obviously false (although see Belzer 2005 for doubts about this assertion). So to avoid violating this transitivity requirement, we simply have to stipulate in our criterion of personal identity that, if the relations in which identity consists may hold one-many, they must obtain uniquely for identity itself to obtain.

But then what has happened to me in fission? It seems I cannot survive as both, as they are two people and I am only one. In addition, there simply is no non-arbitrary reason why identity should obtain between me and just one of the survivors, given that I bear precisely the same relation to each one. So the only remaining option is that I do not survive fission (see Parfit 2001, 42; see also Brink 1997b, 140–141; and Johansson 2010). But is this like an ordinary case in which I don't survive, i.e., like death ? Clearly not: both survivors will seem to remember my thoughts and experiences, they will fulfill intentions I had in action, they will have the same beliefs/desires/goals as me, and their characters will be exactly like mine. Indeed, it will be just as if I had survived. Everything that matters in ordinary survival (or nearly everything), therefore, is preserved in fission, despite the fact that the identity relation is not. What this must mean, then, is that the identity relation just is not what matters (or is not what matters very much) in survival; instead, what matters has to consist in psychological continuity and/or connectedness (what Parfit calls “Relation R”). As long as that relation holds between me-now and some other person-stage – regardless of whether or not it holds one-one – what happens to me is just as good as ordinary survival. Call this the Identity Doesn't Matter (IDM) view.

While there are plausible alternative reactions to fission that maintain the importance of the identity relation (see, e.g., Lewis 1976, Sider 2001a) – and such views will be explored later – for now it is important to see what Parfit's version would mean, if anything, for our practical concerns. What, after all, do we do if identity is not what matters in survival? Given that we have for the most part been assuming that identity is the relation grounding our patterns of concern, we are now faced with two options: either we take those patterns of concern to be unjustified or we find new grounds for them. In Reasons and Persons , Parfit is officially agnostic on the proper approach (he claims that arguments for both stances are defensible, yet also can be defensibly denied; see Parfit 1984, 311–312). Nevertheless, it surely seems most plausible to retain the patterns of concern formerly grounded on identity and simply find a new justification for them. And it seems obvious that Relation R could provide such a justification. After all, if we formerly thought identity justified these patterns insofar as it was what we thought mattered for survival, but it turns out that identity – Relation R plus uniqueness – is not what matters only because uniqueness is not what matters, then it seems natural and plausible to cite the remaining aspect of identity (Relation R) as what grounds our patterns of concern in virtue of being what truly matters in survival (see, e.g., Jeske 1993). How, in other words, could uniqueness have provided all the relevant justifications? Indeed, Parfit himself seems drawn to such a conclusion in the discussion of rationality and morality that follows. He calls it the Moderate Claim (Parfit 1984, 311). (This is in contrast to the Extreme Claim , which is that the further fact of identity is what grounds our practical concerns, so to the extent there is no such further fact, our practical concerns are ungrounded.)

So let us assume that Relation R grounds our patterns of concern. Consider, then, prudential rationality. While it is ordinarily thought to be imprudent to discount the interests of one's Much Later Self (MLS) just because that self will not come into existence for a long time, Parfit suggests that reductionism provides a different, more plausible reason to do so. Since one of the relations in R (connectedness) obtains by degrees, it is very likely it will obtain to a much reduced degree between me-now and my MLS than it will between me-now and my tomorrow's self. But if R grounds my patterns of concern, and a reduced degree of connectedness is one part of R, then a reduced degree of connectedness justifies a reduced degree of concern. Thus, I may be justified in caring much less about my MLS than about my tomorrow's self. This conclusion justifies discounting my MLS's (expected) interests in favor of my present interests.

Of course, given that we still think great imprudence is wrong, how might we criticize it if we made these revisions to our practices? One way to do so would be to recognize that, since my MLS would really be more like a different person than me, he should be treated as such, i.e., how I treat him should now fall under the rubric of morality , and insofar as it is wrong to harm others without their consent, it would be wrong for me to harm him as well. Great imprudence like this, in other words, would be immoral (Parfit 1984, 318–320).

Parfit's theory has often been called “revisionary,” in part because of moves like this one (see, e.g., Rovane 1998, 11; Martin 1998, 15). The thought is that both his theory of identity and its implications for our prudential and moral practices and concerns require us to change our views both of ourselves and of what matters. But this judgment may be mistaken. After all, Parfit seems to be trying to show that (a) what in fact matters to us in survival (revealed by the fission case) is Relation R, not identity, and (b) what these antecedent commitments about survival imply about prudence and morality is that the wrongness we currently attach to great imprudence should merely be called a wrongness of morality. But in neither case is there any call for revision of anything substantive in our views of ourselves or in our normative practices. Indeed, people simply are less concerned with their MLSs than with their tomorrow-selves, and it is not difficult to see why: if they cannot imagine being the self in question, it is extremely difficult either to imagine what that self's interests are or to take those interests into account equally with their more closely related stages in practical deliberation. But what generally enables that act of projective imagination is the expectation of a significant degree of psychological connectedness, so the less there is expected to be of that relation, the less our concern for those distant stages is likely to be. This suggests, then, that Parfit's view is less revisionary than revelatory : he may be taken to be providing a clear-headed description of our practices and commitments, and in so doing revealing to us just what those practices and commitments actually involve and entail for other aspects of our lives (although see the discussion of the various articles by Mark Johnston later on for considerations to the contrary).

Fission is a challenge to any theory of personal identity that purports to preserve a tight relation between identity and our practical concerns. The Psychological Criterion will be a clear casualty, for instance. As for the Biological Criterion, it seems most plausible, in light of fission, to adopt an extreme version of the IDM stance, maintaining (as does Olson 1997, as noted earlier) that our numerical identity just doesn't ground our practical concerns at all (which are instead a function of a “same person relation” that need not adhere to the demands of a strict numerical identity relation).

What, though, about the Anthropological View? Schechtman offers an interesting take on fission: Such a procedure hasn't yet occurred, so without filling in the social conditions and practices we can't state in advance what the identity of the survivors would be. If fission happened all the time, all of those future humans would likely be very different sorts of creatures from us, as they would be living a different form of life, and so the identity conditions for individuals like us simply wouldn't apply to them. If it happened only once or very rarely, the survivors would be sufficiently like us (as we could still engage with them interpersonally, and our interactions with them could still make sense from within our current form of life) that they would be one of us, but they couldn't be identical to the original person. This is because there would be such a huge range of differences in how they would be treated – by the spouse, children, friends, bank, and employer of the pre-fission person – that each person's relation to the pre-fission person would now just be too different to count as identity (Schechtman 2014, 159–166). The Anthropological View thus seems as if it can deal with fission while nevertheless preserving a tight relation between identity and practical concerns.

It seems difficult to arbitrate between the IDM and the Anthropological View, and one reason is that they seem to be taking different methodological approaches to identifying the identity conditions for different kinds of entities. Regarding the latter, Parfit asks the first-person question, “What matters to me in fission?” and this presupposes that we are talking about the type of creatures (pre- and post-fission) that are individuals like us in terms of our full-fledged forensic (Lockean personhood) capacities. Schechtman, on the other hand, asks the third-person question, about how such fission products would be treated, which allows for their being creatures who are indeed different from us. Furthermore, Schechtman is interested in identifying (from the start) the unified locus of our practical concerns and then subsequently figuring out that thing's identity conditions, whereas Parfit is interested in what antecedent theories of personal identity would imply for our practical concerns in light of fission. This latter difference in methodology will be discussed in a later section. The former difference in the object of our practical concerns, however, may be irreconcilable. Indeed, from my perspective in fission, once I'm a Lockean person, it may seem that nothing internal to that perspective will be lost (holding instead twice over). But I can also understand how differently the survivors might well be treated in a number of respects by others. It may thus be unclear which perspective we ought to privilege here.

We have just examined the leading contemporary theories of personal identity (or what matters in personal identity), and we have also explored how those views might relate to ethics. But we have thus far ignored what may be the most popular theory of identity outside philosophy (and a view that a minority of philosophers still accept as well). This is nonreductionism, according to which persons exist separately and independently from their brains and bodies, and so their lives are unified from birth to death in virtue of that separately existing entity, what we will call a Cartesian ego (but is most popularly thought of as a soul). And although there is logical space available for a nonreductionism according to which identity isn't what matters for survival and our practical concerns, the universal view is instead the opposite. Notice, then, that this view implies both a deep unity within individual lives and a deep disunity between lives. After all, if what unifies my life is a particular persisting ego-substance, and that substance is wholly present at every stage of my life, then every temporal slice of my life is just as much a part of me as every other, so if prudential concern is grounded in identity, for example, I ought to be equally concerned for every part of my life. Further, given that my particular ego-substance is distinct from every other person's particular ego-substance, my special prudential concern justifiably ends at the boundaries of my epidermis (or at the “boundaries” of my ego).

Now one important problem for this view is that it is very difficult to see why my patterns of concern should track this particular ego, and not instead the psychological features constituting Relation R. What is it about this substance that warrants my special prudential concern, for example? If it is in virtue of its function as the carrier of the various psychological connections, then we might well wonder why we shouldn't just care directly for those connections, rather than merely for the “house” they live in. But if we make that move, then we have already switched to reductionism, it seems, and because those direct psychological connections may hold one-many, identity cannot be what matters.

On the other hand, the nonreductionist might insist that I am justified in having special concern for my future ego simply insofar as it is the only thing that will be me , regardless of whether or not Relation R is preserved by or within it. On this account, then (what Parfit 1984, 228 calls the “Featureless Cartesian View”), who I am – my essential identity – is independent of any particular psychological properties. But if identity is entirely prized apart from psychology in this way, and if the ego to be tracked is an immaterial substance (as it is, of course, on the Cartesian version), we are left with two related puzzles. First, if the particular ego I now have (or am) can be perceived or identified neither directly, via some empirical means, nor indirectly, via a particular set of psychological properties it might be thought to evince, then we actually have no reason to believe that there is just one such ego unifying the various stages of our lives. Instead, our bodies might get a new, qualitatively identical ego every year on our birthdays, or perhaps every day, or perhaps there is a river of them flowing through us from moment to moment. If this were to happen, then I would cease to exist, replaced by a qualitatively identical person who then inherits my psychological properties. But no one would even notice! This would be rather odd, to say the least, and this is because of the connection we think should obtain between our metaphysical criterion of personal identity and our epistemological criterion of personal identity. In other words, we tend to think there is a close connection between the nature of personal identity and what enables us to determine when identity obtains. So if what makes X and Y identical is sameness of body, it will also be our reidentification of that body which enables us to determine that X is Y . Similarly, if what makes X and Y identical is some kind of psychological continuity, then determining that X and Y are identical will be a matter of determining whether psychological continuity obtains between them. Now in both the body and the psychology cases, we have the capacity to do the tracking in question. If the Featureless Cartesian View is correct, though, we do not. We cannot track immaterial egos floating free from any particular psychological properties, so on this view we would never be justified in claiming to have reidentified anyone, nor would we be justified in claiming special concern for some future stage of our bodies: in both cases, we could have no reason whatsoever for thinking that the persons in question were who we thought they were (Perry 1978, 6–18; Parfit 1984, 228).

Now the defender of the view might maintain that, given the correctness of the metaphysical criterion, we should simply abandon our desire for epistemic access to identity. And it is indeed the case that this version of nonreductionism could be true: There is simply no way to show that I am not, after all, an essentially immaterial substance unattached to any particular psychological properties. But if this true, and there becomes no way to make justified judgments of identity, then the second problem is that the theory is just irrelevant for all practical purposes. We in fact make judgments of identity and reidentification based on physical and psychological properties – we lack the capacity to do anything else – so even if the Featureless Cartesian View were true, it would be useless in addressing any of our practical concerns. If, then, we want to articulate a useful relation between personal identity and ethics, we may have to abandon nonreductionism, or at least nonreductionism of the “separately existing entities” sort (technically, Schechtman's Anthropological View is a non-reductionist view, as it does insist that the facts about identity consist in facts beyond just facts about brains and bodies, but these aren't non-trackable facts like those of the Featureless Cartesian; they are instead facts about social treatment and engagement).

Let us turn briefly now to a very general position, a possible version of reductionism according to which identity nevertheless still matters. This view is typically defended by advocates of four-dimensionalism , according to which objects have both spatial and temporal parts (see, e.g., Lewis 1971, 1976; Noonan 1989; Sider 2001a). This view allows one to say that, in the fission case, both post-fission people existed all along, completely coinciding spatially pre-fission (so that each shared that temporal stretch of his life with the other). In other words, they might be like two distinct roads that coincide for a while before separating off in different directions. Thus, if both post-fission person-stages are stages of the same person as the pre-fission stages (but there are indeed two distinct persons all along), then one can maintain the thesis that the identity relation is what matters, for now identity is also preserved through fission (whereas in Parfit's version while what matters is preserved through fission, identity is not).

Of course, this does not mean identity is really what matters. Perhaps instead the identity relation merely always accompanies , but is not constitutive of, what matters. Indeed, this point may be pressed on the four-dimensionalist. Why, after all, would it be identity that matters in my relation to some future person-stage? Suppose we regularly lived to be 1000 years old. On the four-dimensionalist account, I now would be unified with – I would be part of the same spacetime worm as – my 900-year-old self. But it is extraordinarily difficult, if not psychologically impossible, for me to project myself into his shoes, for I expect him to be radically different, psychologically, from me. There would be between us, then, virtually nothing of what actually matters in ordinary survival, despite the obtaining of identity. Of course, one might maintain instead that it is some strong degree of psychological connectedness that provides the unity relation between various temporal stages, but then it seems explicit that the relation preserving what matters is just connectedness, not identity per se. There is much more to say about this view, of course (see, e.g., Belzer 2005), and we will return to it later.

Strictly speaking, a metaphysical criterion of identity has no direct implications whatsoever for normative matters, simply because what is the case implies nothing about what ought to be the case. What people who seek a relation between identity and ethics typically do, then, is appeal to considerations of identity to fill in some key blank regarding what the ethically significant metaphysical units are. In other words, certain conclusions about identity are taken to inform us as to just what unifies the targets of prudential and moral theorizing. Consider prudence, for example. In deliberating about what is in my best interest, what is needed is some conception of the scope of the “my” in question, i.e., what unit my deliberations are to cover. Similarly, with respect to moral responsibility, we need to know whether the agent subject to praise or blame for some action is part of the same unit as the agent who performed that action.

But notice that a specification of possible metaphysical unities alone will not be sufficient, for what we need in addition is a specification of which such unities are significant for ethics . To see why this is an issue, consider just reductionism. Reductionism is actually quite a general metaphysical view, holding at its most basic that the facts about identity simply consist in more particular facts about brains, bodies, and so forth. But even if one accepts reductionism, and so abandons appeal to some further fact about separately existing entities to explain personal identity, and even if one also believes that identity is not what matters in survival, one still has much work to do before being able to apply the theory to ethics. This is because there are (at least) four possible metaphysical units that could be targeted for normative theorizing. First, we might target living human beings , human organisms picked out by the Biological Criterion (and to some extent the Anthropological View) and unified over time via biological continuity. These entities would endure from some early-stage fetuses until organismic death. Second, we might target Lockean persons , entities picked out by the Psychological Criterion and unified over time by psychological continuity (overlapping chains of strong psychological connectedness). These entities would endure from late infancy (or the time at which the various psychological connections could be established) to brain death or perhaps dementia. Third, we might target selves , entities unified by strong psychological connectedness. Such units would have significant duration, but they would not be likely to endure for as long as persons – insofar as memories typically fade, beliefs and desires are lost or revised over time, and so forth – and they certainly wouldn't endure as long as the life of the human being of which they were a part. Fourth, we might target atoms , or momentary experiencers, “units” defined and delimited by the duration of an experience. It could be, after all, that if the deep fact of identity is missing, there just are no other relations of significance we could legitimately substitute for it, so all that remains would be merely the basic atomic moments of people's lives. (For discussion of the last three possible units, see D. Shoemaker 1999, 401; for a similar distinction, see Brink 1997b, 110–115, where he labels these last three possible units “persons,” “person-segments,” and “person-slices.”)

So it is not enough that we articulate the various possible metaphysical units. We must also figure out a way to identify which one we ought to target for ethics (or whether just one will do the trick for all relevant forms of ethical theorizing). So in its purely metaphysical guise, reductionism must settle merely for presenting these four alternatives, remaining officially neutral on which one the ethicists should adopt. This two-step process – identifying the possible metaphysical units, then narrowing down the list to the ethically significant metaphysical units – is often overlooked by those wishing to adopt metaphysical conclusions in their normative theorizing, but both steps are important (a notable exception to those who overlook this point is Brink; see his 1990, 1997a, and 1997b).

Once we make the switch from talk of identity to talk of unity relations as being ethically significant, however, things can also get quite complicated. For there seems no reason in principle why two of the contending intrapersonal unity relations – psychological continuity and connectedness – could not also hold interpersonally . That is, not only could psychological continuity, say, hold one-many, between me-now and more than one person in the future, but it could also hold between me-now and other spatially distinct, simultaneously-existing persons (Brink 1997a, 141–143, 1997b, 125–128). And the same could be true as well of psychological connectedness. At least some of the psychological relations making up connectedness and continuity can obviously obtain interpersonally, e.g., sameness of beliefs/desires/goals, and resemblance of character. But it also seems perfectly possible that memories and intentions may be shared between persons, produced by some common cause ( Ibid .). Recognizing these connections widens the boundaries of what counts as a targeted unit (and in so doing it may also blur the boundaries between prudence and morality), but the ensuing messiness may not be worth it. After all, if the proper ethical unit is a self, say, unified by psychological connectedness, which obtains by degrees, that means that my unity with many others – and with future stages of myself – will be only partial, obtaining to various people in varying degrees. But if these are the units targeted by ethics, how do we mark their boundaries such that the moral concepts and principles coherently apply (McMahan 2002, 62)? In addition, who exactly would the practical agents in question be, where people are more or less unified with each other (Brink 1997b, 113–114)? And there may also be worries about how to apply moral concepts admitting of no scalar dimensions – like promises – to moral units – like selves – that do (Williams 1976, 202–204). These questions (and more) pose genuine challenges for accounts allowing for interpersonal unities.

Perhaps in order to avoid these and other problems, Marya Schechtman proposes her Anthropological View as driven by the question of what units are the proper object of all of our person-related practical concerns. As already noted, she thinks the only way to unite all of them is by focusing on the human animal, one that lives our form of life. This allows her to say that the fetus is the same thing as the infant, which is the same as the teenager, the adult, and the demented grandparent, one individual treated as the same locus of a host of practical concerns over the course of that life. This view effectively blocks the possibilities, raised above, of some concerns cutting across individual lives, but this may prevent the Anthropological View from being able to explain some features of commonsense morality that the interpersonal unities view can.

We have already seen some ways in which considerations of personal identity might be relevant to self-regarding arenas like anticipation and prudential concern. We turn now to examine specific ways in which personal identity may have implications for the other-regarding practical concerns discussed in various arenas of moral philosophy. One of the most widely discussed in the literature thus far has been ethical theory. Most of those working in the field to this point have been appealing to considerations of identity to boost the plausibility of consequentialism, and, more specifically, utilitarianism. There are various ways in which such an attempt proceeds.

First, one might identify a serious objection to utilitarianism, say, and then show how considerations of personal identity (or at least of what matters in identity) dissolve the objection. This is the approach Parfit takes in Reasons and Persons . The objection he is concerned to refute is Rawls' famous “separateness of persons” charge, the contention that utilitarianism fails to take seriously the distinction between persons, because it controversially jettisons interpersonal distributive principles in exactly the way we uncontroversially jettison them intrapersonally (Rawls 1971, 22–27). That is, in extending the principle of rational choice to society-wide decision-making (via use of the imagined impartial spectator), utilitarianism treats the interests of all members of society as if they were the interests of one person, and so conflates different persons into one. What Parfit suggests is that, if the objection depends on a hard-and-fast metaphysical distinction between persons (i.e., on the non-identity of different persons), and if this distinction depends on the further fact of identity – a nonexistent fact if reductionism is true – then the distinction is nothing to take seriously in the first place. Utilitarians, in other words, may be reductionists, justifiably ignoring the “distinctness” between persons – and the distributive principles such a distinction might support – because the non-identity of persons is just a less deep fact (Parfit 1984, 329–345; see also Broome 1991 for a reductionist-based argument in support of utilitarianism's account of goodness).

The success of arguments for this conclusion actually depends on the specific version of reductionism being advanced. After all, there are several possible ethically significant metaphysical units compatible with reductionism, and it turns out that the larger the unit, the less successful the argument will be. As the authors on this topic do, we will focus just on the three possible psychological units: persons, selves, and atoms. If one believes that the only relevant units are atoms (momentary experiencers) – given that in the absence of the further fact of identity one believes there just are no other unifying relations of any significance (i.e., Parfit's Extreme Claim) – then it is easy to see the complete analogy between individual lives and sets of lives: neither are unified by any significant metaphysical relations, so we could think of them both as just big collections of experiences, in which case there would seem to be no reason to apply distributive principles within either (or, alternatively, no reason not to apply such principles to both – how much weight they ought to bear in that case would remain open, however). But notice that if one adopts either of the other two psychology-based versions of reductionism, according to which either selves or persons are the basic moral units, the argument may not be as successful. If, for instance, it is psychological continuity that matters instead of the further fact of identity – and matters just as much as identity was thought to (i.e., Parfit's Moderate Claim) – then persons are the ethically significant metaphysical units, but then there remains a metaphysical distinction between persons, for psychological continuity, in the absence of interpersonal connectedness, fails to unify sets of lives in the way it does individual lives (see Jeske 1993, Brink 1997a). And the same goes for strong psychological connectedness, which would unify selves in a way rendering them metaphysically distinct from sets of lives.

It looks, then, as if the only way to bolster support for utilitarianism (with a version of this argument, anyway) is to adopt the extreme view, that the ethically significant metaphysical units are momentarily-existing person-atoms. But this is implausible, for it is very difficult even to make sense of a momentary agent . Agents, after all, have interests and projects they seek to advance that necessarily project them into the future. In order to be what one is at any moment, then, one must identify with one's future. “When the person is viewed as an agent, no clear content can be given to the idea of a merely present self” (Korsgaard 1989, 114; see also Williams 1976, 204–207, and Brink 1997b, 112–113). But if one moves away from atoms as the basic moral units for these sorts of practical reasons, the separation between selves/persons and sets of lives becomes more distinct.

Unless , that is, one allows that the relations that matter in identity can hold interpersonally, in which case a number of interesting possibilities arise. For instance, Brink argues that the possibility of interpersonal continuity supports a kind of consequentialism via rational egoism. If one is a rational egoist, one will aim to promote one's own good. What counts as one's own , though – what counts as contained within the prudentially significant metaphysical unit – given reductionism, is defined by psychological continuity (Brink argues against the coherence or practical feasibility of both atoms and selves as the basic units). But if continuity also holds interpersonally, then the rational egoist must, if truly rational, promote the good of all those with whom he is continuous, which, given the thought that each of us bears only six degrees of separation from every other person, generates an important kind of impartial, universalist consequentialism: “the egoist can recognize derivative but non-instrumental reason to be concerned about others” (Brink 1997b, 127). Of course, if the utter impartiality of a universalist consequentialism is implausible for the way it overlooks the importance to us of the special concern we have for friends and loved ones, perhaps one can introduce the idea of degrees of continuity, in which case the concern the egoist must have for others “is proportional to the amount of psychological continuity that exists between the agent and others” ( Ibid ., 128; see also McMahan 2002, 59–66).

Of course, while connectedness clearly comes in degrees, it is less clear that continuity does. For one thing, if continuity consists in strong connectedness, and what makes for such strength is the obtaining of an amount of direct psychological connections above some specified threshold (as it does for Parfit 1984, 206), then continuity is not a matter of degree: either strong connectedness obtains at each link in the chain or it does not (Belzer 2005). But even if we allow that some links in the chain may be weaker than others, if what matters is the existence of the chain , it is difficult to see why its strength in certain patches is relevant. In other words, even if we allow that continuity comes in degrees, it is not entirely clear why our patterns of concern ought to track the amount and not simply the fact of continuity. Indeed, if what matters is supposed to be the degree of continuity, it might seem to make more sense simply to focus on the more obviously scalar relation in which continuity consists, viz., connectedness , as delivering the units of significance in the form of selves.

While focus on selves could perhaps yield a very complicated form of consequentialism (involving the introduction into deliberation of the good of all affected parties – including future selves – weighted according to the degrees of connectedness obtaining between them and the deliberator), another, perhaps more promising, approach would be to appeal to reductionist selves to buttress a different ethical theory altogether, namely contractualism. One longstanding objection to the theory is that it has no way of motivating the amoralist to adhere to the demands of morality. But we can assume that the amoralist is at least prudentially rational. If so, then one very plausible way to model ordinary prudential deliberation is as consisting of a desire that one's actions be justifiable to all affected future stages of oneself (see, e.g., McClennen 1990, 217). But if the relation that matters in identity is connectedness, it should ground such prudential concern in a way that restricts required justification only to those stages with whom one expects to be connected. Then if connectedness holds interpersonally, the rational amoralist must also extend that desire for justifiability to all those with whom he is psychologically connected, and this will take him a long ways towards having the moral motivation at the heart of contractualism (D. Shoemaker 2000; for the basic view of contractualism presupposed here, see Scanlon 1982 and 1998).

The views documented thus far all appeal to psychology-based versions of the ethically significant metaphysical units. What, though, of biology-based versions? One thought motivating nonconsequentialism over consequentialism has to do with compensation: nonconsequentialists think it would be unfair to compensate one basic moral unit for a burden undergone by another such unit, something which consequentialism allegedly permits (Jeske 1993). Here the non-identity of different basic moral units is significant. But what are the moral units relevant to issues of compensation? These are most often thought to be psychological units, typically reductionist persons. But why not think these basic units are instead human beings , individual animal organisms unified by biological continuity? One reason to do so stems from consideration of cases in which a child has been made worse off by some burden undergone when she was a fetus, e.g., her mother drank (giving her fetal alcohol syndrome) or her mother's physician was negligent. Here she is owed compensation, we might think, for what happened to her before birth. (And analogous cases might be constructed with respect to humans who become non-persons, perhaps by going into a PVS.) Such cases might then suggest that, if compensation presupposes personal identity (or what matters in identity), then the criterion of identity relevant to compensation is biological, in which case ethical theories targeting only psychological units are incomplete (D. Shoemaker 2007, 338).

As we can see, then, one may deploy reductionism about personal identity in very different ways to achieve very different results for ethical theory, depending on the basic metaphysical units one targets. Of course, there may simply be no single relation appropriate for grounding all our patterns of concern, i.e., some patterns of concern may be grounded in biological continuity, some may be grounded in psychological continuity or connectedness, and some may target simple momentary experiences. If this is the case, then it may be difficult to see what general uniform conclusions, if any, can be drawn for ethical theory (see Shoemaker 2007; this is what Schechtman 2014 (80–88) calls the Problem of Multiplicity).

As noted earlier, Locke thought the personal identity relation was, in effect, an accountability relation: what makes Y at t 2 the same person as X at t 1 is just what makes Y accountable – morally responsible – for X 's actions. Now this general account of moral responsibility won't do without immmediate supplementation. After all, various excuses (e.g., brainwashing, involuntary intoxication) may serve to get one off the accountability hook even if one is identical to the original agent. So let us suppose, then, that Locke thought one is accountable, in the absence of excuse , for all and only those actions performed by someone with whom one is identical. Is this true?

There is widespread agreement that identity is at least a necessary condition for accountability. The way this idea is most often expressed is that one can be responsible only for one's own actions. Sometimes this is put more expansively: I can be responsible for my own actions, and I cannot be responsible for anyone else's actions (Sider 2001, 4, 143, 203–204; Schechtman 1996, 14; Olson 1997, 59). But these ways of putting the matter are just supposed to be a gloss on the philosophical slogan that moral responsibility presupposes personal identity (Butler 1736, 99–105; Reid 1785, 107–118; DeGrazia 2005, 88–89; Glannon 1998; Parfit 1984, 323–326; Parfit 1986, 837–843).

Now one might think that there are obvious counterexamples to the slogan: parents are sometimes held responsible for the actions of their children, and accomplices are held responsible for the crimes committed by others. An easy reply, however, is that in each case the person being held responsible is actually responsible only for what he or she did . For example, the parent is being held responsible, not for what his child did, but for his (in)action in letting the child do what she did, say, or for his poor parenting. And the accomplice is being held responsible, not for what the criminal did, but for what the accomplice did in aiding the criminal. So in both cases there is some properly specified action for which it seems only the person identical to the actor may be held responsible.

Nevertheless, there are serious problems with the slogan. To see why, note that we are looking for an answer to the following question: what makes a past action my own for purposes of responsibility? The answer given by most theorists, following Locke, is that an action is my own just in case I am identical to the person who performed it. So what account of personal identity provides the right criterion of what makes an action one's own? Locke's memory criterion fails, for some actions can be one's own even if one no longer remembers performing them, due to drunkenness, repression, trauma, or the like (Schechtman 2005, 12; see also Bradford and Smith 1979). In addition, memory isn't sufficient for ownership of actions. Were someone else's memory trace of doing something immoral copied into my brain (so that I “remembered” that person's action), it would be silly to think that it was mine for purposes of accountability, or that I was somehow thereby identical to the performer of that action (Schechtman 2005, 12).

What of the Biological Criterion? On an application of that view, some past action is mine for purposes of accountability just in case I am biologically continuous with its agent. But this again seems neither necessary nor sufficient for ownership. Were my cerebrum transplanted into another's biological organism, such that that person were now fully psychologically continuous with me, it seems that ownership of my actions would have been transferred as well, such that my cerebrum inheritor now is eligible for accountability for my actions, despite his not being biologically continuous with me. Furthermore, were immoral Johann to enter a fugue state, yielding a biological successor (call him Sebastian) who was nevertheless completely psychologically discontinuous with Johann, it would be hard to believe Sebastian could continue to be the owner of Johann's actions, despite their biological continuity (D. Shoemaker 2011).

The natural move, then, is to apply the Psychological Criterion to the criterion of ownership relevant to responsibility (see, e.g., Glannon 1998, 231, 237–243). This criterion requires a wider variety and a greater number of psychological connections than does the memory criterion, and so it can sidestep the worries attaching to Locke's account, while also emphasizing that psychological, not biological, relations are what matter for responsibility. According to this view, then, some past action is my own (for purposes of accountability) just in case the person who performed the action is uniquely psychologically continuous with me (where this consists in overlapping chains of strong psychological connectedness).

Nevertheless, this view also has some problems. For one thing, it's unclear that psychological continuity alone is sufficient for ownership. Suppose Johann's fugue state (turning into the psychologically very different Sebastian) developed gradually, as the result of a brain tumor. We still would likely deny that Sebastian is the owner of Johann's actions, despite their now psychological continuity. And it also seems possible that psychological continuity isn't necessary for ownership either. Suppose someone were to undergo a brain trauma causing psychological discontinuity. Depending on how the case were filled in, it may be that certain actions performed prior to the discontinuity would still be judged hers in the relevant sense. As long as they flowed from a central aspect of the agent's character that remained in place, we might say, they are properly attributable to her regardless of the other psychological discontinuities that have taken place.

It is in part because of these sorts of worries that Schechtman suggests abandoning the search for identity in the reidentification sense in favor of identity in the characterization sense. What we're looking for, after all, is an account of what makes some past action my own. But looking for an answer to this question via something like the Psychological Criterion is too indirect: it has us attributing the action to some past person first and then trying to determine whether or not the person to be assessed as responsible is one and the same as that past agent. But if the action cannot be attributed to the allegedly responsible person directly , the relation between the two person-slices just isn't strong enough to warrant responses like punishment and blame (Schechtman 1996, 90–91; 2005, 13).

Nevertheless, all of these theories, including narrative identity, fall prey to the fission case. Suppose X were to rob a bank and then undergo fission, dividing into Y and Z , both of whom were psychologically continuous with X . Both Y and Z would seem to remember X 's theft, they would still be buzzing over the thrill of the getaway chase, they would each have inherited an intention to spend the money on wine, women, and song, they would each persist in X 's beliefs about the justification for the crime, and so forth. We would likely think the crime to be properly attributable to both of them, and so hold them both (at least partially) responsible for it. Yet neither could be numerically identical to X , and if identity is a necessary condition of responsibility, neither could be morally responsible for his crime. But this seems the wrong answer.

There are two plausible replies, both familiar by now. On the one hand, we can go four-dimensionalist (as does Sider 2001a), and hold that Y and Z are indeed two people who were, essentially, present all along, overlapping in all their spatial parts during the temporal stage of the life when they were both known as “ X .” This allows us to preserve the slogan that one person cannot be responsible for the actions of another – in other words, it is indeed numerical identity that is necessary for responsibility – while also preserving the thought that it is the robust psychological relation that obtains between the various parties that grounds our belief that X has not gotten away with his crime just by undergoing fission.

Nevertheless, this option has some uncomfortable implications. For one thing, we think “I” uniquely refers, but “I” in X 's mouth would, in this case, actually be referring to two people, Y and Z . Or perhaps that is not quite right; perhaps instead “I” in X 's mouth refers to only one person, either Y or Z . But in that case, no one, not even “the” speaker, could possibly know to which one it referred. And there are other worries. For instance, whether or not the pre-fission X consists in two overlapping persons depends entirely on what happens in the future, i.e., on whether or not X goes through with the fission. So if X is driving from the bank to the fission doctor and then gets cold feet, there will be no fission and thus no Y or Z . But then whether or not Y or Z exist at the time of X 's cold feet depends on whether or not X even gets cold feet, which seems, at the very least, quite odd. Whether or not “I” now consist in one or two people should not, we want to say, depend on what happens to “me” in the future.

Now these are just standard puzzles for four-dimensionalism about persons (see Olson 1997b, van Inwagen 2002, and the entry on personal identity ). But there are also puzzles for four-dimensionalism specific to its treatment of the responsibility case. For instance, if responsibility depends on identity, and identity is a transitive relation, then if Y is responsible for the actions of X (insofar as Y is unified with X as part of the same person-worm), and Z is responsible for the actions of X (insofar as Z is unified with X as part of the same person-worm), then wouldn't Y also be responsible for the actions of Z (and vice versa)? Of course, unity relations are not identity relations, but it is unclear just why they do not have to be transitive in the way the identity relation is supposed to be (in Sider 2001a, 203, he simply insists that they do not have to be, without saying why). Furthermore, the four-dimensionalist solution is meant to preserve the commonsense slogan, but it does so in virtue of a solution that seems about as far from commonsense as can be. Indeed, the slogan is about the responsibility of persons , but four-dimensionalism offers only a solution regarding the responsibility of person-stages ( Ibid .; see also Parfit 1976).

A second reply is reductionist, and it simply denies the slogan. In other words, identity is not necessary for moral responsibility. Instead (the reductionist could say), what matters is psychological continuity (or connectedness), regardless of whether it obtains uniquely. This allows the reductionist to handle the fission case in the following way: while neither Y nor Z is identical with X , both are fully psychologically continuous with him, and insofar as ownership of actions consists in psychological continuity with the original agent, and because ownership is the necessary condition for responsibility, both Y and Z may be morally responsible for X 's crimes.

Of course, we already saw some worries attached to a psychological continuity account of ownership that were unrelated to its being an account of numerical identity (e.g., the gradual fugue of Johann to Sebastian, and the psychological discontinuity case). Perhaps, though, we could draw from the insights regarding the characterization sense of identity in responding to these particular problems, and then construct an account of ownership relevant to responsibility that is utterly divorced from considerations of numerical identity (and insofar as narrative identity depends on numerical identity, it would not be an eligible contender here). Indeed, this might be one way to construe what those working on responsibility and identification are doing (e.g., Frankfurt 1988, 1999; Taylor 1983; Watson 1975; Smith 2000; D. Shoemaker 2015). Once the account of ownership were complete, one could then call the view an identity account if one wanted (perhaps being about practical identity), but this would just be a terminological overlay, and it would be clear at that point that the essential component of responsibility was not really identity but rather ownership.

(One might wonder what the Anthropological View would say about moral responsibility and personhood. As the theory stands, it does not engage directly with this discussion, as it is just about determining the types of entities who are the appropriate targets of accountability assessments, and so does not purport to deliver whether any individual assessment is appropriate relative to identity.)

6. Identity and Applied Ethics

Perhaps the most exciting and variegated explorations of the relation between identity and ethics are taking place in the arena of applied ethics, specifically in medical ethics and bioethics. These typically involve attempts to chart the relation between some clear-cut person and either an earlier or later entity “at the margins of life.” We will here discuss the two main arenas of such research before briefly noting the sorts of debates about identity and applied ethics taking place in other arenas.

There are several ways in which personal identity is taken to be relevant to the debates over these topics. Consider first embryos and recent disputes over the morality of stem cell research. The most commonly cited argument against such research is that, in its most promising form, it will involve destruction of two- to five-day-old embryos (in order to harvest their inner cell mass, which is what is used for the development of stem cells). But because human beings come into existence at the “moment” of conception, embryos are human beings, and insofar as it is prima facie immoral to kill human beings, it is prima facie immoral to kill embryos (see, e.g., Peters 2001, 129).

References to identity in this debate come from objectors to this argument, who apply the argument from fission to a real life version of it, namely, twinning. An embryo might split any time generally before the two-week point in fetal development, and those two embryos could develop into fully formed infant twins. The question for the advocate of the above argument to consider is, in such a case, what happens to the original human being , the embryo we will call Adam? There are only three possibilities: (a) either Adam survives as both twins, (b) Adam survives only as one or the other of the twins, or (c) Adam does not survive. Option (a) cannot be right, given that the twins will live distinct, individual lives, and so will clearly be two human beings, not one. Option (b) cannot be right, for what non-arbitrary reason could there be for one of the twins to be Adam and not the other? They will both be qualitatively identical to Adam, after all. The only remaining option, then, is (c), in which Adam does not survive. But this has two bad implications for the above advocate. First, if it is a tragedy when a human being dies, then twinning involves a tragedy, and Adam's death, it seems, ought to be mourned. This seems absurd (McMahan 1995 and 2002, 26; although see Oderberg 1997 for an embrace of this implication). Second, if the metaphysical analysis is right, then Adam's death brings about the existence of two new human beings (call them Barney and Claire). But this means that (1) it is not the case that all human beings come into existence at conception (some come into existence at twinning), and (2) death can somehow occur with no earthly remains, which is at best odd and at worst false (Kuhse and Singer 2002, 190).

There are several possible replies, though. First, it is not clear that the options in twinning are exhausted by the three possibilities articulated above. A fourth possible option, it seems, is that of the four-dimensionalist, who can maintain that the embryo is a human being from the moment of conception by saying that the pre-twinning temporal parts of both Barney and Claire simply overlapped, i.e., what we called Adam was really a shared stage in the lives of both Barney and Claire. McMahan, for one, simply dismisses this possibility as absurd (McMahan 2002, 26), but it is not clear why, especially given that it is a straightforward application of a powerful metaphysical theory that has quite a bit of independent support (despite having its own set of problems, discussed earlier). Second, the implications involved may not be as bad as indicated. For one thing, “death by twinning,” while still a kind of death, may not be of a kind warranting the same sort of mourning typically expected to accompany regular “bodily” death. Furthermore, this kind of ceasing to exist, if it is a different kind of event than that of regular death, perhaps should not be expected to have the same kind of conditions – like the leaving of earthly remains – as regular death either. Consider how we think of the similar “deaths” of splitting amoebas ( Ibid ., 27).

Turn now to just one way in which personal identity enters into the broader debate over abortion. Perhaps the most famous anti-abortion argument in the philosophical literature comes from Don Marquis, who argues that, because it is prima facie wrong to kill any entity with a future like ours, and because a fetus has a future like ours, it is prima facie wrong to kill a fetus (Marquis 1989). Peter McInerney and others, however, have denied that fetuses have futures like ours by appealing to considerations of identity. To have a future like ours, for instance, presupposes that one is identical to some person who will experience said future. But a fetus is not a person, it seems, and so it cannot be identical to any future person. Indeed, none of the relations deemed relevant to the identity of persons are present between a fetus and anything else, simply because a fetus lacks a psychology with memories, beliefs, desires, intentions, and a general character capable of establishing any sort of plausible connection to a future experiencer, so that any experiences that experiencer undergoes cannot be the fetus's future experiences (McInerney 1990, Brill 2003). (The same point might be true as well for infants, but instead of taking that to be a reductio of the objection, one might also quite plausibly take it simply to be a point in favor of rejecting Marquis's criterion of the wrongness of killing: given that infants also lack a future like ours, Marquis's account is substantially incomplete, for it fails to explain why killing infants is wrong, when it obviously is.)

This objection assumes a purely psychological criterion of identity, however, one in which, further, “person” is what's known as a substance concept, a term designating a kind to which an individual always and essentially belongs throughout its existence. But as we saw earlier, “person” might be merely a phase sortal, designating a kind to which the individual belongs – if it does at all – for only part of its existence. This could mean, then, that I, now a person, could still be identical qua individual, to some organism – a fetus, say – that was not a person. Thus if some past fetus is identical to me – if we are one and the same animal, or organism – then he did indeed have a future like ours (Marquis 1998).

Clearly, though, if it is identity alone that renders a future experiencer's experiences mine , then the view runs into difficulty when, once more, we consider the possibility of fission. If I undergo fission, then, given the standard arguments, I will not survive (setting four-dimensionalist considerations aside). Nevertheless, surely we want to say that I still have a valuable future – indeed, it is overwhelmingly plausible to say I will have two valuable futures. This only makes sense, though, if we prize apart the having of a valuable future from the obtaining of the (numerical) identity relation (for resistance to this point, see Heathwood 2011). If we do so, though, we are insisting that the relations that matter in the having of a valuable future are definitely psychological , in which case, even if I am identical with some past fetus ( qua organism or animal), that is irrelevant: what matters in the having of a valuable future does not obtain between us, so while a fetus has a future, it really does not have a future like ours .

A third kind of stance taken regarding identity and abortion is that there just is no relation of significance between them. Earl Conee argues in this way, insisting that the four main attempts to bolster some view about abortion with metaphysical conclusions fail, and thus that the metaphysics simply makes no moral difference, a conclusion “indicative of a general epistemic irrelevance of metaphysics to the moral issue” (Conee 1999, 619). But just because the various arguments fail (and Conee seems right about that), it does not yet follow that metaphysics generally makes no moral difference to questions about fetuses and embryos; indeed, we have just discussed two cases in which it clearly does. As Timothy Chappell puts it, Conee “does nothing to show that the right metaphysical doctrines – combined of course with the right moral doctrines – could not give us genuine reason to turn one way rather than the other in debates about abortion, or other similar debates about the extent of the moral community” (Chappell 2000, 279). And so it is to one of those “similar debates,” this time regarding the other end of life, that we now turn.

The philosophical puzzle regarding advance directives is fundamentally a puzzle about personal identity. Suppose that a woman is in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease, and she recognizes that there will come a point where she is in a demented state and will thus be incompetent to make autonomous or informed decisions about her treatment. Because she values her creativity and autonomy, she does not want that future demented self to be kept alive – its life will not be worth living – so she signs an advance directive stipulating that no life-saving measures are to be used on that future demented self (FDS). However, by the time her FDS gets pneumonia, she is quite content in her state and, when asked, says she wants to live (e.g., McMahan 2002, 497).

There is obviously a conflict here, but of what sort? If FDS is identical to the early-stage Alzheimer's self (EAS), then the conflict is between temporally distinct interests of the same person. But if that is the case, then we typically discount past interests in favor of present ones. If, when I was a ravenously carnivorous 20-year-old, I swore to myself that I would never pass up an opportunity to eat a juicy steak, yet I now find myself a vegetarian who gets queasy at the sight of medium-rare flesh on the table, it is obviously my present interests that will – and ought, we think – win the day.

On the other hand, if FDS is not identical to EAS – if, instead, she is a different person, or is at least a different self – then it may not be so obvious what the conflict is after all, for FDS has made her preferences clear, and if she is importantly distinct from the signer of the advance directive, then there seems little reason why the interests of EAS are relevant at all to FDS's life. But then again, FDS is not competent, and EAS, if not identical to her, is at least akin to her closest relative, one might think, in which case her earlier wishes perhaps ought to hold sway after all (see Luttrell and Sommerville 1996). (But EAS and FDS will be very psychologically different, we are supposing, so why think they are closely related at all? Indeed, wouldn't FDS be more closely “related” to her fellow end-stage Alzheimer's patients? So why think EAS has any more right to make life-or-death decisions about her than any of these others?)

And here is yet another way of looking at the matter. Suppose we agree with Parfit and others that identity just is not what matters for, among other things, defining and delimiting the scope of egoistic concern; suppose instead it is Relation R. FDS, because of her loss of memory and the like, will bear a very limited degree of that relation to EAS. EAS will thus be strongly R-related with most of the previous stages of her life (the chains of connectedness, let us stipulate, are very strong), but very weakly R-related with FDS, even though, it seems clear, FDS remains a stage of her life. But the part of her life most deeply prudentially unified – the far larger, more dominant part of her life – is the part of which EAS was still a strongly R-related part. Thus it might be that the wishes of EAS to preserve a coherently meaningful and valuable life ought to control here, given that the longer FDS lives, the worse she might retrospectively render EAS's life. That is, what is good for the deepest, longest prudential unity will be closest to what is best for the life as a whole, so FDS's good ought to be sacrificed for the sake of the good of the whole, as articulated by EAS in her advanced directive (see McMahan 2002, 502 for an argument like this).

Of course, once we abandon identity as what matters – especially if we do so in favor of a relation(s) that does not guarantee life-long unity (e.g., connectedness) – then it is not so clear anymore why what is best for the life-as-a-whole “unit” should matter at all. But if considerations of life-long welfare are set aside, then it is hard to see how EAS's advance directive could still have any moral authority over FDS's expressed interests. EAS's “life” would be over, for all intents and purposes, so it seems that no matter what happens to FDS, it cannot retroactively affect the value of EAS's already-completed “life.” This is the kind of move urged by some theorists regardless of considerations of identity. What we should abandon, they suggest, is the intuition that EAS's preferences are authoritative over FDS's at all (Dresser 1986, Jaworska 1999). Many demented patients are still capable of a kind of autonomy – involving the capacity to value – and so their wishes ought to be respected, goes this line, over the decisions of their earlier selves (Jaworska 1999, 109). Of course, this kind of view won't apply to end-stage dementia patients, but they may be patients incapable of expressing (or having?) genuine preferences in the first place.

As should be evident from just this very brief discussion, the issues here are quite complex, but they are definitely issues for which considerations of personal identity are often taken to be directly relevant. (See also Buchanan 1988 for helpful discussion of some of these issues.)

There are at least four other areas of applied ethics that seem to bear a relation to personal identity, and we will lay out the issues of each very briefly. First, there is a problem of justifying therapeutic treatment for patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). The worry here comes from the attractive thought that each of the distinct personalities of someone with DID is in fact a different person (Wilkes 1988; Dennett 1976). If so, then a therapy that aims at eliminating one or more of the alter personalities in favor of one of them would be, prima facie, immoral. (Morton Prince, one of the first psychologists to work with a DID patient, wrote that his aim was indeed to kill off what he thought of as the “non-real” personalities of his patient, Christine Beauchamp. See Prince 1905.) But this verdict is quite counterintuitive: surely the therapist is helping the patient with DID when his work produces only one healthy personality, not doing anything immoral. The issue, then, is about the moral ramifications of cutting off personal identity in an unusual sort of way. In addition, there are intriguing issues regarding identity and both legal and moral responsibility in patients with DID. What if one alter commits a crime, say? Is the patient with DID responsible or is only the offending alter responsible? If the latter, how is a fair punishment to be effected? (For further discussion of these issues, see Wilkes 1981, 1988; Hacking 1991, 1995; Lizza 1993; Braude 1995, 1996; Radden 1996; Sinnott-Armstrong and Behnke 2000; Kennett and Matthews 2002; and DeGrazia 2005).

A second problem has to do with genetic interference. Suppose someone carried the gene for Huntington's disease (HD) and wanted a child. There would be a 50/50 chance her child would inherit the HD gene. If there were genetic intervention available to eliminate the possibility of her child carrying the gene, should she undergo it? It seems obvious she should, at least until we draw on some metaphysical considerations about identity. Suppose the genetic intervention involved waiting until after fertilization and then altering the genome of the fetus. What would be the identity of the post-intervention child? Further, if its identity would be different from the child that would have been brought into existence, would the genetic interference be immoral in virtue of preventing that other child's existence? Relevant to the debate here is Saul Kripke's thesis about origins, that one person could not have been someone else (Kripke 1980), and this is a thesis with which advocates of the Biological Criterion of personal identity would likely agree: what makes me the particular individual I am is my biological structure and its origins, and any other combination of my parents' sperm and egg would have produced a different individual. The question here, though, is whether or not some other changes, after the combination of sperm and egg, would be sufficient to produce a different individual. And if so, does this bear on the morality of doing so? (For further discussion of these issues, see Elliot 1993, Persson 1995, Belshaw 2000, Glannon 2001, and DeGrazia 2005: 244–268.)

A third problem is in certain respects closely related. It is the non-identity problem , first discussed in detail in Parfit 1984, 351–379. Suppose a fourteen-year-old girl decides to have a child. Given her youth, the girl gives her child a bad start in life. If she had waited several years to have a child, that child would have been better off than the one she had. Our intuition is that what the girl has done is wrong. But why? The obvious answer would seem to be that the girl's decision was bad for her child . But this cannot be right, for that child would not even have existed were it not for her decision. It is also clear that she doesn't harm the child that would have existed had she waited, given that something that does not exist cannot be harmed. It thus turns out to be very difficult to articulate just what was wrong with the girl's decision, but as Parfit notes, we do not abandon our belief in the wrongness of what the girl did. Instead, “we cannot defend this belief in the natural way … suggested” (Parfit 1984, 359). But finding an alternative defense does not look very promising. And applying the non-identity problem on a grander scale yields a serious puzzle in population ethics. Suppose governments around the world continue to ignore the threat of global warming, so that the lives of people living between 2200 and 2500 are barely worth living. Contrast this case with the scenario in which the governments cooperate to enact regulatory measures that slow down the warming trend and render it a non-threat, but in so doing make the lives of people living between 2010 and 2200 of a lower quality than they would otherwise have been. Clearly, it seems the second scenario is better, that we ought to bring this scenario about. But on what basis? Far-reaching governmental policies often play a critical role in determining the ways and timing in which people get together, so the identities of the members of the populations in each scenario would likely be quite different. If we also assume that we do not harm anyone by bringing him or her into existence, then who is harmed in the former scenario? Who is made worse off? Given that those people would not have existed had we done something about global warming, they have not been harmed by our inaction. So what moral reason can be given in defense of our pursuit of the second scenario? (Parfit 1984, 371–377) These are very difficult issues indeed. (For further discussion, see DeGrazia 2005, 268–279.)

Finally, many have argued that considerations of personal identity can shed light on the nature of death, which itself plays a key role in moral argumentation (Green and Wikler 1980; Zaner 1988; Puccetti 1988; McMahan 2002; DeGrazia 2005). One popular line of thought, based on the Psychological Criterion, has been that when an individual is at the point when she is no longer able to sustain any psychological continuity, her identity has ceased, and so she should be considered dead. This idea has led many philosophers to advocate for a criterion of death known as the “higher brain standard,” according to which death occurs at the point of irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness (e.g., Green and Wikler 1980). This psychological criterion of death implies that those in a permanent vegetative state are dead, despite their continuing brainstem activities. This philosophically popular view has never, however, been adopted anywhere. Those favoring the Biological Criterion advocate a view much more in line with actual medical practice. If we are essentially human organisms, according to these advocates, then our death occurs at the point when that organism dies. There is still wrangling over when precisely that occurs, however. Some favor a “death of the whole brain standard,” whereas others, dissenters as DeGrazia labels them, adhere to a “circulatory-respiratory standard,” according to which “human death is the permanent cessation of circulatory-respiratory function” (DeGrazia 2005, 149). It is less clear, however, what role personal identity actually plays in this debate. After all, the cessation of my identity may have nothing to do with anything like organismic (or brain) death. On any view of personal identity other than four-dimensionalism, recall, I cease to exist if I undergo fission. There will be no one in existence who is me, but this fact is irrelevant to our thinking about death. It may be the case, then, that seeking the factors involved in cutting off someone's personal, or human, identity will yield no insights into the nature of death itself. (For further discussion, see DeGrazia 2003, and McMahan 1995 and 2002.)

Recall that both Reid and Butler objected to Locke's account of personal identity, in part, because they thought it had absurdly revisionary implications for our practices of moral responsibility. So rather than give up those practices, they said, we would be better off giving up Locke's theory. On this view, our normative commitments provide an important check on our theories of personal identity. Nevertheless, the consideration about moral responsibility is only one of many objections both critics run against Locke. They also launch purely metaphysical objections as well, the thought being that Locke's view fails both on its own terms and in light of its absurd normative implications. So actually, while our normative commitments provide an important consideration that the theory of personal identity should account for, it remains open that such commitments could be overridden or revised, depending perhaps on the independent plausibility of the theory in question.

For some authors, however, the role of our normative commitments in this debate is much stronger: they may actually authoritatively constrain, shape, or even be immune or irrelevant to one's theory of personal identity. This is a general methodological dispute about the proper direction of argumentation in the arena of personal identity and ethics. The assumption of many working in this arena has been evident in the discussion thus far: we work out or identify the correct theory of personal identity and then apply it where needed to the world of ethics. What we will briefly explore in this section, though, are four importantly different approaches (these are not exhaustive of the alternatives, however).

First, there is the Kantian view, advanced by Christine Korsgaard, that conceiving ourselves as practical agents simply requires us to view our lives as unified, despite the weakness or strength of various psychological connections that may or may not obtain between our various temporal stages. My conception of myself as a unified agent is not based on any metaphysical theory; it is instead based (a) on the basic need I have to eliminate conflict among my various motivational desires in order to act (producing my unified agency at any given time, i.e., synchronic unity), (b) on my deliberative standpoint, within which I view myself – a single deliberator/decider – as being over and above my various desires, weighing them and deciding between them, and (c) on my need to pursue any ends or carry out a rational plan of life (presupposing my unified agency across time, i.e., diachronic unity). In any case, I must conceive myself as a unified agent both at a time and across time because I have only one body with which to act. This unity, therefore, has no need of any metaphysical support; instead, it is simply a practical requirement of being an agent, a doer of deeds and a thinker of thoughts (Korsgaard 1989).

Second, there is the communitarian view, advanced by philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, that all proper conceptions of the self are dependent on social matrices. In order to understand the self, we must view it both in its relation to the good and in its relation to other selves, for two reasons. First, we have an indispensable ability both to have certain moral intuitions and to articulate the grounds of those intuitions, and this ability presupposes the existence of what Taylor calls evaluative frameworks, frameworks also presupposed by our concept of personhood. So crucial to understanding who I am is understanding where I stand in moral space: my identity is bound up in, and at least partially constituted by, my strong attachments to a community that provides the evaluative framework within which I am able to articulate what is good and valuable. Thus, to ask about a person abstracted from his self-interpretations is to ask “a fundamentally misguided question” (Taylor 1989, 34).

The second general reason selves can be understood only by reference to community and morality comes from a consideration of human actions. As MacIntyre notes, human actions are intelligible only if viewed in a particular setting. We can understand a piece of human behavior only when we have situated the agent's intentions within the two contexts of their role in the agent's history and their role within the history of their particular setting(s). In doing so, we are writing a narrative history. Intelligible actions are actions for which the agent is accountable , actions which have a place in an ongoing narrative (MacIntyre 1984, 206–208). Thus arises the notion of narrative unity. My life, my entire life, from physical birth to physical death, can be understood only as a narrative, as an ongoing story. Now the unity of a narrative requires unity of character, and unity of character presupposes strict, numerical personal identity. To be the subject of a narrative is to be accountable for past actions that have composed that narrative life. To understand your actions now, therefore, I have to understand them as actions situated in a life story, your life story, as actions interrelated with your prior actions. As a result, “all attempts to elucidate the notion of personal identity independently of and in isolation from the notions of narrative, intelligibility and accountability are bound to fail. As all such attempts have” ( ibid ., 218).

Both the Kantian and communitarian objections target the disunifying implications of a metaphysical approach like reductionism, insisting instead that we are indeed unified as either practical agents or selves in moral space for purely normative reasons. Any theory of identity we construct, then, must be constrained by these normative considerations, which are thus obviously prior. Nevertheless, we may have some reason to doubt these claims. Consider first narrative unity. For one thing, it is not clear that intelligible actions are those for which the agent is accountable. Actions of children and the insane can be perfectly intelligible – even intelligible within some kind of narrative structure – without being those for which the agents are accountable.

More troublesome, though, is the status of the narrative unity claim. Is it descriptive or prescriptive? If descriptive, asserting that selves simply conceive themselves as unified over their lives within a narrative structure, then it seems false. As Galen Strawson points out, some people (and he claims to be one) are “Episodics,” those who have “little or no sense that the self that one is was there in the (further) past and will be there in the future,” and thus “are likely to have no particular tendency to see their life in Narrative terms” (Strawson 2004, 430). In addition, this observation bodes ill for the Kantian, insofar as it asserts the possibility of practical agency for those who do not view themselves as diachronically unified, i.e., unified practical agency may indeed not be a practical necessity. On the other hand, if the narrative unity thesis is supposed to be prescriptive , urging that people ought to view themselves as unified over time within a narrative structure, then it poses no threat to descriptive, disuniting theories of identity like reductionism, for it would have to allow that life-long unity may simply not occur. Indeed, if the account is prescriptive, then it actually makes more sense to consider persons to be disunified, if what they ought to strive for is greater unity. If unity were a given, such striving would be unnecessary. (For somewhat similar considerations, see Williams 2007.)

But even if we grant the need for the kind of unity desired by both the Kantians and the communitarians, this does not yet imply that we must grant the life-long unity on which they both insist. It may be instead that only certain parts of one's life are unified in the way they describe, and these could in fact be stretches defined also by the obtaining of strong psychological connectedness, say (such that one's life would be better conceived as a collection of short stories than as a novel). In other words, it could be that reductionist theories of personal identity dovetail with these normative considerations already, so that rather than constituting a constraint on that theory (and disuniting theories like it), such considerations actually buttress it.

The third methodological alternative insists that, because our commonsense intuitions are at loggerheads over the thought experiments motivating the various metaphysical theories of personal identity (e.g., brain transplants, teletransportation, and the like), the only plausible solution to this underlying conflict is going to be revisionary, requiring us to abandon one of the conflicting sets of intuitions. But on the basis of what? Carol Rovane suggests that we start instead by deploying something on which everyone could agree, namely, a conception of personhood that's allegedly built into the foundations of every ethical position (including anti-theoretical ones). Once we determine the key condition of personhood – the condition Rovane calls “the ability to engage in agency-regarding relations ” (Rovane 1998, 5) – we can then go on to construct a metaphysical theory of personal identity on top of this ethical concept. For Rovane, this will yield the rather surprising possibility of both group persons, composed of many human bodies (insofar as the group can meet the conditions of ethical personhood, functioning as an individual agent), and multiple persons, simultaneously existing within only one human body (insofar as each “personality” can meet the condition of ethical personhood, functioning as an individual agent, as well) ( Ibid ., chapters 4–5).

Others have been sufficiently moved as well by the recognition of conflicting intuitions in the puzzle cases to seek an entirely different approach to the issue of personal identity (see, e.g., Wilkes 1988, Schechtman 1996). But it is not yet clear why such a radical revision in methodology is called for. After all, the fact that our intuitions conflict in the puzzle cases does not necessarily mean that there is some deep-seated, ineliminable incoherence in the concepts we're applying to them. Instead, it may simply mean that there are conditions restricting the deployment of our concepts to anything other than paradigm cases, or it might mean that we are actually unsure what our intuitions are about the puzzle cases (for the former objection, see Gendler 2002a, 231; for the latter, see Degaynesford 2001, 171). (Further, even if we do agree on the need for a distinctly ethical conception of personhood and personal identity, it is not clear why the one Rovane has chosen is supposed to be uniquely suited to our purposes. After all, there will be plenty of other possible conceptions that are at least as plausible as having the agency-regarding ability, including conceptions emphasizing the ability to experience complex emotions, to control certain aspects of their world, or to feel pleasure and pain [see Gendler 2002a, 236]. Why privilege agency-regarding capacities over these?)

A fourth alternative to the methodology assumed thus far is presented in a series of powerful papers by Mark Johnston, in which he defends a view called “minimalism,” according to which the metaphysical facts of personal identity are irrelevant to the justification of our person-related practices and practical concerns, that the facts to which we think we are committed actually play only a minimal role in those practices and concerns (Johnston 1987, 1989, 1992, and 1997; Wolf 1986 and Unger 1990 have argued in a somewhat similar vein as well). Indeed, our practices here have a justification independent of metaphysics – a coherentist justification – so no metaphysical theory of personal identity will imply any real revisions to them at all. Johnston illustrates this point by talking about one of our practical concerns in particular: self-concern. My self-concern is part of a wider pattern of self-referential concern, a special non-derivative concern I have for a certain limited network of people, all of whom bear certain sorts of special relations to me: I care about my friends, my family, and my self. I care about them for their own sakes and I would need a very good reason not to do so (which is so far not forthcoming) (Johnston 1997, 158–159). Thus, in “the particular case of personal identity, minimalism implies that any metaphysical view of persons which we might have is either epiphenomenal or a redundant basis for our practice of making judgements about personal identity and organizing our practical concerns around this relation” (Johnston 1997, 150).

This is an important point. Unfortunately, it is not clear whether it could be extended to apply to all of our practical concerns, resting as it does solely on an analysis of self-concern. Indeed, there may well be other person-related practices and concerns that aren't part of that network of self-referential concerns, including, perhaps, moral responsibility, compensation, third-person reidentification, and general survival. For these other practices and concerns, then, the metaphysics of identity may still be quite relevant. Indeed, trying to see what, if anything, serves to unify the locus of all of these practical concerns is what motivates Schechtman's (2014) Anthropological View of our “literal identity.” Insofar as our many concerns are, she thinks, organized around one type of thing (what she calls a “person-life”), we can derive from their close consideration the actual identity conditions of individuals like us. Here, though, the issue is less about identity grounding our practical concerns than its being revealed by them.

As should by now be obvious, the relation between personal identity and ethics is complex and by no means established, and this is true for several reasons. First, it is still unclear what the correct theory of personal identity is, or even what the right sense of “identity” (reidentification or characterization) is that's to be deployed. Second, there is a question about the priority relation between identity and ethics. In other words, should we establish the true theory of identity before applying it to ethics, should we constrain or construct our theory of identity in light of our ethical concerns, or should we try to build up theories of both identity and our ethical concerns in light of one another (via a sort of reflective equilibrium)? Third, it is unclear what the precise type of relation is that we should expect between identity and ethics, i.e., should it be a justificatory relation or an explanatory relation? If the former, how exactly do we bridge the is/ought gap between descriptive metaphysics and normativity? If the latter, what precisely is to be explained, and how would appeals to identity help? Fourth, are we right to think of there being the – a single – relation between identity and ethics at all? (See D. Shoemaker 2007 and 2016; Schechtman 2014, Ch. 3)

This last point deserves much more discussion than it has previously received. It has generally been assumed that if there is a relation between identity and our practical concerns, it is some sort of univocal relation, running from a single (correct) theory of personal identity to all of our person-related practical concerns (whether it's a grounding relation, an explanatory relation, a revealed relation, or something else). But why should we think this is the case? Instead, why not think that some practical concerns are grounded by one relation and other concerns are grounded by another?

Here is just one way in which this might be true. My concern about anticipation of survival seems to depend on a belief about some future person bearing a certain sort of psychological relation to me. Alternatively, what grounds compensation might be a biological relation. The possibility of compensation, after all, may not be restricted to benefits and burdens distributed solely to psychological creatures: As mentioned earlier, I may deserve compensation as an adult for what happened to me as a fetus , and this may be rendered coherent only with respect to my being a biological human organism. Finally, consider moral responsibility. It seems platitudinous that I can be responsible only for my own actions, but this suggests that what's at issue is the ownership relation of moral agents to their actions, i.e., the issue of what makes some past action properly attributable to me, a robust Lockean person (see Jaworski and Shoemaker 2018). But this relation may best be grounded by something like a narrative conception of personal identity, one that answers to the characterization question, not the reidentification question.

These sketches suggest the possibility, then, of a plurality of relations between identity and ethics. If so, perhaps the way to proceed is to focus on one specific person-related practical concern at a time and work out its precise relation to identity (if any) before moving on to others. While this approach may not diminish the complexity of the relation(s) between identity and ethics, perhaps it will at least provide the kind of settled views in some limited areas which we have thus far been missing.

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advance directives | cloning | communitarianism | death: definition of | identity | identity: relative | Kant, Immanuel: moral philosophy | Locke, John | moral responsibility | personal identity | Reid, Thomas | temporal parts

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful both to Nicole Smith, for her valuable and thorough research assistance during the preparation of this entry, and to Eric Cave and Marvin Belzer, for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts.

Copyright © 2019 by David Shoemaker

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10 Personal Statement Essay Examples That Worked

What’s covered:, what is a personal statement.

• Essay 1: Summer Program
• Essay 2: Being Bangladeshi-American
• Essay 3: Why Medicine
• Essay 4: Love of Writing
• Essay 5: Starting a Fire
• Essay 6: Dedicating a Track
• Essay 7: Body Image and Eating Disorders
• Essay 8: Becoming a Coach
• Essay 9: Eritrea
• Essay 10: Journaling
• Is Your Personal Statement Strong Enough?

Your personal statement is any essay that you must write for your main application, such as the Common App Essay , University of California Essays , or Coalition Application Essay . This type of essay focuses on your unique experiences, ideas, or beliefs that may not be discussed throughout the rest of your application. This essay should be an opportunity for the admissions officers to get to know you better and give them a glimpse into who you really are.

In this post, we will share 10 different personal statements that were all written by real students. We will also provide commentary on what each essay did well and where there is room for improvement, so you can make your personal statement as strong as possible!

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Personal Statement Examples

Essay example #1: exchange program.

The twisting roads, ornate mosaics, and fragrant scent of freshly ground spices had been so foreign at first. Now in my fifth week of the SNYI-L summer exchange program in Morocco, I felt more comfortable in the city. With a bag full of pastries from the market, I navigated to a bus stop, paid the fare, and began the trip back to my host family’s house. It was hard to believe that only a few years earlier my mom was worried about letting me travel around my home city on my own, let alone a place that I had only lived in for a few weeks. While I had been on a journey towards self-sufficiency and independence for a few years now, it was Morocco that pushed me to become the confident, self-reflective person that I am today.

As a child, my parents pressured me to achieve perfect grades, master my swim strokes, and discover interesting hobbies like playing the oboe and learning to pick locks. I felt compelled to live my life according to their wishes. Of course, this pressure was not a wholly negative factor in my life –– you might even call it support. However, the constant presence of my parents’ hopes for me overcame my own sense of desire and led me to become quite dependent on them. I pushed myself to get straight A’s, complied with years of oboe lessons, and dutifully attended hours of swim practice after school. Despite all these achievements, I felt like I had no sense of self beyond my drive for success. I had always been expected to succeed on the path they had defined. However, this path was interrupted seven years after my parents’ divorce when my dad moved across the country to Oregon.

I missed my dad’s close presence, but I loved my new sense of freedom. My parents’ separation allowed me the space to explore my own strengths and interests as each of them became individually busier. As early as middle school, I was riding the light rail train by myself, reading maps to get myself home, and applying to special academic programs without urging from my parents. Even as I took more initiatives on my own, my parents both continued to see me as somewhat immature. All of that changed three years ago, when I applied and was accepted to the SNYI-L summer exchange program in Morocco. I would be studying Arabic and learning my way around the city of Marrakesh. Although I think my parents were a little surprised when I told them my news, the addition of a fully-funded scholarship convinced them to let me go.

I lived with a host family in Marrakesh and learned that they, too, had high expectations for me. I didn’t know a word of Arabic, and although my host parents and one brother spoke good English, they knew I was there to learn. If I messed up, they patiently corrected me but refused to let me fall into the easy pattern of speaking English just as I did at home. Just as I had when I was younger, I felt pressured and stressed about meeting their expectations. However, one day, as I strolled through the bustling market square after successfully bargaining with one of the street vendors, I realized my mistake. My host family wasn’t being unfair by making me fumble through Arabic. I had applied for this trip, and I had committed to the intensive language study. My host family’s rules about speaking Arabic at home had not been to fulfill their expectations for me, but to help me fulfill my expectations for myself. Similarly, the pressure my parents had put on me as a child had come out of love and their hopes for me, not out of a desire to crush my individuality.

As my bus drove through the still-bustling market square and past the medieval Ben-Youssef madrasa, I realized that becoming independent was a process, not an event. I thought that my parents’ separation when I was ten had been the one experience that would transform me into a self-motivated and autonomous person. It did, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t still have room to grow. Now, although I am even more self-sufficient than I was three years ago, I try to approach every experience with the expectation that it will change me. It’s still difficult, but I understand that just because growth can be uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s not important.

What the Essay Did Well

This is a nice essay because it delves into particular character trait of the student and how it has been shaped and matured over time. Although it doesn’t focus the essay around a specific anecdote, the essay is still successful because it is centered around this student’s independence. This is a nice approach for a personal statement: highlight a particular trait of yours and explore how it has grown with you.

The ideas in this essay are universal to growing up—living up to parents’ expectations, yearning for freedom, and coming to terms with reality—but it feels unique to the student because of the inclusion of details specific to them. Including their oboe lessons, the experience of riding the light rail by themselves, and the negotiations with a street vendor helps show the reader what these common tropes of growing up looked like for them personally. 

Another strength of the essay is the level of self-reflection included throughout the piece. Since there is no central anecdote tying everything together, an essay about a character trait is only successful when you deeply reflect on how you felt, where you made mistakes, and how that trait impacts your life. The author includes reflection in sentences like “ I felt like I had no sense of self beyond my drive for success, ” and “ I understand that just because growth can be uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s not important. ” These sentences help us see how the student was impacted and what their point of view is.

What Could Be Improved

The largest change this essay would benefit from is to show not tell. The platitude you have heard a million times no doubt, but for good reason. This essay heavily relies on telling the reader what occurred, making us less engaged as the entire reading experience feels more passive. If the student had shown us what happens though, it keeps the reader tied to the action and makes them feel like they are there with the student, making it much more enjoyable to read. 

For example, they tell us about the pressure to succeed their parents placed on them: “ I pushed myself to get straight A’s, complied with years of oboe lessons, and dutifully attended hours of swim practice after school.”  They could have shown us what that pressure looked like with a sentence like this: “ My stomach turned somersaults as my rattling knee thumped against the desk before every test, scared to get anything less than a 95. For five years the painful squawk of the oboe only reminded me of my parents’ claps and whistles at my concerts. I mastered the butterfly, backstroke, and freestyle, fighting against the anchor of their expectations threatening to pull me down.”

If the student had gone through their essay and applied this exercise of bringing more detail and colorful language to sentences that tell the reader what happened, the essay would be really great. 

Table of Contents

Essay Example #2: Being Bangladeshi-American

Life before was good: verdant forests, sumptuous curries, and a devoted family.

Then, my family abandoned our comfortable life in Bangladesh for a chance at the American dream in Los Angeles. Within our first year, my father was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He lost his battle three weeks before my sixth birthday. Facing a new country without the steady presence of my father, we were vulnerable — prisoners of hardship in the land of the free. We resettled in the Bronx, in my uncle’s renovated basement. It was meant to be our refuge, but I felt more displaced than ever. Gone were the high-rise condos of West L.A.; instead, government projects towered over the neighborhood. Pedestrians no longer smiled and greeted me; the atmosphere was hostile, even toxic. Schoolkids were quick to pick on those they saw as weak or foreign, hurling harsh words I’d never heard before.

Meanwhile, my family began integrating into the local Bangladeshi community. I struggled to understand those who shared my heritage. Bangladeshi mothers stayed home while fathers drove cabs and sold fruit by the roadside — painful societal positions. Riding on crosstown buses or walking home from school, I began to internalize these disparities. During my fleeting encounters with affluent Upper East Siders, I saw kids my age with nannies, parents who wore suits to work, and luxurious apartments with spectacular views. Most took cabs to their destinations: cabs that Bangladeshis drove. I watched the mundane moments of their lives with longing, aching to plant myself in their shoes. Shame prickled down my spine. I distanced myself from my heritage, rejecting the traditional panjabis worn on Eid and refusing the torkari we ate for dinner every day. 

As I grappled with my relationship with the Bangladeshi community, I turned my attention to helping my Bronx community by pursuing an internship with Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda. I handled desk work and took calls, spending the bulk of my time actively listening to the hardships constituents faced — everything from a veteran stripped of his benefits to a grandmother unable to support her bedridden grandchild.

I’d never exposed myself to stories like these, and now I was the first to hear them. As an intern, I could only assist in what felt like the small ways — pointing out local job offerings, printing information on free ESL classes, reaching out to non-profits. But to a community facing an onslaught of intense struggles, I realized that something as small as these actions could have vast impacts. Seeing the immediate consequences of my actions inspired me. Throughout that summer, I internalized my community’s daily challenges in a new light. I began to stop seeing the prevalent underemployment and cramped living quarters less as sources of shame. Instead, I saw them as realities that had to be acknowledged, but could ultimately be remedied. I also realized the benefits of the Bangladeshi culture I had been so ashamed of. My Bangla language skills were an asset to the office, and my understanding of Bangladeshi etiquette allowed for smooth communication between office staff and its constituents. As I helped my neighbors navigate city services, I saw my heritage with pride — a perspective I never expected to have.

I can now appreciate the value of my unique culture and background, and of living with less. This perspective offers room for progress, community integration, and a future worth fighting for. My time with Assemblyman Sepulveda’s office taught me that I can be a change agent in enabling this progression. Far from being ashamed of my community, I want to someday return to local politics in the Bronx to continue helping others access the American Dream. I hope to help my community appreciate the opportunity to make progress together. By embracing reality, I learned to live it. Along the way, I discovered one thing: life is good, but we can make it better.

This student’s passion for social justice and civic duty shines through in this essay because of how honest it is. Sharing their personal experience with immigrating, moving around, being an outsider, and finding a community allows us to see the hardships this student has faced and builds empathy towards their situation. However, what really makes it strong is that they go beyond describing the difficulties they faced and explain the mental impact it had on them as a child: Shame prickled down my spine. I distanced myself from my heritage, rejecting the traditional panjabis worn on Eid and refusing the torkari we ate for dinner every day. 

The rejection of their culture presented at the beginning of the essay creates a nice juxtaposition with the student’s view in the latter half of the essay and helps demonstrate how they have matured. They use their experience interning as a way to delve into a change in their thought process about their culture and show how their passion for social justice began. Using this experience as a mechanism to explore their thoughts and feelings is an excellent example of how items that are included elsewhere on your application should be incorporated into your essay.

This essay prioritizes emotions and personal views over specific anecdotes. Although there are details and certain moments incorporated throughout to emphasize the author’s points, the main focus remains on the student and how they grapple with their culture and identity.  

One area for improvement is the conclusion. Although the forward-looking approach is a nice way to end an essay focused on social justice, it would be nice to include more details and imagery in the conclusion. How does the student want to help their community? What government position do they see themselves holding one day? 

A more impactful ending might look like the student walking into their office at the New York City Housing Authority in 15 years and looking at the plans to build a new development in the Bronx just blocks away from where the grew up that would provide quality housing to people in their Bangladeshi community. They would smile while thinking about how far they have come from that young kid who used to be ashamed of their culture. 

Essay Example #3: Why Medicine

I took my first trip to China to visit my cousin Anna in July of 2014. Distance had kept us apart, but when we were together, we fell into all of our old inside jokes and caught up on each other’s lives. Her sparkling personality and optimistic attitude always brought a smile to my face. This time, however, my heart broke when I saw the effects of her brain cancer; she had suffered from a stroke that paralyzed her left side. She was still herself in many ways, but I could see that the damage to her brain made things difficult for her. I stayed by her every day, providing the support she needed, whether assisting her with eating and drinking, reading to her, or just watching “Friends.” During my flight back home, sorrow and helplessness overwhelmed me. Would I ever see Anna again? Could I have done more to make Anna comfortable? I wished I could stay in China longer to care for her. As I deplaned, I wondered if I could transform my grief to help other children and teenagers in the US who suffered as Anna did.

The day after I got home, as jet lag dragged me awake a few minutes after midnight, I remembered hearing about the Family Reach Foundation (FRF) and its work with children going through treatments at the local hospital and their families. I began volunteering in the FRF’s Children’s Activity Room, where I play with children battling cancer. Volunteering has both made me appreciate my own health and also cherish the new relationships I build with the children and families. We play sports, make figures out of playdoh, and dress up. When they take on the roles of firefighters or fairies, we all get caught up in the game; for that time, they forget the sanitized, stark, impersonal walls of the pediatric oncology ward. Building close relationships with them and seeing them giggle and laugh is so rewarding — I love watching them grow and get better throughout their course of treatment.

Hearing from the parents about their children’s condition and seeing the children recover inspired me to consider medical research. To get started, I enrolled in a summer collegelevel course in Abnormal Psychology. There I worked with Catelyn, a rising college senior, on a data analysis project regarding Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Together, we examined the neurological etiology of DID by studying four fMRI and PET cases. I fell in love with gathering data and analyzing the results and was amazed by our final product: several stunning brain images showcasing the areas of hyper and hypoactivity in brains affected by DID. Desire quickly followed my amazement — I want to continue this project and study more brains. Their complexity, delicacy, and importance to every aspect of life fascinate me. Successfully completing this research project gave me a sense of hope; I know I am capable of participating in a large scale research project and potentially making a difference in someone else’s life through my research.

Anna’s diagnosis inspired me to begin volunteering at FRF; from there, I discovered my desire to help people further by contributing to medical research. As my research interest blossomed, I realized that it’s no coincidence that I want to study brains—after all, Anna suffered from brain cancer. Reflecting on these experiences this past year and a half, I see that everything I’ve done is connected. Sadly, a few months after I returned from China, Anna passed away. I am still sad, but as I run a toy truck across the floor and watch one of the little patients’ eyes light up, I imagine that she would be proud of my commitment to pursue medicine and study the brain.

This essay has a very strong emotional core that tugs at the heart strings and makes the reader feel invested. Writing about sickness can be difficult and doesn’t always belong in a personal statement, but in this case it works well because the focus is on how this student cared for her cousin and dealt with the grief and emotions surrounding her condition. Writing about the compassion she showed and the doubts and concerns that filled her mind keeps the focus on the author and her personality. 

This continues when she again discusses the activities she did with the kids at FRF and the personal reflection this experience allowed her to have. For example, she writes: Volunteering has both made me appreciate my own health and also cherish the new relationships I build with the children and families. We play sports, make figures out of playdoh, and dress up.

Concluding the essay with the sad story of her cousin’s passing brings the essay full circle and returns to the emotional heart of the piece to once again build a connection with the reader. However, it finishes on a hopeful note and demonstrates how this student has been able to turn a tragic experience into a source of lifelong inspiration. 

One thing this essay should be cognizant of is that personal statements should not read as summaries of your extracurricular resume. Although this essay doesn’t fully fall into that trap, it does describe two key extracurriculars the student participated in. However, the inclusion of such a strong emotional core running throughout the essay helps keep the focus on the student and her thoughts and feelings during these activities.

To avoid making this mistake, make sure you have a common thread running through your essay and the extracurriculars provide support to the story you are trying to tell, rather than crafting a story around your activities. And, as this essay does, make sure there is lots of personal reflection and feelings weaved throughout to focus attention to you rather than your extracurriculars. 

Essay Example #4: Love of Writing

“I want to be a writer.” This had been my answer to every youthful discussion with the adults in my life about what I would do when I grew up. As early as elementary school, I remember reading my writing pieces aloud to an audience at “Author of the Month” ceremonies. Bearing this goal in mind, and hoping to gain some valuable experience, I signed up for a journalism class during my freshman year. Despite my love for writing, I initially found myself uninterested in the subject and I struggled to enjoy the class. When I thought of writing, I imagined lyrical prose, profound poetry, and thrilling plot lines. Journalism required a laconic style and orderly structure, and I found my teacher’s assignments formulaic and dull. That class shook my confidence as a writer. I was uncertain if I should continue in it for the rest of my high school career.

Despite my misgivings, I decided that I couldn’t make a final decision on whether to quit journalism until I had some experience working for a paper outside of the classroom. The following year, I applied to be a staff reporter on our school newspaper. I hoped this would help me become more self-driven and creative, rather than merely writing articles that my teacher assigned. To my surprise, my time on staff was worlds away from what I experienced in the journalism class. Although I was unaccustomed to working in a fast-paced environment and initially found it burdensome to research and complete high-quality stories in a relatively short amount of time, I also found it exciting. I enjoyed learning more about topics and events on campus that I did not know much about; some of my stories that I covered in my first semester concerned a chess tournament, a food drive, and a Spanish immersion party. I relished in the freedom I had to explore and learn, and to write more independently than I could in a classroom.

Although I enjoyed many aspects of working for the paper immediately, reporting also pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I am a shy person, and speaking with people I did not know intimidated me. During my first interview, I met with the basketball coach to prepare for a story about the team’s winning streak. As I approached his office, I felt everything from my toes to my tongue freeze into a solid block, and I could hardly get out my opening questions. Fortunately, the coach was very kind and helped me through the conversation. Encouraged, I prepared for my next interview with more confidence. After a few weeks of practice, I even started to look forward to interviewing people on campus. That first journalism class may have bored me, but even if journalism in practice was challenging, it was anything but tedious.

Over the course of that year, I grew to love writing for our school newspaper. Reporting made me aware of my surroundings, and made me want to know more about current events on campus and in the town where I grew up. By interacting with people all over campus, I came to understand the breadth of individuals and communities that make up my high school. I felt far more connected to diverse parts of my school through my work as a journalist, and I realized that journalism gave me a window into seeing beyond my own experiences. The style of news writing may be different from what I used to think “writing” meant, but I learned that I can still derive exciting plots from events that may have gone unnoticed if not for my stories. I no longer struggle to approach others, and truly enjoy getting to know people and recognizing their accomplishments through my writing. Becoming a writer may be a difficult path, but it is as rewarding as I hoped when I was young.

This essay is clearly structured in a manner that makes it flow very nicely and contributes to its success. It starts with a quote to draw in the reader and show this student’s life-long passion for writing. Then it addresses the challenges of facing new, unfamiliar territory and how this student overcame it. Finally, it concludes by reflecting on this eye-opening experience and a nod to their younger self from the introduction. Having a well-thought out and sequential structure with clear transitions makes it extremely easy for the reader to follow along and take away the main idea.

Another positive aspect of the essay is the use of strong and expressive language. Sentences like “ When I thought of writing, I imagined lyrical prose, profound poetry, and thrilling plot lines ” stand out because of the intentional use of words like “lyrical”, “profound”, and “thrilling” to convey the student’s love of writing. The author also uses an active voice to capture the readers’ attention and keep us engaged. They rely on their language and diction to reveal details to the reader, for instance saying “ I felt everything from my toes to my tongue freeze into a solid block ” to describe feeling nervous.

This essay is already very strong, so there isn’t much that needs to be changed. One thing that could take the essay from great to outstanding would be to throw in more quotes, internal dialogue, and sensory descriptors.

It would be nice to see the nerves they felt interviewing the coach by including dialogue like “ Um…I want to interview you about…uh…”.  They could have shown their original distaste for journalism by narrating the thoughts running through their head. The fast-paced environment of their newspaper could have come to life with descriptions about the clacking of keyboards and the whirl of people running around laying out articles.

Essay Example #5: Starting a Fire

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

This student is an excellent writer, which allows a simple story to be outstandingly compelling. The author articulates her points beautifully and creatively through her immense use of details and figurative language. Lines like “a rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees,” and “rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers,” create vivid images that draw the reader in. 

The flowery and descriptive prose also contributes to the nice juxtaposition between the old Clara and the new Clara. The latter half of the essay contrasts elements of nature with music and writing to demonstrate how natural these interests are for her now. This sentence perfectly encapsulates the contrast she is trying to build: “It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive.”

In addition to being well-written, this essay is thematically cohesive. It begins with the simple introduction “Fire!” and ends with the following image: “When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.” This full-circle approach leaves readers satisfied and impressed.

There is very little this essay should change, however one thing to be cautious about is having an essay that is overly-descriptive. We know from the essay that this student likes to read and write, and depending on other elements of her application, it might make total sense to have such a flowery and ornate writing style. However, your personal statement needs to reflect your voice as well as your personality. If you would never use language like this in conversation or your writing, don’t put it in your personal statement. Make sure there is a balance between eloquence and your personal voice.

Essay Example #6: Dedicating a Track

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

This essay effectively conveys this student’s compassion for others, initiative, and determination—all great qualities to exemplify in a personal statement!

Although they rely on telling us a lot of what happened up until the board meeting, the use of running a race (their passion) as a metaphor for public speaking provides a lot of insight into the fear that this student overcame to work towards something bigger than themself. Comparing a podium to the starting line, the audience to the track, and silence to the gunshot is a nice way of demonstrating this student’s passion for cross country running without making that the focus of the story.

The essay does a nice job of coming full circle at the end by explaining what the quote from the beginning meant to them after this experience. Without explicitly saying “ I now know that what Stark actually meant is…” they rely on the strength of their argument above to make it obvious to the reader what it means to get beat but not lose. 

One of the biggest areas of improvement in the intro, however, is how the essay tells us Stark’s impact rather than showing us: His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The writer could’ve helped us feel a stronger emotional connection to Stark if they had included examples of Stark’s qualities, rather than explicitly stating them. For example, they could’ve written something like: Stark was the kind of person who would give you gas money if you told him your parents couldn’t afford to pick you up from practice. And he actually did that—several times. At track meets, alumni regularly would come talk to him and tell him how he’d changed their lives. Before Stark, I was ambivalent about running and was on the JV team, but his encouragement motivated me to run longer and harder and eventually make varsity. Because of him, I approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

Essay Example #7: Body Image and Eating Disorders

I press the “discover” button on my Instagram app, hoping to find enticing pictures to satisfy my boredom. Scrolling through, I see funny videos and mouth-watering pictures of food. However, one image stops me immediately. A fit teenage girl with a “perfect body” relaxes in a bikini on a beach. Beneath it, I see a slew of flattering comments. I shake with disapproval over the image’s unrealistic quality. However, part of me still wants to have a body like hers so that others will make similar comments to me.

I would like to resolve a silent issue that harms many teenagers and adults: negative self image and low self-esteem in a world where social media shapes how people view each other. When people see the façades others wear to create an “ideal” image, they can develop poor thought patterns rooted in negative self-talk. The constant comparisons to “perfect” others make people feel small. In this new digital age, it is hard to distinguish authentic from artificial representations.

When I was 11, I developed anorexia nervosa. Though I was already thin, I wanted to be skinny like the models that I saw on the magazine covers on the grocery store stands. Little did I know that those models probably also suffered from disorders, and that photoshop erased their flaws. I preferred being underweight to being healthy. No matter how little I ate or how thin I was, I always thought that I was too fat. I became obsessed with the number on the scale and would try to eat the least that I could without my parents urging me to take more. Fortunately, I stopped engaging in anorexic behaviors before middle school. However, my underlying mental habits did not change. The images that had provoked my disorder in the first place were still a constant presence in my life.

By age 15, I was in recovery from anorexia, but suffered from depression. While I used to only compare myself to models, the growth of social media meant I also compared myself to my friends and acquaintances. I felt left out when I saw my friends’ excitement about lake trips they had taken without me. As I scrolled past endless photos of my flawless, thin classmates with hundreds of likes and affirming comments, I felt my jealousy spiral. I wanted to be admired and loved by other people too. However, I felt that I could never be enough. I began to hate the way that I looked, and felt nothing in my life was good enough. I wanted to be called “perfect” and “body goals,” so I tried to only post at certain times of day to maximize my “likes.” When that didn’t work, I started to feel too anxious to post anything at all.  

Body image insecurities and social media comparisons affect thousands of people – men, women, children, and adults – every day. I am lucky – after a few months of my destructive social media habits, I came across a video that pointed out the illusory nature of social media; many Instagram posts only show off good things while people hide their flaws. I began going to therapy, and recovered from my depression. To address the problem of self-image and social media, we can all focus on what matters on the inside and not what is on the surface. As an effort to become healthy internally, I started a club at my school to promote clean eating and radiating beauty from within. It has helped me grow in my confidence, and today I’m not afraid to show others my struggles by sharing my experience with eating disorders. Someday, I hope to make this club a national organization to help teenagers and adults across the country. I support the idea of body positivity and embracing difference, not “perfection.” After all, how can we be ourselves if we all look the same?

This essay covers the difficult topics of eating disorders and mental health. If you’re thinking about covering similar topics in your essay, we recommend reading our post Should You Talk About Mental Health in College Essays?

The short answer is that, yes, you can talk about mental health, but it can be risky. If you do go that route, it’s important to focus on what you learned from the experience.

The strength of this essay is the student’s vulnerability, in excerpts such as this: I wanted to be admired and loved by other people too. However, I felt that I could never be enough. I began to hate the way that I looked, and felt nothing in my life was good enough. I wanted to be called “perfect” and “body goals,” so I tried to only post at certain times of day to maximize my “likes.”

The student goes on to share how they recovered from their depression through an eye-opening video and therapy sessions, and they’re now helping others find their self-worth as well. It’s great that this essay looks towards the future and shares the writer’s goals of making their club a national organization; we can see their ambition and compassion.

The main weakness of this essay is that it doesn’t focus enough on their recovery process, which is arguably the most important part. They could’ve told us more about the video they watched or the process of starting their club and the interactions they’ve had with other members. Especially when sharing such a vulnerable topic, there should be vulnerability in the recovery process too. That way, the reader can fully appreciate all that this student has overcome.

Essay Example #8: Becoming a Coach

”Advanced females ages 13 to 14 please proceed to staging with your coaches at this time.” Skittering around the room, eyes wide and pleading, I frantically explained my situation to nearby coaches. The seconds ticked away in my head; every polite refusal increased my desperation.

Despair weighed me down. I sank to my knees as a stream of competitors, coaches, and officials flowed around me. My dojang had no coach, and the tournament rules prohibited me from competing without one.

Although I wanted to remain strong, doubts began to cloud my mind. I could not help wondering: what was the point of perfecting my skills if I would never even compete? The other members of my team, who had found coaches minutes earlier, attempted to comfort me, but I barely heard their words. They couldn’t understand my despair at being left on the outside, and I never wanted them to understand.

Since my first lesson 12 years ago, the members of my dojang have become family. I have watched them grow up, finding my own happiness in theirs. Together, we have honed our kicks, blocks, and strikes. We have pushed one another to aim higher and become better martial artists. Although my dojang had searched for a reliable coach for years, we had not found one. When we attended competitions in the past, my teammates and I had always gotten lucky and found a sympathetic coach. Now, I knew this practice was unsustainable. It would devastate me to see the other members of my dojang in my situation, unable to compete and losing hope as a result. My dojang needed a coach, and I decided it was up to me to find one.

I first approached the adults in the dojang – both instructors and members’ parents. However, these attempts only reacquainted me with polite refusals. Everyone I asked told me they couldn’t devote multiple weekends per year to competitions. I soon realized that I would have become the coach myself.

At first, the inner workings of tournaments were a mystery to me. To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side. I learned everything from motivational strategies to technical, behind-the-scenes components of Taekwondo competitions. Though I emerged with new knowledge and confidence in my capabilities, others did not share this faith.

Parents threw me disbelieving looks when they learned that their children’s coach was only a child herself. My self-confidence was my armor, deflecting their surly glances. Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

Despite the attack, I refused to give up. When I saw the shining eyes of the youngest students preparing for their first competition, I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was. The knowledge that I could solve my dojang’s longtime problem motivated me to overcome my apprehension.

Now that my dojang flourishes at competitions, the attacks on me have weakened, but not ended. I may never win the approval of every parent; at times, I am still tormented by doubts, but I find solace in the fact that members of my dojang now only worry about competing to the best of their abilities.

Now, as I arrive at a tournament with my students, I close my eyes and remember the past. I visualize the frantic search for a coach and the chaos amongst my teammates as we competed with one another to find coaches before the staging calls for our respective divisions. I open my eyes to the exact opposite scene. Lacking a coach hurt my ability to compete, but I am proud to know that no member of my dojang will have to face that problem again.

This essay begins with an in-the-moment narrative that really illustrates the chaos of looking for a coach last-minute. We feel the writer’s emotions, particularly her dejectedness, at not being able to compete. Starting an essay in media res  is a great way to capture the attention of your readers and build anticipation for what comes next.

Through this essay, we can see how gutsy and determined the student is in deciding to become a coach themselves. She shows us these characteristics through their actions, rather than explicitly telling us: To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side.  Also, by discussing the opposition she faced and how it affected her, the student is open and vulnerable about the reality of the situation.

The essay comes full circle as the author recalls the frantic situations in seeking out a coach, but this is no longer a concern for them and their team. Overall, this essay is extremely effective in painting this student as mature, bold, and compassionate.

The biggest thing this essay needs to work on is showing not telling. Throughout the essay, the student tells us that she “emerged with new knowledge and confidence,” she “grew unsure of her own abilities,” and she “refused to give up”. What we really want to know is what this looks like.

Instead of saying she “emerged with new knowledge and confidence” she should have shared how she taught a new move to a fellow team-member without hesitation. Rather than telling us she “grew unsure of her own abilities” she should have shown what that looked like by including her internal dialogue and rhetorical questions that ran through her mind. She could have demonstrated what “refusing to give up” looks like by explaining how she kept learning coaching techniques on her own, turned to a mentor for advice, or devised a plan to win over the trust of parents. 

Essay Example #9: Eritrea

No one knows where Eritrea is.

On the first day of school, for the past nine years, I would pensively stand in front of a class, a teacher, a stranger  waiting for the inevitable question: Where are you from?

I smile politely, my dimples accentuating my ambiguous features. “Eritrea,” I answer promptly and proudly. But I  am always prepared. Before their expression can deepen into confusion, ready to ask “where is that,” I elaborate,  perhaps with a fleeting hint of exasperation, “East Africa, near Ethiopia.”

Sometimes, I single out the key-shaped hermit nation on a map, stunning teachers who have “never had a student  from there!” Grinning, I resist the urge to remark, “You didn’t even know it existed until two minutes ago!”

Eritrea is to the East of Ethiopia, its arid coastline clutches the lucrative Red Sea. Battle scars litter the ancient  streets – the colonial Italian architecture lathered with bullet holes, the mosques mangled with mortar shells.  Originally part of the world’s first Christian kingdom, Eritrea passed through the hands of colonial Italy, Britain, and  Ethiopia for over a century, until a bloody thirty year war of Independence liberated us.

But these are facts that anyone can know with a quick Google search. These are facts that I have memorised and compounded, first from my Grandmother and now from pristine books  borrowed from the library.

No historical narrative, however, can adequately capture what Eritrea is.  No one knows the aroma of bushels of potatoes, tomatoes, and garlic – still covered in dirt – that leads you to the open-air market. No one knows the poignant scent of spices, arranged in orange piles reminiscent of compacted  dunes.  No one knows how to haggle stubborn herders for sheep and roosters for Christmas celebrations as deliberately as my mother. No one can replicate the perfect balance of spices in dorho and tsebhi as well as my grandmother,  her gnarly hands stirring the pot with ancient precision (chastising my clumsy knife work with the potatoes).  It’s impossible to learn when the injera is ready – the exact moment you have to lift the lid of the mogogo. Do it too  early (or too late) and the flatbread becomes mangled and gross. It is a sixth sense passed through matriarchal  lineages.

There are no sources that catalogue the scent of incense that wafts through the sunlit porch on St. Michael’s; no  films that can capture the luminescence of hundreds of flaming bonfires that fluoresce the sidewalks on Kudus  Yohannes, as excited children chant Ge’ez proverbs whose origin has been lost to time.  You cannot learn the familiarity of walking beneath the towering Gothic figure of the Enda Mariam Cathedral, the  crowds undulating to the ringing of the archaic bells.  I have memorized the sound of the rains hounding the metal roof during kiremti , the heat of the sun pounding  against the Toyota’s window as we sped down towards Ghinda , the opulent brilliance of the stars twinkling in a  sky untainted by light pollution, the scent of warm rolls of bani wafting through the streets at precisely 6 o’clock each day…

I fill my flimsy sketchbook with pictures from my memory. My hand remembers the shapes of the hibiscus drifting  in the wind, the outline of my grandmother (affectionately nicknamed a’abaye ) leaning over the garden, the bizarre architecture of the Fiat Tagliero .  I dice the vegetables with movements handed down from generations. My nose remembers the scent of frying garlic, the sourness of the warm tayta , the sharpness of the mit’mt’a …

This knowledge is intrinsic.  “I am Eritrean,” I repeat. “I am proud.”  Within me is an encyclopedia of history, culture, and idealism.

Eritrea is the coffee made from scratch, the spices drying in the sun, the priests and nuns. Eritrea is wise, filled with ambition, and unseen potential.  Eritrea isn’t a place, it’s an identity.

This is an exceptional essay that provides a window into this student’s culture that really makes their love for their country and heritage leap off the page. The sheer level of details and sensory descriptors this student is able to fit in this space makes the essay stand out. From the smells, to the traditions, sounds, and sights, the author encapsulates all the glory of Eritrea for the reader. 

The vivid images this student is able to create for the reader, whether it is having the tedious conversation with every teacher or cooking in their grandmother’s kitchen, transports us into the story and makes us feel like we are there in the moment with the student. This is a prime example of an essay that shows , not tells.

Besides the amazing imagery, the use of shorter paragraphs also contributes to how engaging this essay is. Employing this tactic helps break up the text to make it more readable and it isolates ideas so they stick out more than if they were enveloped in a large paragraph.

Overall, this is a really strong essay that brings to life this student’s heritage through its use of vivid imagery. This essay exemplifies what it means to show not tell in your writing, and it is a great example of how you can write an intimate personal statement without making yourself the primary focus of your essay. 

There is very little this essay should improve upon, but one thing the student might consider would be to inject more personal reflection into their response. Although we can clearly take away their deep love and passion for their homeland and culture, the essay would be a bit more personal if they included the emotions and feelings they associate with the various aspects of Eritrea. For example, the way their heart swells with pride when their grandmother praises their ability to cook a flatbread or the feeling of serenity when they hear the bells ring out from the cathedral. Including personal details as well as sensory ones would create a wonderful balance of imagery and reflection.

Essay Example #10: Journaling

Flipping past dozens of colorful entries in my journal, I arrive at the final blank sheet. I press my pen lightly to the page, barely scratching its surface to create a series of loops stringing together into sentences. Emotions spill out, and with their release, I feel lightness in my chest. The stream of thoughts slows as I reach the bottom of the page, and I gently close the cover of the worn book: another journal finished.

I add the journal to the stack of eleven books on my nightstand. Struck by the bittersweet sensation of closing a chapter of my life, I grab the notebook at the bottom of the pile to reminisce.

“I want to make a flying mushen to fly in space and your in it” – October 2008

Pulling back the cover of my first Tinkerbell-themed diary, the prompt “My Hopes and Dreams” captures my attention. Though “machine” is misspelled in my scribbled response, I see the beginnings of my past obsession with outer space. At the age of five, I tore through novels about the solar system, experimented with rockets built from plastic straws, and rented Space Shuttle films from Blockbuster to satisfy my curiosities. While I chased down answers to questions as limitless as the universe, I fell in love with learning. Eight journals later, the same relentless curiosity brought me to an airplane descending on San Francisco Bay.

“I wish I had infinite sunsets” – July 2019

I reach for the charcoal notepad near the top of the pile and open to the first page: my flight to the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes. While I was excited to explore bioengineering, anxiety twisted in my stomach as I imagined my destination, unsure of whether I could overcome my shyness and connect with others.

With each new conversation, the sweat on my palms became less noticeable, and I met students from 23 different countries. Many of the moments where I challenged myself socially revolved around the third story deck of the Jerry house. A strange medley of English, Arabic, and Mandarin filled the summer air as my friends and I gathered there every evening, and dialogues at sunset soon became moments of bliss. In our conversations about cultural differences, the possibility of an afterlife, and the plausibility of far-fetched conspiracy theories, I learned to voice my opinion. As I was introduced to different viewpoints, these moments challenged my understanding of the world around me. In my final entries from California, I find excitement to learn from others and increased confidence, a tool that would later allow me to impact my community.

“The beauty in a tower of cans” – June 2020

Returning my gaze to the stack of journals, I stretch to take the floral-patterned book sitting on top. I flip through, eventually finding the beginnings of the organization I created during the outbreak of COVID-19. Since then, Door-to-Door Deliveries has woven its way through my entries and into reality, allowing me to aid high-risk populations through free grocery delivery.

With the confidence I gained the summer before, I took action when seeing others in need rather than letting my shyness hold me back. I reached out to local churches and senior centers to spread word of our services and interacted with customers through our website and social media pages. To further expand our impact, we held two food drives, and I mustered the courage to ask for donations door-to-door. In a tower of canned donations, I saw the value of reaching out to help others and realized my own potential to impact the world around me.

I delicately close the journal in my hands, smiling softly as the memories reappear, one after another. Reaching under my bed, I pull out a fresh notebook and open to its first sheet. I lightly press my pen to the page, “And so begins the next chapter…”

The structuring of this essay makes it easy and enjoyable to read. The student effectively organizes their various life experiences around their tower of journals, which centers the reader and makes the different stories easy to follow. Additionally, the student engages quotes from their journals—and unique formatting of the quotes—to signal that they are moving in time and show us which memory we should follow them to.

Thematically, the student uses the idea of shyness to connect the different memories they draw out of their journals. As the student describes their experiences overcoming shyness at the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes and Door-to-Door Deliveries, this essay can be read as an Overcoming Obstacles essay.

At the end of this essay, readers are fully convinced that this student is dedicated (they have committed to journaling every day), thoughtful (journaling is a thoughtful process and, in the essay, the student reflects thoughtfully on the past), and motivated (they flew across the country for a summer program and started a business). These are definitely qualities admissions officers are looking for in applicants!

Although this essay is already exceptionally strong as it’s written, the first journal entry feels out of place compared to the other two entries that discuss the author’s shyness and determination. It works well for the essay to have an entry from when the student was younger to add some humor (with misspelled words) and nostalgia, but if the student had either connected the quote they chose to the idea of overcoming a fear present in the other two anecdotes or if they had picked a different quote all together related to their shyness, it would have made the entire essay feel more cohesive.

Where to Get Your Personal Statement Edited

Do you want feedback on your personal statement? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Next Step: Supplemental Essays

Essay Guides for Each School

How to Write a Stellar Extracurricular Activity College Essay

4 Tips for Writing a Diversity College Essay

How to Write the “Why This College” Essay

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Guest Essay

Elite College Admissions Have Turned Students Into Brands

By Sarah Bernstein

Ms. Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist in Brooklyn.

“I just can’t think of anything,” my student said.

After 10 years of teaching college essay writing, I was familiar with this reply. For some reason, when you’re asked to recount an important experience from your life, it is common to forget everything that has ever happened to you. It’s a long-form version of the anxiety that takes hold at a corporate retreat when you’re invited to say “one interesting thing about yourself,” and you suddenly believe that you are the most boring person in the entire world. Once during a version of this icebreaker, a man volunteered that he had only one kidney, and I remember feeling incredibly jealous of him.

I tried to jog this student’s memory. What about his love of music? Or his experience learning English? Or that time on a summer camping trip when he and his friends had nearly drowned? “I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “That all seems kind of cliché.”

Applying to college has always been about standing out. When I teach college essay workshops and coach applicants one on one, I see my role as helping students to capture their voice and their way of processing the world, things that are, by definition, unique to each individual. Still, many of my students (and their parents) worry that as getting into college becomes increasingly competitive, this won’t be enough to set them apart.

Their anxiety is understandable. On Thursday, in a tradition known as “Ivy Day,” all eight Ivy League schools released their regular admission decisions. Top colleges often issue statements about how impressive (and competitive) their applicant pools were this cycle. The intention is to flatter accepted students and assuage rejected ones, but for those who have not yet applied to college, these statements reinforce the fear that there is an ever-expanding cohort of applicants with straight A’s and perfect SATs and harrowing camping trip stories all competing with one another for a vanishingly small number of spots.

This scarcity has led to a boom in the college consulting industry, now estimated to be a $2.9 billion business. In recent years, many of these advisers and companies have begun to promote the idea of personal branding — a way for teenagers to distinguish themselves by becoming as clear and memorable as a good tagline.

While this approach often leads to a strong application, students who brand themselves too early or too definitively risk missing out on the kind of exploration that will prepare them for adult life.

Like a corporate brand, the personal brand is meant to distill everything you stand for (honesty, integrity, high quality, low prices) into a cohesive identity that can be grasped at a glance. On its website, a college prep and advising company called Dallas Admissions explains the benefits of branding this way: “Each person is complex, yet admissions officers only have a small amount of time to spend learning about each prospective student. The smart student boils down key aspects of himself or herself into their personal ‘brand’ and sells that to the college admissions officer.”

Identifying the key aspects of yourself may seem like a lifelong project, but unfortunately, college applicants don’t have that kind of time. Online, there are dozens of lesson plans and seminars promising to walk students through the process of branding themselves in five to 10 easy steps. The majority begin with questions I would have found panic-inducing as a teenager, such as, “What is the story you want people to tell about you when you’re not in the room?”

Where I hoped others would describe me as “normal” or, in my wildest dreams, “cool,” today’s teenagers are expected to leave this exercise with labels like, Committed Athlete and Compassionate Leader or Environmentally Conscious Musician. Once students have a draft of their ideal self, they’re offered instructions for manifesting it (or at least, the appearance of it) in person and online. These range from common-sense tips (not posting illegal activity on social media) to more drastic recommendations (getting different friends).

It’s not just that these courses cut corners on self-discovery; it’s that they get the process backward. A personal brand is effective only if you can support it with action, so instead of finding their passion and values through experience, students are encouraged to select a passion as early as possible and then rack up the experience to substantiate it. Many college consultants suggest beginning to align your activities with your college ambitions by ninth grade, while the National Institute of Certified College Planners recommends students “talk with parents, guardians, and/or an academic adviser to create a clear plan for your education and career-related goals” in junior high.

The idea of a group of middle schoolers soberly mapping out their careers is both comical and depressing, but when I read student essays today, I can see that this advice is getting through. Over the past few years, I have been struck by how many high school seniors already have defined career goals as well as a C.V. of relevant extracurriculars to go with them. This widens the gap between wealthy students and those who lack the resources to secure a fancy research gig or start their own small business. (A shocking number of college applicants claim to have started a small business.) It also puts pressure on all students to define themselves at a moment when they are anxious to fit in and yet changing all the time.

In the world of branding, a word that appears again and again is “consistency.” If you are Charmin, that makes sense. People opening a roll of toilet paper do not want to be surprised. If you are a teenage human being, however, that is an unreasonable expectation. Changing one’s interests, opinions and presentation is a natural part of adolescence and an instructive one. I find that my students with scattershot résumés are often the most confident. They’re not afraid to push back against suggestions that ring false and will insist on revising their essay until it actually “feels like me.” On the other hand, many of my most accomplished students are so quick to accept feedback that I am wary of offering it, lest I become one more adult trying to shape them into an admission-worthy ideal.

I understand that for parents, prioritizing exploration can feel like a risky bet. Self-insight is hard to quantify and to communicate in a college application. When it comes to building a life, however, this kind of knowledge has more value than any accolade, and it cannot be generated through a brainstorming exercise in a six-step personal branding course online. To equip kids for the world, we need to provide them not just with opportunities for achievement, but with opportunities to fail, to learn, to wander and to change their minds.

In some ways, the college essay is a microcosm of modern adolescence. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either a forum for self-discovery or a high-stakes test you need to ace. I try to assure my students that it is the former. I tell them that it’s a chance to take stock of everything you’ve experienced and learned over the past 18 years and everything you have to offer as a result.

That can be a profound process. But to embark on it, students have to believe that colleges really want to see the person behind the brand. And they have to have the chance to know who that person is.

Sarah Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Mount Everest was the riskiest place I had practiced medicine until I became an OB/GYN in the South

In post-dobbs georgia, unlike on everest, i didn't choose the restrictions and threats i now practice under, by mimi zieman.

On the eastern glacier of Everest in Tibet, where avalanches boomed in the distance and icy winds blew through my nylon tent, I tucked in at night within a cocoon of uncertainty. I kept my stethoscope and blood pressure cuff nestled by my thighs to keep them warm and ready to use. Months stretched out in isolation with me on high alert — alone in my medical role — fearing I’d fail when most needed. Most nights I shivered as I donned my down layers, slept with two hats, and tucked a hot water bottle beside my feet for warmth. I envied the rest of the all-male team who slept bare.

In the middle of one night, my fears became reality. Two severely injured climbers crawled over uneven rocks to stumble into camp. They shouted our names for help, piercing the black air. Half asleep, with shoelaces untied and blades of hail stinging my face, I stumbled toward the sound of their voices, then helped them back to our tents, and began a marathon of care. At 18,000 feet, the thin air mirrored my nascent experience as a 25-year-old medical student. I worried about their conditions and the care I was delivering. Was I doing everything correctly? Remembering the protocols? What else should I be doing?  

My journey to Everest was a leap of faith. I was raised a New York City girl and felt like an unlikely candidate for a Himalayan expedition, but I couldn’t resist the call of the mountains. Once I joined the team as the Medical Officer, I dove into mountaineering medicine, sought counsel from experts, and armed myself with knowledge. Yet nothing could prepare me for how isolated we’d be. We saw no outsiders for months and knew there was no chance for rescue on the East Face of the mountain in Tibet. 

A few days later, back in Base Camp, I laid out packages of gauze, tape, scissors, antiseptic and checked the antibiotics on hand. While tending to a climber with severe frostbite injuries affecting both hands and feet, I tipped his hat over his eyes and suggested he look away. I removed the bandage I’d placed at Advanced Base Camp from his first finger. A shrunken black stub of a distal phalanx — the whole tip of his finger — stared back. He lifted his hat, saw his finger, and looked up at me with wide eyes. Then he rounded his back away from me like an animal curled up in defense. More unwrapping, more fingers, more rocking with sobs, digit after digit, dead, inch-long black fingertips. He wailed, shook his head, and his sobs pierced my heart. I wished I could protect him from this pain. His eyes were pleading, but I had no answers. I, too, was surprised at how rapidly his shredded fingers had turned to coal.

Since the Dobbs decision, I don’t have the autonomy I had on the mountain to deliver the best care possible.

“Will I ever be able to climb again?” he asked. The gauze adhered to his final two fingers. 

I didn’t have an answer.

My only motivation was to provide the best care possible while being present with compassion. We were all at the knife edge of our limits and digging deeply for strength.

Each of us on that mountain had weighed our risks and vulnerabilities and had chosen to be there. The climbers had chosen the extreme challenge of Everest and did everything in their power to remain alive. I had chosen to work in these circumstances and was delivering the best care I could under difficult conditions.

Not so in my OB/GYN practice in Georgia. Since the Dobbs decision, I don’t have the autonomy I had on the mountain to deliver the best care possible. This is a different kind of isolation, and it’s more unnerving. Despite years of medical training and a commitment to evidence-based care, physicians are hamstrung by state laws, and our patients are suffering. 

A few weeks ago, I entered an exam room to find a young woman staring at her phone, wearing a college sweatshirt and crocs decked out with charms. She had driven alone to Georgia from Tennessee seeking an abortion. Georgia law permits abortions  until approximately two weeks after a missed period, whereas Tennessee bans all procedures with narrow medical emergency exceptions .

After discussing how she felt and clarifying information in her medical history, I said, “Your ultrasound doesn’t show a pregnancy in the uterus, which can happen for a few reasons, most commonly because it’s too early in pregnancy. But the level of pregnancy hormone in your blood and medical history makes me concerned you could have an ectopic pregnancy — one that grows outside the uterus, typically in the fallopian tubes.”

Here, the peaks are legal hurdles, the valleys emotional.

We discussed what might be going on and the next steps we could take, but this young woman dissolved into tears. Getting advanced care to rule out an ectopic pregnancy would require involving her health insurance, which would alert her parents, something she wanted to avoid. I left the room to give her space and time to compose herself while I went to investigate options for care. 

Sobbing patients overwhelmed by difficult decisions resulting from abortion restrictions are now part of our everyday practice as OB/GYNs. We’re not discussing plans of care based on science — we’re sorting out travel, logistics, time off work, childcare, emotional distress, and legal ramifications. Here, the peaks are legal hurdles, the valleys emotional.

This is taking a toll on us. A recent survey by EL Sabbath et al. of OB/GYNs in states with bans documents immense personal impacts “including distress at having to delay essential patient care, fears of legal ramifications, mental health effects, and planned or actual attrition.” The majority reported symptoms of anxiety or depression as a direct consequence of Dobbs. Ninety-three percent of respondents had situations where they or their colleagues could not follow standard of care. Eleven percent had already moved to another state without restrictions, and 60% considered leaving but have family and other obligations making them stay for now.

Although we’ve spent years in medical training, our expertise has been erased by politicians with no medical background. Not being able to practice in accordance with the ethical principles of respecting patient privacy and autonomy in the decision-making process is wounding us.

A May 2023 survey found that 55% of Idaho OB-GYNs were seriously or somewhat considering leaving the state due to the abortion ban, and a hospital there was forced to close its labor and delivery unit due to related staffing issues. Fewer OB/GYNS means less maternal care and yet many of the states with abortion restrictions have the highest maternal mortality rates.

Take this a step back and medical trainees are being affected. Abortion bans are affecting almost half of OB/GYN training programs. A recent survey of medical students in Indiana found 70% were less likely to pursue residency in a state with abortion bans. With decreased training — and diminishing numbers of OB/GYNs willing to practice in these states —  maternal mortality will rise. Care of other gynecological conditions such as endometriosis, infertility, fibroids and cancer will suffer. This affects the most vulnerable among us, low-income and minority patients.

My patient’s insurance would only work in Tennessee. She reminded me of my youngest daughter. I couldn’t picture her processing this information on her own. I was most worried that my patient would need to drive herself back across state lines in this fraught emotional state.

Unlike my experience on Everest, I am not choosing these risks — to my patients or to myself — of practicing under untenable circumstances where I cannot deliver optimal care.

She returned to Tennessee, where her bloodwork confirmed an ectopic pregnancy. Even though treatment of ectopic pregnancies is permitted in that state, the hospital released her without immediate treatment. Delayed care could put her at risk for impaired future fertility, emergency rather than elective surgery, and even death. I can only hope none of that happened. Treating people crossing state lines, who we cannot adequately care for ourselves, is stressful. I still think of her.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the decision I made to go to Everest with the risks involved and the potential for trauma. I’d joined the team to experience the majesty of the Himalayas. To wake up to fine blue mountain light, live within vastness, and quell the warnings from girlhood to stay small and be safe. To this end, I made peace with the risks I was taking and ultimately grew from facing my fears. When trauma beset us, each team member grew into the best version of themselves.

My family moved to Georgia almost three decades ago, a different kind of unlikely for this city-raised girl. I grew to love the rolling hills of north Georgia, the breathtaking palette of autumn, the scent of apple cider and boiled peanuts. I learned how to cook collards — without ham — their rough stems of veins running through me.

But in the South now, we are not expanding and growing; we are shrinking, boxed in by medical practice governed by legislators, lawyers and hospital administrators. 

Unlike my experience on Everest, I am not choosing these risks — to my patients or to myself — of practicing under untenable circumstances where I cannot deliver optimal care. If I were finishing my training today and choosing somewhere to practice, I would not come to this state or anywhere with these restrictions on practice. 

I would never have predicted, when I was shivering, afraid, and alone providing care on the mountain, that I would feel threatened 36 years later by simply practicing basic healthcare in America. I couldn’t have known that after studying and working hard, I would not be able to put my education, knowledge, and skills to their best use. That I would be hampered when fulfilling the essence of my dream to care for women with skill and compassion. I couldn’t have known how alone, isolated and abandoned I would feel. Right here, at home. 

about this topic

• As more abortion bans occur, many patients must travel hundreds of miles for care — or be stranded
• Yes, some medication abortion patients go to the ER — but it may not be for what you think
• Supreme Court restricting mifepristone would be a "slippery slope" for future drugs

Mimi Zieman MD is the author of " Tap Dancing on Everest " (Falcon, April 2024), and "The Post-Roe Monologues," a play that has been performed in multiple cities. A physician, she has also co-authored sixteen editions of "Managing Contraception." Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, The Sun Magazine, Ms. Magazine, The Forward, NBC News THINK, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and other publications.

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More From Forbes

Strategies to address deepfakes and generative ai attacks on identity.

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Bojan Simic is the Co-Founder and CEO of HYPR , a provider of passwordless MFA and identity assurance solutions.

In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission reported more than 1 million identity theft complaints at an estimated loss of $1.3 billion . This rise aligns with an IBM report citing credential abuse as a leading threat tactic in 30% of incidents . Yet, as deepfakes, phishing and social engineering continue to serve as the new attack vectors of choice, identity-based attacks will inevitably escalate with the increased weaponization of AI tools.

New Attack Methods

Today, adversaries can execute an AI attack within four days , compared to 60 days in 2019. But in addition to speed and scale, it's AI’s adaptability and efficacy that makes it Pandora’s Box. For example, AI can be used to write malware code and then instantaneously change the code immediately, post creation—thwarting defense tools. Some of the most common generative AI attack approaches include:

“Phishing” was once considered a blanket attack, with the number of victims outweighing the quality of the attack. With AI and large language models (LLMs), adversaries can tailor phishing attempts to an exact target, disseminating messages faster and with scale. Employees once trained to “analyze the quality of an email,” by spotting frequent grammatical or spelling errors, now encounter customized, impeccably translated, contextual messages virtually indistinguishable as scams. Unsurprisingly, 2023 saw a 1,265% increase in phishing attempts, likely attributable to AI.

Impersonation And Deepfakes

AI adds sophistication to impersonations, allowing bad actors to mimic voice, vernacular, facial expressions, text and body language. What previously took months to monitor, capture and produce, can now take minutes for a hacker to generate personas. CSIRO states that “novice attackers can create a [deepfake] with no prior knowledge in seconds, skilled hackers can create realistic versions in just a few hours to a day.” A recent deepfake video-led attack resulted in a multinational firm losing more than US$25 million .

A Psychologist Explores The Rise Of ‘Hikikomori Syndrome’

Ipad 2024 apple just accidentally revealed an all new product it seems, apple iphone 16 pro models exposed in new leak, social engineering.

Unvalidated calls from the “IRS” or emails that dubiously announce a gift card or free vacation are common. Before, these were scam tactics designed to emotionally motivate a recipient, but over time, grew easier to detect. With AI, adversaries leverage socially engineered approaches to host fake websites, digitally tailgate, pretext and create chatbots and voice conversations to mimic individuals. Though nuanced, combined with advanced algorithms, these strategies allow hackers to circumnavigate firewalls and antivirus software to widen attacks. The most notable example was MGM Casino , resulting in a system-wide outage and loss of $100M.

Probabilistic Challenges

Before discussing strategic defenses, we must learn why probabilistic identity security controls are failing. Probabilistic, as the name suggests, relies on the probability or likelihood of an incident. In cybersecurity, probabilistic strategies outline risk quantifications or, the chance of an attack versus the legitimacy of an email. While valuable, probabilistics brings uncertainty in that it relies on the quality and quantity of data and overlooks intangible factors like human error or social engineering—thus creating a gap in security monitoring. Prominent probabilistic approaches include phishable authentication such as passwords or one-time passwords, knowledge-based identity verification and human-verified documentation like a passport—all vulnerable to interception and manipulation.

In contrast, deterministic controls provide binary certainty and logical reasoning to allow or deny an action. The definitive, rules-based approach of deterministic strategies uses accuracy and precision to determine if something is true or false, safe or a threat and also offers prevention by identifying and blocking malicious activities at the onset. Commonly known deterministic controls include phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, firewalls, network access control and patch management.

Deterministic Strategies

Effective identity management begins with identity hygiene and empowering the workforce to manage personal profiles in and outside the office. Next, organizations must eradicate attack vectors that create exploitable opportunities. These include weak passwords, poorly maintained software, processes with minimal or no verification, or legacy, siloed and manual techniques. Four deterministic approaches for organizations to consider:

Strong authentication methods: Eradicate traditional passwords and implement “context-based authentication.” Deterministic in approach, context-based authentication analyzes user behavior, device activity and other environmental factors to dynamically assess attempted access risks. From there, the system provides an adaptive response, whether to grant or deny access or request additional verification. This not only protects identities, but improves user experience, ensures regulatory compliance and adheres to Zero Trust principles of “never trust, always verify.” Additionally, cryptographic techniques like FIDO authentication and smartcards (using public-key cryptography) and biometrics, safeguard against all identity-based attacks—AI-assisted or not.

Layered identity verification: Traditional verifications are failing the battle test against AI-driven attacks and while new techniques such as liveness detection are successful, it is inevitable that these biometric sensors will be foiled by the advancement of AI. Therefore, a multi-layered approach with more than one proofing process is imperative. Deterministic factors like location, human behaviors, document verification, AI-powered chat, video and facial recognition provide a comprehensive, adaptable and multifaceted strategy for verification—with the reassurance that individuals are who they claim to be.

AI-assisted identity risk management: AI use isn’t all nefarious. It can equally defend against attacks. AI-powered tools that provide adaptive risk identification, analysis, mitigation and monitoring are critical. This is where context-based authentication and its key components—the risk engine, context sources and action orchestration—are vital. A risk engine continuously collects data through machine learning algorithms and AI is then used to grant or deny access. The data sources consist of device health, mobile, web and browser signals, real-time events, behaviors and access patterns. Lastly, action orchestration is the performance—the final risk assessment and identity-proofing steps to determine legitimacy.

Identity security toolbox: Most identity solutions are standalone or siloed, leaving exploitable gaps. Thankfully, open standards from FIDO and Open Policy Agent (OPA) reduce the disparity between attacker and defender. FIDO utilizes standards-based protocols for password authentication, while OPA is an authorization engine that grants access permissions. Together, these ensure compatibility between security tools and processes, creating robust identity environments. This is essential for collaborative security strategies, along with passwordless authentication, identity and access management, comprehensive identity verification and threat detection and intelligence.

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What about Equifax and TrustedID?

Pricing compared, identity theft: what you need to know, more security and internet recommendations, best identity theft protection and monitoring services for 2024.

If you suspect your identity may have been stolen, these identity theft protection services can help you.

David Gewirtz

CNET staff -- not advertisers, partners or business interests -- determine how we review the products and services we cover. If you buy through our links, we may get paid.

• LifeLock See at LifeLock
• IdentityForce $100 at IdentityForce
• Identity Guard $80 at IdentityGuard
• Complete ID $108 at Complete ID
• ID Watchdog $150 at ID Watchdog
• Identity Fraud $100 at Identity Fraud
• PrivacyGuard $120 at PrivacyGuard
• McAfee Identity Theft Protection Standard $40 at McAfee Identity Theft Protection

Identity theft is a serious matter. Someone stealing your identity can open you up to a host of issues that may destroy your life if you aren’t careful. And according to the  Identity Theft Research Center , these cybercrimes are on the rise, with data compromises increasing by 68% in 2021 alone. This is why you need to protect yourself with one of the best identity theft protection services available. 

Falling victim to one of these crooks could result in your credit being directly attacked. They might even commit other crimes and cause additional problems with your stolen identity. Your Social Security number, bank account and more are at risk, which is why you need to be proactive in protecting yourself.

The best way to safeguard your personal information is to make use of the best identity theft protection services to suit your needs. These services typically offer ID protection, credit monitoring and more to keep your sensitive data away from prying eyes. Our top picks for the best identity theft protection and monitoring services can help safeguard your identity and proactively monitor suspicious activity and assist with recovery if you become a victim of a data breach.  

ID theft protection is only going to become more essential. In 2019 alone, there were  more than 13 million US identity fraud cases , with victims losing nearly $17 billion, along with untold damage to credit reports. The  2017 Equifax breach  was the icing on a nasty cake -- one that got  even worse  in the following years. One of the biggest 2020 data breaches was the  Marriott hack , which affected over 5 million customers. That followed an earlier breach of Marriott’s Starwood reservation system, in which the personal information of more than 380 million guests was compromised, including  more than 5 million passport numbers .

In this directory, we’ll look at some of the best options for helping you manage and protect your identity at various price levels. We’ll also explain the difference between an identity theft protection company and a credit monitoring service. Before we get started, keep in mind that you don’t have to spend $10 to $30 a month for the best identity theft protection service. The US government offers  IdentityTheft.gov , an identity restoration service that can help a victim report and recover from identity theft.

Read more :   How to Prevent Identity Theft

We’ll jump straight to the top choices for the best identity theft protection service options for ID monitoring, credit monitoring and more. Keep reading to review additional important information and facts about ID theft and ID protection. This list is updated frequently.

LifeLock  has come a long way since the days when it was subject to multiple Federal Trade Commission investigations ( settled in 2015 ) and various lawsuits from customers and credit reporting agencies. That might give one pause before declaring it the best identity theft protection even if it does have great features. However, In 2017, it became a  subsidiary of Symantec , purchased for $2.3 billion.

You may recall the ads where LifeLock’s founder posted his Social Security number everywhere, as a statement in his confidence about LifeLock’s protection services. While he did  experience numerous instances of identity theft  based on those Social Security number postings, LifeLock’s theft protection services helped him recover.

The company offers a wide range of identity monitoring and protection options, including stolen wallet protection, ID verification monitoring, home title monitoring and checking and savings account application alerts.

LifeLock’s  ID theft protection services range from around $9 a month to $20 a month the first year. Terms apply. Reimbursement of $25,000 to $1 million is available, depending on the monitoring plan. The lower-price protection services monitor credit only from one credit bureau. The $20-a-month identity theft protection plan monitors all three major credit bureaus. You can pull credit reports once a year, but the service will provide you with a credit score monthly, based on Experian data.

SSN and credit alerts, dark web monitoring, alerts on suspicious activity like crimes committed under your name and credit card activity and fraud alert services are all marks in LifeLock’s favor, despite its past stumbles.

LifeLock Terms of Service

IdentityForce

IdentityForce  offers two tiers of service: UltraSecure and UltraSecure Plus Credit, the latter of which includes credit reports and scores. We liked how the credit score monitoring not only watches all three reporting agencies but provides a visual tracker that lets you examine your credit rating over time.

IdentityForce  identity theft protection monitoring includes quite a lot beyond credit information. It checks for public information record changes, address changes, court and arrest records and payday loan applications, and checks for identity information on a variety of illicit identity-sharing websites to act as a guard dog from identity thieves. The company also monitors sex offender registries to see if your name is associated with such things. We also like that it tracks SSNs for new usages or associations with new names.

Its mobile app has been updated with a feature called Mobile Attack Control. This monitors your smartphone for spyware and insecure Wi-Fi locations, as well as “spoof” networks (networks that act as if they’re legitimate connections but they’re not). Additionally, the phone app will present alerts if there are security issues monitored by IdentityForce that need immediate attention.

The company did not disclose frequency of service monitoring (beyond credit reporting agencies). That said, we liked how the company has an interesting credit score simulator which can help you understand how different balances, payments and balance transfers might have an impact on your credit score. IdentityForce offers a 14-day free trial version, so you can see if it offers the best identity theft protection for your needs.

Right now, the UltraSecure program is $150 per year (or $15 for a monthly plan), and the UltraSecure Plus Credit for individuals is $200 per year (or $20 per month).

IdentityForce Terms of Service

Identity Guard

The big pitch for  Identity Guard  is that it’s powered by IBM’s Watson. Earlier versions of Watson have done everything from  winning at Jeopardy  to helping doctors diagnose cancer. The version of Watson powering Identity Guard is, as you’d expect, focused on identity theft.

Identity Guard’s  use of Watson involves building a corpus of knowledge and continuing to feed it information from many different sources, including social networks. There’s no doubt the Watson-enabled service can help advise you on identity management. Its service monitors the customer’s personal information for ID theft, including your credit files, DOB and SSN.

Identity Guard offers a  clear summary  of its insurance terms, which is very helpful for determining whether it’s the best identity theft protection for you. The company offers a basic plan at around $6 a month, but it doesn’t provide credit monitoring. If you want monthly credit report updates, that jumps to $13 a month and includes credit monitoring from three credit bureaus and a monthly credit score. Its most comprehensive plan is the Identity Guard Ultra plan, which costs $20 a month and includes annual credit reports.

Identity Guard Terms of Service

Complete ID

Complete ID  is a service provided by Experian, one of the big three credit reporting agencies, and is exclusively available to Costco members. Costco Executive members pay $9 a month plus an optional $3 a month for child protection, and Gold Star Costco members pay $14 a month and an optional $4 a month for child protection.

Complete ID provides an annual credit report from the three agencies. It also offers monthly credit scores and provides a nice graph over time so you can see how your score has improved. These perks may help make it the best identity theft protection if you’re seeking multiple services in one.

The identity monitoring service offers monitoring for unauthorized use of your Social Security number and other noncredit identity monitoring to help prevent you from being the victim of stolen identity. A valuable feature is its neighborhood watch, updated monthly, which provides details on sexual predators and crimes in your area.

As with all of the services we’re spotlighting,  Complete ID  offers $1 million in limited identity theft insurance. And unlike some of the competitors listed here, it has a  clear summary of benefits . Base price (for Costco Executive members): $108 a year.

Complete ID Terms of Service

ID Watchdog

ID Watchdog  describes its service as “True Identity Protection.” The company’s big differentiator is helping you recover after you’ve been the victim of an identity theft experience. It offers a  guarantee  of “100% identity theft resolution,” but the fine print introduces some notable limits.

First, the company will only help you if it detects a new incident of fraud while you’re an active customer. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get back any money you lost, but it will provide access to its team of Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialists.

Like all the other commercial identity monitoring services we’ve profiled in this directory,  ID Watchdog  offers a $1 million identity theft insurance policy. But that policy’s exact terms, limits and benefits aren’t spelled out until you complete the signup process.

The base program doesn’t provide a credit report or credit score information, but if you sign up for the premium $220-per-year service, you can get a copy of your credit report and your credit score. The catch? You get that report once a year. You can already do that yourself, for free, by going to  annualcreditreport.com . Still, if you don’t need to check your credit often, this might make sense as the best identity theft protection for you.

While the company says that it provides monitoring services, it does not specify, anywhere in its terms and conditions, how often it performs checks for each type of service it monitors.

ID Watchdog Terms of Service

Identity Fraud

One of  Identity Fraud’s  standout features is price. It has the second-lowest entry-level price of any of the services we explored. The company also offers a business cybercrime protection service called  BizLock . Those two facts alone make it the best identity theft protection for some.

Identity Fraud’s personal service is $100 a year, with a bump to $160 a year for credit reporting and monitoring. Like all our other identity theft prevention contenders,  Identity Fraud  offers $1 million in fraud insurance (except for those in New York state, where the limit is $25,000 in coverage), with a $0 deductible. And we like that Identity Fraud’s  insurance benefits are clear and easy to find .

The company does provide a credit score, but it’s limited to data from TransUnion, one of the three credit-reporting agencies. The company will send you a monthly “no news is good news” email if your identity has had a quiet month. It also offers lost wallet services, along with identity resolution and prevention assistance.

Identity Fraud Terms of Service

PrivacyGuard

PrivacyGuard  offers a 14-day trial program, but instead of it being free, you have to pay a buck. So while you can still see if you like the program, the company loses all the friction-reducing benefits of trial-to-live conversions by requiring users to jump through that dollar hoop at the beginning of the relationship. Go figure.

Beyond the slightly shoot-themselves-in-the-foot trial program, PrivacyGuard provides many of the usual credit and identity protection services offered by its competitors. It offers daily credit monitoring, a key value in protecting a person’s identity against identity thieves, and a frequency level sorely lacking among many of the company’s competitors.

PrivacyGuard ‘s base $10-per-month program does record scans. A $20-a-month program does credit scans. A $25-per-month program does both. Like most other vendors, Privacy Guard offers a $1 million policy. Prior to signing up, the company provides some information about the policy’s benefits and limitations, but not enough for it to be useful for making a purchasing decision.

PrivacyGuard updates credit scores monthly and monitors public records and Social Security numbers. It also offers a yearly public records report, which provides all of the public records information that it’s found in one clear document.

PrivacyGuard offers a trial version.

PrivacyGuard Terms of Service

McAfee Identity Theft Protection Standard

McAfee’s identity theft protection service  is the least expensive we’ve seen for a year of coverage. You can get a full year of basic coverage for $50 as introductory pricing for new customers, and it includes antivirus protection. This is substantially less expensive than the other players we’ve discussed here.

It offers a slick “cyber monitoring” service that constantly scans for credit activity and alerts you if something unusual happens. The company does monitor your Experian credit file but doesn’t connect to either TransUnion or Equifax.

Like most other vendors, it offers to reimburse up to $1 million for identity recovery (unless you’re in New York state), and its recovery service will also return up to $10,000 in stolen funds. As an added benefit, if you lose your wallet, the company will do its best to reissue “a variety of contents from IDs and credit cards to concert tickets.”

McAfee is probably best known as an antivirus company founded by its  very  eccentric eponymous founder, John McAfee. In 2011, Intel bought the company and renamed it Intel Security Group but by 2017, McAfee (now known as McAfee LLC) was back out on its own, having been spun out to TPG Capital (although Intel still owns a minority stake).

We’re telling you all this because the company’s DNA is very clearly antivirus. A presales call to the company asking about its identity theft program first resulted in complete confusion about how many devices we wanted antivirus installed on, and then, once transferred to the “identity theft department,” culminated in our editor attempting to explain to the rep what credit reporting agencies did and why you’d care about them.

That doesn’t mean the product itself is bad. Fortunately, just about all of this service is automated and there’s never been any question about McAfee’s software chops. If its automated systems see odd behavior for one of your tracked accounts, those alerts may be your first and best protection when you need to secure your credit.

The company actually offers four tiers of identity protection service. Its Premium plan is the aforementioned $40 for the first year.

McAfee Terms of Service

Ah,  Equifax . If you already have an ID monitoring service, it may well be because of this company, which is the poster child for bad security. One of the big three credit reporting agencies, Equifax had no less than  five major   data breaches  in 2017, affecting nearly every American who has a credit history. In the months that followed, we learned that things  may have somehow even been worse  than originally known.

And the company’s ham-fisted response to each data breach made matters worse: At one point, the company was  directing users to a fake help site” target=”_blank . And the site it set up to provide free credit account monitoring after the data breach was originally  also vulnerable to hackers .

Heads rolled,  executives left , and the  company’s reputation is in tatters . And yet, thanks to a tepid response from the federal government, it’s unclear if anything has really changed. Equifax remains one of three major companies -- Experian and TransUnion being the other two -- that pass judgment on whether we’re all credit-worthy. 

For better or worse, many people took advantage of Equifax’s offer of a free year’s membership to TrustedID, its commercial identity theft service. But that offer -- originally available to anyone with a Social Security number -- has ended. (It required that you register by Jan. 31, 2018.)

The service provides a copy of your  Equifax  credit report, a lock on your Equifax data by third parties (with some exceptions), credit monitoring from all three credit bureaus, monitoring of your SSN on what Equifax calls “suspicious” websites and a very limited $1 million identity theft insurance policy.

We understand if you took advantage of the offer while it was free. That said, we just can’t recommend doing business with a company that has demonstrated such contempt for security protocols -- let alone customers. Any of the alternative protection services listed above would be a better option. 

The base prices of each service are presented below, from lowest to highest. Note that the more expensive ones almost always offer additional perks, such as more frequent credit reports from credit bureaus. 

ID monitoring yearly pricing

These are some key things to keep in mind about the best identity theft protection and ID monitoring services.

Early detection is key . If you’re signing up for one of these protection services, it’s less about preventing the initial breach and saving you from being a victim of identity theft -- that’s somewhat out of your hands, unfortunately. Instead, the best identity theft protection is about getting a heads-up as soon as possible on suspicious activity to prevent you from needing to do a credit freeze or more to stop an identity thief. Whether your credit card has charges on it you never incurred, or you suddenly discover that loan collectors are trying to collect amounts you never borrowed, thanks to thieves halfway across the country -- or thieves halfway around the world -- who opened a credit card or applied for a loan in your name, seeing the suspicious activity early on is the name of the game. The scary fact is that these breaches can cost you a lot of money and identity theft monitoring can alert you to a problem before it becomes too big to handle.

Knowing how your personal information is being used is a big step to keeping yourself safe . There are identity theft protection companies that can help you monitor your personal information, get notified if your accounts and personal information are being misused by thieves and if you should get a credit freeze, and even get you reimbursement after the fact.

None of these protection services will monitor your actual banking activity . I have  long recommended a way to protect yourself from becoming a victim of most banking fraud , which is to examine all your accounts once a week. It’s a bit of a pain, but just in my family, we’ve found numerous fraudulent activities and charges over the years. By doing this practice regularly, we’ve saved thousands of dollars.  Consumer Reports recommends  you do all your own monitoring, too. 

That said, if you’re not the type of person who is willing or able to take the time to do the constant due diligence necessary to protect your identity, some of these protection services can help. 

Read the fine print . Finally, because each of these protection services offers vastly different terms and conditions, we’ve included an easy link to each company’s terms of service. Be sure to take the time to read all of their fine print before you sign up for another monthly or yearly fee.

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Watch CBS News

What customers should know about AT&T's massive data breach

By Khristopher J. Brooks

Edited By Anne Marie Lee

Updated on: April 2, 2024 / 5:38 PM EDT / CBS News

Millions of current and former AT&T customers learned over the weekend that hackers have likely stolen their personal information and are sharing it on the dark web . 

AT&T on Saturday said it doesn't know if the massive data breach "originated from AT&T or one of its vendors," but that it has "launched a robust investigation" into what caused the incident. The data breach is the latest cyberattack AT&T has experienced since a leak in January of 2023 , that affected 9 million users. By contrast, Saturday's much larger breach impacts 73 million current and former AT&T account holders. AT&T has seen several data breaches  over  the years that range in size and impact. 

The data breach prompted an Ohio man to file a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, accusing the telecommunications giant of negligence and breach of contract. Lawyers representing Alex Petroski of Summit County, Ohio, argued that the cyberattack could have been avoided and that AT&T's security failed to protect customer data. 

Until more details of AT&T's investigation arise, here's what customers should know about the most recent data breach.

How many people were impacted by the AT&T data breach?

AT&T said the breach on Saturday affects about 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former AT&T customers. 

What type of information was taken from AT&T?

AT&T said Saturday that a dataset found on the  dark web contains information such as Social Security and passcodes. Unlike passwords, passcodes are numerical PINS that are typically four-digits long. Full names, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and AT&T account numbers may have also been compromised, the company said. The impacted data is from 2019 or earlier and does not appear to include financial information or call history, it added.

Was my information affected by the AT&T data breach?

Consumers impacted by this breach should be receiving an email or letter directly from AT&T about the incident. The email notices began going out on Saturday, an AT&T spokesperson  confirmed .

What has AT&T done so far to help customers?

Beyond notifying customers, AT&T said that it had already reset the passcodes of current users. The company also said it would pay for credit-monitoring services where applicable.

What's the latest with AT&T's investigation into the breach?

AT&T hasn't disclosed details about its investigation into the data breach, but it is likely to be time-consuming and costly, according to Kevin Powers, the founding director of the Master of Science in Cybersecurity Policy and Governance Programs at Boston College.

The company will most likely bring in outside computer forensics specialists who will work with its on-site IT staff to determine exactly when and how the hackers got into the customer account information system, Powers said. But identifying the hackers' path of entry will be a big challenge for such a large company.

"You don't know where it came in from," Powers told CBS MoneyWatch, referring to the source of the breach. "It potentially could be from a customer or it could have been done from one of their outside contractors or someone else along their supply chain."

In addition, AT&T will have to scrub any malware out of the software that runs its customer account system, while also keeping the system running for customers who weren't impacted, he said. All these steps will have to be shared with lawyers, the outside consultants, and likely officials from the Federal Trade Commission. 

What's the best way to protect my personal information? 

Start by freezing your credit reports at all three major agencies — Equifax, Experience and TransUnion. Then sign up for 24-7 credit monitoring and enable two-factor authentication on your AT&T account, said WalletHub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou, a former senior director at Capital One.

If you receive a notice about a breach, it's a good idea to change your password and monitor your account activity for any suspicious transactions. The Federal Trade Commission offers free credit freezes and fraud alerts that consumers can set up to help protect themselves from identity theft and other malicious activity.

—The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. He previously worked as a reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, Newsday and the Florida Times-Union. His reporting primarily focuses on the U.S. housing market, the business of sports and bankruptcy.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Personal Identity — The Important Aspect of My Personal Identity: My Cultural Heritage

The Important Aspect of My Personal Identity: My Cultural Heritage

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Introduction, defining identity, an aspect of my personal identity, influences on my experiences, impact on my perspectives, influence on relationships, contributions to goals and values, contribution to personal growth and development.

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AT&T says a data breach leaked millions of customers’ information online. Were you affected?

FILE - The sign in front of an AT&T retail store is seen in Miami, July 18, 2019. The theft of sensitive information belonging to millions of AT&T’s current and former customers has been recently discovered online, the telecommunications giant said Saturday, March 30, 2024. In an announcement addressing the data breach, AT&T said that a dataset found on the dark web contains information including some Social Security numbers and passcodes for about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — The theft of sensitive information belonging to millions of AT&T’s current and former customers has been recently discovered online, the telecommunications giant said this weekend.

In a Saturday announcement addressing the data breach, AT&T said that a dataset found on the “dark web” contains information including some Social Security numbers and passcodes for about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.

Whether the data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors” is still unknown, the Dallas-based company noted — adding that it had launched an investigation into the incident. AT&T has also begun notifying customers whose personal information was compromised.

Here’s what you need to know.

WHAT INFORMATION WAS COMPROMISED IN THIS BREACH?

Although varying by each customer and account, AT&T says that information involved in this breach included Social Security numbers and passcodes — which, unlike passwords, are numerical PINS that are typically four digits long.

Full names, email addresses, mailing address, phone numbers, dates of birth and AT&T account numbers may have also been compromised. The impacted data is from 2019 or earlier and does not appear to include financial information or call history, the company said.

HOW DO I KNOW IF I WAS AFFECTED?

Consumers impacted by this breach should be receiving an email or letter directly from AT&T about the incident. The email notices began going out on Saturday, an AT&T spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press.

WHAT ACTION HAS AT&T TAKEN?

Beyond these notifications, AT&T said that it had already reset the passcodes of current users. The company added that it would pay for credit monitoring services where applicable.

AT&T also said that it “launched a robust investigation” with internal and external cybersecurity experts to investigate the situation further.

HAS AT&T SEEN DATA BREACHES LIKE THIS BEFORE?

AT&T has seen several data breaches that range in size and impact over the years .

While the company says the data in this latest breach surfaced on a hacking forum nearly two weeks ago, it closely resembles a similar breach that surfaced in 2021 but which AT&T never acknowledged, cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt told the AP Saturday.

“If they assess this and they made the wrong call on it, and we’ve had a course of years pass without them being able to notify impacted customers,” then it’s likely the company will soon face class action lawsuits, said Hunt, founder of an Australia-based website that warns people when their personal information has been exposed.

A spokesperson for AT&T declined to comment further when asked about these similarities Sunday.

HOW CAN I PROTECT MYSELF GOING FORWARD?

Avoiding data breaches entirely can be tricky in our ever-digitized world, but consumers can take some steps to help protect themselves going forward.

The basics include creating hard-to-guess passwords and using multifactor authentication when possible. If you receive a notice about a breach, it’s good idea to change your password and monitor account activity for any suspicious transactions. You’ll also want to visit a company’s official website for reliable contact information — as scammers sometimes try to take advantage of news like data breaches to gain your trust through look-alike phishing emails or phone calls.

In addition, the Federal Trade Commission notes that nationwide credit bureaus — such as Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — offer free credit freezes and fraud alerts that consumers can set up to help protect themselves from identity theft and other malicious activity.

AP Reporter Matt O’Brien contributed to this report from Providence, Rhode Island.