This is the 7th lecture of [[Keith Campbell]]'s *[[PA Psychology of the Self]]* from [[Peterson Academy]]. >  "Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind." — William James ## Relation as fundamental Sociologist Baldwin thinks that instead of the self, we should be talking about the 'socius,' which means companionship in Latin, because it is in actual dyadic relationship that is foundational rather than the self. Harry Stack Sullivan is known for interpersonal psychiatry, which studies psychological disorders and relational disorders. He talked about chumships—early friendships—as pivotal for forming ourselves. Object relations theory from clinical psychology suggests that our selves are formed by negotiating how different objects—representations of people—relate to one another in our head. Micheal Balint talks about the basic fault, or the basic split, is the divide in how we are built to connect, but always feel disconnected as well. ### [[John Bowlby's Attachment Theory|Attachment theory]] John Bowlby came up with attachment theory that argued that our personalities develop out of early attachment relationships.[^1] Two things are learnt from those early (first six months) relationships, which are 1) whether we are a good person, and 2) whether people are trustworthy. If we were loved at a young age, we think we are good people, and if not loved, then bad. From there we can see three attachment styles being developed. #### Attachment styles 1. Anxious attachment style — happens if parents aren't predictably present all the time. Such unstable environments make the person clingy and anxious, and hard to comfort in future relationships. 2. Avoidant attachment style — they are neglected by parents. Learns not to trust parents, and by extension others. Learns to be tough on their own, and hard to attach or build relationships later. 3. Secure attachment style — they are adequately provided for. This turns on the safe exploration system given the security and stability found in the parents. This is the most common and systematic understanding in the literature for how the self emerges from early childhood relationships. ## How (two) selfs connect Three models of how two selves get connected with one another here include, reciprocal self-disclosure, self expansion, and I-sharing. **Reciprocal self-disclosure** is the process of systematically revealing aspects of each other, going from shallow to deep. One lab version of this is the relationship closeness induction task, where two people are given a list of questions that start shallow and gradually get deeper. Connection here is achieved by merging. **Self expansion**—an Art Aron idea—is the idea that in a relationship, I am expanding myself in order to incorporate aspects and qualities of my partner, and my partner is doing the same. This growth sparks passion. In relationships, the expanding towards the other eventually stops, and passion stops, so a substitute for it is to expand together as a couple by experiencing things together that are new to both. Connection by expansion is achieved by merging and growing. **I-sharing**—work done by Liz Pinel—suggests that we can connect with another by sharing not the contents of our self, but consciousness itself. What that looks like is sharing a moment together where we both feel like we are experiencing each other. This, too, is merging but at the level of consciousness instead of at the level of content. In contrast, in predatory relationships, gaslighting[^2] or otherwise known as the billfish strategy[^3] is a common way to disconnect and destabilize a partner's sense of reality, in order to manipulate and control them. Social isolation is dangerous in relationships. ## How selfs connect as a group Belonging to a group makes us feel a sense of belongingness, groupness or technically known as entitativity. **Mere categorization** by Tajfel and Turner is the idea that a person would feel like they belong to a group simply by categorizing them as a member of the group. **Interdependence** increases groupness. This can be done by dividing jobs and assigning roles to make everybody work together and depend on one another. Next in line that increases groupness is the presence of an **out-group**. **Social identity theory of groups** tell us that we get self-esteem from being a member of a group. Group wins give me esteem, and strength my connectedness with that group. Group loses may make me leave the group to seek a group that wins in order to meet self-esteem needs. Robery Cialdini—author of Persuasion—studied people wearing or buying merch of their sports team right after they won. This is called **basking in reflected glory**, or BIRGing. Q: What does this idea that people can gain sufficient self-esteem from group identity alone without any personal achievements leave us? An old study called They Saw a Game showed selective perception of the same game between two teams, which is the self-serving bias operating on a group level. ### Discontinuity: group self vs individual self An interesting thing we see in groups is how the same person in a group can behave very differently than when he evaluated as an individual. Nice people can make violent groups, and violent people do not make groups at all, or dysfunctional groups if we want to call them that. Individuals tend to trust each other, but it is hard for groups to trust one another. Even the nicest of individuals can be more protective minded when it comes to thinking as a group or for the group. ### How groups connect Since groups are hard to trust each other, negotiations are difficult too. Political scientists Robert Axelrod and Bob Axelrod's research shows that groups tend to resort to tit-for-tat strategy, which is another way of saying an eye for an eye. Proportional response becomes a relevant concept. ## Self as cultural construct Individualism vs collectivism has been studied comparing United States and Japan, as well as Northern China wheat culture vs Southern China rice culture. Japanese had a lower self-esteem, and self-enhance on communal traits, and tend to win by a smaller margins in sports games, indicating a more collectivist self-concept.[^4] Cultivating rice is more of a collective effort, whereas cultivating wheat required no collaboration between families, Northern Chinese were more individualistic, and also more narcissistic.[^5] Honor culture has been studied comparing people from Northern US and Southern US. The North was a farming culture, while the South was a herding culture. The South had a stronger culture of honor because of the need to defend their animals. Meanwhile, the Northerners are more cooperative. ### Generational change With culture changing fast, concepts of the self change fast too. The US have generally trended towards individualism over time. Today we have a pretty bad loneliness epidemic as reported by Sergeon General and studied by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell himself. Same thing is happening to China, and South Korea has it worse. "We are built with pieces of other people in us" Subject: [[Psychology]] [^1]: He came to this understanding by observing war orphans suffering from losing their parents. The predominant idea before this was that suffering came from bad relationships with parents, thus he found this surprising. The fact that children suffer from not being loved at an early age is so common sensical to me now that I think this observation is worth noting. [^2]: The term 'gaslighting' comes from an old play where a partner lowers the gas light, and then tells the spouse that somebody lowered the gas light, destabilizing their sense of reality thus destabilizing them. [^3]: Similarly, this name comes from the observation that a billfish uses its bill to destabilize a school of fish to eat them. [^4]: Markus and Kitayama [^5]: Huajian Cai