Psychology and Sociology

**Social science** is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It in turn has many branches, each of which is considered a "social science". The social sciences include economics, political science, human geography, demography, psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, jurisprudence, history, and linguistics.

Social sciences are of course heavily relevant to megaten. Not just because the personal games are overtly based on psychology, and sociological aspects, but even the mainline games are based on psychology with demons being metaphors for ideas and social structures. This page will exist to encompass all the social science aspects relevant to the games which do not fit on the jung page. Since the social sciences are such a broad field, it will limit itself to things directly relevant to something that shows up in game.

There are various ways of doing social sciences. **Positivist** social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. **Interpretivist** social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (for instance, by combining **quantitative** and **qualitative** research). Leading to some combined theories like postpositivism.

Research designed to answer questions about the current state of
affairs such as the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals is
known as ***descriptive research***. Descriptive research can be qualitative or quantitative in orientation.

***Qualitative research***
 is descriptive research that is focused on observing and describing
events as they occur, with the goal of capturing all of the richness of
everyday behavior and with the hope of discovering and understanding
phenomena that might have been missed via only statistic examination.

**Quantitative** research designs are either **descriptive** (subjects usually measured once) or **experimental** (subjects measured before and after a treatment). A descriptive study establishes only associations between variables. An experiment establishes causality.
Qualitative psychological research methods include interviews, first-hand observation, and participant observation. Creswell (2003) identifies five main possibilities for qualitative research, including narrative, phenomenology, ethnography, case study, and grounded theory.

## General types

**Psychology** is the science of behavior and mind as regards the individual, embracing all aspects of conscious and unconscious experience as well as thought. It is an academic discipline and a social science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific cases. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.

Psychologists explore behavior and mental processes, including perception, cognition, attention, emotion (affect), intelligence, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, and personality. This extends to interaction between people, such as interpersonal relationships, including psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas. Psychologists of diverse orientations also consider the unconscious mind. Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical and deductive methods, some—especially clinical and counseling psychologists—at times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques. Psychology has been described as a "**hub science**", with psychological findings linking to research and perspectives from the social sciences, natural sciences, medicine, humanities, and philosophy.

**Moral psychology** is a field of study in both philosophy and psychology. Some use the term "moral psychology" relatively narrowly to refer to the study of moral development. However, others tend to use the term more broadly to include any topics at the intersection of ethics, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Some of the main topics of the field are moral judgment, moral reasoning, moral sensitivity, moral responsibility, moral motivation, moral identity, moral action, moral development, moral diversity, moral character (especially as related to virtue ethics), altruism, psychological egoism, moral luck, moral forecasting, moral emotion, affective forecasting, and moral disagreement.

**Sociology** is the study of social behavior or society, including its origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder, and change. Many sociologists aim to conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, while others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro-sociology level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure. Sociology focuses on groups, whereas psychology focuses more on individuals. Though there is much overlap, especially in the fields of social psychology.

**Cognitive science** is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology.
 The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of
organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural
 circuitry to modular brain organization. The fundamental concept of
cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of
representational structures in the mind and computational procedures
that operate on those structures.

One major contribution of AI and cognitive science to psychology has
been the information processing model of human thinking in which the
metaphor of brain-as-computer is taken literally. This relates to various megaten games such as digital devil saga which relate AIs to other minds, and thoughts to data processing in general. More information about this on the philosophy of mind page.

**Cognitive Psience**. The Psi in psience is short for **Parapsychology.** Which is is a field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena which include telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and other paranormal claims. It is identified as pseudoscience by the overwhelming majority of mainstream scientists. And so it is a combination of that term with the term cognitive science. In persona 5, Wakaba Isshiki was Futaba Sakura's
 mother and a prominent cognitive researcher focusing on a supernatural
phenomenon about the cognitive world within the human's mind which she referred to as cognitive psience.

## Psychology

### General

**Psychology** is the science of behavior and mind, embracing all aspects of conscious and unconscious experience as well as thought. It is an academic discipline and a social science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific cases. Psychology is of course heavily relevant to megaten, not just in persona, but mainline as well, since the forces it depicts are to some degree metaphors for human thought structures and their influence.

In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.

### Psychological approaches

**Biological Approach**
Biopsychologists
look at how your nervous system, hormones and genetic makeup affect
your behavior. Biological psychologists explore the
connection between your mental states and your brain, nerves and
hormones to explore how your thoughts, moods and actions are
shaped. What this means is that for the
biological approach, you are the sum of your parts. You think
the way you do because of the way your brain is built and because of
your body's needs.  All of your choices are based on your
physical body.  The biological approach attempts to understand
the healthy brain, but it also examines the mind and body to figure
out how disorders like schizophrenia develop from genetic
roots.

**Behavioral psychology.**
Behavioral psychologists believe that external
environmental stimuli influence your behavior and that you can be
trained to act a certain way. Behaviorists like B.F.
Skinner believe that you learn
through a system of reinforcements and punishment. The
behavioral approach is effective when you don't care what
someone thinks internally, as long as you get the desired behavior. The
influence of these theories affects us every day and throughout our
lives, impacting everything from why we follow the rules of the road
when driving to how advertising companies build campaigns to get us
to buy their products.

**Cognitive psychology**
In contrast
to behaviorists, cognitive psychologists believe that your
behavior is determined by your expectations and emotions. Cognitive
psychologist Jean Piaget would argue that you remember
things based on what you already know.  You also solve problems
based on your memory of past experiences. With this
approach, we turn away from people as machines and
delve into thoughts and feelings. How you act is based upon
internal processes, and there is much more stress upon individuals.
 From a cognitive perspective, your expectations of an upcoming
party will affect how you feel and act while you're there and will
color your memory of the night after you return home.

**Social psychology** is the study of how humans think about each other and
how they relate to each other. Social psychologists study such topics as
 the influence of others on an individual's behavior (e.g. conformity, persuasion), and the formation of beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes about other people. Social cognition
 fuses elements of social and cognitive psychology in order to
understand how people process, remember, or distort social information.
The study of group dynamics
 reveals information about the nature and potential optimization of
leadership, communication, and other phenomena that emerge at least at
the microsocial level.

**Humanistic psychology** is based on the belief that humans are
essentially good and that they are motivated to realize their full
potential. Psychologists from this camp focus on how you can feel
good about yourself by fulfilling your needs and goals. The prominent
humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers called his patients
'clients' and offered a supportive environment in which clients could
gain insight into their own feelings. In contrast to the
behavioral approach, the humanistic approach works on individual empowerment. Whether you are right or not, in a larger sense,
you are motivated to be the best person you can be. All your choices
come from trying to improve your life.  So, if you're trying to
cut back on your nightly wine consumption, a humanistic therapist
would be encouraging and supportive but won't directly advise you to
quit or try to analyze why you drink in the first place.

Humanistic psychology developed in the 1950s as a movement within academic psychology, in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. The humanistic approach sought to glimpse the whole person, not just
fragmented parts of the personality or isolated cognitions. Some founders of the humanistic school of thought were American psychologists Abraham Maslow, who formulated a hierarchy of human needs, and Carl Rogers, who created and developed client-centered therapy. Later, positive psychology opened up humanistic themes to scientific modes of exploration.

**Psychoanalysis** was promoted by Sigmund Freud, who believed that
many of our impulses are driven by sex.  Psychologists in this
school of thought believe that unconscious drives and experiences
from early childhood are at the root of your behaviors and that
conflict arises when societal restrictions are placed on these
urges. Although much of freud's work is considered outdated, he did open the door to certain ideas such as tracing adult actions to things that happened at a younger age.

### Themes

**Personality**. Personality oriented psychology is concerned with enduring patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion—commonly referred to as personality—in
 individuals. Theories of personality vary across different
psychological schools and orientations. They carry different assumptions
 about such issues as the role of the unconscious and the importance of
childhood experience. According to Freud, personality is based on the
dynamic interactions of the id, ego, and super-ego. Trait theorists, in contrast, attempt to analyze personality in terms of a discrete number of key traits by the statistical method of factor analysis. The number of proposed traits has varied widely. Dimensional models of personality are receiving increasing support, and
 some version of dimensional assessment will be included in the
forthcoming DSM-V. Megaten games focus on personality in various ways. The scale between law and chaos attributes being one that bears some connotations of personality. Likewise, in iva it showed a scale between friendly versus aloof or cold characters. Law to chaos is of course (aside from being more about ideology than just personality) not just one scale, since in various games and especially side games different aspects of what it associates with the characters show up in different areas.

**Unconscious mind.** Study of the unconscious mind,
 a part of the psyche outside the awareness of the individual which
nevertheless influenced thoughts and behavior was a hallmark of early
psychology. In one of the first psychology experiments conducted in the
United States, C. S. Peirce and Joseph Jastrow found in 1884 that subjects could choose the minutely heavier of two weights even if consciously uncertain of the difference. Freud popularized this concept, with terms like Freudian slip entering popular culture, to mean an uncensored intrusion of unconscious thought into one's speech and action. His 1901 text *The Psychopathology of Everyday Life* catalogues hundreds of everyday events which Freud explains in terms of unconscious influence. Pierre Janet advanced the idea of a subconscious mind, which could contain autonomous mental elements unavailable to the scrutiny of the subject

Behaviorism notwithstanding , the unconscious mind has maintained its
importance in psychology. Cognitive psychologists have used a "filter"
model of attention,
 according to which much information processing takes place below the
threshold of consciousness, and only certain processes, limited by
nature and by simultaneous quantity, make their way through the filter.
Copious research has shown that subconscious *priming* of certain ideas can covertly influence thoughts and behavior. Which is of course a heavy basis of how effecting shadows in persona games effects the people they correspond to.
 A significant hurdle in this research is proving that a subject's
conscious mind has not grasped a certain stimulus, due to the
unreliability of self-reporting. Some experimental data even suggests that the brain begins to consider taking actions before the mind becomes aware of them.

The unconscious mind of course forms a heavy aspect of the persona series, since it is based on interacting with shadows, representations of the unconscious minds of individuals. One heavy element explored therein being the fact that the shadow contains many aspects people refuse to identify with, and which they can become hostile when realizing that these aspects represent them. More information about this is on the jung page, since the persona series explores this mainly through the lens of Jung.

**Motivation**. Psychologists such as William James initially used the term *motivation* to refer to intention, in a sense similar to the concept of *will* in European philosophy. With the steady rise of Darwinian and Freudian thinking, instinct also came to be seen as a primary source of motivation. According to drive theory,
 the forces of instinct combine into a single source of energy which
exerts a constant influence. Classical psychoanalysis conceives of a struggle between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, roughly corresponding to id and ego. Later, in *Beyond the Pleasure Principle*, Freud introduced the concept of the *death drive*, a compulsion towards aggression, destruction, and psychic repetition of traumatic events.
 Meanwhile, behaviorist researchers used simple dichotomous models
(pleasure/pain, reward/punishment) and well-established principles such
as the idea that a thirsty creature will take pleasure in drinking. Clark Hull formalized the latter idea with his drive reduction model. Hunger, thirst, fear, sexual desire, and thermoregulation all seem to constitute fundamental motivations for animals.
 Humans also seem to exhibit a more complex set of motivations—though
theoretically these could be explained as resulting from primordial
instincts—including desires for belonging, self-image, self-consistency,
 truth, love, and control.

Motivation can be modulated or manipulated in many different ways. Researchers have found that eating, for example, depends not only on the organism's fundamental need for homeostasis—an important factor causing the experience of hunger—but also on circadian rhythms, food availability, food palatability, and cost. Abstract motivations are also malleable, as evidenced by such phenomena as *goal contagion*: the adoption of goals, sometimes unconsciously, based on inferences about the goals of others. Vohs and Baumeister
 suggest that contrary to the need-desire-fulfilment cycle of animal
instincts, human motivations sometimes obey a "getting begets wanting"
rule: the more you get a reward such as self-esteem, love, drugs, or
money, the more you want it. They suggest that this principle can even
apply to food, drink, sex, and sleep.

Megaten games also explore the idea of motivations, even explaining them via subconscious biases that can stem from things that happened to the individual early on. For instance, Junya Kaneshiro seems to have been raised in an impoverished situation, and so when he left this became obsessed with the idea of hoarding money, doing whatever it takes to get it, as well as when anxious spending to reassure himself he can. Motivations can tie to various unconscious biases that can effect what you prioritize.

**Development**. Mainly focusing on the development of the human mind through the life span, developmental psychology
 seeks to understand how people come to perceive, understand, and act
within the world and how these processes change as they age. This may
focus on cognitive, affective, moral,
 social, or neural development. Researchers who study children use a
number of unique research methods to make observations in natural
settings or to engage them in experimental tasks. Such tasks often
resemble specially designed games and activities that are both enjoyable
 for the child and scientifically useful, and researchers have even
devised clever methods to study the mental processes of infants. In
addition to studying children, developmental psychologists also study aging and processes throughout the life span, especially at other times of rapid change (such as adolescence and old age). Developmental psychologists draw on the full range of psychological theories to inform their research.

Psychology also deals with how things that happen in development effect one as they get older. For instance, persona 5 deals with people who had various things happen to them when younger and it effected their older mentalities. Goro being obsessed with his father due to him being neglectful and absent.

**Genes and environment**. All researched psychological traits are influenced by both genes and environment, to varying degrees (this contrast also being known as **nature vs nurture**). Epiginetics also deals with changes in gene expression rather than the genetic code itself.
 These two sources of influence are often confounded in observational
research of individuals or families. An example is the transmission of depression
 from a depressed mother to her offspring. Theory may hold that the
offspring, by virtue of having a depressed mother in his or her (the
offspring's) environment, is at risk for developing depression. However,
 risk for depression is also influenced to some extent by genes.
 The mother may both carry genes that contribute to her depression but
will also have passed those genes on to her offspring thus increasing
the offspring's risk for depression. Genes and environment in this
simple transmission model are therefore confounded, and hard to isolate.

Experimental and quasi-experimental behavioral genetic research uses genetic methodologies to disentangle this confound and understand the nature and origins of individual differences in behavior. Traditionally this research has been conducted using twin studies and adoption studies, two designs where genetic and environmental influences can be separated, to understand the relations and distinction. More recently, the availability of microarray molecular genetic or genome sequencing technologies allows researchers to measure participant DNA variation directly, and test whether individual genetic variants within genes are associated with psychological traits and psychopathology through methods including genome-wide association studies.

Megaten explores the relationship of both genes and environment to people. On the environment side it shows how individuals tend to conform heavily to the group they emerged from societally, showing a heavy environmental influence. In IVA for example, all your party members tend to conform to some degree to the group with which they were raised. Genes are addressed as well. Chaos often focuses on the pseudoscientific concept of social darwinism, hoping that killing off the weak leads to propagation of better genes. But with no indication that this is really successful. Law on the other hand in one story deliberately bio engineered humans with some demon genes in them to change their nature. And it is shown how this different humanity can exist in a radically different situation, living very differently from normal humans. One different way chaos addresses genes is merging humans and demons into one, creating hybrid races.

### Maslow's hierarchy of needs

   **Maslow's hierarchy of needs** is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation". Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take

precedence over others. He believed that for someone to be totally mentally healthy they would need to have all of these needs fulfilled, and that that is what you would expect to find from studying the most mentally healthy of the population.

This five stage model can be divided into **deficiency** needs and **growth**
needs. The first four levels are often referred to as deficiency needs (*D-needs*), and the top level is known as growth or being needs (*B-needs*). The deficiency needs are said to motivate people when they are unmet.
Also, the need to fulfil such needs will become stronger the longer the
duration they are denied. For example, the longer a person goes without
food, the more hungry they will become.
One must satisfy lower level deficit needs before progressing on to
meet higher level growth needs. When a deficit need has been satisfied
it will go away, and our activities become habitually directed towards
meeting the next set of
needs that we have yet to satisfy. In order, these needs are 1: things needed for immediate survival, 2: things needed for long term safety, 3: the need for a palce in the world where one belongs, 4: the need to feel accomplished, and finally 5: engaging in self actualizing creative activities.

**A place where you belong**. Persona 5 especially, though the other games as well focus heavily on the element of the hierarchy of having a place where you belong. The main characters are all depicted as outcasts, and those seeking to find a place in the world, and others for whom to be close to. And what it can do to one's self image and mental health to lack this. When tied with the hierarchy of needs, it frames the context of the importance of this for the sake of living a self actualized life.

Interestingly, it gives a contrasting element to this. While the main characters are seen as having found this and it helped them cope, and turn their life in a positive direction, Goro is described as lacking this, and his loneliness driving him over the edge. With him even saying that had he met you earlier, it would have been different, showing his affection for and longing to be truly integrated into your circle. This also ties to the next need of esteem and accomplishment needs, with him also having wanted attention from his absent father.

### Id, ego, and super-ego

**Id, ego, and super-ego** are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; (The id is also known as the Es in germany, which shows up as a demon in devil summoner, shown to the right). they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity
and interaction our mental life is described. According to this model of
 the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. The super-ego can stop one from doing certain things that one's id may want to do.
Although the model is structural and makes reference to an apparatus,
 the id, ego and super-ego are purely psychological concepts and do not
correspond to (somatic) structures of the brain such as the kind dealt with by neuroscience.
 The super-ego is observable in how someone can view themselves as
guilty, bad, pathetic, shameful, weak, and feel compelled to do certain
things. The superego consists of two structures: the **conscience**, which stores information about what is "bad" and what has been punished, and the **ego ideal**, which stores information about what is "good" and what one "should" do or be.

According to this theory, id impulses are based on the pleasure principle:
 instant gratification of one's own desires and needs. Sigmund Freud
believed that the id represents biological instinctual impulses in
humans, such as aggression (**Thanatos** or the Death instinct) and sexuality (**Eros** or the Life instinct).

For example, when the id impulses (e.g., desire to have sexual relations with a stranger) conflict with the superego
 (e.g., belief in the ideal of not having sex with unknown
persons), unsatisfied feelings of anxiousness or feelings of anxiety
come to the surface. To reduce these unpleasant feelings, the ego might
use defense mechanisms (conscious or unconscious blockage of the id
impulses).

From a neutral perspective, one could obviously associate the id with chaos, and the superego with law. Although that is not a perfect comparison since those sides have their own internal metrics for these things as well. Noting that even though the superego functions as the conscience, freud did not think letting it dominate over the ego was ideal. His point being that these personal goals have to be balanced with the larger system. Note that this corresponds somewhat to jung's archetypal representations of god and the devil. More information about which is on the jung page.

**The reality principle**. In Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis, the reality principle is the ability of the mind to assess the reality of the external world, and to act upon it accordingly, as opposed to acting on the pleasure principle. Allowing the individual to defer (put off) instant gratification, the reality principle is the governing principle of the actions taken by the ego, after its slow development from a "pleasure-ego" into a "reality-ego": it may be compared to the triumph of reason over passion, head over heart, rational over emotional mind. And this is the triumph of the ego over the id.

### Social pressure

**Peer pressure** (or **social pressure**) is the direct influence
 on people by peers, or the effect on an individual who gets encouraged
to follow their peers by changing their attitudes, values or behaviors to conform
 to those of the influencing group or individual. Peer pressure
differs from general social pressure because it causes an individual to
change in response to a feeling of being pressured or influenced from a
peer or peer group. Social groups affected include both *membership groups*, in which individuals are "formally" members (such as political parties and trade unions), and cliques,
 in which membership is not clearly defined. However, a person does not
need to be a member or be seeking membership of a group to be affected
by peer pressure.

The paradox of the idea of social influences is that while your personal self is born in social
interactions, the outcome of ethical relationships is the development of
 a self that is more than the sum of those interactions—what some refer
to as the "real" you, your inner or private self. This part that you
most identify as your core is strongest when your relationships have
been at their best. When it's treated badly, it's an assault upon your
dignity. So while its impossible to exist outside of social influences, there can be a balance where it is seen as fostering individuality versus an overpowering sense of control.

Social pressures are one of the major themes of persona 5. Many of the events are shown to result in the fact that many people will follow the herd unquestioningly, and so allow bad things to happen. Interestingly, at the end, yaldabaoth presents a solution to this to be not to encourage people to think for themselves, but rather to have exemplary people lead the herd in better directions, and helping purge it of abusive elements. The idea of relying on individual autonomy to make better decisions being mistrusted by him. But his proposal is rejected in favor of encouraging people not to merely rely on the herd to move well, but to think for themself.

Mainline megaten also brings up questions of social pressure at times. People are shown entrenched in specific situations, and that these situations will cause them to naturally think in specific ways, seeing certain trends as the norm. and games like iva show is that they tend to produce people more in tune with what is familiar to them. But that even in that light you can still go across the aisle to work for improvements. And you can seek to free your society of the most controlling influences.

Since demons are depicted as embodiment of ideas, the fact that they are equated to religious ideas and the idea of being something that is considered dubious to question at times reflects the games enshrining these social pressures as something that people will consider it almost blasphemous to deviate from. And something which one needs to learn that one has the ability to do so when necessary to make improvements. This ties to the idea of social organisms below on this page.

Interestingly, the games also make the point a bit about how it could be impossible to exist outside of social pressure. Using the metaphor of demons, demons exist via collective observations in a sense. So the only way for them to exist outside of this pressure is in a sense to kind of cease to exist, as in dagda's goal to free himself by returning to nature. Implying that you in some ways always are contextualized by social interactions if you exist. Though notably, demons can exist to some degree without direct knowledge of them. Such as noah in nocturne who has existed outside of human knowledge and in solitude for so long that none remember his name.

### Identity crisis

In psychology, the term **identity crisis** (coined by psychologist Erik Erikson) means the failure to achieve ego identity during adolescence. What this means is that one questions who they are, due to lacking a specific dominant self identity, and this leads to a crisis of questioning how to proceed with life due to not having a dominant idea of what type of person they are and by extension what they will do.

The stage of psychosocial development
 in which identity crisis may occur is called the Identity Cohesion vs.
Role Confusion. During this stage, adolescents are faced with physical
growth, sexual maturity, and integrating ideas of themselves and about
what others think of them.
 Adolescents therefore form their self-image and endure the task of
resolving the crisis of their basic ego identity. Successful resolution
of the crisis depends on one’s progress through previous developmental stages, centering on issues such as trust, autonomy, and initiative.

The concept of the identity crisis is a common theme in megaten games, especially for mainline. This being because mainline often involves a group of people who begin together who have ambiguous ideologies, who come in conflict for ideological reasons, ultimately breaking apart the group as they go in different ways over their different ideas of how to proceed and different self identities they decide on. These different decisions can involve rebelling against certain people previously considered authorities or even complying with them, but on their own terms. Oftentimes people are seen facing the aspects of the ideology they align to that they disagree with, and are seen coming to terms with what would be seen as its negatives, or alternately rejecting them as extremes that pollute the otherwise better ideal.

Interestingly, atlus shows aspects of law and chaos that it sees as coming in conflict with one's search for identity. Jiminez accuses zelenin of thinking she was part of something bigger, saying that in reality you just lose yourself by doing so. Law is sometimes accused of focusing on the big picture in ways that don't allow as much a focus on personal identity. This sometimes being depicted with the literal idea of uniting into a larger unity, with in SJ it being described as in a sense a single unified spirit. In contrast, chaos is seen at times associated with paranirvana and dissolution of the self in general. Which can be a metaphor for how too unstable a situation doesn't allow even enough stability to hold on to and resolve crisis-es of identity. As if your self is dissolved into the chaos of the world. Neutral being associated with existentialist logic is being presented as a balanced alternative.

Another point that they seem to be making is that lawful and chaotic worlds due to being structured around a specific theme / goal involves social pressure to align to that in particular, and so diminishes the role of choice in self identity. But that claim comes with issues of its own. since after all, neutral worlds also reject law or chaos slants that deviate too far, so the fact that it technically allows both as long as it is subsumed into neutral itself means its not really clear that its a world about more choice in general, so much as a declaration that since these ideas are defined around neutral as the center that there are more technical options, so long as all of them are within certain boundaries. But since any different humanity or situation would have more choices available relative to its own center, that can't be taken as an absolute. Doubly, since society has reasons for preventing harmful paradigms from having too much power in general. So the prevention of harmful self identities from being seen as live options can be seen as a good thing.

While one could vie chaos' call to radical freedom as potentially beneficial for contextualizing self identity, in nocturne, lucifer also mentions how you must no longer have any notion of where your strength will lead you. This ties to the unstable aspect of chaos, which can be considered a situation too uncertain to maintain a coherent identity and idea of the path of one's future in. It can imply that the chaotic and impulsive aspect are not reflective of the stable human mind, and in a sense actually disrupts it.

Likewise, in lawful worlds certain issues would not be impeding your ability to self actualize would likewise be something important for establishing and maintaining a sense of self identity. So you can call into question what paths really would lead to better self actualization. This is because in psychology material concerns are seen as effecting your ability to self actualize too. Such as lack of resources or a stable living condition. So the fact that law provides more of this is something that could be a large benefit. And the fact that its human nature is more oriented to the collective isn't an impediment to self actualization per say, because a slightly alien human nature would simply have its own way of doing things. And since people are born and grow with this nature, long term it is not a rejection of their own nature, but a nature that that humanity grows into.

### Defense mechanisms

**A defense mechanism** is an unconscious psychological mechanism that reduces anxiety arising from unacceptable or potentially harmful stimuli. Sigmund Freud was one of the first proponents of this construct. When anxiety becomes overwhelming, it is the ego's place to protect the person by employing defence mechanisms. Guilt, embarrassment and shame often accompany anxiety. Defence mechanisms work by distorting the id impulses into
acceptable forms, or by unconscious or conscious blockage of these
impulses. There are many different perspectives on how the construct of ***defence*** relates to the construct of ***coping***;
 which some writers differentiate the constructs in various ways.

Defence mechanisms may result in healthy or unhealthy consequences
depending on the circumstances and frequency with which the mechanism is
 used. In psychoanalytic theory, defence mechanisms are psychological strategies brought into play by the unconscious mind to manipulate, deny, or distort reality in order to defend against feelings of anxiety and unacceptable impulses and to maintain one's self-schema. These processes that manipulate, deny, or distort reality may include the following: **repression**, or the burying of a painful feeling or thought from one's awareness even though it may resurface in a symbolic form; **identification**, incorporating an object or thought into oneself; and **rationalization**, the justification of one's behaviour and motivations by substituting "good" acceptable reasons for the actual motivations. In psychoanalytic theory, repression is considered as the basis for other defense mechanisms.
Healthy persons normally use different defenses throughout life. An ego
 defense mechanism becomes pathological only when its persistent use
leads to maladaptive behaviour such that the physical or mental health
of the individual is adversely affected. Among the purposes of ego
defense mechanisms is to protect the mind/self/ego from anxiety and/or social sanctions and/or to provide a refuge from a situation with which one cannot currently cope.

An obvious example of a defense mechanism show up in persona 5 where goro complains about the idea of teammates. Saying that since he survived on his own they must be an unnecessary concept. But in actuality, he wishes heavily he was integrated into a group, yours specifically, and this was a defense mechanism against the fact that he was not. Yusuke points out how goro was in a similar boat to your group, and says that if he hadn't met you he might have ended up like goro eventually as well. Persona 5 of course focuses on and refers mainly to the idea of distortions, but for context a larger list is useful.

In 1936, Anna Freud enumerated the ten defence mechanisms that appear in the works of Sigmund Freud: 1. Repression, 2. Regression, 3. Reaction formation, 4. Isolation, 5. Undoing, 6. Projection, 7. Introjection, 8. Turning against one's own person, 9. Reversal into the opposite, 10. Sublimation or displacement. The five main of these are:

* **Repression**: when a feeling is hidden and forced from the consciousness to the unconscious because it is seen as socially unacceptable.
* **Regression**: falling back into an early state of mental/physical development seen as "less demanding and safer".
* **Projection**: possessing a feeling that is deigned as socially unacceptable and instead of facing it, that feeling or "unconscious urge" is seen in the actions of other people.

* **Reaction formation**: acting the opposite way that the unconscious instructs a person to behave, "often exaggerated and obsessive". For example, if a wife is infatuated with a man who is not her husband, reaction formation may cause her to – rather than cheat - become obsessed with showing her husband signs of love and affection.

* **Sublimation**: seen as the most acceptable of the mechanisms, an expression of anxiety in socially acceptable ways.

### Vaillant's categorization

The psychiatrist George Eman Vaillant introduced a four-level classification of defense mechanisms. The levels go from worse to better, with level 1 being the stage extremely far from a properly functioning mind, with level 4 being the level of proper functioning. Note that how these concepts are interpreted almost necessarily has a kind of normative or moral element. Since what one would consider to be a proper functioning depends on a concept of what one considers a pro social mentality. With the differences often being less in nature, and more in result in some more ambiguous cases Therapists are meant to try to distance themself from any normative presuppositions however past what are absolutely necessary. Looking at the list, one can tell that some concepts would necessarily have to be seen in a light that implies ideological presuppositions about how to interpret them.

**Level 1: "Psychotic".** When predominant, the mechanisms on this level are almost always severely pathological.
 These six defenses, in conjunction, permit one effectively to rearrange
 external experiences to eliminate the need to cope with reality.
Pathological users of these mechanisms frequently appear irrational or insane to others. These are the "psychotic" defenses, common in overt psychosis. However, they are normally found in dreams and throughout childhood as well. They include:

* **Delusional projection**: Delusions about external reality, usually of a persecutory nature.
* **Denial**: Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening; arguing against an anxiety-provoking stimulus by stating it doesn't exist; resolution of emotional conflict and reduction of anxiety by refusing to perceive or consciously acknowledge the more unpleasant aspects of external reality.

* **Distortion**: A gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs. Note that cognitive distortion is referenced as an explanation behind emergence of palaces in persona 5.

**Level 2: "Immature."** These mechanisms are often present in adults. These mechanisms lessen
 distress and anxiety produced by threatening people or by an
uncomfortable reality. Excessive use of such defences is seen as
socially undesirable, in that they are immature, difficult to deal with
and seriously out of touch with reality. These are the so-called
"immature" defences and overuse almost always leads to serious problems
in a person's ability to cope effectively. These defenses are often seen
 in major depression and personality disorders. They include:

* **Acting out**: Direct expression of an unconscious wish or impulse in action, without conscious awareness of the emotion that drives the expressive behavior.

* **Hypochondriasis**: An excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness.
* **Passive-aggressive behavior**: Indirect expression of hostility
* **Projection**: A primitive form of paranoia. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming consciously aware of them; attributing one's own unacknowledged, unacceptable, or unwanted thoughts and emotions to another; includes severe prejudice and jealousy, hypervigilance to external danger, and "injustice collecting", all with the aim of shifting one's unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses onto someone else, such that those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations are perceived as being possessed by the other.

* **Schizoid Fantasy**: Tendency to retreat into fantasy in order to resolve inner and outer conflicts.

**Level 3: "Neurotic."** These mechanisms are considered neurotic,
 but fairly common in adults. Such defences have short-term advantages
in coping, but can often cause long-term problems in relationships, work
 and in enjoying life when used as one's primary style of coping with
the world. They include:

* **Displacement**: defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet; separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening. For example, a mother may yell at her child because she is angry with her husband.

* **Dissociation**: Temporary drastic modification of one's personal identity or character to avoid emotional distress; separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.

* **Intellectualization**: A form of isolation; concentrating on the intellectual components of a situation so as to distance oneself from the associated anxiety-provoking emotions; separation of emotion from ideas; thinking about wishes in formal, affectively bland terms and not acting on them; avoiding unacceptable emotions by focusing on the intellectual aspects (isolation, rationalization, ritual, undoing, compensation, and magical thinking).

* **Reaction formation**: Converting unconscious wishes or impulses that are perceived to be dangerous or unacceptable into their opposites; behaviour that is completely the opposite of what one really wants or feels; taking the opposite belief because the true belief causes anxiety.

* **Repression**: The process of attempting to repel desires towards pleasurable instincts, caused by a threat of suffering if the desire is satisfied; the desire is moved to the unconscious in the attempt to prevent it from entering consciousness; seemingly unexplainable naivety, memory lapse or lack of awareness of one's own situation and condition; the emotion is conscious, but the idea behind it is absent.

**Level 4: "Mature."** These are commonly found among emotionally healthy adults and are
considered mature, even though many have their origins in an immature
stage of development. They have been adapted through the years in order
to optimise success in human society and relationships. The use of these
 defences enhances pleasure and feelings of control. These defences help
 to integrate conflicting emotions and thoughts, whilst still remaining
effective. Those who use these mechanisms are usually considered virtuous. Mature defences include:

* **Altruism**: Constructive service to others that brings pleasure and personal satisfaction.
* **Anticipation**: Realistic planning for future discomfort.
* **Humor**: Overt expression of ideas and feelings (especially those that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about directly) that gives pleasure to others. The thoughts retain a portion of their innate distress, but they are "skirted around" by witticism, for example self-deprecation.

* **Sublimation**: Transformation of unhelpful emotions or instincts into healthy actions, behaviours, or emotions, for example, playing a heavy contact sport such as football or rugby can transform aggression into a game. This is actually mentioned in the visionary items of SMTI. Lucifer talks about how sublimated desire can be seen as not being true to yourself, and transforming your true intentions to socially acceptable ones at times. And how you should be true to your heart. In keeping with the impulsive chaotic mentality.

* **Suppression**: The conscious decision to delay paying attention to a thought, emotion, or need in order to cope with the present reality; making it possible later to access uncomfortable or distressing emotions whilst accepting them.

### Other defense mechanisms

**Pathological**

* **Conversion**: The expression of an intrapsychic conflict as a physical symptom; some examples include blindness, deafness, paralysis, or numbness. This phenomenon is sometimes called *hysteria*.

* **Splitting**: A primitive defense. Both harmful and helpful impulses are split off and unintegrated, frequently projected onto someone else. The defended individual segregates experiences into all-good and all-bad categories, with no room for ambiguity and ambivalence. When "splitting" is combined with "projecting", the undesirable qualities that one unconsciously percieves oneself as possessing, one consciously attributes to another.

**Immature**

* **Idealization**: Tending to perceive another individual as having more desirable qualities than he or she may actually have.
* **Introjection**: Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person. For example, introjection occurs when we take on attributes of other people who seem better able to cope with the situation than we do.

* **Passive aggression**: Aggression towards others expressed indirectly or passively, often through procrastination.
* **Projective identification**: The object of projection invokes in that person a version of the thoughts, feelings or behaviours projected.
* **Somatization**: The transformation of uncomfortable feelings towards others into uncomfortable feelings toward oneself: pain, illness, and anxiety.

* **Wishful thinking**: Making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence, rationality, or reality.

**Neurotic**

* **Isolation**: Separation of feelings from ideas and events, for example, describing a murder with graphic details with no emotional response.

* **Rationalization (making excuses)**: Convincing oneself that no wrong has been done and that all is or was all right through faulty and false reasoning. An indicator of this defense mechanism can be seen socially as the formulation of convenient excuses.

* **Regression**: Temporary reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way, for example, using whining as a method of communicating despite already having acquired the ability to speak with an appropriate level of maturity.

* **Undoing**: A person tries to 'undo' an unhealthy, destructive or otherwise threatening thought by acting out the reverse of the unacceptable. Involves symbolically nullifying an unacceptable or guilt provoking thought, idea, or feeling by confession or atonement.

* **Upward and downward social comparisons**: A defensive tendency that is used as a means of self-evaluation. Individuals will look to another individual or comparison group who are considered to be worse off in order to dissociate themselves from perceived similarities and to make themselves feel better about themselves or their personal situation.

* **Withdrawal**: Withdrawal is a more severe form of defence. It entails removing oneself from events, stimuli, and interactions under the threat of being reminded of painful thoughts and feelings.

**Mature**

* **Acceptance**: A person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition (often a difficult or uncomfortable situation) without attempting to change it, protest, or exit. Religions and psychological treatments often suggest the path of acceptance when a situation is both disliked and unchangeable, or when change may be possible only at cost or risk.

* **Courage**: The mental ability and willingness to confront conflicts, fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, despair, obstacles, vicissitudes or intimidation. Physical courage often extends lives, while moral courage preserves the ideals of justice and fairness.

* **Emotional self-regulation**: The ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable. Emotional self-regulation refers to the processes people use to modify the type, intensity, duration, or expression of various emotions.

* **Emotional self-sufficiency**: Not being dependent on the validation (approval or disapproval) of others.
* **Forgiveness**: Cessation of resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offence, disagreement, or mistake, or ceasing to demand retribution or restitution.

* **Gratitude**: A feeling of thankfulness or appreciation involving appreciation of a wide range of people and events. Gratitude is likely to bring higher levels of happiness, and lower levels of depression and stress. Throughout history, gratitude has been given a central position in religious and philosophical theories.

* **Humility**: A mechanism by which a person, considering their own defects, has a humble self-opinion. Humility is intelligent self-respect which keeps one from thinking too highly or too meanly of oneself.

* **Identification**: The unconscious modelling of one's self upon another person's character and behavior.
* **Mercy**: Compassionate behavior on the part of those in power.
* **Mindfulness**: Adopting a particular orientation toward one's experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterised by curiosity, openness, and acceptance.

* **Moderation**: The process of eliminating or lessening extremes and staying within reasonable limits. It necessitates self-restraint which is imposed by oneself on one's own feelings, desires etc.

* **Patience**: Enduring difficult circumstances (delay, provocation, criticism, attack etc.) for some time before responding negatively. Patience is a recognized virtue in many religions.

* **Respect**: Willingness to show consideration or appreciation. Respect can be a specific feeling of regard for the actual qualities of a person or feeling being and also specific actions and conduct representative of that esteem. Relationships and contacts that are built without the presence of respect are seldom long term or sustainable. The lack of respect is at the very heart of most conflict in families, communities, and nations.

* **Tolerance**: The practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves.

### Cognitive distortions

**Cognitive distortions** are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that are believed to perpetuate the effects of psychopathological states, especially depression and anxiety. Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cognitive therapists believe
cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. These thinking
patterns often are said to reinforce negative thoughts or emotions.
 Cognitive distortions tend to interfere with the way a person perceives
 an event. Because the way a person feels intervenes with how they
think, these distorted thoughts can feed negative emotions and lead an
individual affected by cognitive distortions towards an overall negative
 outlook on the world and consequently a depressive or anxious mental
state. Cognitive distortions are a concept from **Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).**

For
 example, a person might tell themselves, “I always fail when I try to
do something new; I therefore fail at everything I try.” This is an
example of “black or white” (or *polarized*) thinking. The person is only seeing things in absolutes — that if they fail at one thing, they must inherenlty fail at **all** things. If they added, “I must be a complete loser and failure” to their thinking, that would also be an example of *overgeneralization* — taking a failure at one specific task and generalizing it their very self and identity.

The model essentially states that there are specific (and common) ways
people distort their thinking. These irrational thoughts and beliefs
(i.e., distortions) can lead to problematic emotional states and
behavior, like anxiety, low self-esteem, depression and relationship
conflicts. That’s why you want to be aware of them, so that you can
shift your thinking to more rational and objective thoughts whenever
possible.  More rational thinking tends to lead to more positive
emotional and behavioral experiences. Cognitive distortions are not a rare or extreme thing limited only to certain individuals, but how bad they get and how damaging it can be between people varies by individual.

Cognitive distortions are obviously a heavily relevant aspect of persona 5 that is referred to commonly in game. For instance, Palaces are described as a manifestation of distortions, strong negative and corrupt
 thoughts that warp the perceptions of people into a hazard for
themselves and others (for example, seeing all other people as living ATMs). These are implied to lead to their motivations and desires being twisted, resulting in an individual palace forming.

Despite using the name distortion, there is some ambiguity over how closely the palaces really resemble unique distortions. For starters, the subconscious using symbolic imagery isn't necessarily a distortion in and of itself. That's just how they work. And the idea of seeing people as atms seems more like a moral statement, or disposition towards them than necessarily something that totally separates the individual from anyone else. While its true that some distortions would probably underlie this, its not clear about these characters per say that them being heavily immoral really separates them psychologically from anyone else that heavily. They aren't mentally handicapped or necessarily disordered. So like as stated above, it seems a moral element is being read into this. What makes their distortions considered extra bad is the moral outcome, rather than necessarily just the idea of them having a mental handicap or delusion that is unique to their mentality. The fact that the palaces isolate one aspect of their personality also implies less nuance than a shadow would realistically have. Though obviously for the sake of plot streamlining the logic makes it more simple.

Note also that cognitive distortions despite the name aren't quite some kind of error thrown on top of regular thinking. But are in and of themselves often the regular thinking of those involved. Since there is no underlying pure human nature belying how peopel function. People use shortcuts and mistaken biases in a sense for everything. So the idea that deleting a distortion would lead directly to more objective thinking would be a bit dubious, since realstically the thinking could easily just fall into different still dubious patterns. Since everyone has cognitive biases in a way, just that some people's are far more extreme than others. The thing to remember is that everything exists on gradients of effect. Whether they are present isn't necessarily a binary, but a scale. And whether it is a problem yet has some ideological connotations read into it.

**Cognitive restructuring** (**CR**) is a psychotherapeutic process of learning to identify and dispute irrational or maladaptive thoughts known as cognitive distortions, such as all-or-nothing thinking (splitting), magical thinking, over-generalization, magnification, and emotional reasoning, which are commonly associated with many mental health disorders. CR employs many strategies, such as Socratic questioning, thought recording, and guided imagery, and is used in many types of therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT). A number of studies demonstrate considerable efficacy in using CR-based therapies. CR therapies aim to eliminate “automatic thoughts” which create
dysfunctional or negative views for individuals. Cognitive restructuring
 is the main component of Beck's and Burns's cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

Here are a few examples of distortions:

**1. Filtering.**

We take the
negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive
aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single,
unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of
reality becomes darkened or distorted.

**2. Polarized Thinking (or “Black and White” Thinking).**

In
 polarized thinking, things are either “black-or-white.” We have to be
perfect or we’re a failure — there is no middle ground. You place people
 or situations in “either/or” categories, with no shades of gray or
allowing for the complexity of most people and situations. If your
performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

**3. Overgeneralization.**

In
 this cognitive distortion, we come to a general conclusion based on a
single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens
only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a
 single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.

**4. Jumping to Conclusions.**

Without
 individuals saying so, we know what they are feeling and why they act
the way they do. In particular, we are able to determine how people are
feeling toward us.

For example, a person may conclude that someone
 is reacting negatively toward them but doesn’t actually bother to find
out if they are correct. Another example is a person may anticipate that
 things will turn out badly, and will feel convinced that their
prediction is already an established fact.

**5. Catastrophizing.**

We
 expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred to as
“magnifying or minimizing.” We hear about a problem and use *what if* questions (e.g., “What if tragedy strikes?” “What if it happens to me?”).

For
 example, a person might exaggerate the importance of insignificant
events (such as their mistake, or someone else’s achievement). Or they
may inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until
they appear tiny (for example, a person’s own desirable qualities or
someone else’s imperfections).

**6. Personalization.**

Personalization
 is a distortion where a person believes that everything others do or
say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to the person. We also
compare ourselves to others trying to determine who is smarter, better
looking, etc.

A person engaging in personalization may also see
themselves as the cause of some unhealthy external event that they were
not responsible for. For example, “We were late to the dinner party and *caused* the hostess to overcook the meal. If I had only pushed my husband to leave on time, this wouldn’t have happened.”

**7. Control Fallacies.**

If we feel *externally controlled*,
 we see ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. For example, “I can’t
help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I work
overtime on it.” The fallacy of *internal control* has us
assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around
us. For example, “Why aren’t you happy? Is it because of something I
did?”

**8. Fallacy of Fairness.**

We feel
resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people won’t
agree with us. As our parents tell us when we’re growing up and
something doesn’t go our way, “Life isn’t always fair.” People who go
through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging
its “fairness” will often feel badly and negative because of it. Because
 life isn’t “fair” — things will not always work out in your favor, even
 when you think they should.

**9. Blaming.**

We
 hold other people responsible for our pain, or take the other track and
 blame ourselves for every problem. For example, “Stop making me feel
bad about myself!” Nobody can “make” us feel any particular way — only
we have control over our own emotions and emotional reactions.

**10. Shoulds.**

We
 have a list of ironclad rules about how others and we should behave.
People who break the rules make us angry, and we feel guilty when we
violate these rules. A person may often believe they are trying to
motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if they have to be
punished before they can do anything.

For example, “I really should exercise. I shouldn’t be so lazy.” *Musts* and *oughts* are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When a person directs *should statements* toward others, they often feel anger, frustration and resentment.

**11. Emotional Reasoning.**

We
 believe that what we feel must be true automatically. If we feel stupid
 and boring, then we must be stupid and boring. You assume that your
unhealthy emotions reflect he way things really are — “I feel it,
therefore it must be true.”

**12. Fallacy of Change.**

We
 expect that other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or
cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for
happiness seem to depend entirely on them.

**13. Global Labeling.**

We
 generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. These
are extreme forms of generalizing, and are also referred to as
“labeling” and “mislabeling.” Instead of describing an error in context
of a specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy label to
themselves.

For example, they may say, “I’m a loser” in a
situation where they failed at a specific task. When someone else’s
behavior rubs a person the wrong way, they may attach an unhealthy label
 to him, such as “He’s a real jerk.” Mislabeling involves describing an
event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. For
example, instead of saying someone drops her children off at daycare
every day, a person who is mislabeling might say that “she abandons her
children to strangers.”

**14. Always Being Right.**

We
 are continually on trial to prove that our opinions and actions are
correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we will go to any length to
demonstrate our rightness. For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing
with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what
because I’m right.” Being right often is more important than the
feelings of others around a person who engages in this cognitive
distortion, even loved ones.

**15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy.**

We expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score. We feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.

### Brainwashing

**Brainwashing** (also known as **mind control**, **menticide**, **coercive persuasion**, **thought control**, **thought reform**, and **re-education**) is the application of the theoretical concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject’s ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into the subject’s mind, as well as to change his or her attitudes, values, and beliefs.

The concept of brainwashing was originally developed during the Korean War to explain how Chinese captors appeared to make American prisoners of war cooperate with them. Scholars also looked at Nazi Germany
 and at some criminal cases in the United States. However, as of yet, brainwashing in the literal sense is considered to be in the realm of science fiction, rather than a real thing, there being no known examples or times / metrics of accomplishment. This of course doesn't count lesser examples that are more casually called brainwashing, such as manipulation.

Brainwashing has a heavy history in megaten games. Various times in the series, some group or person would do brainwashing, ranging from certain law endings, to in SJ the chaos side, to in iva dagda, and the phantom thieves in persona 5. An interesting thing the games hint at is how different brainwashing even is from social influences in general. Since for instance, a law style brainwashing is used to create an orderly world, yet someone born in the world of shijima would have simply had that be their nature to begin with. Certain games imply limits to the power of brainwashing, saying it can only work on the content of your existing mind. This ties to how certain social situations produce people who are attuned to them in general, and how brainwashing in a sense is just shifting these influences heavily. This ties into the ambiguity of autonomy and how people and environment are continuous.

Interestingly, while in the other situations it is depicted as more morally ambiguous, in persona 5 brainwashing of heavily bad people into better people is presented as overall morally good. Implying it being seen as an acceptable way to stop the harms coming from them. So its leaving the question open to what degree of harm or what situation doing so would be acceptable in, if it is presumed that it is acceptable at times. Note that in p5, as with the other games, the characters doing this never refer to it as brainwashing in and of themselves. In p5 its referred to as changing someone's heart. In strange journey they refer to it as enlightenment. In II to giving op your knowledge (of good and evil. Meaning a disposition toward considering selfish actions). A point as regards the enlightenment aspect being that if a so called enlightenment did change your consciousness, what even distinguishes it from brainwashing?

### Jacques Lacan

**Jacques Lacan** was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud." While megaten does not directly reference him in the same way that xenogears does (which has a character actually named lacan) many of his ideas were similar to jung in a way that helps elucidate on some of its themes, due to being close to the field of psychoanalysis. And due to having close ties with other things referenced by them, it is possible that some of the overlaps were intentional. Lacan is heavily influential, being a main basis for much of the works of many modern philosophers like Zizek.

**The three registers** is a system lacan uses to describe the three dimensions of subjectivity. Lacan believes that the psyche can be divided into three
major structures that control our lives and our desires.

**1: The imaginary** refers to the construction of ourselves and others, giving them a sense of unity. This is similar (though not the same) to jung's idea of the persona. The imaginary refers not the full content of ourselves, but the way we view and identify with ourselves as a concrete unity, as well as how we interact with the symbolic rules of society. I.E. to identify as a doctor involves a social idea of what a doctor is. These constructed selves are referred to as the other with a small o to distinguish it from the big Other. Note that even your own ego is called an other.

**2: The symbolic** refers to our ideas about the symbolic order of society. We view it as having specific rules and precepts that are constructs to make it easier to interact with. This also includes a normative order. The idea of a "**big other**" that represents the view of society that we judge ourself relative to the views of. An important part of some who use this scema being the realization that the big other is not real, but an internal mental construct, and so our feelings of guilt and not living up to it do not necessarily correspond to objective wrongs, or similar things.

**3: The real** refers to the full range of our experiences, which the constructs that the first two registers use ignores much of. Real here is not meant to imply it is objective reality, merely that it is the full content of our subjectivity. People are seen as having a crisis of identity, or other forms of anxiety when the real pushes through into the other realms, upending the constructs that were used to uphold them. Note that calling it the real does not mean that it is something you are meant to be able to achieve through objectivity. Constructs and systems are seen as something we are inherently bound by, and as necessary means to interact with society, others, and even ourselves.

The three registers were first defined
by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, but the clearest contemporary
descriptions of them come from Slavoj Zizek. He writes that
these three registers "can be nicely illustrated by a game of
chess." The rules of chess (the moves each piece can make, the
board, etc.) are The Symbolic. The level on which each piece is
shaped and given a name (King, Queen, pawn) is The Imaginary. And the
contingent circumstances that are left out of these registers (the
intrusion on the game by my dog that upsets the chess board) is The
Real.

And important thing to note is that the concept of the big other related to psychology of religion. Namely, that it is common for people to associate the big other with a religious concept of god, and use it as an assessment of themself. In megaten this can of course be taken more literally, since gods exist as emanations of actual structures of the human mind. And a big theme is compliance with them versus realization that one can move beyond the construct any specific one represents. The most obvious example being yhvh in SMTII, who is presented as a dominant order of society that every ending ultimately seeks to deconstruct or move past, but for different reasons. In real life christian atheism, a large focus in it is its association of god with the big other specifically to focus on its absence, and the realization that the internal voice is not a divine voice.

IVA expands on this, by talking about gods being bounded by language. To lacan, the symbolic and imaginary are based in language, whereas the real by definition escapes language, being outside of our constructs that language signifies. And so this relates to in-game how gods bounded by language are ones we can see, and thus be actively conscious of. Whereas ones not entering our imaginary are not bounded in this way. This is obviously not a 1:1 of the psychological idea, having also aspects related to game functioning and them as specific beings, but it is giving an indication of a tangible symbolic order before us.

One thing brought up in p5 with cognition is that people can recreate society and change the shape of the world. This does not necessarily mean literally (although in-game it is depicted literally) but is about the fact that the symbolic order of society can change to any number of arrangements, which literally changes your experience of reality, due to being what shapes your mode of interaction with it. And as such, it places high value on the mental aspect of this.

**Mirror stage**. The idea of the
"mirror stage" is an important early component in Lacan’s
critical reinterpretation of the work of Freud. Drawing on work in
physiology and animal psychology, Lacan proposes that human infants
pass through a stage in which an external image of the body
(reflected in a mirror, or represented to the infant through the
mother or primary caregiver) produces a psychic response that gives
rise to the mental representation of an "I". The infant
identifies with the image, which serves as a gestalt of the infant's
emerging perceptions of selfhood, but because the image of a unified
body does not correspond with the underdeveloped infant's physical
vulnerability and weakness, this imago is established as an Ideal-I
toward which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his or
her life.

**Ego**. Lacan believed that the Cartesian picture of self is misleading because
it neglects the unconscious. For both Lacan and Freud, the ego is something
that we build, largely injecting material dished on us by other
people; our "self" is an imaginative creation. One aspect of this is the idea that the ego is in some sense an object rather than a subject. In other
words, the ego, despite conscious senses to the contrary, is not a
locus of autonomous agency, the seat of a free, true “I”
determining its own fate. But even it itself is a result of your full range of thoughts projecting into it from the unconscious.

As such, he calls even your ego an "other," saying that you are inherently alienated from yourself due to this object having aspects even you cannot understand. Subjectivity in a sense being born from the inability of the subject to perceive itself as an object, and its full qualities, and so inherently revolving around this lack. Even your unconscious is not seen as a "self" by him, since your brain too exists as an object in the world, and does not create content monadically, but is shaped by external things, showing this interrelation.

Likewise, the self construction that happens in the mirror stage is seen as in a sense a misrecognition. Likewise every instance of someone identifying themself as a specific type of person. This being similar to the jungian idea of the constructed persona leaving out the aspects of the shadow. Lacan sees viewing the ego as the true self ignores that you have no self outside of the projected content much of which ultimately comes from outside yourself, since your view of the symbolic order is shaped by the actual external elements of the world. In-game, some of this tension is seen, showing how people are never fully autonomous from their situation, and even how gods live in the subconscious affecting them, where the gods themselves are shaped by society. showing that the categories people use come from external societal influence.

**Desire** is an important concept for lacan to make sense of motivation. Desire for lacan means not just the immediate wanting of a specific thing, something he calls lack, but the motivating factor for you in general. And desire stems from the idea of lack. People see themselves as lacking something, which the big other calls them to want to obtain. Interestingly, for lacan this blurs the idea of the id and superego together since what is desired can think that to be successful as viewed positively by the big other can be a normative drive. The important thing here is that desire by him is viewed always through the categories society pushes on you. So even your own desires are shaped by external categories you cannot fully escape.

Interestingly, people who study lacan make the point how desire is a fundamental characteristic of subjectivity, and so in some ways people are addicted to the desire more than always wanting it fundamentally satisfied. This can in some ways explain why people will defend bad situations they are stuck in rather than trying to rectify them. Since at the point where they consider these struggles like a journey, they can identify with this journey to some degree, and have no sense of what their self would be like without it. This could be used to contextualize the neutral characters' aversions to a law oriented world. The fact that certain struggles they are used to would not exist there feels too alien to their narrative of struggle, and so even though they often struggle to solve those problems they do not want a total erasure of them.

### Moral psychology

**Moral psychology** is a field of study in both philosophy and psychology. Some use the term "moral psychology" relatively narrowly to refer to the study of moral development. However, others tend to use the term more broadly to include any topics at the intersection of ethics, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Some of the main topics of the field are moral judgment, moral reasoning, moral sensitivity, moral responsibility, moral motivation, moral identity, moral action, moral development, moral diversity, moral character (especially as related to virtue ethics), altruism, psychological egoism, moral luck, moral forecasting, moral emotion, affective forecasting, and moral disagreement.

One important topic in moral psychology is culpability. I.E. How one's base psychology and its influences can establish degrees of culpability for certain actions done. For instance, whether someone born in nazi germany forced into the party and who thinks it is normal would be as culpable as someone in a modern western society doing similar things without the same influences.

In megaten, though it doesn't necessarily address the concept of culpability directly, the question is implicitly implied by the fact that it shows how people will tend to ideologically resemble what they came from. Like in iva how all your team members are slanted somewhat towards the group that produced them. In IV, merkabah even distinguishes between people who have mentalities too detrimental to allow versus those who it sees as actively evil. Referring to the former as victims of circumstance. In persona 5 they mention how socrates thought all evil was born from ignorance and that training could effect how people act. While this idea is seen as too absolutist to be totally literal in modern day it does provide some context for an important aspect of moral psychology, and to recall the different impulses and knowledge one has that effects one's actions.

**Moral luck** describes circumstances whereby a moral agent
 is assigned moral blame or praise for an action or its consequences
even if it is clear that said agent did not have full control over
either the action or its consequences. Namely that certain aspects of how good you might be come from luck, and situations outside your control. Since this is true, then morality might have to be seen not as an individual endeavor, but an overall structural trend individuals are continuous with. For instance, yusuke mentions how if he hadn't found someone like you he might have ended up the same as goro. If taken literally, then the moral culpability would be more similar than it at first seems, even though one was pointed in a good direction and another in a negative one.

**Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development** constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. The theory holds that moral reasoning, the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable developmental stages, each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than its predecessor. Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment far beyond the ages studied earlier by Piaget, who also claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages.
 Expanding on Piaget's work, Kohlberg determined that the process of
moral development was principally concerned with justice, and that it
continued throughout the individual's lifetime, a notion that spawned dialogue on the philosophical implications of such research.

Kohlberg's six stages can be more generally grouped into three levels
 of two stages each: pre-conventional, conventional and
post-conventional. Following Piaget's constructivist requirements for a stage model, as described in his theory of cognitive development, it is extremely rare to regress in stages—to lose the use of higher stage abilities.
 Stages cannot be skipped; each provides a new and necessary
perspective, more comprehensive and differentiated than its predecessors
 but integrated with them.

*Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)*

1. Obedience and punishment orientation: (*How can I avoid punishment?*

2. Self-interest orientation : (*What's in it for me?*) (*Paying for a benefit*)

*Level 2 (Conventional)*

3. Interpersonal accord and conformity : (*Social norms*)(*The good boy/girl attitude*)

4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation : (*Law and order morality*)

*Level 3 (Post-Conventional)*

5. Social contract orientation

6. Universal ethical principles: (*Principled conscience*)

**Heinz's dilemma** is a frequently used example in many ethics and morality classes to highlight the stages of moral development. One well-known version of the dilemma, used in Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development, is stated as follows:
A woman was near death. There was one drug that the doctors thought
might save her. But the only producers of it charge far more for it than it is worth. Her husband tries everything he can to get the money, but in the end ends up with not enough for its cost, though more than what would be considered a fair price. He asks if he can get a reduction in cost, or to pay some later but is told no. He is then faced with the issue. The only way to get the drug in time is to steal it. If he does not steal it his wife will die. Should He break into the laboratory to steal
 the drug for his wife? Why or why not?

From a theoretical point of view, it is not important what the participant thinks that Heinz should *do*. Kohlberg's theory holds that the justification the participant offers is what is significant, the *form* of their response. Below are some of many examples of possible arguments that belong to the six stages. Note that different possible answers could be given for each stage, but this is one potential way of listing them.

**Stage one (obedience):** Heinz should not steal the medicine because
he will consequently be put in prison which will mean he is a bad
person. **Or**: Heinz should steal the medicine because it is only worth
$200 and not how much the druggist wanted for it; Heinz had even
offered to pay for it and was not stealing anything else.

**Stage two (self-interest):** Heinz should steal the medicine
because he will be much happier if he saves his wife, even if he will
have to serve a prison sentence. **Or**: Heinz should not steal the
medicine because prison is an awful place, and he would more likely
languish in a jail cell than over his wife's death.

**Stage three (conformity)**: Heinz should steal the medicine because
his wife expects it; he wants to be a good husband. **Or**: Heinz should
not steal the drug because stealing is bad and he is not a criminal;
he has tried to do everything he can without breaking the law, you
cannot blame him.

**Stage four (law-and-order):** Heinz should not steal the medicine
because the law prohibits stealing, making it illegal. **Or**: Heinz
should steal the drug for his wife but also take the prescribed
punishment for the crime as well as paying the druggist what he is
owed. Criminals cannot just run around without regard for the law;
actions have consequences.

**Stage five (human rights):** Heinz should steal the medicine because
everyone has a right to choose life, regardless of the law. **Or**: Heinz
should not steal the medicine because the scientist has a right to
fair compensation. Even if his wife is sick, it does not make his
actions right.

**Stage six (universal human ethics)**: Heinz should steal the
medicine, because saving a human life is a more fundamental value
than the property rights of another person. **Or**: Heinz should not
steal the medicine, because others may need the medicine just as
badly, and their lives are equally significant.

Note of course that either answer can be given for either stage. The point here is not which answer is right, or even whether the reasoning is sound. But simply how one reasons psychologically. The variance in potential answers even at different stages of course gives rise to the idea of being able to come down on different areas for moral questions at the higher stage. This doesn't mean that every answer is equal or valid however.

In megaten terms one could make a similar question for alignments. If we were to contrast siding with law or chaos, a low level of reasoning might say to side for law to do so simply because it is the law or for chaos not to out of self interest. And a higher one might appeal to the greater good for law, or for establishing a more self actualization fulfilling paradigm for chaos. Different characters in megaten games do sometimes give different reasons for siding with the sides, implying a scale of development for the reasons given. However, note that there is some interpretation or subjectivity involved in assigning what types of reasoning applies where. You can also give two different reasons even at the same level. Whether the answers given are accurate to the choice or not isn't what matters.

### Other psychology

**The bouba/kiki effect** is a non-arbitrary mapping between speech
sounds and the visual shape of objects. This effect was first observed
by German-American psychologist Wolfgang Köhler in 1929.[1] In psychological experiments, first conducted on the island of Tenerife (in which the primary language is Spanish),
 Köhler showed forms similar to those shown at the right and asked
participants which shape was called "takete" and which was called
"baluba". Although not explicitly stated,
 Köhler implies that there was an extremely strong preference to pair the jagged
shape with "takete" and the rounded shape with "baluba".

In 2001, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
 and Edward Hubbard repeated Köhler's experiment using the words "kiki"
and "bouba" and asked American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers
 in India "Which of these shapes is bouba and which is kiki?" In both
groups, 95% to 98% selected the curvy shape as "bouba" and the jagged
one as "kiki", suggesting that the human brain somehow attaches abstract
 meanings to the shapes and sounds in a consistent way. Recent work by Daphne Maurer and colleagues shows that even children as young as 2 1/2 years old may show this effect as well. Notably, Individuals who have autism
 do not show as strong a preference. Neurotypical individuals agree with
 the standard result 88% of the time, while individuals with autism
agree only 56% of the time.

Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has
implications for the evolution of language, because it suggests that the
 naming of objects is not completely arbitrary.
 The rounded shape may most commonly be named "bouba" because the mouth
makes a more rounded shape to produce that sound while a more taut,
angular mouth shape is needed to make the sound "kiki". Or possibly, because the spiky shape is associated with a cutting sound or the sound of bladed instruments. Alternatively, the distinction may be between coronal or dorsal consonants like /k/ and labial consonants like /b/. The presence of these "synesthesia-like mappings" suggest that this effect might be the neurological basis for sound symbolism, in which sounds are non-arbitrarily mapped to objects and events in the world.

This effect is mentioned in the school segment of persona 5. Although little emphasis is placed on it, it has some relevance to the association between concepts, and underlying patterns in reality or the human mind. Something which is heavily jungian in tone.

**Phantom vibration syndrome** or **phantom ringing** is the perception that one's mobile phone is vibrating or ringing when it is not ringing. Other terms for this concept include **ringxiety** (a portmanteau of *ring* and *anxiety*) and **fauxcellarm** (a play on "false alarm").
 According to Dr. Michael Rothberg, the term is not a syndrome, but is
better characterised as a tactile hallucination since the brain
perceives a sensation that is not present. Phantom vibrations develop after carrying a cell phone set to use vibrating alerts. Researcher Michelle Drouin found that almost 9 of 10 undergraduates at her college experienced phantom vibrations.

The cause of phantom vibrations is not known. Preliminary research suggests it is related to over-involvement with one's cell phone. Vibrations typically begin occurring after carrying a phone for between one month and one year. It has been suggested that, when anticipating a phone call, the cerebral cortex may misinterpret other sensory input (such as muscle contractions, pressure from clothing, or music) as a phone vibration or ring tone. This tells something interesting about the shortcuts used by the human mind, and how many day to day times people may have small hallucinations. Which ties in to how persona 5 stresses that the real world is in a sense a perception rather than entirely literal. In persona 5 the phantom vibration syndrome was mentioned in the school segment highlighting this.

**Dreaming in black and white**: persona 5 mentions the fact that during the period where tv was in black and white, people mainly reported dreaming in black and white. And this changed once tvs became colored. Which despite sounding made up is actually a real phenomena that has been studied. It is interesting, since it implies a strong link between tvs and your subconscious. Such that your dreams will adapt to how you see tv, since your subconscious relates them together. Interestingly, before tvs were invented it is implied dreams were not in black and white as often as they were during black and white tv. This makes persona 4 relating the subconscious to a tv world interesting also. And has implications for how much your subconscious is controlled by media without you realizing. Note that one reason for this is because dreams are in a sense watched in a way similar to how tv is.

**The** **Rorschach test** is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms,
 or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's
personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been
employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly.[4] The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. In the 1960s, the Rorschach was the most widely used projective test. Though some questions of its validity have been raised. In nocturne, aradia's faces take the forms of different rorschach inkblot looking forms.

## Sociology

### General

**Sociology** is the study of social behavior or society, including its origins, development, organization, networks, and institutions. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder, and change. Many sociologists aim to conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, while others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro-sociology level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure.

The traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality and deviance. As all spheres of human activity are affected by the interplay between social structure and individual agency, sociology has gradually expanded its focus to further subjects, such as health, medical, military and penal institutions, the Internet, education, social capital and the role of social activity in the development of scientific knowledge.

### Traditions

**Classical theory** The contemporary discipline of sociology is theoretically multi-paradigmatic as a result of the issues of classical social theory when it was only approached from a single angle. In Randall Collins' well-cited survey of sociological theory
 he retroactively labels various theorists as belonging to four
theoretical traditions: **Functionalism, Conflict, Symbolic Interactionism, and Utilitarianism**. (note that utilitarianism here is something different from the moral theory) Utilitarianism, also known as Rational Choice or Social Exchange, although often associated with economics, is an established tradition within sociological theory. In the late 1800s the theory of social darwinism also existed in sociology as a distinct theory that often aligned with functionalist perspectives, but it has since been discredited. Social darwinism in various games is depicted as an explicit aspect of the worldview of the chaos side.

**Functionalism** addresses the social structure, referred to as social organization
 in among the classical theorists, as a whole and in terms of the
necessary function of its constituent elements. A common analogy
(popularized by Herbert Spencer) is to regard norms and institutions as 'organs' that work towards the proper-functioning of the entire 'body' of society.
 The perspective was implicit in the original sociological positivism of
 Comte, but was theorized in full by Durkheim, again with respect to
observable, structural laws. It is in Radcliffe-Brown's specific usage that the prefix 'structural' emerged.

Classical functionalist theory is generally united by its tendency towards biological analogy and notions of social evolutionism,
 in that the basic form of society would increase in complexity and
those forms of social organization that promoted solidarity would
eventually overcome social disorganization. As Giddens
 states: "Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked
particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and
most compatible model for social science. Biology has been taken to
provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and the function of
social systems and to analysing processes of evolution via mechanisms of
 adaptation ... functionalism strongly emphasizes the pre-eminence of
the social world over its individual parts (i.e. its constituent actors,
 human subjects)."

Note here that although it argues that different aspects of society uphold the society, this does not mean that it does so in a morally beneficial way. I.E. it might hold that class imbalances arose as a way to maintain certain aspects of society, but it does not follow that it sees these as good or necessary. Merely arguing that you have to understand why they exist to find out how to shift society to a different kind of social organism.

**Conflict theory** Functionalist theories emphasize "cohesive systems" and are often
contrasted with "conflict theories", which critique the overarching
socio-political system or emphasize the inequality between particular
groups. Conflict theories stress that rather than working as part of a larger system, aspects of society are largely in conflict with eachother, and this tension is often resolved only through radical shifts.

Note that you can think different theories explain different aspects of society. For instance, neutral might think order and chaos in society function together (when not lopsided) in a way such as functionalism implies, whereas law and chaos themselves think they are in conflict for some reason associated with who they represent, and must be at odds. Alternately, neutral may also think they are in conflict, and that this needs to be resolved. And chaos might think of hierarchy in a functionalist way where it is necessary to support higher people, but law would think of it as a conflict that needs to be resolved to lead to a peace in which there is no longer conflicts. Conflict theory was developed mainly to refer to social classes, but can encompass explanations for various types of division. Demons are also depicted as a lower class then gods in a sense, though interestingly the demons ideologically are depicted as more classist.

Persona 5 also deals with some conflict resulting around various hierarchies and people's lack of motivation to change them. Though there are various aspects it also focuses on age, and how older people generally have more power that effects people who are younger and perpetuates the system as those people can grow into more people who uphold it either through complacency or hoping to move up in it. And how this can carry on generation to generation unless something upsets the chain to fix certain structural problems that exist.

Persona 5 also details with something conflict theory adresses, which is the tendency of the super-franchised and those who hold power to be explicitly exploitative. P5 shows them as exploitative of labor, but not only that, but sexually exploitative as well. The ability to do this often held up by power structures that they can use to their advantage. Ones that it calls you to challenge.

**Symbolic Interactionism** Symbolic interaction
 is a sociological tradition that places emphasis on subjective meanings
 and the empirical unfolding of social processes, generally accessed
through micro-analysis. The approach focuses on creating a framework for building a theory that
 sees society as the product of the everyday interactions of
individuals. Society is nothing more than the shared reality that people
 construct as they interact with one another. This approach sees people
interacting in countless settings using symbolic communications to
accomplish the tasks at hand. Therefore, society is a complex,
ever-changing mosaic of subjective meanings.
 Some critics of this approach argue that it only looks at what is
happening in a particular social situation, and disregards the effects
that culture, race or gender (i.e. social-historical structures) may
have in that situation.

For instance, if you see people in photos, are you interpreting what is happening through your social understanding symbolically of how things are seen. Individuals interact with and react to symbols in unique ways. There are
 societal norms for interpreting symbols, but they are probably not as
rigid and common as many would like to believe. So, reality is socially
constructed by individuals. There is no true meaning aside from these contexts. This is part of what is mentioned at the end of persona 5 with cognition. Saying how there is no real world, and how people see things is the world. Because people use these scema of symbols to understand and provide context for things. And the schema can be changed.

**Utilitarianism** (note, this is something different from the moral theory) is often referred to as exchange theory or rational choice theory
 in the context of sociology. This tradition tends to privilege the
agency of individual rational actors and assumes that within
interactions individuals seek to maximize their own
self-interest, and so one can map likely interactions from this. Note here that "self interest" does not mean the same thing it does when referring to selfishness. Self interest here means whatever one's interests are in seeing accomplished. I.E. doing something for someone else, or even society at large would be defined here as a type of economic self interest. As argued by Josh Whitford,
 rational actors are assumed to have four basic elements, the individual
 has (1) "a knowledge of alternatives," (2) "a knowledge of, or beliefs
about the consequences of the various alternatives," (3) "an ordering of
 preferences over outcomes," (4) "A decision rule, to select among the
possible alternatives." Although this is a bit of a stretch to tie together, this could tie to how megaten presents all the actions of law or chaos characters generally as slotting into those paradigms. Though obviously in real life nothing would be that smooth. And one could become greedy shifting their interests from their ideology to themself.

**Pax Wisconsana** While
 some conflict approaches also gained popularity in the United States,
the mainstream of the discipline instead shifted to a variety of
empirically oriented middle-range theories with no single overarching, or "grand", theoretical orientation. John Levi Martin refers to this "golden age of methodological unity and theoretical calm" as the *Pax Wisconsana*, as it reflected the composition of the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: numerous scholars working on separate projects with little contention. Omar Lizardo describes the *Pax Wisconsana* as: "a Midwestern flavored, Mertonian resolution of the theory/method wars in which [sociologists] all agreed on at least two working hypotheses: (1) grand theory' is a waste of time; (2) [and] good theory has to be good to think with or goes in the trash bin."
 Despite the aversion to grand theory in the later half of the 20th
century, several new traditions have emerged that propose various
syntheses: structuralism, post-structuralism, cultural sociology and
systems theory.

**Structuralism and Poststructuralism.** Structuralism is the belief that humanity
can be understood by studying anything that could be called "structure,"
 including stuff like politics, social order, villages, and abstract
stuff like myths. The idea was to study things systematically to find
their "meanings." Meaning, then, would be some solid consistent thing
that is being represented.

For example: zombies are
 not real, but people talk about them like they are, so the
structuralist might assume that "zombie" is some static concept because
even if it isn't real, there must be something real about the zombie
that makes people's concept of them so structured. Maybe the zombie
represents something else, like fear of the dead. A post-structuralist
would say that zombies are structured because we want them to be
structured, and the idea is self-purpetuating, but not necessarily
constant or unchanging.

Zombies used to be cursed, but in new zombie
stories, they have a disease, but we still call them zombies because the
 specific detail doesn't matter, so if zombies can change and still be
called zombies, then there is not meaning beyond what is on the surface,
 and the idea of a "real zombie" is just an illusion. Once the basis
for zombie stories is established, they keep being told not because
zombies are real on some level, but because the last story was cool, so
we want to tell another one like it. These are not necessarily distinct theories, but a trend of understanding ideas, and the evolution of how they were seen.

Nocturne in particular uses demons in ways that don't match their lore, or even depictions in the other games, to make the postmodern point that all of these beings are symbols that have a meaning to humanity, but the symbol's meaning is not set in stone. Since it takes place in a world where the logic of a reality is not set, the meaning of what angels, etc, represent can change.

Structuralists think that structures are a useful way of understanding the world, and therefore, probably have some truth value. A good example would be Biology. We come up with names for the parts
of the body, and even though we know we just invented the terms (thorax,
 etc) we find them so useful we assume that we have uncovered some
fundamental principle in nature. Post-structuralists would submit that the reason such terms are
useful is not that they describe the universe necessarily, but they help
 us deal with our limited memories and imaginations. Putting labels on
things may organize the world, making it easy to deal with, but
simplification often comes at the cost of accuracy. Our comfort with
structures can fool us into thinking they have universal truth value even though to some degree this is constructed. Ultimately, Both schools might use a structure if they find it useful to do so. WHY it's useful is the debate.

Structuralism was people trying to figure out how spoken or written
words come to mean things in our heads. They came up with a simple model
 of how it works: the word (or the 'signifier' to use a fancy term) is
fixed to the object it's describing (or the 'signified') in our minds.
So when someone says, for example "Blue", we picture the colour blue.
Pretty simple, right? Post-structuralists, however, realised that this was far too simple,
because when one person says "blue", everybody in the room is likely to
be picturing a slightly different shade of blue. Heck, even in your own
mind, there are probably a bazillion shades of blue you can imagine if
you think really hard! The only way to set upon what 'blue' means, then,
 is to compare it to other things and figure out what it isn't - for
example, by thinking "blue is not red, yellow, green, pink, purple,
etc." This means that words gain definition not by what they *are* signifying, but by what they *aren't*,
 as well as by a billion other influences and associations that are
unique to your own mind. For a slightly more complicated example, take
the word "female". There's no 'right' answer to what constitutes
"female", even in purely biological terms, so meaning comes from the
network of associations and influences which society teaches us to
create in our minds when we hear it.

Obviously megaten highlights the changing nature of ideas and symbols in general, which it shows with how when humanity develops the archetypes of what the demons embody can as well. But one of the most important games that highlights this issue is nocturne. Unlike most of the other games in the series, nocturne deliberately chooses to use symbolism in a weird or non-normal way much of the time. This shows that since you exist outside of the existence of an ordered world that these symbols don't necessarily have a set meaning, and won't until given one in a new world. The malleability of symbols and concepts being a major aspect of poststructuralism. The angels you see are supporting a chaotic ideology in nocturne because in the creation of the new world you could theoretically literally change what it means to be an angel.

### Central problems

Overall, there is a strong consensus regarding the central problems of
sociological theory, which are largely inherited from the classical
theoretical traditions. This consensus is: how to link, transcend or
cope with the following "big three" dichotomies: subjectivity and objectivity, structure and agency, and synchrony and diachrony. The first deals with *knowledge*, the second with *action*, and the last with *time*.
 Lastly, sociological theory often grapples with the problem of
integrating or transcending the divide between micro, meso and
macro-scale social phenomena, which is a subset of all three central
problems.

**subjectivity and objectivity**. The problem of subjectivity and objectivity can be divided into a
concern over the general possibilities of social actions, and, on the
other hand the specific problem of social scientific knowledge. In the
former, the subjective is often equated (though not necessarily) with
the individual, and the individual's intentions and interpretations of
the objective. The objective is often considered any public or external
action or outcome, on up to society writ large. A primary question for
social theorists is how knowledge reproduces along the chain of
subjective-objective-subjective, that is to say: how is *intersubjectivity*
 achieved? While, historically, qualitative methods have attempted to
tease out subjective interpretations, quantitative survey methods also
attempt to capture individual subjectivities.

The latter concern with scientific knowledge results from the fact
that a sociologist is part of the very object they seek to explain.
Bourdieu puts this problem rather succinctly: How can the sociologist effect
in practice this radical doubting which is indispensable for
bracketing all the presuppositions inherent in the fact that she is a
social being, that she is therefore socialised and led to feel "like
a fish in water" within that social world whose structures she
has internalized? How can she prevent the social world itself from
carrying out the construction of the object, in a sense, through her,
through these unself-conscious operations or operations unaware of
themselves of which she is the apparent subject.

**Structure and agency**. Structure and agency, form an enduring ontological debate in social theory: "Do social
structures determine an individual's behavior or does human agency?" In
 this context 'agency' refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make free choices, whereas 'structure'
 relates to factors that limit or affect the choices and actions of
individuals (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, and so
on). Discussions over the primacy of either structure and agency relate
to the core of sociological epistemology ("What is the social world made of?", "What is a cause in the social world, and what is an effect?"). A perennial question within this debate is that of "social reproduction": how are structures (specifically, structures producing inequality) reproduced through the choices of individuals?

Many of the games address the fact that people are products of environments, and that certain paradigms tend to generate individuals which are attuned to it. I.E. a law world would generate law individuals. A neutral world would generate more neutral ones. Obviously there is variance. The point is not that everyone adopts the same ideology, but that a prevailing paradigm shapes how individuals see. People are continuous with their environments and shaped by them and their societies in ways whereby individual action has to be understood in this larger context.

Interestingly, an example of how inherently necessary this social aspect is comes up in iva. In iva dagda obsesses about thinking for yourself ans absolutely being a true individual who is free from the influences of others. However, as gods are shaped by observation, which is a metaphor for group trends and societal ideas, for a god to truly be independent means losing their form. In essence ceasing to exist as an individual, since there is nothing to define them as one. This is perhaps a metaphor about how people by nature are shaped by these societal influences and about how they might lack a coherent sense of identity without them.

**Synchrony and diachrony**. The former slices moments of time for analysis, thus it is an analysis
of static social reality. Diachrony, on the other hand, attempts to
analyses dynamic sequences. Synchrony would refer to
social phenomena as a static concept like a *language*, while diachrony would refer to unfolding processes like actual *speech*. In Anthony Giddens' introduction to *Central Problems in Social Theory*,
 he states that, "in order to show the interdependence of action and
structure ... we must grasp the time space relations inherent in the
constitution of all social interaction." And like structure and agency,
time is integral to discussion of social reproduction.
 In terms of sociology, historical sociology is often better positioned
to analyses social life as diachronic, while survey research takes a
snapshot of social life and is thus better equipped to understand social
 life as synchronized. Some argue that the synchrony of social structure
 is a methodological perspective rather than an ontological claim. Nonetheless, the problem for theory is how to integrate the two manners of recording and thinking about social data.

### Social construction

**Social constructionism** or the **social construction of reality** (also **social concept**) is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory
 that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of
the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The idea centers on the notions that human beings rationalize their experience by creating models of the social world and share and reify these models through language.

A social construct or construction refers to the meanings or connotation or divisions placed between objects, and how society views them. Society adopts these constructs, and perpetuates them via language. For instance, one example is color. Is orange a distinct color from red or yellow? How many colors is this? In actuality colors are a continuous gradient, but ways of referring to them can be constructs. Likewise, other physical things exist in an unclassified reality, and the classifications and their connotations used are shaped by human language. Social constructs often end up interpreted as naturak kinds. Accepted natural divisions between things, but this may be inaccurate as other societies may have alternate divisions that are no less accurate.

A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in
which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their
perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans.

This is a heavy aspect of megaten games, since it is how the entire mechanic of demons work. Called cognition in persona 5, and observation in iva, though present series-wide, demons exist in a sense based on how the social constructions of society arrange information. This is why steven and morgana stress that there is no inherent answer to these questions, but humans decide the answer based on what paradigm they use. The answers can thus be changed since you can create a new pragmatic division. And in game that would shift what forms demons take, and by extension the flow of ideas in society. Since demons here are metaphors for social influences. The importance of language for doing this is stressed in iva where gods are said to be after being observed into existence bounded by language. Meaning that the connotations of the words used to describe ideas effects how they are seen.

### Social organism

In sociology, the **social organism** is a concept in which a society or social structure is viewed as a "living organism". From this perspective, typically, the relation of social features, e.g. law, family, crime,
 etc., are examined as they interact with other features of society to
meet social needs. All elements of a society or social organism have a
function that maintains the stability and cohesiveness of the organism. This framework has a long history, even stretching back to aristotle.

According to Durkheim, the more specialized the
function of an organism or society the greater its development, and vice
 versa. Generally, culture, politics, and economics
 are the three core activities of society. Social health depends on the
harmonious interworking of these three activities. This concept was
further developed by Rudolf Steiner in his lectures, essays and books on "The Threefold Social Order" from 1904 for the next two decades. Hence, the “health"
 of the social organism can be thought of as a function of the
interaction of culture, politics and rights, and economics, which in
theory can be studied, modeled, and analyzed. Durkheim also said "God is Society, writ large," which implies that society's ideas of gods reflect their own society and its ideal symbolic order, and this is a feedback loop which influences and reinforces it.

In the 2002 book, Darwin's Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson applies his multilevel selection theory
 to social groups and proposes to think of society as an organism. Human
 groups therefore function as single units rather than mere collections
of individuals. He claims that organisms "survive and reproduce in their
 environments" and that :"Human groups in general, and religious groups
in particular, qualify as organismic in this sense". Note the importance of this not just being metaphor. From the perspective of the natural world, the individual is not a privileged reference frame. Structures exist on all levels of arrangement. And so the collective functions of something like a society or ideological flow are not necessarily any less real than an individual, even if less continuous. There are even ideas that tie this to mind itself, though that is less about sociology, and more about philosophy of mind. More information about this in the philosophy of mind page.

As far as megaten goes, this is another idea it represents semi literally. Demons are shaped by collective human observation, which is the flow of human ideas, and so in some sense are literally social organisms composed of certain collective aspects of societal structure. (Not too literally of course, since it is the archetype that is the social organism, and the specific incarnation of the demon is obviously its own thing). Demons then represent heavily the flow of ideas and influences in society and the ways it is effected. And even other abstract things like the shape of the demon world.

### Conspicuous consumption

**Conspicuous consumption** is the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power—of the income or of the accumulated wealth of the buyer. To the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means of either attaining or maintaining a given social status. Economists have talked about how the rise of the industrial age led to a larger focus on people other than the high class engaging in conspicuous consumption, leading to a larger focus on the consumption of goods for the sake of maintaining a social persona rather than based on the direct utility of said goods.

High levels of conspicuous consumption may be seen as socially
undesirable on two grounds; firstly, as it is often associated with high
 relative income, high levels of conspicuous consumption may be an
indicator of high levels of income inequality, which may be found
intrinsically or instrumentally objectionable; secondly conspicuous
consumption differs from other forms of consumption in that the main
reason for the purchase of positional goods
 is not due to the additional direct utility provided by the goods
alleged high quality, but rather the social prestige associated with the
 consumption of that good. This can mean an increased wastage of resources as they begin to be used not merely for direct uses, but in comparison to the uses of others.

One downside of this search for status is
that individual purchases of positional goods may at a social level be
self-defeating due to external effects. In this case, the externality is status anxiety,
 the loss of social status suffered by people whose stock of high-status
 goods (positional goods) is diminished, in relation to the stocks of
other conspicuous consumers, as they increase their consumption of
high-status goods and services; effectively, status-seeking is a zero-sum game—by definition, the rise of one person in the social hierarchy can occur only at the expense of other people.

Conspicuous consumption is mentioned in strange journey as a demon saying this about horkos, saying that it is eating so much mainly to prove it can. In a larger sense, the area this takes place in is a demonic parallel of a shopping mall meant by the demons to critique human behavior. One aspect of that is heavy wastage of resources, of which conspicuous consumption can be a large basis of. And so this is meant to parallel and reflect on human society.

### Anomie

**Anomie** is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals". This evolves from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown of
social bonds between an individual and the community (both economic and
primary socialization).
 In a person this can progress into a dysfunctional ability to
integrate within normative situations of their social world e.g., an
unruly personal scenario that results in harm to one's social
identity and a rejection of values.

The term is commonly understood to mean *normlessness*, and believed to have been popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim. He described anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".
 Durkheim used the term "the malady of the infinite" because desire
without limit can never be fulfilled; it only becomes more intense. In other words, anomie is defined as a social dysfunction that occurs when socially defined goals are hard or impossible to attain via
 socially accepted means. For example, when you can't achieve financial
"success" by working hard. And so are led to various responses to this, such as trying to via other means such as theft, or convincing yourself that you don't need success. It leads to a sense of purposelessness that is reached when purported goals can't be reached via the means provided and so one is led to question the validity of one's values.

Anomie can be used to explain various things that show up in the games. One could argue that chaos as an ideology stems as a result from it and the desire to then forsake society's standards, living by your own power to reach the purported benefits. One could also make a case for the white representing its ties to ideas like suicide that can result from the feeling of purposelessness and how the ideologies one advocates may not lead to the goals one seeks. Its ties to chaos are related to situations such as when the impoverished cannot increase their fortunes via hard work and so turn to crime. But chaos is an example of the ideology that can emerge from this, but manifested to a larger societal level. And one which to avoid the arising of in smaller cases can avoid the larger issues.