tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/self-21093/articlesSelf – The Conversation2023-09-13T12:27:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2078972023-09-13T12:27:12Z2023-09-13T12:27:12ZHumility is the foundation to a virtuous life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547576/original/file-20230911-8366-tkcrs7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=101%2C269%2C3568%2C2365&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Humility can help your interconnectedness with others snap into focus.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/blurred-crowds-of-people-relaxing-on-the-lawn-in-royalty-free-image/1263629875">deberarr/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/la-humildad-es-la-base-de-una-vida-virtuosa-217168"><em>Leer en español.</em> </a></p>
<p>The default psychological setting for human beings is an unavoidable self-centeredness. We each <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Man-for-Himself-An-Inquiry-into-the-Psychology-of-Ethics/Erich/p/book/9781138875258">stand at the center of our own thoughts</a>, feelings and needs, and thus experience them in a way that we cannot experience the thoughts, feelings and needs of others.</p>
<p>As writer David Foster Wallace put it in a 2005 commencement address:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“ … Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that <a href="http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html">I am the absolute center of the universe</a>, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence … it’s pretty much the same for all of us.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This self-centeredness comes as a part of the packaging – a natural part of our human experience. Yet it isn’t hard to see how it can be problematic. Take a step back from your own life to take in the whole of humanity, and you can see how this self-focus might easily <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691152615/saving-god">distort your ethical sensibilities</a>, leading you to <a href="https://sophiainstitute.com/product/humility/">overinflate the value and importance</a> of certain lives over others and the “rightness” of your values and way of life over those of others.</p>
<p>You can also see how it might similarly interfere with your ability to change your beliefs in pursuit of the truth – it’s hard to let go of false beliefs when they feel true because you believe them. It’s hard to imagine things <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167221997619">from perspectives that are not your own</a>. It’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2014.904197">hard to accept that you are limited and fallible</a>, prone to error.</p>
<p>This is where humility comes in.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wpWbGD8AAAAJ&hl=en">When my</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GPzazxwAAAAJ&hl=en">colleagues</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ku5G0rMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">and I</a> first started studying humility more than a decade ago, I didn’t really think it would amount to much. It struck me as a relatively uninteresting virtue – if even a virtue at all. Nothing like courage, compassion or generosity – <a href="http://digital.casalini.it/10.19272/202000701004">virtues that arguably play critical roles</a> in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620924473">effort to live an admirable life</a>.</p>
<p>But the more time I’ve spent with humility, the more I’ve come to appreciate it. And now, I see it as the most foundational virtue of them all.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="view behind person on stage with spotlights aimed at them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547577/original/file-20230911-22-kn0b8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Each person hogs the spotlight at center stage in their own life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/speech-royalty-free-image/454164831">tunart/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>You’re the star of your own life</h2>
<p>When I’m hungry, it’s a compelling, full-body experience – complete with a gurgling stomach, an urge to consume food and so on. But when other people are hungry, I don’t experience any of this. I might hear someone’s stomach rumble, I might notice that they look peckish, but I don’t experience their hunger in the way I experience my own.</p>
<p>My hunger is more attention-grabbing and motivating – more urgent – to me. If someone I care about is hungry, then I might be motivated to ignore my own hunger and focus instead on theirs, but this takes an effort and self-control that ignoring their hunger and focusing instead on my own does not.</p>
<p>I experience my emotions. I can only react to yours. I hear my own thoughts. I can only infer yours. You may decide to share them with me, though I still won’t know if what you’ve shared has been edited.</p>
<p>My values, beliefs and goals feel more compelling, true and worthwhile, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/humility-9780190864880?lang=en&cc=us">simply because they are mine</a>. They come with a sort of gravitational force that makes them hard to reject or let go. They are all wrapped up and woven into the life that I am living – my life.</p>
<h2>Humility tempers self-centeredness</h2>
<p>In other words, our natural self-centeredness is a source of two kinds of distortion. It interferes with our ability to accurately perceive and interpret objective reality – the world as it really is. And it messes with our ability to appreciate the ethical worth of others.</p>
<p>Humility functions as a <a href="https://beltpublishing.com/products/radical-humility?variant=40430390378594">corrective to this self-centeredness</a>.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1167940">define humility as</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2017.1327454">a state of awareness</a> in which both these distortions are quieted, even if only temporarily. Or, as other scholars have put it, humility involves “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2006.00429.x">hypo-egoic” states</a> – <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Handbook-of-Self-and-Identity/Leary-Tangney/9781462515370/summary">a quieting of the self</a>. It results in a reduction in one’s hyperfocus on the self, allowing you to shift more of your focus outward.</p>
<p>In other words, humility reduces the gravitational pull of your values, beliefs and goals, so you can hold them more loosely. You become more able to accurately evaluate them, more open to revision, more accepting of and less threatened by your fallibility and imperfection. It no longer feels catastrophic to be wrong, and it’s less important to be right.</p>
<p>Humility also reduces the immediacy of your own feelings, needs and goals, creating space for the importance of others’ to enter in. It quiets the “centeredness” enough for you to better experience <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221110630">your interdependency and connection to others</a>. We all bring parts of the puzzle of human experience to the table. We all have something to offer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="person silhouetted against a sunrise over a distant cityscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547581/original/file-20230911-29-lkd3ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turning down the volume on your ego lets you value the experiences of others all around you.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/city-light-royalty-free-image/1482207584">Piet Lopu/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Humility supports all the virtues</h2>
<p>And this corrective function is why I now consider humility foundational to other intellectual and moral virtues.</p>
<p>Self-centeredness is a force that can <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-nicomachean-ethics-9780199213610">interfere with one’s ability to exercise virtues appropriately</a>. It’s hard to be appropriately open-minded and curious, for example, when the ideas being presented threaten or stand in conflict to your own, implying you’ve been mistaken. It’s hard to be compassionate, generous or courageous when your perception is distorted, when your own beliefs and needs weigh more heavily than those of others. And this makes quieting this distortion critical.</p>
<p>When considering who should benefit from your time, energy and resources, humility is necessary to bring the needs of others clearly into view. It quiets the incessant push and pull of your own desires and needs, facilitating and deepening your capacity for patience, honesty, generosity, compassion and so on. </p>
<p>This is not to say that humility is all about focusing on others and not yourself. It is also not about stepping back from your values, beliefs or needs when it is appropriate for you to assert them. As the Mussar Jewish ethical movement teaches, humility is about <a href="https://www.shambhala.com/everyday-holiness-575.html">occupying the right amount of space</a>, the space necessary for the situation – not less, not more.</p>
<p>In other words, humility serves as the foundation of our ability to thrive, both as individuals and together in human society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jen Cole Wright received funding for some of her research on humility from the Templeton Foundation. </span></em></p>Humility doesn’t get the fanfare of virtues like courage, compassion or generosity. But without humility, those other virtues won’t get much traction in the quest to live a good life.Jen Cole Wright, Professor of Psychology, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1827362022-06-08T12:32:43Z2022-06-08T12:32:43ZWhy can’t you remember being born, learning to walk or saying your first words? What scientists know about ‘infantile amnesia’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467580/original/file-20220607-40973-et6p7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=457%2C12%2C7786%2C5475&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Will either sibling remember this momentous meeting?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/little-boy-meeting-his-cute-baby-sister-royalty-free-image/1367706938">ArtMarie/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whenever I teach about memory <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wGGw7JQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">in my child development class</a> at Rutgers University, I open by asking my students to recall their very first memories. Some students talk about their first day of pre-K; others talk about a time when they got hurt or upset; some cite the day their younger sibling was born. </p>
<p>Despite vast differences in the details, these memories do have a couple of things in common: They’re all <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_memory">autobiographical</a>, or memories of significant experiences in a person’s life, and they typically didn’t happen before the age of 2 or 3. In fact, most people can’t remember events from the first few years of their lives – a phenomenon researchers have dubbed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012370877-9.00007-4">infantile amnesia</a>. But why can’t we remember the things that happened to us when we were infants? Does memory start to work only at a certain age?</p>
<p>Here’s what researchers know about babies and memory.</p>
<h2>Infants can form memories</h2>
<p>Despite the fact that people can’t remember much before the age of 2 or 3, research suggests that infants can form memories – just not the kinds of memories you tell about yourself. Within the first few days of life, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1989.tb00784.x">infants can recall their own mother’s face</a> and distinguish it from the face of a stranger. A few months later, infants can demonstrate that they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.37.5.642">remember lots of familiar faces</a> by smiling most at the ones they see most often.</p>
<p>In fact, there are lots of <a href="https://www.brainhq.com/brain-resources/memory/types-of-memory/">different kinds of memories</a> besides those that are autobiographical. There are semantic memories, or memories of facts, like the names for different varieties of apples, or the capital of your home state. There are also procedural memories, or memories for how to perform an action, like opening your front door or driving a car. </p>
<p>Research from <a href="https://www.rutgers.edu/news/carolyn-rovee-collier-pioneer-whose-research-proved-infants-can-learn-dies-72">psychologist Carolyn Rovee-Collier’s</a> lab in the 1980s and 1990s famously showed that infants can form some of these other kinds of memories from an early age. Of course, infants can’t exactly tell you what they remember. So the key to Rovee-Collier’s research was devising a task that was sensitive to babies’ rapidly changing bodies and abilities in order to assess their memories over a long period.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="baby lying on back in crib looking up at mobile suspended from above" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467578/original/file-20220607-15930-ust6na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mobile in motion can keep a baby entertained.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/asian-newborn-baby-feeling-joyful-and-happy-with-royalty-free-image/1372675707">Nattakorn Maneerat/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the version for 2- to 6-month-old infants, researchers place an infant in a crib with a mobile hanging overhead. They measure how much the baby kicks to get an idea of their natural propensity to move their legs. Next, they tie a string from the baby’s leg to the end of the mobile, so that whenever the baby kicks, the mobile moves. As you might imagine, infants quickly learn that they’re in control – they like seeing the mobile move and so they kick more than before the string was attached to their leg, showing they’ve learned that kicking makes the mobile move.</p>
<p>The version for 6- to 18-month-old infants is similar. But instead of lying in a crib – which this age group just won’t do for very long – the infant sits on their parent’s lap with their hands on a lever that will eventually make a train move around a track. At first, the lever doesn’t work, and the experimenters measure how much a baby naturally presses down. Next, they turn the lever on. Now every time the infant presses on it, the train will move around its track. Infants again learn the game quickly, and press on the lever significantly more when it makes the train move. </p>
<p>What does this have to do with memory? The cleverest part of this research is that after training infants on one of these tasks for a couple of days, Rovee-Collier later tested whether they remembered it. When infants came back into the lab, researchers simply showed them the mobile or train and measured if they still kicked and pressed the lever. </p>
<p>Using this method, Rovee-Collier and colleagues found that at 6 months, if infants are trained for one minute, they can remember an event a day later. The older infants were, the longer they remembered. She also found that you can <a href="https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PPP243/%CE%A5%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C%202021/Rovee-Collier1999.pdf">get infants to remember events for longer</a> by training them for longer periods of time, and by giving them reminders – for example, by showing them the mobile moving very briefly on its own.</p>
<h2>Why not autobiographical memories?</h2>
<p>If infants can form memories in their first few months, why don’t people remember things from that earliest stage of life? It still isn’t clear whether people experience infantile amnesia because we can’t form autobiographical memories, or whether we just have no way to retrieve them. No one knows for sure what’s going on, but scientists have a few guesses.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="excited toddler sits in an airplane window seat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467577/original/file-20220607-24-histdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A lot of development needs to happen for him to remember an exciting experience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/inspecting-my-private-jet-an-excited-child-playing-royalty-free-image/1062132748">FroggyFrogg/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>One is that autobiographical memories require you to have some sense of self. You need to be able to think about your behavior with respect to how it relates to others. Researchers have tested this ability in the past using a mirror recognition task called the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-97661-006">rouge test</a>. It involves marking a baby’s nose with a spot of red lipstick or blush – or “rouge” as they said in the 1970s when the task was created.</p>
<p>Then researchers place the infant in front of a mirror. Infants younger than 18 months just smile at the cute baby in the reflection, not showing any evidence that they recognize themselves or the red mark on their face. Between 18 and 24 months, toddlers touch their own nose, even looking embarrassed, suggesting that they connect the red dot in the mirror with their own face – they have some sense of self. </p>
<p>Another possible explanation for infantile amnesia is that because infants don’t have language until later in the <a href="https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/speech-and-language">second year of life</a>, they can’t form narratives about their own lives that they can later recall.</p>
<p>Finally, the hippocampus, which is the region of the brain that’s largely responsible for memory, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2015.08.009">isn’t fully developed in the infancy period</a>. </p>
<p>Scientists will continue to investigate how each of these factors might contribute to why you can’t remember much, if anything, about your life before the age of 2.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa LoBue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Psychologists know babies can form memories soon after birth. So why can’t people remember anything that happened to them before around age 2? A child development expert describes possible reasons.Vanessa LoBue, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1775822022-04-13T14:15:50Z2022-04-13T14:15:50ZCan we ever fully separate our work and home lives? Philosophy suggests we should stop trying<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448101/original/file-20220223-15-tjypry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C6%2C4446%2C2519&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/army-artificial-workers-3d-illustration-1070149298">Photobank.kiev.ua / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you could take work-life balance to its most literal extreme, what would it look like? That’s the central theme of Severance, the sci-fi series that has just finished airing on Apple TV. </p>
<p>Employees working for the fictional corporation Lumon are able to undergo a procedure where their consciousness and memories are divided between work and home. Employees who have been “severed” do not remember anything about their life at work when they clock out, or anything about their home life during working hours. </p>
<p>Severance quickly becomes unsettling when it is implied that in isolating the memories of someone’s work life, a new person is created – a slave who lives only to work. These “new” employees (people’s work-selves) are told they can leave the office whenever they like, but inevitably find themselves sent back to work by their home life counterparts who don’t want to lose their jobs and do not have to endure the horror of living only in the office. </p>
<p>It’s safe to say most of us wouldn’t undergo such a procedure – after all, work is also a place where we make friends who can even <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-your-colleagues-affect-your-home-life-and-vice-versa-175889">help us</a> in our home lives. But the concept presented in Severance raises deep philosophical questions about the relationship between our memories and ourselves.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Working to make a difference in the world but struggling to save for a home. Trying to live sustainably while dealing with mental health issues. For those of us in our twenties and thirties, these are the kinds of problems we deal with every day. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series that explores those issues and comes up with solutions.</em></p>
<p><em>More articles:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/news-of-war-can-impact-your-mental-health-heres-how-to-cope-178734?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">News of war can impact your mental health – here’s how to cope</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/would-you-bring-your-dog-to-a-shop-why-retailers-should-be-more-pet-friendly-178112?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Would you bring your dog to a shop? Why retailers should be more pet-friendly</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-it-makes-good-business-sense-for-your-employer-to-look-after-your-mental-health-177503?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Why it makes good business sense for your employer to look after your mental health</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>The show trades on the idea that personhood can be reduced to one’s conscious experiences. The idea being that “I” am the sum total of my remembered experiences, thoughts, desires and emotions, and that my life is the narrative these memories come together to form. As one Lumon employee puts it, “History makes us someone”. There is a rich tradition of philosophical thinking about memory that shares this way of understanding personal identity, most often associated with the 17th-century thinker John Locke. </p>
<p>Questions about personhood – what makes you <em>you</em> and not somebody else – were very important at Locke’s time of writing. For many 17th-century thinkers (for whom Christianity was part of the fabric of society, and atheism was virtually inconceivable), it was a given that after our mortal lives, we would go on to live some kind of afterlife. But who exactly will live that life? </p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-personal-identity/">Locke’s answer</a> is that for everyone, “consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ‘tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self”. In other words, I am what I am conscious of. He adds that “as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person”. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dTqlZkvbNVg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Locke teaches us that whatever I remember doing – and <em>only</em> what I remember doing – was done by me. Thus, so long as I continue to have conscious experiences in the afterlife (and remember my past ones), I continue to exist.</p>
<p>The case of literal work-life severance is interesting precisely because the process creates a new person – one who comes into existence (starts being conscious) only when the severing procedure is over. Since that new person only remembers being conscious at work, that person only exists at work. This also seems to be how people within Severance are thinking about things. By cutting myself from my work life, I can avoid having the stresses of work “leak” into the rest of my life, and be a different person when I clock out. </p>
<h2>The Locke problem</h2>
<p>The early episodes of the show suggest that the seemingly neat separation of work-me and home-me is going to cause problems. Likewise, philosophers who responded to Locke – 18th-century thinkers like <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/">George Berkeley</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/">Thomas Reid</a> – pointed out that his account of personhood leads to absurdities. </p>
<p>Am I not the baby who was born on my birthday, because I don’t remember it? Will I not be the old man living through the 2050s if I don’t remember this particular day in 2022? Am I to be absolved of any crimes I commit when I get blackout drunk because I am not, now, in the cold light of day, conscious of them? Such questions led these thinkers to develop alternative accounts of what makes me <em>me</em> – perhaps it’s my soul?. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man's feet with a professional shoe on the right foot, and a casual sneaker on the left foot" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">What if our work and home selves were completely different people – literally?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/work-life-balance-concept-low-section-1185354394">Black Salmon / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>There are signs that within the world of Severance, there is more to a person than what they can remember. In the opening episode, the main character goes home to find that he has a cut on his forehead from an accident at work that of course, he cannot remember. This is an ominous sign that the scars that your work-self accrues are scars on you, and not some other person. More worryingly, perhaps this means that severed employees are subjecting <em>themselves</em> to a tortuous existence – one made worse by the fact that they cannot remember it. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1">good reasons</a> to believe that who “I” am is more than just what I remember – after all, many things have happened to me that I cannot easily recall. How many of us struggle to remember big moments in life, like job interviews? </p>
<p>The timing of Severance’s release is interesting because, after two years of working from home, genuine work-life separation seems less realistic than ever. For many, “work” is not some place we leave home for every morning, but perhaps a spare room or a kitchen table. Consequently, many of us are looking for ways to establish a clean divide between work and our personal lives. But – in line with the message at the heart of Severance – perhaps instead, we should be trying to make peace between the different parts of our lives and thereby understand our full selves better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Apple TV’s Severance imagines what would happen to our sense of self if we could completely separate our work and home lives.Peter West, Teaching Fellow in Philosophy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1790902022-03-30T19:08:53Z2022-03-30T19:08:53Z‘I will not hide’: Helen Garner’s radical gift is the shock of plain-speaking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454328/original/file-20220325-21-rp96pb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Helen Garner</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Darren James</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most readers of Helen Garner will be able to pinpoint a first personal encounter with her work: a book, or even a sentence, that cut through like sharp light; a local landmark suddenly immortalised on the page; an unsayable bodily experience transformed into the unabashedly said. </p>
<p>Reading Garner, it’s as though doors and windows have been flung open and there, over the cups and dishes and fruit bowls, is the stuff of life – frankly, tenderly, impeccably revealed. Garner’s clarity is such that it almost aches. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Writers on Writers – Sean O’Beirne on Helen Garner – Sean O'Beirne
(Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and the State Library Victoria)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>My first encounter came in Christmas 1984, when an aunt gave me a slender novel called <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-children-s-bach">The Children’s Bach</a>. Chosen probably on account of its brevity – I’d just turned 14 – this tensile little book was, for me, bewildering in its adult complexity, disorienting in its fragmentary narrative style, indecipherable if I applied the principles of storytelling I was accustomed to. It refused to fill me in, to explain itself, to tell me. It was an initiation of sorts: my first foray into the exciting work that goes with adult literary reading. </p>
<h2>Personal confession and concealment</h2>
<p>Sean O’Beirne is the same age as me and has followed the “phases” of Garner – my word, not his – much as I have. In his book-length essay on Garner, he doesn’t organise her works into phases, so much as entwine them into a single unfurling ribbon of the self: in different permutations, across time and intents and, of course, books. </p>
<p>Every phase, every work, gets attention. There is the “close to self I” of Nora in <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/monkey-grip">Monkey Grip</a>; the “Not-I” of her early and mid-career fiction (The Children’s Bach, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1398613.Postcards_from_Surfers">Postcards from Surfers</a>, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/honour-other-people-s-children-text-classics">Honour and Other People’s Children</a>, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/cosmo-cosmolino">Cosmo Cosmolino</a>); and the “collective I” of her later non-fiction – which he explains as a sort of personal “I” nested within society. </p>
<p>In puzzling these selves in Garner, O’Beirne examines the impulse towards self in his own work. What results is an essay that examines personal confession and concealment in his own writing as scrupulously as it traces these in Garner’s.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454572/original/file-20220328-25-fiob1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454572/original/file-20220328-25-fiob1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454572/original/file-20220328-25-fiob1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454572/original/file-20220328-25-fiob1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454572/original/file-20220328-25-fiob1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1229&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454572/original/file-20220328-25-fiob1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1229&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454572/original/file-20220328-25-fiob1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1229&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>O’Beirne’s is one of <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/imprint/writers-writers">a series</a> of book-length essays by writers on writers published by Black Inc., in association with the University of Melbourne and the State Library of Victoria. None of the subjects in the series needs introduction. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-shirley-hazzard-art-is-the-only-afterlife-of-which-we-have-evidence-70519">Shirley Hazzard</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/david-maloufs-an-open-book-is-poetry-to-sit-with-105572">David Malouf</a>, Patrick White, Beverley Farmer: these are the literary cartographers of 20th-century Australia. Some of the essay writers occupy this same rarefied plane – <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-slap-whose-side-are-you-on-3969">Christos Tsiolkas</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/michelle-de-kretser-named-fifteenth-woman-to-win-the-miles-franklin-8747">Michelle De Kretser</a> – but other highly accomplished contributors (Josephine Rowe, Richard Cooke), like O’Beirne, will be new to many readers. There is clearly a generational impetus to the selections Black Inc. has made in commissioning this series – a desire to trace influences, connections and continuities across time and writers.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-literary-portrait-of-helen-garner-leaves-you-wanting-to-know-more-76975">A new literary portrait of Helen Garner leaves you wanting to know more</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Impersonal, efficient vulnerability</h2>
<p>O’Beirne, for his part, approaches Garner from what he calls a “place in the junior writing position”. He is the author, so far, of one well-received book: the 2020 short-story collection <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/couple-things-end">A Couple of Things Before the End</a> (also Black Inc.). A consistently intelligent humility runs throughout his essay, but O’Beirne is no less probing for his preparedness to defer to Garner’s art. He “carefully, respectfully” adjudicates Cosmo Cosmolino as a “bad book”, for instance, describing it as a sliding-doors moment in Garner’s career in which she might’ve fallen prey to a magical realism that is less cogent, less compelling than her signature crisp realism – yet he remains open to the novel’s innovations.</p>
<p>There is a persistent sense that O’Beirne is reaching for something in himself through Garner; something that may well be unreachable, but is worth reaching for all the same. Partly, this is Garner’s receptiveness to self and other, her preparedness to commandeer her vulnerability and plant it, with “brisk impersonal efficiency”, on the page. O’Beirne writes, at one point, that he wishes to “do the good work of less impersonation” in his own writing, to stop disguising himself in fictional personae, to cast off his reticence and put himself frankly there. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454571/original/file-20220328-21-49yjmo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454571/original/file-20220328-21-49yjmo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454571/original/file-20220328-21-49yjmo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454571/original/file-20220328-21-49yjmo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454571/original/file-20220328-21-49yjmo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454571/original/file-20220328-21-49yjmo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454571/original/file-20220328-21-49yjmo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sean O'Beirne.</span>
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<p>His tendency to “hide” is partially explained in the spare details he gives of his traditional Australian boyhood in outer-suburban Melbourne where, in order to survive, an impersonation of “manhood” was crucial. You couldn’t be a soft-thinking, sports-averse, self-doubting “boy” who didn’t even know how to have an orgasm. You had to be pretend that you were part of a “bunch of blokes”, swiftly disguising any weakness if it threatened to spill over into the performance. O'Beirne’s habit of disguise is a habit of self-preservation, and Garner thrilled him by showing that being imprisoned in the ashamed not-quite-right self might be a blessing; that “it was contradictorily interesting and delicious and bad and lonely to be so steeped in, waterlogged with the problem of <em>me</em>”. </p>
<p>But, as he is first to admit, the “real man” behind the essayist does not fully materialise here. O’Beirne remains conceptual, not visceral – he wonders why he feels comfortable giving such bodily experiences as a first sexual encounter to a character, but retreats from owning it on the page as himself. He may, like Garner, be prepared to wriggle on the end of his own hook, but he retreats where Garner boldly goes forth. </p>
<p>In elucidating his ideas, O’Beirne employs an idiosyncratic prose style that determinedly avoids the administrative, structural, institutional literary – the world of “Them”, which, he says, Garner also eschews. Often this enables him to say things for which there are no existing words, or no sufficiently illuminating words. </p>
<p>Sometimes, though, in preserving his prose from the already-said, O’Beirne’s choices confound rather than illuminate. His tendency to noun phrases (“my not-as-socially-approved awareness”, “a starting amount of more open confession”, “a trying to be with someone else”) occasionally ruptured my sense of being a co-traveller on his thought journey. Similarly, his choice of the Australian vernacular (“bloke” and “I reckon”) made aesthetic or even ideological sense but nevertheless grated.</p>
<p>When they work, however, his hyphenated compounds, rammed together like a string of mismatched train carriages, led me on new journeys, or even jumped the rails entirely and deposited me in completely fresh territory. Sometimes I couldn’t go there with him, but I was elated when I could.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-janet-malcolm-her-intellectual-courage-shaped-journalism-biographies-and-helen-garner-163005">Remembering Janet Malcolm: her intellectual courage shaped journalism, biographies and Helen Garner</a>
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<h2>Primal shock</h2>
<p>“I will not hide” is Garner’s gift, O’Beirne says. It remains a radical gift, even in the face of other recent acts of radical literary self-revelation – in the work, for instance, of Maggie Nelson and Sheila Heti, which O’Beirne cites. Yet, for any shock value in Heti’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/109/1098254/motherhood/9780099592846.html">Motherhood</a> or Nelson’s bone-crackingly good <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-argonauts">The Argonauts</a>, the primal, bodily shock of Garner (a forgotten tampon, a slow fuck, a shit sucked back up into the body) has always been the shock of plain-speaking, not of sensation or transgression. </p>
<p>O’Beirne doesn’t seek transgression either: just honesty and bravery, the things he admires in his subject. He wants to be like Garner; he cannot be like Garner; the best he can do is be O’Beirne. Ultimately – for me and for him – that’s enough. In this essay, O’Beirne’s honesty may not be of Garner’s register, but it’s honesty all the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston has received funding from The Australia Council for her latest and previous novels, as well as funding from Creative Victoria and the Felix Meyer scholarship</span></em></p>Helen Garner is the pioneer of fearless self-revelation in Australian literature. Writer Sean O'Beirne examines his own literary fear and fearlessness: should he ‘give’ more, as Garner does?Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1754222022-02-09T13:24:04Z2022-02-09T13:24:04ZPartnering up can help you grow as an individual – here’s the psychology of a romantic relationship that expands the self<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445285/original/file-20220209-16-129wbzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=443%2C474%2C3884%2C2981&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Following a partner's lead in an activity they enjoy can foster growth for you.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-woman-leading-boyfriend-up-a-mountain-trail-royalty-free-image/1283508188">The Good Brigade/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s common to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43747-3">want to become a better version of yourself</a>. Much like the desires to eat, drink and avoid harm, human beings also experience a fundamental need to learn, grow and improve – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195398694.013.0005">what psychologists call self-expansion</a>.</p>
<p>Consider your favorite activities. Things like reading a book, spending time in nature, volunteering with a new organization, taking a class, traveling, trying a new restaurant, exercising or watching a documentary all broaden the self. Those experiences add new knowledge, skills, perspectives and identities. When who you are as a person expands, you enhance your competence and capabilities and increase your ability to meet new challenges and accomplish new goals. </p>
<p>Of course, you can achieve self-expansion on your own by trying new and interesting activities (like playing Wordle), learning new things (like advancing through a language app) or working on a skill (like practicing meditation). Research confirms that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2012.746999">these kinds of activities help individuals expand themselves</a>, which encourages them to put forth more effort on subsequent challenging tasks.</p>
<p>Interestingly, romantic relationships can also be a key source of growth for people. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=v2ai_5wAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As a relationship scientist</a> for over 20 years, I’ve studied the effects all kinds of romantic relationships can have on the self. Today’s modern couples hold high expectations for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721415569274">a partner’s role in one’s own self-development</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man and woman with musical instruments sit on couch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445301/original/file-20220209-16-xdvsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You can hold onto what makes you your own person while learning from a partner’s strengths.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/panoramic-view-of-woman-receiving-musical-course-in-royalty-free-image/1215994594">beavera/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Growing in your relationship</h2>
<p>Falling in love feels good, and spending time with a romantic partner is enjoyable, but love’s benefits run even deeper. People tend to value partners who help them become a better version of themselves.</p>
<p>One way to optimize self-growth in your relationship is by sharing in your partner’s unique interests and skills. When “me” becomes “we,” partners <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02399">blend their self-concepts and include the other in the self</a>. That merging encourages partners to take on each other’s characteristics, quirks, interests and abilities to some extent. Romantic partners inevitably have different life experiences, knowledge bases, perspectives and skills. Each area is an opportunity for growth.</p>
<p>For example, if your partner has a better sense of humor than you do, over time, yours will likely improve. If they have an eye for interior design, your ability to put together a room will evolve. A partner’s differing views on climate change, politics or religion will grant you new perspectives and a deeper understanding of those topics. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.2.241">Your relationship helps you become a better person</a>.</p>
<p>This isn’t to say that individuals should try to completely merge, running the risk of losing themselves. Rather, each person can maintain their own identity while augmenting it with desirable elements from their partner. </p>
<h2>Relationship consequences of more or less</h2>
<p>The science makes it abundantly clear that couples with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195398694.013.0005">more self-expansion are better relationships</a>. Specifically, people who report more self-expansion in their relationship also report more passionate love, relationship satisfaction and commitment. It’s also associated with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407519875217">more physical affection, greater sexual desire, less conflict and couples being happier with their sex life</a>.</p>
<p>Because self-expansion is so critical, when expanding relationships end, participants describe <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2006.00120.x">feeling like they have lost a part of themselves</a>. Importantly, when less-expanding relationships break up, individuals <a href="https://youtu.be/Cw2qD87KDHc">experience positive emotions and growth</a>.</p>
<p>When a relationship provides insufficient expansion, it can feel like it’s stuck in a rut. That stagnant malaise has consequences. Research finds that married couples who at one point indicated more boredom in their current relationship also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02332.x">reported less marital satisfaction nine years later</a>. Insufficient relationship self-expansion also encourages people to have more of a wandering eye and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407510382321">pay more attention to alternative partners</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.146.4.389-403">increases susceptibility to cheating on one’s partner</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000148">lowers sexual desire</a> and comes with a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518768079">greater likelihood of breakup</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man and woman relaxing on couch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445302/original/file-20220209-13-pkvsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The self-expansion provided by a strong relationship has benefits for the relationship itself.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/husband-and-wife-embracing-on-couch-royalty-free-image/1300319639">MoMo Productions/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How does your relationship measure up?</h2>
<p>Maybe you’re now wondering how your own relationship is doing on this front. To provide some insight, <a href="https://www.garylewandowski.com/post/sustainable-marriage-quiz">I created the Sustainable Marriage Quiz</a>. On a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being “very little” and 7 being “very much,” answer these questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>How much does being with your partner result in you having new experiences?</li>
<li>When you are with your partner, do you feel a greater awareness of things because of them?</li>
<li>How much does your partner increase your ability to accomplish new things?</li>
<li>How much does your partner help to expand your sense of the kind of person you are?</li>
<li>How much do you see your partner as a way to expand your own capabilities?</li>
<li>How much do your partner’s strengths as a person (skills, abilities, etc.) compensate for some of your own weaknesses as a person?</li>
<li>How much do you feel that you have a larger perspective on things because of your partner?</li>
<li>How much has being with your partner resulted in your learning new things?</li>
<li>How much has knowing your partner made you a better person?</li>
<li>How much does your partner increase your knowledge?</li>
</ol>
<p>Before adding up your score, know that these categories are generalizations. They suggest where your relationship may need attention, but also where it’s already strong. Relationships are complicated, so you should see your score for what it is: one small piece of the puzzle about what makes your relationship work.</p>
<ul>
<li>60 and above – Highly Expansive. Your relationship provides lots of new experiences and helps you reach new goals. As a result, you likely have a more fulfilling and sustainable relationship.</li>
<li>45 to 60 – Moderately Expanding. Your relationship has produced some new experiences and additions to your self-concept, but you have some room for improvement.</li>
<li>Below 45 — Low Expansion. Currently your relationship isn’t creating many opportunities to increase your knowledge or enhance you. Consequently you likely aren’t improving yourself as much as you could. Consider making an effort to seek out more new and interesting experiences with your partner. You may even rethink if this is the right partner for you. </li>
</ul>
<p>What makes a relationship great? While there are many factors to consider, one area deserves more attention: how much it helps you grow. A relationship that fosters self-expansion will make you want to be a better person, help you increase your knowledge, build your skills, enhance your capabilities and broaden your perspectives.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 140,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140K">Join the list today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It almost sounds like a paradox, but pairing with the right person can help you grow as an individual as you blend your interests with theirs and learn from their strengths.Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., Professor of Psychology, Monmouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1505092020-12-01T13:25:17Z2020-12-01T13:25:17ZYour brain’s built-in biases insulate your beliefs from contradictory facts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372118/original/file-20201130-21-q7ey1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=126%2C183%2C7539%2C4884&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">These psychological tendencies explain why an onslaught of facts won't necessarily change anyone's mind.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/conflict-royalty-free-image/1061219956">Francesco Carta fotografo/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A rumor started circulating back in 2008 that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. At the time, I was serving as chair of the Hawaii Board of Health. The director and deputy director of health, both appointed by a Republican governor, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42519951">inspected Obama’s birth certificate</a> in the state records and certified that it was real.</p>
<p>I would have thought that this evidence would settle the matter, but it didn’t. Many people thought the birth certificate was a fabricated document. Today, many <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/birtherism-and-trump/610978/">people still believe</a> that President Obama was not born in the U.S.</p>
<p>I once listened to a “Science Friday” <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/01/07/132740175/paul-offit-on-the-anti-vaccine-movement">podcast on the anti-vaccination movement</a>. A woman called in who didn’t believe that vaccines were safe, despite <a href="https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/safety">overwhelming scientific evidence that they are</a>. The host asked her how much proof she would need in order to believe that vaccines were safe. Her answer: No amount of scientific evidence could change her mind.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=87v4Nk4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As a psychologist</a>, I was bothered, but not shocked, by this exchange. There are several well-known mechanisms in human psychology that enable people to continue to hold tight to beliefs even in the face of contradictory information.</p>
<h2>Cognitive shortcuts come with biases</h2>
<p>In its early days, the science of psychology assumed that people would make rational decisions. But over the decades, it’s become clear that many decisions people make – about choices ranging from romantic partners and finances to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2008.01.002">risky health behaviors</a> like unsafe sex and <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2008.155382">health-promoting behaviors</a> – are not made rationally.</p>
<p>Instead, human minds have a tendency toward several <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/cognitive-bias/565775/">cognitive biases</a>. These are systematic errors in the way you think about the world. Given the complexity of the world around you, your brain cuts a few corners to help you process complex information quickly.</p>
<p>For example, the availability bias refers to the tendency to use information you can quickly recall. This is helpful when you’re ordering ice cream at a place with 50 flavors; you don’t need to think about all of them, just one you recently tried and liked. Unfortunately these shortcuts can mean you end up at a nonrational decision.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="looking at camera man holds up a finger" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372119/original/file-20201130-21-1iks1yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In efficiency mode, your mind may discount contradictory information.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-businessman-rejecting-your-offer-royalty-free-image/1165905568">DjelicS/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One form of cognitive bias is called <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=3850">cognitive dissonance</a>. This is the feeling of discomfort you can experience when your beliefs are not in line with your actions or new information. When in this state, people can reduce their dissonance in one of two ways: changing their beliefs to be in line with the new information or interpreting the new information in a way that justifies their original beliefs. In many cases, people choose the latter, whether consciously or not.</p>
<p>For example, maybe you think of yourself as active, not at all a couch potato – but you spend all of Saturday lying on the couch bingeing reality TV. You can either start thinking about yourself in a new way or justify your behavior, maybe by saying you had a really busy week and need to rest up for your workout tomorrow.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23274">confirmation bias</a> is another process that helps you justify your beliefs. It involves favoring information that supports your beliefs and downplaying or ignoring information to the contrary. Some researchers have called this “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237827">my side blindness</a>” – people see the flaws in arguments that are contradictory to their own but are unable to see weaknesses in their own side. Picture fans of a football team that went 7-9 for the season, arguing that their team is actually really strong, spotting failings in other teams but not in theirs.</p>
<p>With the decline of mass media over the past few decades and the increase in niche media and social media, it’s become easier to <a href="https://theconversation.com/misinformation-and-biases-infect-social-media-both-intentionally-and-accidentally-97148">surround yourself with messages you already agree with</a> while minimizing your exposure to messages you don’t. These information bubbles reduce cognitive dissonance but also make it harder to change your mind when you are wrong.</p>
<h2>Shoring up beliefs about yourself</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman seething behind the wheel of a car" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372120/original/file-20201201-20-1cyeluq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">I’m nice, so this confrontation must be their fault.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/road-rage-royalty-free-image/1070981954">Petri Oeschger/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It can be especially hard to change certain beliefs that are central to your <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60075-1">self-concept</a> – that is, who you think you are. For example, if you believe you’re a kind person and you cut someone off in traffic, instead of thinking that maybe you’re not all that nice, it’s easier to think the other person was driving like a jerk.</p>
<p>This relationship between beliefs and self-concept can be reinforced by affiliations with groups like political parties, cults or other like-minded thinkers. These groups are often belief bubbles where the majority of members believe the same thing and repeat these beliefs to one another, strengthening the idea that their beliefs are right.</p>
<p>Researchers have found that people generally think they are <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/31/18200497/dunning-kruger-effect-explained-trump">more knowledgeable </a> about certain issues than they really are. This has been demonstrated across a variety of studies looking at vaccinations, Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine and <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533524/the-knowledge-illusion-by-steven-sloman-and-philip-fernbach/">even how toilets work</a>. These ideas then get passed from person to person without being based on fact. For example, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/republicans-free-fair-elections-435488">70% of Republicans</a> say they don’t believe the 2020 presidential election was free and fair despite a lack of any evidence of widespread voter fraud.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<p>Belief bubbles and the defenses against cognitive dissonance can be hard to break down. And they can have important downstream effects. For instance, these psychological mechanisms affect the ways people have chosen whether or not to follow public health guidelines around social distancing and wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/role-cognitive-dissonance-pandemic/614074/">deadly consequences</a>.</p>
<p>Changing people’s minds is difficult. Given the confirmation bias, evidence-based arguments counter to what someone already believes are likely to be discounted. The best way to change a mind is to start with yourself. With as open a mind as you can summon, think about why you believe what you do. Do you really understand the issue? Could you think about it in a different way?</p>
<p>As a professor, I like to have my students debate ideas from the side that they personally disagree with. This tactic tends to lead to deeper understanding of the issues and makes them question their beliefs. Give it an honest try yourself. You might be surprised by where you end up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jay Maddock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cognitive shortcuts help you efficiently move through a complicated world. But they come with an unwelcome side effect: Facts aren’t necessarily enough to change your mind.Jay Maddock, Professor of Public Health, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1418442020-07-03T10:55:03Z2020-07-03T10:55:03ZHow the brain builds a sense of self from the people around us – new research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345498/original/file-20200703-21-nm87g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Our sense of self depends on understanding how others think about the world.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Barney Moss/Flickt</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are highly sensitive to people around us. As infants, we observe our parents and teachers, and from them we learn how to walk, talk, read – and use smartphones. There seems to be no limit to the complexity of behaviour we can acquire from observational learning. </p>
<p>But social influence goes deeper than that. We don’t just copy the behaviour of people around us. We also copy their minds. As we grow older, we learn what other people think, feel and want – and adapt to it. Our brains are really good at this – we copy computations inside the brains of others. But how does the brain distinguish between thoughts about your own mind and thoughts about the minds of others? Our new study, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16856-8">published in Nature Communications</a>, brings us closer to an answer.</p>
<p>Our ability to copy the minds of others <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-children-learn-empathy-56623">is hugely important</a>. When this process goes wrong, it can contribute to various mental health problems. You might become unable to empathise with someone, or, at the other extreme, you might be so susceptible to other people’s thoughts that your own sense of “self” is volatile and fragile. </p>
<p>The ability to think about another person’s mind is one of the most sophisticated adaptations of the human brain. Experimental psychologists often assess this ability with a technique called a “<a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4419-1698-3_91#:%7E:text=Definition,world%20may%20contrast%20with%20reality.">false belief task</a>”. </p>
<p>In the task, one individual, the “subject”, gets to observe another individual, the “partner”, hide a desirable object in a box. The partner then leaves, and the subject sees the researcher remove the object from the box and hide it in a second location. When the partner returns, they will falsely believe the object is still in the box, but the subject knows the truth. </p>
<p>This supposedly requires the subject to hold in mind the partner’s false belief in addition to their own true belief about reality. But how do we know whether the subject is really thinking about the mind of the partner?</p>
<h2>False beliefs</h2>
<p>Over the last ten years, neuroscientists have explored a theory of mind-reading called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_theory_of_empathy#:%7E:text=Simulation%20theory%20of%20empathy%20is,as%20the%20expression%20of%20emotions.">simulation theory</a>. The theory suggests that when I put myself in your shoes, my brain tries to copy the computations inside your brain. </p>
<p>Neuroscientists have found compelling evidence that the brain does simulate the computations of a social partner. They have shown that if you observe another person receive a reward, like food or money, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/107/32/14431">your brain activity is the same as</a> if you were the one receiving the reward. </p>
<p>There’s a problem though. If my brain copies your computations, how does it distinguish between my own mind and my simulation of your mind? </p>
<p>In our experiment, we recruited 40 participants and asked them to play a “probabilistic” version of the false belief task. At the same time, we scanned their brains using <a href="https://theconversation.com/brain-scanners-allow-scientists-to-read-minds-could-they-now-enable-a-big-brother-future-72435">functional magnetic resonance imaging</a> (fMRI), which measures brain activity indirectly by tracking changes in blood flow. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155836/original/image-20170207-30937-1epizb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155836/original/image-20170207-30937-1epizb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155836/original/image-20170207-30937-1epizb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155836/original/image-20170207-30937-1epizb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155836/original/image-20170207-30937-1epizb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155836/original/image-20170207-30937-1epizb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155836/original/image-20170207-30937-1epizb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">fMRI scanner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this game, rather than having a belief that the object is definitely in the box or not, both players believe there is a probability that the object is here or there, without knowing for certain (making it a <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/8/130812-physics-schrodinger-erwin-google-doodle-cat-paradox-science/">Schrödinger’s box</a>). The object is always being moved, and so the two players’ beliefs are always changing. The subject is challenged with trying to keep track of not only the whereabouts of the object, but also the partner’s belief.</p>
<p>This design allowed us to use a mathematical model to describe what was going on in the subject’s mind, as they played the game. It showed how participants changed their own belief every time they got some information about where the object was. It also described how they changed their simulation of the partner’s belief, every time the partner saw some information.</p>
<p>The model works by calculating “predictions” and “prediction errors”. For example, if a participant predicts that there is a 90% chance the object is in the box, but then sees that it’s nowhere near the box, they will be surprised. We can therefore say that the person experienced a large “prediction error”. This is then used to improve the prediction for next time. </p>
<p>Many researchers believe that the prediction error is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding">fundamental unit of computation in the brain</a>. Each prediction error is linked to a particular pattern of activity in the brain. This means that we could compare the patterns of brain activity when a subject experiences prediction errors with the alternative activity patterns that happen when the subject thinks about the partner’s prediction errors. </p>
<p>Our findings showed that the brain uses distinct patterns of activity for prediction errors and “simulated” prediction errors. This means that the brain activity contains information not only about what’s going on out there in the world, but also about who is thinking about the world. The combination leads to a subjective sense of self. </p>
<h2>Brain training</h2>
<p>We also found, however, that we could train people to make those brain-activity patterns for self and other either more distinct or more overlapping. We did this by manipulating the task so that the subject and partner saw the same information either rarely or frequently. If they became more distinct, subjects got better at distinguishing their own thoughts from the thoughts of the partner. If the patterns became more overlapping, they got worse at distinguishing their own thoughts from the thoughts of the partner. </p>
<p>This means that the boundary between the self and the other in the brain is not fixed, but flexible. The brain can learn to change this boundary. This might explain the familiar experience of two people who spend a lot of time together and start to feel like one single person, sharing the same thoughts. On a societal level, it may explain why we find it easier to empathise with those who’ve shared similar experiences to us, compared with people from different backgrounds. </p>
<p>The results could be useful. If self-other boundaries really are this malleable, then maybe we can harness this capacity, both to tackle bigotry and alleviate mental health disorders.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Ereira does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How does the brain distinguish between the “self” and the “other”? A new study gives a clue.Sam Ereira, Postdoctoral researcher of Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1123152019-02-27T14:12:17Z2019-02-27T14:12:17ZCan robots ever have a true sense of self? Scientists are making progress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260559/original/file-20190224-195876-vtct1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/user/events/details/1F0054FEBF917CC6/47-45805%2FUK5">By YAKOBCHUK VIACHESLAV/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Having a sense of self lies at the heart of what it means to be human. Without it, we couldn’t navigate, interact, empathise or ultimately survive in an ever-changing, complex world of others. We need a sense of self when we are taking action, but also when we are anticipating the consequences of potential actions, by ourselves or others.</p>
<p>Given that we want to incorporate robots into our social world, it’s no wonder that creating a sense of self in artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the ultimate goals for researchers in the field. If these machines are to be our carers or companions, they must inevitably have an ability to put themselves in our shoes. While scientists are still a long way from creating robots with a human-like sense of self, they are getting closer.</p>
<p>Researchers behind a new study, <a href="http://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/26/eaau9354">published in Science Robotics</a>, have developed a robotic arm with knowledge of its physical form – a basic sense of self. This is nevertheless an important step. </p>
<p>There is no perfect scientific explanation of what exactly constitutes the human sense of self. Emerging studies from neuroscience shows that cortical networks in the motor and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/parietal-lobe">parietal areas</a> of the brain are activated in many contexts where we are not physically moving. For example, hearing words such as “pick or kick” activate the motor areas of the brain. So does observing someone else acting.</p>
<p>The hypothesis emerging from this is that we understand others as if we ourselves were acting – a phenomenon scientists refer to as “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136466131100194X">embodied simulation</a>”. In other words, we reuse our own ability to act with our bodily resources in order to attribute meanings to the actions or goals of others. The engine that drives this simulation process is a mental model of the body or the self. And that is exactly what researchers are trying to reproduce in machines.</p>
<h2>The physical self</h2>
<p>The team behind the new study used a <a href="https://theconversation.com/business-is-waking-up-to-the-idea-of-deep-learning-59857">deep learning network</a> to create a self model in a robotic arm through data from random movements. Importantly, the AI was not fed any information about its geometrical shape or underlying physics, it learned gradually as it was moving and bumping into things – similar to a baby learning about itself by observing its hands. </p>
<p>It could then use this self model containing information about its shape, size and movement to make predictions related to future states of actions, such as picking something up with a tool. When the scientists made physical changes to the robot arm, contradictions between the robot’s predictions and reality triggered the learning loop to start over, enabling the robot to adapt its self model to its new body shape.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261218/original/file-20190227-150705-1q6k0ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261218/original/file-20190227-150705-1q6k0ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261218/original/file-20190227-150705-1q6k0ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261218/original/file-20190227-150705-1q6k0ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261218/original/file-20190227-150705-1q6k0ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261218/original/file-20190227-150705-1q6k0ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261218/original/file-20190227-150705-1q6k0ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We look the same, but we know we’re different.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phonlamai Photo/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the present study used a single arm, similar models are <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10514-016-9563-3">also being developed</a> for humanoid robots through the process of self exploration (dubbed sensory motor babbling) – inspired by studies in developmental psychology.</p>
<h2>The complete self</h2>
<p>Even so, a robotic sense of self does not come close of the human one. Like an onion, our self <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3292">has several mysterious layers</a>. These include an ability to identify with the body, being located within the physical boundaries of that body and perceiving the world from the visuo-spatial perspective of that body. But it also involves processes that go beyond this, including integration of sensory information, continuity in time through memories, agency and ownership of one’s actions and privacy (people can’t read our thoughts).</p>
<p>While the quest to engineer a robotic sense of self that encompasses all these multiple layers is still in its infancy, building blocks such as the body schema demonstrated in the new study are being created. Machines can also be made to imitate others and predict intentions of others or adopt their perspective. Such developments, along with growing episodic memory, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2018.00034/full">are also important steps</a> towards building socially cognitive robotic companions.</p>
<p>Interestingly, this research can also help us learn more about the human sense of self. We know now that robots can adapt their physical self model when changes are made to their bodies. An alternative way to think about this is in the context of tool use by animals, where diverse external objects are coupled to the body (sticks, forks, swords or smart phones). </p>
<p>Imaging studies show that neurons active during hand grasping in monkeys also <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/2209">become active when they grasp using pliers</a>, as if the pliers were now the fingers. The tool becomes a part of the body and the physical sense of self has been altered. It is similar to how we consider the avatar on the screen as ourselves while playing video games.</p>
<p>An intriguing idea originally proposed by Japanese neuroscientist <a href="http://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/bdr/symbol_cogn_dev/">Atsushi Iriki</a> is that the ability to literally incorporate external objects into one’s body and the ability to objectify other bodies as tools, <a href="http://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/bdr/symbol_cogn_dev/">are two sides of the same coin</a>. Remarkably, this blurred distinction requires emergence of a virtual concept – the self – to act as place holder between the subject/actor and objects/tools. Tweaking the self by adding or removing tools can therefore help us probe how this self operates. </p>
<p>Robots learning to use tools as an extension to their bodies are fertile test beds to validate such emerging data and theories from neuroscience and psychology. At the same time, the research will lead to development of more intelligent, cognitive machines working for and with us in diverse domains. </p>
<p>Perhaps this is the most important aspect of the new research. It ultimately brings together psychology, neuroscience and engineering to understand one of the most fundamental questions in science: Who am I?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vishwanathan Mohan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scientists have developed a robotic arm with knowledge of its physical form – a very basic sense of self.Vishwanathan Mohan, Lecturer of Computer Science, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1094512019-01-14T08:27:02Z2019-01-14T08:27:02ZWant to be happier? Try getting to know yourself<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253410/original/file-20190111-43538-b0vc9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/black-woman-afro-hairstyle-doing-yoga-788029807?src=wma2qNqp12UTiTQr6VZzWQ-1-22">javi_indy/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The unexamined life is not worth living, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unexamined_life_is_not_worth_living">said the Greek philosopher Socrates</a>. He was reflecting on the expression “Know Thyself” – an aphorism inscribed on the <a href="https://www.ancient-greece.org/architecture/delphi-temple-of-apollo.html">temple of Apollo at Delphi</a> and one of the ultimate achievements in ancient Greece.</p>
<p>While we walk around the world more or less successful in our endeavours, many of us sometimes have the nagging feeling that we don’t truly know ourselves. Why do we really feel and behave the way we do? While we have some ideas about who we are, our understanding of ourselves is often patchy and inconsistent. So, is self-knowledge something we should strive for, or are we better off living in blissful ignorance? Let’s examine the research.</p>
<p>By <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge/">self-knowledge</a>, psychologists mean having an understanding of our feelings, motivations, thinking patterns and tendencies. These give us a stable sense of self-worth and a secure grip on our values and motivations. Without self-knowledge we cannot have an internal measure of our own worth. </p>
<p>This leaves us vulnerable to accepting others’ opinions of us as truths. If a co-worker decides (and acts as if) we are worthless, we may swallow their verdict. We end up looking out to the world, rather than into ourselves, in order to know what we should feel, think and want.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253409/original/file-20190111-43525-wn4shg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253409/original/file-20190111-43525-wn4shg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253409/original/file-20190111-43525-wn4shg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253409/original/file-20190111-43525-wn4shg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253409/original/file-20190111-43525-wn4shg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253409/original/file-20190111-43525-wn4shg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253409/original/file-20190111-43525-wn4shg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Delphi, Greece.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edward Knapczyk/wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is an advantage to learn how to recognise our feelings. The experience of sadness, for example, could be the result of bad news, but it could also be caused by a predisposition to feeling sad resulting from childhood trauma or even just the <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/can-microbes-encourage-altruism-20170629/">bacteria</a> in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2018.1460015">our gut</a>. Recognising true emotions can help us to intervene in the <a href="http://atlasofemotions.org/">space between feelings and actions</a> – knowing your emotions is the first step to being in control of them, breaking negative thought patterns. Understanding our own emotions and thinking patterns can also help us more easily empathise with others. </p>
<p>Self-awareness also allows us to make better decisions. In <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20152338?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">one study</a>, students who scored higher on “metacognitive awareness” – the ability to reflect on personal thoughts, feelings, attitudes and beliefs – tended to make more effective decisions when it came to playing a computer game in which they had to diagnose and treat virtual patients in order to cure them. The authors argued that this was because they could set more well defined goals and make strategic actions.</p>
<h2>Getting to know yourself</h2>
<p>So how can we learn to know how we feel? People can have different ways of thinking about themselves. We can think about our history, and how past experiences have made us who we are. But we can also brood about negative scenarios in the past or future. Some of these ways of thinking about ourselves are better for us than others. Unfortunately, many of us tend to ruminate and to worry. That is, we focus on our fears and shortcomings, and as a result we become anxious or depressed.</p>
<p>The best way to start would be talking with an insightful friend or a trained therapist. The latter is especially important in cases where a lack of self-knowledge is interfering with our mental health. Putting words to feelings and being asked follow-up questions can really help us to understand who we are. Reading about <a href="https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Intuition-Pumps-and-Other-Tools-for-Thinking-Audiobook/B00CLG3RWO?source_code=M2M14DFT1BkSH082015011R&ds_rl=1235779">useful ways of thinking</a> can also help us to navigate our lives better. </p>
<p>In addition, there are several other traditions throughout history that have explored ways of getting to know ourselves. Both <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5503948.html">Stoic philosophy</a> and <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/DUNTAU">Buddhist traditions</a> valued self-knowledge and developed practices to nurture awareness of mental states – such as meditation.</p>
<p>Nowadays, mindfulness meditation has <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/12/why-google-target-and-general-mills-are-investing-in-mindfulness">gained traction</a> in psychology, medicine and neuroscience. Meditation and emotion regulation training can reduce negative feelings, rumination and anxiety. They also <a href="https://1ammce38pkj41n8xkp1iocwe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Contemplative-emotion-training-reduces-negative-emotional-behavior-and-promotes-prosocial-responses.pdf">increase positive emotions</a>, improve the ability to recognise emotions in others, and protect us from social stress. Therapies that integrate mindfulness have been shown to be reliable in helping to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735815000197">improve mental health</a>, specifically the outcomes of depression, stress and anxiety. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/95143875" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Imagine sitting by the side of a busy road, with the passing cars representing your thoughts and feelings.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By just sitting for a little while and watching our thoughts and feelings from a distance, as if we’re sitting by the side of the road and watching cars go by, we can get to know ourselves better. This helps us practice the skill of not thinking about the past or future, and we can be in the present a little bit more. We can learn to recognise the feelings that certain events and emotions trigger in us at the moment, and to create a space in which we can decide how to act (as some responses are more constructive than others). </p>
<p>Imagine, for example, that you have plans to go for a bike ride with a friend tomorrow and you’re very much looking forward to this. In the morning, your friend cancels. Later in the day, a colleague asks you for help with a problem, and you feel annoyed and snap at them – telling them you don’t have time for it.</p>
<p>Maybe you felt annoyed with the colleague, but the real reason was that you felt disappointed with your friend, and you now feel that you may not be as important to them as they are to you. If we’re more self-aware, we’re more likely to have the chance to pause and realise why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling. Rather than taking it out on our colleague, we can then realise that we are overreacting or identify whether there are any problems in our relationship with our friend.</p>
<p>It is fascinating that almost 2,500 years after the construction of the temple of Apollo, the quest to know ourselves better is still equally important.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109451/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niia Nikolova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If you develop an awareness of how you feel you are more likely to be able to change negative thinking patterns.Niia Nikolova, Postdoctoral Researcher of Psychology, University of Strathclyde Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/957352018-05-24T10:22:34Z2018-05-24T10:22:34ZPersonality tests with deep-sounding questions provide shallow answers about the ‘true’ you<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220226/original/file-20180523-51141-s5bwj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=529%2C98%2C4742%2C3377&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A quirky quiz probably isn't going to tell you much about your innermost essence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-smiling-young-woman-covering-her-648726070">StunningArt/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Have you ever clicked on a link like “What does your favorite animal say about you?” wondering what your love of hedgehogs reveals about your psyche? Or filled out a personality assessment to gain new understanding into whether you’re an introverted or extroverted “type”? People love turning to these kinds of personality quizzes and tests on the hunt for deep insights into themselves. People tend to believe they have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616689495">a “true” and revealing self</a> hidden somewhere deep within, so it’s natural that assessments claiming to unveil it will be appealing. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ep1t9nsAAAAJ&hl=en">As</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=So__A9oAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">psychologists</a>, we noticed something striking about assessments that claim to uncover people’s “true type.” Many of the questions are poorly constructed – their wording can be ambiguous and they often contain forced choices between options that are not opposites. This can be true of BuzzFeed-type quizzes as well as more seemingly sober assessments.</p>
<p>On the other hand, assessments created by trained personality psychologists use questions that are more straightforward to interpret. The most notable example is probably the well-respected <a href="https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm">Big Five Inventory</a>. Rather than sorting people into “types,” it scores people on the established psychological dimensions of openness to new experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. This simplicity is by design; psychology researchers know that the more respondents struggle to understand the question, the worse the question is.</p>
<p>But the lack of rigor in “type” assessments turns out to be a feature, not a bug, for the general public. What makes tests less valid can ironically make them more interesting. Since most people aren’t trained to think about psychology in a scientifically rigorous way, it stands to reason they also won’t be great at evaluating those assessments. We recently conducted <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618766409">series of studies</a> to investigate how consumers view these tests. When people try to answer these harder questions, do they think to themselves “This question is poorly written”? Or instead do they focus on its difficulty and think “This question’s deep”? Our results suggest that a desire for deep insight can lead to deep confusion.</p>
<h2>Confusing difficult for deep</h2>
<p>In our first study, we showed people items from both the Big Five and from the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS), a popular “type” assessment that contains many questions we suspected people find comparatively difficult. Our participants rated each item in two ways. First, they rated difficulty. That is, how confusing and ambiguous did they find it? Second, what was its perceived “depth”? In other words, to what extent did they feel the item seemed to be getting at something hidden deep in the unconscious?</p>
<p>Sure enough, not only were these perceptions correlated, the KTS was seen as both more difficult and deeper. In follow-up studies, we experimentally manipulated difficulty. In one study, we modified Big Five items to make them harder to answer like the KTS items, and again we found that participants rated the more difficult versions as “deeper.”</p>
<p>We also noticed that some personality assessments seem to derive their intrigue from having seemingly nothing to do with personality at all. Take <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/agh/this-color-association-test-will-reveal-the-age-you-are-at-h">one BuzzFeed quiz</a>, for example, that asks about which colors people associate with abstract concepts like letters and days of the week and then outputs “the true age of your soul.” Even if people trust BuzzFeed more for entertainment than psychological truths, perhaps they are actually on board with the idea that these difficult, abstract decisions do reveal some deep insights. In fact, that is the entire idea behind <a href="http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2001/May/erMay.7/5_7_01lilienfeld.html">classically problematic</a> measures such as the Rorschach, or “ink blot,” test. </p>
<p>In two studies inspired by that BuzzFeed quiz, we found exactly that. We gave people items from purported “personality assessment” checklists. In one study, we assigned half the participants to the “difficult” condition, wherein the assessment items required them to choose which of two colors they associated with abstract concepts, like the letter “M.” In the “easier” condition, respondents were still required to rate colors on how much they associated them with those abstract concepts, but they more simply rated one color at a time instead of choosing between two.</p>
<p>Again, participants rated the difficult version as deeper. Seemingly, the sillier the assessment, the better people think it can read the hidden self.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Complicated or hard-to-parse questions about yourself aren’t going to spring open a shortcut to the true you.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/optical-form-examination-pencil-213521044">Basar/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Intuition may steer you wrong</h2>
<p>One of the implications of this research is that people are going to have a hard time leaving behind the bad ideas baked into popular yet unscientific personality assessments. The most notable example is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which infamously remains quite popular while doing a fairly poor job of assessing personality, due to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless">longstanding issues</a> with the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die">assessment itself</a> and the long-discredited <a href="https://medium.com/@AdamMGrant/mbti-if-you-want-me-back-you-need-to-change-too-c7f1a7b6970">Jungian theory</a> behind it. Our findings suggest that Myers-Briggs-like assessments that have largely been debunked by experts might persist in part because their formats overlap quite well with people’s intuitions about what will best access the “true self.” </p>
<p>People’s intuitions do them no favors here. Intuitions often <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/andrew-shtulman/scienceblind/9780465094929/">undermine scientific thinking</a> on topics like physics and biology. Psychology is no different. People arbitrarily divide parts of themselves into “true” and superficial components and seem all too willing to believe in tests that claim to definitively make those distinctions. But the idea of a “true self” doesn’t really work as a scientific concept.</p>
<p>Some people might be stuck in a self-reinforcing yet unproductive line of thought: Personality assessments can cause confusion. That confusion in turn overlaps with intuitions of how they think their deep psychology works, and then they tell themselves the confusion is profound. So intuitions about psychology might be especially pernicious. Following them too closely could lead you to know less about yourself, not more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95735/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Few can resist an assessment that promises to reveal your hidden, true self. But new research suggests that people mistakenly believe difficult to answer questions offer deep insights.Randy Stein, Assistant Professor of Marketing, California State Polytechnic University, PomonaAlexander Swan, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Eureka CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/561182016-10-17T10:23:25Z2016-10-17T10:23:25ZHow do children develop a sense of self?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139262/original/image-20160926-31866-1230b9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who's that? Understanding it's them in the mirror offers toddlers another sense of perspective.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-461122078/stock-photo-small-kid-staying-by-reflection-and-watching-himself-little-boy-looking-at-himself-near-mirror.html?src=7OJAKc8850hTQqpx2hoUrQ-1-12">Goami/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the moment they are born, babies are exposed to information that can teach them about who they are. By touching their own face and body, or by kicking and grabbing things, they start to enjoy the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Margaret_Sullivan/publication/232511696_Violation_of_Expectancy_Loss_of_Control_and_Anger_in_Young_Infants/links/004635294e01e38954000000.pdf">influence of their actions on the world</a>. But it is not until children approach their second birthday that they start to develop a sense of self and are able to reflect on themselves from the perspective of somebody else.</p>
<p>One indication of this new objective self-awareness is that children start recognising themselves in a mirror or photograph – something most children do <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279798249_Variability_in_the_early_development_of_visual_self-recognition">by the age of two</a>. This kind of self-awareness can be assessed scientifically by surreptitiously putting a small mark on a child’s forehead, such as by kissing them while wearing lipstick. The child can’t feel the mark so their sense of touch can’t alert them to its presence – but they can see it if they look in a mirror. If the child has the capacity to see themselves as another person would, they will reach up to touch the mark when shown a mirror, indicating that they equate the mirror image with their own body. </p>
<h2>Finding the concept of the ‘self’</h2>
<p>Toddlers also naturally demonstrate their self-awareness by their ability to use and understand self-referential language such as <em>I</em>, <em>me</em>, <em>you</em> and <em>my</em>. Another example is when they claim something as their <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9507.00131/abstract;jsessionid=C0A964746A270876A8BE8D5643B0C0E3.f04t03?userIsAuthenticated=false&deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=">own property</a> – the cry of “it’s mine” is the origin of many sibling disputes. </p>
<p>The appearance of <a href="http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/emotions/according-experts/self-conscious-emotions">self-conscious emotions</a> such as embarrassment, pride, guilt and shame also demonstrates that a child is developing self-consciousness. Parents may notice that by the time they are three-years-old, their child is motivated to make amends for wrongdoing, can be proud of their own behaviour, or hides when unhappy about something they have done.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139275/original/image-20160926-31837-1hbnbtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139275/original/image-20160926-31837-1hbnbtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139275/original/image-20160926-31837-1hbnbtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139275/original/image-20160926-31837-1hbnbtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139275/original/image-20160926-31837-1hbnbtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139275/original/image-20160926-31837-1hbnbtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139275/original/image-20160926-31837-1hbnbtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘It’s my teddybear!’ Self-awareness in action.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-964588/stock-photo-little-girl-in-pyjamas-on-the-bed-holding-her-teddybear-making-faces.html?src=KPPjW-H6u1t1dDU2x0fScQ-2-0">Pauline Breijer/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Toddlers’ ability to think about themselves from the perspective of a second person also marks the start of their acquisition of what’s called “<a href="https://portfolio.du.edu/SusanHarter/page/44342">self-concept</a>” – stable thoughts and feelings about the self. Between their first and second birthdays, children will be able to produce simple self-descriptions and evaluations such as “I am a good boy”, which will become more complex over time. By the time a child is around eight-years-old, they will have a relatively stable idea of their own personality traits and dispositions, and whether they feel like a valuable and competent person.</p>
<p>Individual differences in personality and feelings of self-worth can influence a child’s approach to social situations and academic achievement. Children with positive perceptions of themselves have the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21942279">best social and academic outcomes</a>, perhaps because they focus on success and aren’t deterred by failure. Parents can help their child <a href="http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/social-emotional-development/tips-on-helping-your-child-self-confidence.html?referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/">develop positive self-esteem</a> by reacting positively to them and their achievements, and helping them to overcome negative events. </p>
<p>Psychologists think parents can also shape children’s self-worth right from birth: when they provide a positive response to an infant’s actions it provides them with their first experiences of having a positive impact on the world. </p>
<h2>Influences on memory and learning</h2>
<p>Regardless of how children feel about themselves, adding an “idea of me” to their cognitive architecture changes the way they process information. For example, as adults, we <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cant-we-remember-our-early-childhood-62325">remember very few</a> childhood events. One intuitive explanation for this “childhood amnesia” is that until memories can be related to our sense of self, they are very difficult to store and retrieve. </p>
<p>Once a child’s sense of self is established, they are more likely to remember information that is related to themselves. This is known as the “self-reference effect” on memory and emerges early on. From at least three-years-old children are more likely to remember objects linked with themselves than those linked with another person. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjdp.12005/full">in one experiment</a>, children between four and six-years-old were asked to sort pictures of shopping items into their own basket, and a shopping basket owned by another person. After the items were sorted, the children were shown a wider selection of shopping items and asked which ones they recognised from the previous game. Children accurately remembered more of the items that they “owned”, than items that had been sorted into the other person’s basket. </p>
<p>The self-reference effect occurs because items linked with the self – such as “my apple” – attract additional attention and memory support within the brain, ensuring that information of potential use to the self is not lost.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139282/original/image-20160926-31862-1g2dfps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139282/original/image-20160926-31862-1g2dfps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139282/original/image-20160926-31862-1g2dfps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139282/original/image-20160926-31862-1g2dfps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139282/original/image-20160926-31862-1g2dfps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139282/original/image-20160926-31862-1g2dfps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139282/original/image-20160926-31862-1g2dfps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Solving educational exercises in the first-person helps children learn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-218966014/stock-photo-closeup-portrait-of-cute-little-african-boy-with-small-globe-in-hands-preparing-to-geography-lesson-back-to-school-concept.html?src=qWPtUa4pD0Z_wYMWtbJqsg-5-45">Anna Omelchenko/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The self reference effect can be used to help children process and learn information, especially as it emerges early in life. So asking children to think about themselves while generating sentences to practice their spelling – such as sentences beginning with the word “I” – can significantly improve their <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475215300220">subsequent spelling performance</a>. Putting maths problems in the first-person – for example: “you have four apples more than Tom” – also improves both the <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/89/3/562/">speed and accuracy</a> of children’s responses. </p>
<p>In summary, selfhood starts at birth, but children don’t start expressing an “idea of me” until toddlerhood. Children then start to gather information about themselves and store autobiographical material, starting a life narrative that guides their responses to the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Children start to demonstrate self-awareness as they approach their second birthday – and it helps them to learn.Josephine Ross, Lecturer in Developmental Psychology, University of DundeeDouglas Martin, Senior lecturer, School of Psychology, University of AberdeenSheila Cunningham, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Abertay UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/632102016-07-29T11:09:57Z2016-07-29T11:09:57ZMemory and sense of self may play more of a role in autism than we thought<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132376/original/image-20160728-12120-1j4cue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Our sense of self is grounded in our memories, but recalling these details is harder for people with autism.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">pathdoc/shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s well-known that those with autism spectrum disorders including Asperger’s syndrome develop difficulties with social communication and show stereotyped patterns of behaviour. Less well-studied but equally characteristic features are a weaker sense of self and mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. These are connected with a weaker ability to recall personal memories, known as autobiographical memory.</p>
<p>Research now suggests that autobiographical memory’s role in creating a sense of self may be a key element behind the development of autistic characteristics. </p>
<p>Autism is much more common in men than in women, to the extent that one theory of autism explains it as the <a href="http://autismtruths.org/pdf/SimonBaronCohen_The%20extreme-male-brain%20theory%20of%20autism.pdf">result of an “extreme male” brain</a>, where autistic females are assumed to be more masculinised. Historically, however, research participants have been predominantly male, which has left gaps in our knowledge about autism in women and girls. Psychologists have suggested that the criteria used for diagnosing autism may suffer from a male bias, meaning that many women and girls go undiagnosed <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25717130">until much later in life, if at all</a></p>
<h2>What we remember of ourselves</h2>
<p>This is supported by research that suggests <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-014-2109-7#/page-1">women with autism develop different characteristics</a> than autistic males – particularly in respect to autobiographical memory.</p>
<p>Personal memories play a key role in many of the psychological functions that are affected in those on the autistic spectrum. Personal memories help us form a picture of who we are and our sense of self. They help us predict how others might think, feel and behave and, when faced with personal problems, our past experiences provide insight into what strategies we might use to cope or achieve our goals. Sharing personal memories in conversation helps us to connect with others. Recalling positive memories when we feel down can help lift us up, while dwelling on negative personal memories can induce depression.</p>
<p>What’s become clear from studies of autobiographical memory in autism is that while those with autism may have an excellent memory for factual information, the process of storing and recalling specific personal experiences, such as those that happened on a particular day in a particular place, is much more difficult. Instead, their memories tend to record their experience in general terms, rather than the specifics of the occasion. This might be due in part to their more repetitive lifestyle, in which there are less occasions that stick out as memorable, but also because they are less self-aware and less likely to self-reflect. However, our research suggests that this memory impairment <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-014-2109-7#/page-1">may be exclusive to autistic males</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132379/original/image-20160728-12089-138u97v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132379/original/image-20160728-12089-138u97v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132379/original/image-20160728-12089-138u97v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132379/original/image-20160728-12089-138u97v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132379/original/image-20160728-12089-138u97v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132379/original/image-20160728-12089-138u97v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132379/original/image-20160728-12089-138u97v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Missing or indistinct memories can add to the sense of otherness, confusion and anxiety experienced by autistic people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lightspring/shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Divided by memory</h2>
<p>We examined the personal memories of 12 girls and 12 boys with autism, and compared them with an equal number of girls and boys of similar IQ and verbal ability without autism. We asked them to remember specific events in response to emotional and neutral cue words such as “happy” and “fast”. We also asked them to recall in as much detail as they could their earliest memories, and recollections from other periods of their life.</p>
<p>We know that girls tend to demonstrate better verbal skills and are better at recognising emotions. Might this affect the content and degree of detail they could recall from their own memories? We also wondered whether any gender differences we might find would be replicated between boys and girls with autism, or whether autistic girls would be more like boys – as predicted by the extreme male brain theory.</p>
<p>What we found was that autism did lead to less specific and less detailed memories, but only for the boys. The girls with autism performed more like non-autistic girls – not only were their memories more specific and more detailed than the autistic boys, but like the girls without autism, their memories contained more references to their emotional states than both the autistic and non-autistic boys. So rather than an extreme male brain, the girls with autism were more like girls without autism.</p>
<p>This better autobiographical memory might be one reason why autistic females are often better at masking the difficulties they have with communication and socialising with others, and so are more likely to go undiagnosed. Of course, this poses the question that if they have the building blocks of good communication – access to detailed personal memories – why are they still autistic?</p>
<p>There is some evidence to suggest that the automatic connection between our memories and knowing who we are, and how to use this information to inform how we act in problematic situations, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16874561">is weaker in those with autism</a>. This means that while women with autism can recall the past, they may not be using their experience to help them understand themselves and solve personal problems. </p>
<p>Even though they may be better able to socialise than boys with autism, this may come at a cost, as greater social interaction brings with it more personal problems, and when problems seem overwhelming this can lead to depression. Indeed, recent research suggests that among those with autism, depression in more common in women than men. This gender difference with respect to personal memories is an aspect of autistic characteristics that has been little studied, and should be explored further.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63210/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorna Goddard receives funding from the Economics and Social Research Council UK. </span></em></p>Men and women experience autism differently, which shows something revealing about where autistic characteristics may come from.Lorna Goddard, Lecturer in Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/616672016-07-19T20:07:55Z2016-07-19T20:07:55ZWhen bad ideas refuse to die: the denial of human individuality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130678/original/image-20160715-2115-1h343j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We're all individuals</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/elib/287592026/">Flickr/Elisa Banfi</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is generally thought that science helps good ideas triumph over bad. The weight of evidence eventually pushes false claims aside. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/28/why-bad-ideas-refuse-die">some ideas march onward</a> despite the evidence against them. The discredited link between <a href="http://theconversation.com/in-the-vaccine-debate-science-is-just-getting-its-boots-on-40374">vaccines and autism</a> continues to cause mischief and climate change sceptics continue to resurrect <a href="http://theconversation.com/adversaries-zombies-and-nipcc-climate-pseudoscience-17378">dead science</a>. </p>
<p>Why, then, are some bad ideas so hard to kill? </p>
<p>A striking example of such a “zombie theory” comes from personality psychology. Personality psychologists study human individuality – <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1993-17546-001">how</a> and <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00926566/56">why</a> individuals differ in their patterns of behaviour and experience, and how those differences <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16318601">influence our lives</a>. </p>
<p>For almost 50 years, an idea with a vexing immunity to evidence has needled this field. This idea is called <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/situationism">situationism</a>. </p>
<h2>Is personality an illusion?</h2>
<p>Introduced in the 1960s by American psychologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Mischel">Walter Mischel</a>, situationism is the idea that human behaviour results only from the situation in which it occurs and not from the personality of the individual.</p>
<p>In his 1968 book <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Personality_and_assessment.html?id=r999AAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Personality and Assessment</a>, Mischel claimed that the whole concept of personality is untenable because people behave differently in different situations.</p>
<p>If there are no consistent patterns in our behaviour and we merely react, chameleon-like, to different contexts, then our sense of an enduring personality is illusory. With that bombshell, the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00926566/43/2">person-situation debate</a> erupted.</p>
<h2>Situations versus personality</h2>
<p>The notion that situations influence behaviour is patently true. Could we even imagine a world in which people did not adjust their behaviour to different contexts – from job interviews to romantic dinners?</p>
<p>Personality psychologists have shown <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1983-23385-001">time</a> and <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2015-18458-001/">again</a> that the demands of situations shape and guide our behaviour. As one of the founders of personality psychology, Gordon Allport, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Personality.html?id=nRU8AAAAIAAJ">observed in the 1930s</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We all know that individuals may be courteous, kind and generous in company or in business relations, and at the same time be rude, cruel and selfish at home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But does this flexibility mean there is no consistency in behaviour, rendering the whole notion of personality untenable? Is there no tendency in some individuals to be consistently more courteous than others?</p>
<p>Here the empirical record disagrees. There is significant consistency of behavioural differences between people, both <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10668348">over time</a> and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15053708">across situations</a>. These tendencies are well captured by measures of personality, as <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1980-32524-001">study</a> after <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19968421">study</a> has shown. This tells us that stable differences in personality are real and observable – they are not illusions. </p>
<p>As for the importance of personality, the evidence shows that personality traits are reliable predictors of many <a href="http://pps.sagepub.com/content/2/4/313">important life outcomes</a>, from <a href="http://psr.sagepub.com/content/19/3/277">social behaviour</a> to <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1998-10661-006">job performance</a>, from <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19254083">educational achievement</a> to <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115123">health and well-being</a>. </p>
<h2>A case of consistency: the marshmallow study</h2>
<p>Ironically, a particularly famous example of the stability and power of personality came from Mischel’s own research, which, as one report points out, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/24/481859662/invisibilia-is-your-personality-fixed-or-can-you-change-who-you-are">drives him crazy</a>.</p>
<p>In the marshmallow study, Mischel measured young children’s willpower by timing how long they could resist the temptation of a delicious treat. This simple test, it <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3794428/">turns out</a>, is a measure of the personality trait called conscientiousness. It also predicts the same outcomes later in life that conscientiousness does, including <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073393/">higher educational achievement and lower drug use</a>. The facts that have emerged from this research are simply incompatible with situationism.</p>
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<h2>Laying situationism to rest</h2>
<p>Even before it was disproven by the evidence, Mischel’s theory of situationism contained a logical <em>non sequitur</em>. Specifically, it assumed that a person’s behaviour can only be 100% consistent or else inconsistent – in which case there is no such thing as personality.</p>
<p>But why should the observation of changeable behaviour imply the absence of personality? By this reasoning, we should dismiss the whole notion of climate because weather is changeable. </p>
<p>By the 1990s, most personality psychologists considered situationism a dead duck. A prominent <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ps.46.020195.001455">review of the literature</a> concluded that the debate had, at last, fizzled out. The field was moving on and looking forward. </p>
<p>But the theory didn’t die. </p>
<h2>Back from the dead</h2>
<p>Time and again, the spectre of situationism has reappeared, causing a groaning sense of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1449496?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">déjà vu</a> for personality psychologists. </p>
<p>The theory has even spread beyond psychology, with a prominent behavioural economist recently <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w17378.pdf">claiming</a> that Mischel’s “great contribution to psychology” was to show that there is “no such thing as a stable personality trait”.</p>
<p>Despite being buried by decades of research, situationism keeps kicking. According to <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2711529/">one commentator</a>, it “has morphed into something beyond the veracity of its arguments”. It has become an ideology. </p>
<p>In June this year, Mischel wheeled out situationism once again, this time on an episode of the NPR Invisibilia podcast titled <a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/482836315/the-personality-myth">The Personality Myth</a>. Once again, we’re told “ultimately it’s the situation, not the person, that determines things.”</p>
<p>This baseless message drew sharp criticism <a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10107781434429900&id=7955361&comment_id=10107784835568990&hc_location=ufi">on social media</a> by several eminent personality psychologists. </p>
<p>As one observed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] the contemporary research literature showing that personality traits exist, tend to be stable over time, and influence important life outcomes is never mentioned. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What gives life to bad ideas?</h2>
<p>Why is situationism still being revived after decades of refutation? We suspect this can be explained by at least two factors. </p>
<p>The first is our all-too-human preference for lazy thinking. As Daniel Kahneman explains in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Thinking_Fast_and_Slow.html?id=ZuKTvERuPG8C&redir_esc=y">Thinking Fast and Slow</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this case, the tricky question, “can our patterns of behaviour be <a href="http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/2/83">generally stable yet highly changeable</a>?”, is switched for a no-brainer, “is our behaviour perfectly consistent, or not?” </p>
<p>The second explanation may lie in the appeal of a surprising story. Some of the most alluring ideas in science – <a href="http://pps.sagepub.com/content/8/5/549">and to scientists</a> – are those we find unexpected or counter-intuitive. And what could be more counter-intuitive than the thought that there may be nothing at all that makes you you? </p>
<p>The situationist idea that personality is an illusion is an arresting one, but it is false.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is generally thought that science helps good ideas triumph over bad. But one old and oft-refuted idea that questions why we are who we are, and do what we do, refuses to die.Luke Smillie, Senior Lecturer in Personality Psychology, The University of MelbourneNick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/577032016-04-13T16:11:24Z2016-04-13T16:11:24ZHow LSD helped us probe what the ‘sense of self’ looks like in the brain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118516/original/image-20160413-23631-45vm1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lewis Tse Pui Lung/shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every single person is different. We all have different backgrounds, views, values and interests. And yet there is one universal feeling that we all experience at every single moment. Call it an “ego”, a “self” or just an “I” – it’s the idea that our thoughts and feelings are our own, and no one else has access to them in the same way. This may sound a bit like post-war French existentialism or psycho-analysis, but it’s actually a topic that’s being increasingly addressed by neuroscientists. </p>
<p>We were part of a team interested in finding out how this sense of self is expressed in the brain – and what happens when it dissolves. To do that, we used brain imaging and the psychedelic drug LSD. </p>
<p>Our sense of self is something so natural that we are not always fully aware of it. In fact, it is when it is disturbed that it becomes the most noticeable. This could be due to <a href="https://theconversation.com/predicting-the-future-course-of-psychotic-illness-32423">mental illnesses such as psychosis</a>, when people might experience the delusional belief that their thoughts are no longer private, but can be accessed and even modified by other people. Or it could be due to the influence of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, when the user can feel that <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1503329/">their ego is “dissolving”</a> and they are becoming at one with the world. From a scientific point of view, these experiences of “ego death” or ego dissolution are also opportunities to search for this sense of self in the brain.</p>
<p>Our study, led by <a href="https://enzotagliazucchi.com/">Enzo Tagliazucchi</a> and published in <a href="http://bit.ly/1SatW7j">Current Biology</a>, set out to probe what is happening in the brain when our sense of self becomes altered by psychedelic drugs (link to Enzo’s paper). We studied 15 healthy volunteers before and after taking LSD, which altered their normal feelings of their selves and their relationship with the environment. These subjects were scanned while intoxicated and while receiving placebo using functional MRI, a technique which allows us to study the brain’s activity by measuring changes in blood flow. By contrasting the activity of the brain when receiving a placebo with its activity after taking LSD, we could start exploring the brain mechanisms involved in the normal experience of the self.</p>
<h2>A holistic understanding</h2>
<p>Results of this study showed that the experience of ego-dissolution induced by LSD was not related to changes in only one region of the brain. Instead, the drug affected the way that several brain regions were communicating with the rest of the brain, increasing their level of connectivity. These included the fronto-parietal region, an area that has previously been linked to self awareness, and the temporal region, an area involved in language comprehension and creating visual memories. The brain on LSD would therefore be similar to an orchestra in which musicians are no longer playing together in time, rather than an orchestra in which some are missing or malfunctioning.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118580/original/image-20160413-22081-1ms1q5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118580/original/image-20160413-22081-1ms1q5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118580/original/image-20160413-22081-1ms1q5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118580/original/image-20160413-22081-1ms1q5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118580/original/image-20160413-22081-1ms1q5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118580/original/image-20160413-22081-1ms1q5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118580/original/image-20160413-22081-1ms1q5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brain anatomy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Primalchaos/wikimedia</span></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/110/28/11583.short">In a previous paper,</a> we showed that the brain tends to organise itself into groups or modules of regions working closely together and specialising in a specific activity, a property called modularity. For example, the brain regions specialised for vision are normally organised as a module of the human brain network. LSD disrupted this modular organisation of the brain – and the level of modular disorganisation was linked with the severity of ego-dissolution that volunteers experienced after taking the drug. It seems the modular organisation of the healthy brain works as the scaffolding that allows us to maintain a sense of self.</p>
<p>But on a more fundamental note, these results highlight that a full understanding of the brain will never be complete unless we focus on the connectivity between regions as part of a <a href="http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n3/abs/nrn2575.html">complex network</a>. This is irrespective of the level of microscopic detail we might have about what a single region does. Just as a symphony is fully appreciated only when one listens to all members of the orchestra playing it together, and not by studying each individual instrument separately.</p>
<p>By investigating the psychedelic effects of LSD with brain scanning, we can open the doors of perception to discover how the familiar, egotistical sense of self depends on a particular pattern of brain network organisation. Our sense of individuality may be down to the overall configuration that emerges from the interactions of multiple brain regions. When this organisation is disrupted by LSD, and particularly when the modular organisation falls apart, our sense of self, and the distinct boundaries between us, the environment and others might be lost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57703/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Crossley has received funding from the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) UK. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ed Bullmore receives funding from Wellcome Trust, MRC, NIHR. </span></em></p>Just where in the brain is our ‘ego’?Nicolas Crossley, Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Psychosis Studies, King's College LondonEd Bullmore, Professor of Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience , University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/459432015-10-02T08:36:30Z2015-10-02T08:36:30ZDo brain interventions to treat disease change the essence of who we are?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96977/original/image-20151001-23058-7fedmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brains are physical organs, but also the seat of something essential about us.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-75977104/stock-photo-teamwork-and-cooperation-in-the-sharing-and-exchange-of-ideas-and-business-know-how-represented-by.html">Heads via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>These days, most of us accept that minds are dependent on brain function and wouldn’t object to the claim that “You are your brain.” After all, we’ve known for a long time that <a href="https://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=1323&isbn=9780684801582">brains control</a> how we behave, what we remember, even what we desire. But what does that mean? And is it really true?</p>
<p>Despite giving lip service to the importance of brains, in our practical life this knowledge has done little to affect how we view our world. In part, that’s probably because we’ve been largely powerless to affect the way that brains work, at least in a systematic way.</p>
<p>That’s all changing. Neuroscience has been advancing rapidly, and has <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cognitive-neurosciences-1">begun to elucidate the circuits</a> for control of behavior, representation of mental content and so on. More dramatically, neuroscientists have now started to develop novel methods of intervening in brain function.</p>
<p>As treatments advance, interventions into brain function will dramatically illustrate the dependence of who we are on our brains – and they may put pressure on some basic beliefs and concepts that have been fundamental to how we view the world.</p>
<h2>Pacemaker for heart versus one for the brain</h2>
<p>Medicine has long intervened in the human body. We are comfortable and familiar with the reality of implants that keep the heart going at a steady and even pace. We don’t think pacemakers threaten who we are, nor that they raise deep and puzzling ethical questions about whether such interventions should be permissible. The brain, like the heart, is a bodily organ, but because of its unique function, its manipulation carries with it a host of ethical and metaphysical conundrums that challenge our intuitive and largely settled views about who and what we are.</p>
<p>The last few decades have seen a variety of novel brain interventions. Perhaps the most familiar is the systemic alteration of brain chemistry (and thus function) by a growing array of psychopharmaceuticals. However, more targeted methods of intervening exist, including direct or <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7793.2000.t01-1-00633.x">transcranial electrical stimulation of cortex</a>, <a href="http://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00303">magnetic induction of electrical activity</a>, and focal stimulation of <a href="http://www.brainfacts.org/Diseases-Disorders/Diseases-A-to-Z-from-NINDS/Deep-Brain-Stimulation-for-Parkinson-s-Disease">deep brain structures</a>.</p>
<p>Still on the horizon are even more powerful techniques not yet adapted or approved for use in humans. Transgenic manipulations that make neural tissue sensitive to light will enable the precise control of individual neurons. Powerful gene editing techniques may enable us to correct some neurodevelopmental problems in utero. And although many of these methods seem futuristic, hundreds of thousands of cases of the future are already here: over 100,000 cyborgs are already walking among us, in some sense powered by or controlled by the steady zapping of their brain circuits with electrical pulses.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96990/original/image-20151001-23101-nb2ai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Surgically inserting electrodes into a patient’s brain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parkinson_surgery.jpg">Thomasbg</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>This is no dystopian nightmare, nor the idea for a new zombie show. Deep brain stimulation (or <a href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007453.htm">DBS</a>) has been a life-restoring therapeutic technique for thousands of patients with Parkinson’s disease with severely impaired motor and cognitive function, and it promises to dramatically improve the lives of people suffering from some other psychological and neurological disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder, treatment-resistant depression, and Tourette’s syndrome.</p>
<p>DBS involves the placement of electrodes into deep brain structures. Current is administered through these electrodes by an implanted power pack, which can be remotely controlled by the subject and adjusted by physicians. In essence, DBS is like a pacemaker for the brain.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Watch a Parkinson’s patient who has a DBS implant.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Remarkably, we don’t quite know how it works, but when effective, DBS can in seconds restore normal function to a person virtually paralyzed by a dopamine deficiency, contorted by uncontrollable tremor and muscular contraction. The transformation is nothing short of miraculous.</p>
<h2>When neuroscience answers push us toward philosophy questions</h2>
<p>In addition to its obvious clinical benefits, DBS poses some interesting problems.</p>
<p>For one thing, DBS does not always only address the troubling symptoms of the disease it aims to treat. Sometimes, stimulation results in unanticipated side-effects, altering mood, preferences, desires, emotion or cognition. In one reported case, the identifiable side effect of stimulation was a sudden and unprecedented <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00152">obsession with Johnny Cash’s music</a>.</p>
<p>While it may be fairly easy to write off improvements in motor control as some kind of mechanical restoration of a broken output circuit (which would be a misunderstanding of the actual function of DBS in Parkinson’s), messing with our preferences and passions seems to hit much closer to home. It calls attention to something hard to fathom and often overlooked: what we like, what we are like, who we are, in some very real sense, are dependent on the motion of matter and ebb and flow of electrical signals in our brains, just like any other physical devices.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96995/original/image-20151001-23090-pwuke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How much of what makes you you comes down to your physical brain?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=278476532&src=lb-29877982">Brain image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This reminder points to something we may often pay lip service to, without really coming face to face with its implications. However, the increasing availability of neurotechnologies may push us to deeper philosophical exploration of the <a href="http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0215">truth about our brains and our selves</a>.</p>
<p>After all, if we are merely material beings whose personality can be altered and even controlled by fairly simple technologies, is there really a there there? Is there some immutable kernel of a person that is the self, or an essence that resists change? Can brain interventions can change who we are – make us into a different person or alter personal identity?</p>
<p>If someone insults you (or commits a crime) while under stimulation by DBS, should he be held responsible for what he does? Under what conditions (if any) does it make sense to say that “it wasn’t really him”? Does the answer give us insight into what matters about brain function? And if we think that brain interventions should excuse people, when and why is that so? Does that reasoning also imply that we ought to excuse all behavior due to brains, which are, after all, just physical systems operating according to natural laws? That is, does it threaten to undermine the notion of responsibility more generally? </p>
<p>These are hard questions that philosophers have been grappling with for a long time. For the most part they were relegated to the academy and the realm of thought experiments, and were largely ignored by the rest of the world. But we live today in a world of thought experiment made real, and these questions are now being raised in practical circumstances in medicine and in law. Although there is no consensus (and I do not mean to endorse what might seem to be the obvious answers to the above questions), what have previously seemed like the abstract puzzles of philosophers may soon be seen to hit closer to home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adina Roskies receives funding from Dartmouth College to pursue research on DBS.</span></em></p>New technologies bring questions that have belonged to the abstract realm of philosophers into concrete focus. Why do medical interventions in the brain feel different than those elsewhere in the body?Adina Roskies, Professor of Philosophy, Dartmouth CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/468882015-09-17T20:15:09Z2015-09-17T20:15:09ZFive ways science can help you raise healthy children<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95125/original/image-20150917-12695-36sy2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There might still be more art than science in raising healthy children, but science can be useful.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/familymwr/4929686071/">U.S. Army/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are countless parenting questions that science can’t answer: “is it gross to eat food my child spat out?”, “why do my kids hate wearing pants?” and, of course, “when they grow up, will my kids remember how much I loved them, or just that I made them wear pants?”.</p>
<p>Fortunately, there are some important parenting issues science <em>can</em> address. Here are five simple tips for raising healthy children based on scientific studies from the last 12 months,.</p>
<p><strong>1. Dads can – and should – help with breastfeeding</strong></p>
<p>How many people does it take to breastfeed a baby? A recently published <a href="http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2015/06/08/archdischild-2014-307833.short">Australian study</a> found the answer is closer to three people (mum, baby and partner) than the traditional two of mother and baby. The chance of a baby being breastfed for six months was significantly lower if mum’s partner preferred bottle feeding, or even if her partner felt neutral about breastfeeding.</p>
<p>Not every mum can or wants to breastfeed exclusively for six months. For those who do, however, it would be great if more partners (I’m looking at you, dads) stepped up and helped. <a href="http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/dads_help_breastfeeding.html">Among other things</a>, fathers can offer rest, food, water and encouragement. </p>
<p>Telling your partner she’s doing a great job, organising dinner and taking the opportunity for precious dad-and-baby time so mum can grab a bit of sleep are all important. Being an engaged dad doesn’t always go smoothly (in my <a href="http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/parenting-and-families/what-i-learned-in-my-year-as-a-stay-at-home-dad-20150526-gh9wa4.html">personal experience</a>), but it’s great fun.</p>
<p><strong>2. Let them eat peanuts!</strong></p>
<p>Peanut allergy is potentially life-threatening, and the allergy rate in developed countries has <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h1001">doubled in the past ten years</a>. Thankfully, there’s good news from a <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1414850">landmark UK study</a> published earlier this year that tested whether the risk of developing peanut allergy could be reduced. </p>
<p>It found feeding peanut butter to children less than 11 months old reduced their risk of developing a peanut allergy by up to 80%, compared with children who avoided peanuts until they turned five. The researchers fed the children a lot of peanut butter (about a tablespoon every week for three years), so we don’t know if a smaller amount given less often would give the same benefit. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95126/original/image-20150917-12756-1cskxvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95126/original/image-20150917-12756-1cskxvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95126/original/image-20150917-12756-1cskxvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95126/original/image-20150917-12756-1cskxvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95126/original/image-20150917-12756-1cskxvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95126/original/image-20150917-12756-1cskxvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95126/original/image-20150917-12756-1cskxvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research shows feeding peanut butter to children less than 11 months old reduced their risk of developing a peanut allergy by up to 80%.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/manoftaste-de/9233039800/">Christian Schnettelker/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The study also excluded children who reacted to their first meal of peanuts, so these findings don’t apply to everyone. Still, for the majority of children, this is the best evidence we’ve ever had that raising peanut-allergy-free kids is more likely if you feed them peanuts early. </p>
<p><strong>3. Yoghurt can reduce the washing if your kids are ill</strong></p>
<p>When used correctly, antibiotics are amazing at helping kids return to health. Unfortunately, they kill off good as well as bad bacteria (especially in the gut), which can sometimes cause nasty side effects, such as diarrhoea. It makes sense that finding a way to replace the good bacteria might reduce the diarrhoea.</p>
<p>While probiotics (supplements of “good bacteria”) are popular, there are still lots of things <a href="http://www.cochrane.org/CD004827/IBD_probiotics-for-the-prevention-of-pediatric-antibiotic-associated-diarrhea-aad">we don’t know</a> about them, including which ones work or the best way to take them. </p>
<p>But thanks to an <a href="http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/1/e006474.full">Australian study</a> published this year, we now know that three particular probiotic strains in certain types of yoghurt significantly reduce the likelihood of diarrhoea in children taking antibiotics. The strains were Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), Bifidobacterium lactis (Bb-12) and Lactobacillus acidophilus (la-5) – look out for them at your local supermarket and save on the washing.</p>
<p><strong>4. Moisturise your baby (it might prevent eczema)</strong></p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25282564">Japanese study</a> has shown that moisturising your baby every day for the first eight months reduces risk of developing eczema by 30%. The study used a <a href="http://2e.shiseido.co.jp/">Japanese-brand moisturiser</a>, but if you’re interested in trying this you probably don’t need to import it. </p>
<p>A similar <a href="http://www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN21528841">ongoing study</a> in the United Kingdom is using white, soft paraffin moisturiser. Your local pharmacy will likely stock several brands of this kind of moisturiser – any one of them would be a good place to start.</p>
<p>We don’t know for sure that this works, but if it’s relaxing and fun for you and your baby, doesn’t cost more than you can afford and has the potential to prevent eczema, it’s probably worth doing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95128/original/image-20150917-12722-127lyoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95128/original/image-20150917-12722-127lyoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95128/original/image-20150917-12722-127lyoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95128/original/image-20150917-12722-127lyoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95128/original/image-20150917-12722-127lyoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95128/original/image-20150917-12722-127lyoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95128/original/image-20150917-12722-127lyoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anyone whose baby has been unsettled at night knows about the vast range of opinions out there about how to manage the problem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/_fabio/2751207108/">Fabio Bruna/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>And finally… 5. What’s the best way to get my baby to sleep?</strong></p>
<p>Anyone whose baby has been unsettled at night knows about the vast range of opinions out there about how to manage the problem. There’s often a divide between people who advocate using behavioural strategies to teach babies to self-settle and those who worry self-settling might be harmful.</p>
<p>The good news is that a recent <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpc.12752/abstract">Australian paper</a> found no evidence that self-settling strategies cause harm, as well as finding some evidence they worked. The bad news: it found evidence that sleep problems are stressful, affecting the mental health of both mothers and fathers.</p>
<p>Self-settling is often confused with “controlled crying”, but they’re not the same thing. It involves understanding normal infant development and creating a predictable environment. From when your child is three or four months old, you might start a consistent bedtime routine, put her in bed when she’s drowsy but awake, and keep her room dark (not pitch-black) at night. But there are no hard and fast rules with sleep. If it doesn’t feel right, then don’t do it.</p>
<p>There are lots of places to get help with unsettled babies. Start with your local child and family health centre, and check out <a href="http://raisingchildren.net.au/sleep/babies_sleep.html">these useful tips</a>, or see your family doctor.</p>
<p>There might still be more art than science in raising healthy children, but science can be useful. These papers at least give us five fewer things to worry about, and you might even save on your washing. Of course, trust your own judgement and always speak to your doctor or child health nurse if you have questions about what’s best for your child.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Elliot works as a consultant paediatrician in a public hospital and complex feeding difficulties clinic in Sydney, and in private practice. He sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health</span></em></p>Here are five scientific studies from the last 12 months with simple tips for raising healthy children.Chris Elliot, Consultant Paediatrician and Conjoint Associate Lecturer, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/406822015-04-29T09:57:29Z2015-04-29T09:57:29ZA dean’s plea: let students discover knowledge without pressure to impress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79516/original/image-20150427-18136-11orpsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students no longer have the time for self-discovery. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=3Tba1wM1vW1aRb2ip2Hutw&searchterm=college%20day%201&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=112544996">Student image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is today’s competitive environment making high school students pursue a polished resume and not their passion? </p>
<p>As a university vice president and an admissions dean, we’ve just finished contacting students whom we did admit, did not admit and would have liked to admit, but simply couldn’t. </p>
<p>Regardless of outcome, each group had in its midst students who have been caught up in the growing phenomenon of credentialism, a practice of relying on formal qualifications, that too often undermines what should be four wonderful years of self-discovery in high school.</p>
<h2>More than a numbers game</h2>
<p>Whether it’s taking an <a href="http://www.challengesuccess.org/Portals/0/Docs/ChallengeSuccess-AdvancedPlacement-WP.pdf">Advance Placement course</a> that really doesn’t interest them, holding office in an organization because it will “look good,” on their resume or playing a sport that they really don’t enjoy, students are too often trying to impress, instead of trying to discover, enjoy and grow. </p>
<p>Every student seeking admission to college wants to present a “strong case.” </p>
<p>But what’s becoming increasingly clear to admission officers like me and to guidance counselors who advise high school students, is that “credentialism” is being practiced more and more by students, high schools and institutions of higher learning. </p>
<p>To some degree we have ourselves to blame. </p>
<p>College <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bschools/rankings/undergraduate_mba_profiles">rankings</a> rely heavily on metrics and lets face it, people love being on the “A” list. In some cases, the metrics are about the school; in others, about the students who apply and are admitted.</p>
<p>We begin, despite our best intentions, to question not whether a student is a good match for our institution but how admitting the student will affect our “profile.” </p>
<p>Too often I worry that colleges feel obligated to play the “numbers” game and admit students solely on the basis of board scores, grade scores, number of AP courses, number of extracurricular activities, number of recommendations and so on.</p>
<h2>Students are not pursuing their passion</h2>
<p>As a result, many students – urged on by their parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and, yes, colleges and universities – conduct their lives as though the only purpose is to build a resume to get into the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-best-brightest-and-saddest.html?_r=0">“best”</a> school they can.</p>
<p>So what’s wrong with that? </p>
<p>For colleges and universities,that means we assess students on professed interest and performance that don’t always reflect what the student is really all about and capable of doing. And that’s not good for the student or the institution. </p>
<p>It subverts our desire not just to recruit and admit a class but to create a class, one whose members will thrive synergistically, often energized more by their differences than by their similarities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students end up chasing the right courses to get into the right colleges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=3Tba1wM1vW1aRb2ip2Hutw&searchterm=college%20day%201&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=137713628">Student image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For students, it turns their high school careers into a grab bag of experiences, many of which were pursued to impress others rather than for self-discovery and the pursuit of interests and excellence for their own sake.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. </p>
<p>Many students are truly driven by the best motivations to understand their interests, abilities, and aspirations.</p>
<p>But too many are told they need to go to the right schools, study the right courses, participate in the right activities, have the right friends, volunteer for the right programs, plan for the right careers…and on and on. </p>
<p>What often results is an early and unwelcome appreciation for Thoreau’s observation that, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”</p>
<p>Too many students fail to understand that they are quintessentially “a work in progress,” always in the process of becoming, never finished. (Most adults aren’t much different.) </p>
<p>And in our rush to help them prepare for the rest of their lives, we prevent them from taking full advantage of what’s going on right now in their lives.</p>
<p>Students deserve better, from everybody who is pressuring them to display success to impress rather than for its inherent self-worth. </p>
<h2>Colleges need to restore love for learning</h2>
<p>Can colleges and universities help? </p>
<p>We can proclaim that we seek more than numbers, more than honors, more than achievement for its promotional value. And we can demonstrate our commitment by accepting students whose accomplishments are rooted in exploration, passion, self-discovery and even plain old fun.</p>
<p>We tell students that college is a launching pad for successful careers and lives. And that’s what it should be.</p>
<p>Both high schools and colleges may do students a grave disservice if we suggest that resume-building trumps exploration in pursuit of self-awareness and fulfillment.</p>
<p>So what should we be telling our young people as they undertake their journey to what we pray will be successful lives and careers?</p>
<p>Here are some things that I suggest to help guide that journey:</p>
<ul>
<li>Establish what really matters to you so you’ll have a compass.</li>
<li>Invest in yourself. You have gifts that need to be developed.</li>
<li>Do the best with what you have. It’s OK if you aren’t good at some things.</li>
<li>Take risks. But be smart about it.</li>
<li>Own it – it’s your life. Take responsibility for it.</li>
<li>Build integrity; above all else, this is what matters.</li>
<li>Find mentors who inspire you.</li>
</ul>
<p>This isn’t meant to be a “feel good” list. </p>
<p>And it isn’t just a list meant for the students. We must remain committed to a holistic evaluation. </p>
<p>As educators, we need to restore equity, perspective and a reverence for excellence for its own sake. </p>
<p>We need to connect our kids with the wisdom – from family, friends and trusted institutions – that previously helped each generation blossom, for their individual and collective benefit.</p>
<p>If we can’t come together to change the system, then shame on us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joann McKenna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pursuit to get into the best colleges has taken out the joy of learning from students’ lives.Joann McKenna, Vice President for Enrollment Management, Bentley UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.