By: Jon Tritley
“You don’t have any direct concept of reality, your brain is trying to give that to you all the time.” –Bruce Hood, 2012
As humans, we often take for granted our bodies and what we do to them. We engage in behaviors that we objectively know are not good for them, such as poisoning them through inhaling smoke or over-indulging in unhealthy food. However, we often don’t view this as a self-destruction of the ‘self,’ but rather a behavior that affects our bodies as if the self and the body are separate entities. It is as though our bodies are just objects, or vehicles, that carry our sense of self, which seem to be the culmination of who we are. We even go so far as to describe them as not being a part of the self. For example, see how I just used the word ‘them’ as being not a part of the self; but rather, what seems to be an extension of the mind? This week’s blog discusses the self – what it is and who we are.
The Research
What exactly makes you, you? Is there something there within in us that is not a part of our bodies? These are questions that we unfortunately do not exactly have answers for. Granted, we rarely say that we have solid answers to anything in the scientific world, but I digress. Researchers have attempted to find the self and define it, but many have settled on different answers. One way in which researchers have come to perceive the self is that it is simply located in specific regions of the brain. Northoff et al. (2006) looked across many different brain imaging studies. They used studies that looked at activity in the brain such that they ‘light up’ (being used) when presented with self-reflection tasks that related to the self. The common theme or core they found in their research was a concept called self-referential processing. Self-referential processing is where we view things in our environment that are strongly related to one’s self. Another way in which we can view the self as that it is many different concepts across a number of levels (Fiske, 2014). At the core, there is the body self which makes up the physical matter of you. From there, you move into more in-depth concepts such as spiritual self which comprises your private self-identity. There’s the interpersonal self that explains the connections we have with other people. The societal self describes who we are within one’s culture, such as race, gender, or age. Finally, there is agent self, in which case we view ourselves as being an object of others’ perspectives. Other researchers have come to different conclusions. For example, Bruce Hood (2012) believes that the self is merely an illusion, pointing out that our senses, perceptions, and concepts are oftentimes flawed and can trick us into false perceptions when it is just our minds creating them. In fact, he believes self is merely a creation of the mind, a result of an interconnected network of information that we call the brain. Some researchers tend to focus less on what is happening in the brain and more on what is happening in the world around is. Kitayama and Park (2010) saw the sense of self as deriving not so much from our brains (obviously, the brain is still important!), but from the culture that we are placed. We see the culture around us and engage in it which shapes the way that we perceive our sense of identity. Therefore, these researchers argue, our self of sense is derived from the culture that surrounds us.
The Self and Autism
Sticking with the theme of individuals with autism and how social psychology theories explain their behavior, it is interesting to think about whether or not these individuals would have weakened or lessened abilities to own a sense of self. You may wonder if they have no sense of self at all, given their harsh difficulties in regard to their social understandings. In a review of the literature, Lind (2010) found that individuals with autism have impaired autobiographical episodic memory, which can be defined as one’s memory of times, places, and other contextual information that can be directly stated. Having diminished abilities to remember this information may have a direct impact on your ability to form your sense of self. If you are unable to remember events that have shaped your life, you may find it difficult to define who you are, particularly if you agree with Kitayama and Park’s (2010) view on how the self is defined. Additionally, this researcher found that individuals with autism have a reduced self-reference effect, in which case they have difficulty relating stimuli in their environment to themselves, such that it may be more difficult for them to ascertain a self-concept.
Conclusion
Glancing quickly over the literature, you can see how many researchers take vastly different approaches to answer the question of who exactly we are and what controls the little voice in our head that embodies our existence. Regardless of the fact that there are many different ways of looking at it, one approach does not necessarily invalidate another – each approach brings evidence to the table that helps us to define our sense of self. However, each approach is probably not correct on its own. You can find weakness in any approach such that there are aspects that cannot be explained by said approach, likely because the self is such a vast, complicated, deep concept that is comprised of so many different aspects that it’s impossible to catch everything related in one swoop. Therefore, the answer to the question, ‘who am I?’ seems to largely depend on how you want to view yourself, as there are many different methods and strategies in doing so.
- Fiske, S. T. (2014). Social beings: Core motives in social psychology (3rd Edition). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
- Hood, Bruce. “The Self Illusion: How Your Brain Creates You.” Presentation at the Annual Conference The Amazing Meeting, Las Vegas, July 12-15, 2012.
- Lind, S. E. (2010). Memory and the self in autism: A review and theoretical framework. Autism, 14, 430-456.
- Northoff, G., Heinzel, A., de Greck, M., Bermpohl, F., Dobrowolny, H., & Panksepp, J. (2006). Self-referential processing in the brain – A meta-analysis of imaging studies on the self. Neeuroimage, 31, 440-457.