Perspectives on Psychological Science (forthcoming)
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Abstract |
A long tradition of psychological research has explored the distinction between characteristics
that are part of the self and those that lie outside of it. Recently, a surge
of research has begun examining a further distinction. Even among characteristics
that are internal to the self, people pick out a subset as belonging to the true self. These
factors are judged as making people who they really are, deep down. In this paper, we
introduce the concept of the true self and identify features that distinguish people’s
understanding of the true self from their understanding of the self more generally. In
particular, we consider recent findings that the true self is perceived as positive and
moral, and that this tendency is actor-observer invariant and cross-culturally stable.
We then explore possible explanations for these findings and discuss their implications
for a variety of issues in psychology.
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References found in this work BETA
Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.
Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart.Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd & A. B. C. Research Group - 1999 - Oxford University Press USA.
Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation.Hazel R. Markus & Shinobu Kitayama - 1991 - Psychological Review 98 (2):224-253.
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought.Pascal Boyer - 2001 - Basic Books.
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Citations of this work BETA
Folk teleology drives persistence judgments.David Rose, Jonathan Schaffer & Kevin Tobia - 2020 - Synthese 197 (12):5491-5509.
Personal Identity.David Shoemaker & Kevin P. Tobia - forthcoming - In Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. Oxford:
The Essence of Essentialism.George E. Newman & Joshua Knobe - 2019 - Mind and Language 34 (5):585-605.
Autonomy, Rationality, and Contemporary Bioethics.Jonathan Pugh - 2020 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Origins of the Belief in Good True Selves.Julian De Freitas, Mina Cikara, Igor Grossmann & Rebecca Schlegel - 2017 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 21 (9):634-636.
View all 16 citations / Add more citations
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2016-11-29
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1,631 ( #2,125 of 2,420,820 )
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399 ( #915 of 2,420,820 )
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