This study compares age identities of middle-aged and older adults in the United States and Germany. Differences between countries in social systems and cultural meanings of old age are expected to produce different age identities. Data are from respondents between ages 40 and 74 in the United States (MIDUS; n = 2,006) and Germany (German Aging Survey; n = 3,331). Americans and Germans tend to ...

I discuss the function of social identity signaling in facilitating cooperative group formation, and how the nature of that function changes with the structure of social organization. I propose that signals of social identity facilitate assortment for successful coordination in large-scale societies, and that the multidimensional, context-dependent nature of social identity is crucial for succe...

An integrated anthropological and linguistic analysis of Creek oratory shows oratory to be part of a ritual cycle which recreates both the fundamental Creek cultural system and the Creek towns, the basic political units of Creek society. 1 Creek individual and group identities are thus defined and integrated into the Creek political system. This paper describes the performative effectiveness of...

Intersubjective perceptions refer to shared perceptions of the psychological characteristics that are widespread within a culture. In this article, we propose the intersubjective approach as a new approach to understanding the role that culture plays in human behavior. In this approach, intersubjective perceptions, which are distinct from personal values and beliefs, mediate the effect of the e...

Identity is seen as a cultural and social construct, which indicates how we have been embodied and how we might represent ourselves. The knowledge that identities are the outputs of discourses is a familiar characteristic of some societal concepts. Gender, as an identity or a sense of our identity we build for ourselves, rather than something we are born with, is a constructed cultural category...