| Social identities, or the meanings individuals assign themselves based on negotiated feedback from others, are thought to be derived primarily from the significance of social roles occupied by actors. However, a powerful but often overlooked aspect of the reflexive process by which identities are established and maintained is individuals' use of external symbols within given roles as a means of conveying certain social meanings vis-à-vis appearance.; Based on a non-probability sample of 813 students enrolled in undergraduate Sociology courses at a large southeastern public university, established measures were used to relate myopic (i.e., nearsighted) subjects' adherence to selected dimensions of college student identity (i.e., intellectualism and sociability). Controlling for vision-related factors, it was hypothesized that students' whose current eyewear patterns were incongruent with their social identity would show greater interest in undergoing vision-correcting myopia surgery [i.e., radial keratotomy (RK) and laser in-situ keratomileusis (LASIK)].; Preliminary analyses revealed gender to be an important factor, with females exhibiting significantly higher body image orientation scores than males. However, females' interests in vision-correcting surgery were no more likely than males to be motivated by aesthetic or cosmetic concerns. Moreover, while adherence to the sociability identity did coincide with greater contact lens wearing, the intellectualism dimension did not correspond with more frequent use of spectacles.; Current levels of visual function and body image orientation was a more consistent predictor of interest in vision-correcting surgery—regardless of the college student identity dimension adhered to by subjects. So, while students may choose to wear contact lenses in order to reinforce or self-validate a “sociable” identity, they apparently do not extend the same strategic concerns to using eyeglasses to bolster an intellectual identity. |
