Essays on self, meaning, and polarization

Our society worships the self. We are bombarded with messages to be self-aware, to bring our whole self to work, and to live authentically according to our true self. Doing so is the pinnacle of wellbeing. Underlying these messages is a pervasive lay belief about the self: the idea that who we are is driven by a deeply-rooted and unchanging essence. Termed self-essentialism, this way of thinking about the self paints an atomistic portrait of individual identity and suggests that the path to a good life is to know, express, and stay true to one's essential self. This dissertation explores the implications of self-essentialism for individual wellbeing and social perception. In so doing, I seek to challenge a uniformly positive conception of the self as internal, unseen, and unchanging—that is, as essentialized. Chapter 1 examines the influence of self-essentialist beliefs on individual wellbeing, acknowledging that such a lay theory of the self can foster a sense of certainty and meaning in life. However, Chapter 2 turns to the ways in which self-essentialist beliefs shape (and distort) our perceptions of others, highlighting a limitation of this way of thinking about individual identity. Chapter 1 tests the hypothesis that the perception of stability in one's self-concept, a crucial dimension of self-essentialism, enables the experience of meaning in life by conferring a sense of certainty to one's sense of self. Using a nationally representative archival dataset, I find that a sense of foresight, which is indicative of a stable sense of self, is associated with purpose in life. I also develop a novel intervention of perceived stability in the self-concept (i.e., writing about a day in the life of an expected versus surprising future self) and find across three experiments that contemplating an expected future self bolsters the perception of stability and certainty in the self-concept and leads to greater meaning in life. This work suggests that the belief in an unchanging self can serve the function of maintaining confident judgments about the world, resulting in a sense of certainty and wellbeing. Chapter 2 examines the impact of self-essentialism on social perception. I argue that the similarity-attraction effect (i.e., shared attributes lead to interpersonal attraction) is predicated upon the essentialist belief that an underlying truth or reality causes one's observable characteristics. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that self-essentialist reasoning (i.e., the belief that a deeply-rooted and unchanging essence causes people's observable attributes) leads people to infer a broader generalized shared reality about the world with someone with whom they share a single attribute, which in turn generates interpersonal attraction. Across five experiments, I find support for this hypothesis using both meaningful (i.e., political attitudes) and minimal (i.e., minimal group assignments) dimensions of similarity. I conclude by exploring the implications for social categorization, interpersonal attraction, and attitudinal (i.e., political) polarization. A self-essentialist view of the world means that we see people and their outcomes as being driven by an ineffable entity within. This work suggests that such a view is impoverished. An essential self can provide certainty and engender wellbeing by offering a (perhaps) plausible explanation for our social reality, but it prevents us from seeing the complex ways in which other people and social structures shape our identities and behavior. This is especially problematic in the context of organizations, by definition a social collective. To think that social reality is driven by the additive force of essentialized individuals is to fundamentally misunderstand and misperceive collective behavior. My hope is that we can move toward a more contextualized conception of the self, one that acknowledges the ways in which we are all embedded within our environments and interdependent with one another

Keywords: Business.
Advisor: Lowery Brian
Gruenfeld Deborah H.
Martin Ashley