Who Are You??

Do your personal possessions make you who your are? Or do they make you feel like the person you want to be?

We are what we have. "It’s a simple concept, and a basic premise of consumer behaviour. But, it has boggled the minds of the best psychologists, sociologists, consumer behaviorists, advertisers and marketers for half a century at the least. For, as it turns out now, this simple concept is really a combination of two others. Not only are we what we are seen to be (the ‘me’ concept), we are also what is seen to be ours (the ‘mine’ concept). It seems we, as human beings, create our identities using both these – the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ – concepts."

Possessions are often what makes a person, by this I mean the clothes we wear and the cars we drive, not only this but our experiences and memories and also the people we have in our lives play a part in making us who we are.

People's perception of others are often taken on first impressions. In the lecture we were given a minor case study in which we looked at a young lady called Maria, she stood in silence whilst Ruth asked us questions on what we thought of her based on first impressions.

• Where was she from?
• What we thought of her dress sense? (If she liked expensive things.)
• What she did for a job?
• What car she drives?
• What newspaper she reads?

These were just a few questions that were asked to see how she was perceived by everyone in class. Surprisingly most of these we presumed correctly. But Why? How is it that just by studying a persons appearance and body language we can assume correctly so much about them?