To be or not to be.. ??!

I remember the time that I landed in the US for the first time on 9^th August 2010. My papa said to me one important thing while departing, “Be one of them- the students, but don’t lose your own self in that process!” Before this time, I had never consciously given thought to a process which psychologists usually call the Optimal Distinctiveness Theory.

Optimal Distinctiveness Theory suggests that when people feel very similar to other people in a group, they seek to be different and when they feel different, they try to be more similar (Brewer, 1993, 1999; Leonardelli & Brewer, 2001; Pickett, Silver, & Brewer, 2002). People in groups always have this unending tension between trying to be different and trying to be similar.

When I first came to States, I went through a similar phenomenon. In classes and in social gatherings, I would want to be one of the many students who surrounded me. The initial mixer parties and gatherings that the college organized served a similar purpose. But in all this while I still wanted to keep my individual self, distinct. Hence, what all this resulted in was a constant tension between trying to be one of the 600 students of Trinity Class of 2014 and one of the 153 students of the SNK (my high school) Class of 2010.

One of the studies by Lau (1989), tries to verify this theory by assessing in which localities would African American women identify themselves as feeling closest to African Americans in general. The three types of localities were, predominantly Black, predominantly White and an area with about equal numbers of Blacks and Whites. Before having read this theory, I would have suggested that the African American women would identify strongly with other African Americans in a predominantly White locality. But according to Lau and based on Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, the women identified with other members of their group in a locality which had a 40-70% population of African Americans, a situation that provided an optimal, medium level of distinctiveness.

So folks, it is completely fine if you feel stretched in between wanting to be different and wanting to be one among the members of the group. But, if you guys ever feel the need to be relieved of this stretch, try being in a situation that has the ideal level of distinctiveness, a situation that gives you incentives to be similar while protecting your individuality.

With similarly distinct regards,

Nupur