When you assume a role long enough, you become the role.

Remember the Stanford Prison Experiment? It was a psychological game that had students assume the roles of officers and prisoners—and it had some dark outcomes. The students began to fully buy into their roles, with behaviors—including abuses toward one another—that matched their given roles.

I’ve recently been watching some trash television to unwind with friends. Our garbage of choice? Love is Blind, Season 7. In this televised experiment, a group of youngish individuals are locked together in quarters with lots of alcohol and essentially forced to propose to someone they’ve spent large amounts of time talking to in order to stay on the show. The couples who emerge engaged then spend the following weeks inseparable from each other, convincing themselves and others that they are in love and a match.

As I watch, I can’t help but think of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The individuals have to play the role of someone who believes they’re in love with someone they just met. Not to mention that all the couples have incentives to stay on the show, to stay in the experiment—whether for televised exposure, the lavish vacations and dinners, or maybe even love, if they’ve bought into the premise that hyperexposure is a substitute for experience over time.

Here’s my takeaway: Don your roles with awareness. Just as we can unconsciously assume roles that shape us—calling ourselves a fighter, a tech worker, a director, a boss, a manager, a loser, a housewife, a whatever—we can also choose the roles we want to grow into. As we grow into these roles by making choices that substantiate our association with the name—playing shows if you’re a musician, showing up for your partner if you’re a “good partner,” going the extra mile if you’re a dedicated worker—we can come to happily integrate roles we choose into our identity.

When you think of roles, which ones call to you? Which ones will make you more you? Which roles do you want to integrate into your identity?