THE CONSEQUENCES OF LABELLING ON PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

People generally tend to assign a word to every type of behaviour or attitude, for instance: beautiful, ugly, good, bad, well-behaved, naughty, etc. All of these are actually labels, either positive or negative ones that are addressed to us by those with whom we interact, and which we assume and even get to identify with them. On the other hand, ‘others’ expect us to act and behave according to these labels. According to the theory of labelling, when a particular person is assigned a particular label, in time they come to identify themselves with the label that has been attached to them. The research puts forth a qualitative approach that has been used with a target group of students from the West University of Timisoara.