Essences as Moral Identities: Verifiability and Responsibility in Imputations of Deviance and Charisma

Persons conceive of abilities and disabilities, talents and character defects, competencies and incompetencies, as essences-unobservable, present and inherent states of being. We can test for imputations of essences by noting whether an actor changes his menaing when he defines others by referring only to observable phenomena-their past, manifested activities. The concepts of deviance and charisma, defined as inferior and superior capacity to respond in interaction, summarize the two forms of essences. In these moral transactions, people establish ambivalent identities for themselves, limitating their own actions and risking reversals of identity with those labeled.