The Role of the True Self in the Search for Meaning
By Grace Rivera & Rebecca Schlegel
University of Mississippi & Texas A&M University. June 30, 2021
“Just Be Yourself”
It’s the advice we’ve all given and received many times in our lives. Whether it pertains to a first date or a job interview, the message that good things happen when we’re ourselves pervades American culture. But what does it mean? If we take this phrase literally, it can feel almost nonsensical. Aren’t we always being ourselves? After all, who else can we be? Of course, we understand that this phrase isn’t meant to be taken literally. There are times when we behave in ways that feel like we are being true to ourselves and times when we feel like we’re not. Along with colleagues, we’ve spent years conducting research on how the advice to “just be yourself” is important for finding meaning in our lives. Most of this work has focused on what we refer to as the “true-self” concept.
The True Self: Common beliefs
People generally tend to believe their true self is morally good, permanently fixed, and that its main function is to help guide important decisions in our lives.
When we refer to the true-self concept, we are referring to a person’s own understanding of their true self. Because it’s impossible for us as researchers to access people’s actual “true self” itself, if such a thing even exists, we can’t really know for sure whether those understandings are accurate or not. Instead, we must rely on people’s own reports about who they believe they really are. The true-self concept thus may or may not map onto the person’s “real” true self at all. In fact, some of our research data suggests it may not even be necessary for “real” true selves to even exist at all for people’s true-self concept to have consequences in their search for meaning—more on that further down below.
Interestingly, our research shows that most people tend to share some common beliefs about their true selves, in terms of their content, immutability, and function.
Beliefs about the true self’s content
Research highlights some common beliefs about what true selves are like, in terms of their content. Specifically, people generally exhibit a “good true-self bias,” such that everyone thinks they have a morally good true self (Strohminger et al., 2017). Even self-identified misanthropes (De Frietas et al., 2018), who explicitly view other people in a negative light, show this tendency to attribute moral goodness to the true self.
Data from Study 1 of Newman et al., (2014) show that observers tended to consider another person’s morally good changes as an expression of their true self, but considered morally bad changes to have far less to do with their true self.
For example, imagine a person who was once a “deadbeat” dad but has since become a very involved father who cares about his children (Newman et al., 2014). Did this guy become more like his true self, or less like his true self, when he became involved in his children’s lives? If you share the intuition that he became more like his true self when he made this change, then you too are demonstrating the good true self bias. In contrast, when we flip the scenario and imagine the same guy previously took good care of his kids but is now a deadbeat dad, people tend to think he has become less like his true self. So, it’s not simply the case that any changes are seen as movement towards the true self—only changes seen as morally good.
In our own research, we’ve found that people make the same kind of biased attributions not just about hypothetical targets, but also when they think about their own life and their friend’s lives (Bench et al., 2015). When people change in a way they think is good, they think they’re becoming their true selves. When they change in a way they think is bad, they think they’re moving away from their true selves.
Beliefs about the true self’s immutable presence
Our true-self concepts also tend to feel inextricably linked to our identity. It’s hard to imagine how we could have turned out much differently, and thus our intuitions about who we really are can be hard to shake. After all, if we were to change something about our true selves, it might make us a fundamentally different person!
As a result, research on the topic finds that people tend to think their true self is something they discover deep within themselves (Schlegel et al., 2012), and that it’s fairly resistant to change (Christy et al., 2019). For example, we found that the more a person associates a trait with the true self, the more likely they think they will have exactly the same level of that trait 30 years from now. The same pattern was observed when participants were asked if they would have the same level of that trait if they had lived in a different historical period. This means if a person identifies “shyness” as part of their true self, they’d be fairly certain they will still exhibit the same degree of shyness 30 years from now and that they’d have the same degree of shyness if they had been born 200 years ago to different parents in a radically different type of society.
Beliefs about the true self’s function
Data patterns, reproduced from Study 1 of Schlegel et al., (2013), show that people tended to rate “using the true self as a guide” as the most likely strategy to lead to a satisfying decision. Ratings ranged from 1 = disagree to 7 = agree.
Our research also finds some common beliefs about the function of the true self. Most people tend to agree that the function of the true self is to help guide your decisions—and that you should follow your true self, especially when making important life decisions (Schlegel et al., 2013). Indeed, among 13 potential decision-making strategies, people in our studies rated “using the true self as a guide” as the most likely to lead to a satisfying decision (in a 3-way tie with “using your future self as a guide” and “thinking rationally”). Likewise, people who report having ample knowledge of their true self tend to report higher levels of satisfaction with their major life decisions, presumably because they could more effectively use their true self as a guide.
While most of this work has relied on American samples, we have also found some preliminary evidence across 4 other nations that this may not be an exclusively American experience. Samples from China, South Korea, Singapore, and India similarly rate the true self as guide strategy as one of the most effective decision-making strategies around (Kim et al., under review).
True-Self Concepts and the Search for Meaning
In addition to figuring out what people believe about true selves, much of our work has focused on the downstream psychological implications of these beliefs—such as whether true-self concepts are involved in the search for meaning. This is an important research question, because humans are highly motivated to find meaning in their lives (Frankl, 1946) and the extent to which they believe they’ve succeeded has important implications for other aspects of life. Subjective judgments of meaning in life predict life outcomes as varied as work burnout (Hooker et al., 2020), risk for Alzheimer’s (Boyle et al., 2012), and all-cause mortality (Krause, 2009).
One of the most robust patterns we have found is that people use their true-self concepts a hub for meaning. That is, people use their true-self concepts to imbue other aspects of their lives with meaning, such as their hobbies, relationships, and careers. Many people live in a world that offers a lot of choice in how to live their lives (though this certainly isn’t the case for everyone). When they have the privilege of making choices about how to live, it often falls upon them to decide which choices will be meaningful.
Imagine, for example, someone who decides to become a vegetarian. Depending on the person, this choice could be made because it is consistent with what close friends are doing or because it may provide health benefits or because it is an expression of who they really are (e.g. their most deeply held values). Which one of these reasons imbues that decision with the most perceived meaning? In our research, we consistently find that the extent to which a decision is thought to be consistent with one’s true self, the more satisfying and meaningful that decision feels (Kim et al., 2021).
These effects emerge, in our view, because feeling like you know who you really are is a critical first step for following the true self down a life path that feels coherent, significant, and full of purpose. When you feel out of touch with who you really are, you feel out of touch with that guiding life philosophy about how you should make decisions.
Data patterns from Study 6 of Schlegel et al., (2013) show that when people had an experience that made them wonder whether they knew their true selves well, they also questioned their prior life decisions. Ratings ranged from 1 = dissatisfied to 11 = satisfied.
In one set of studies we asked college students how satisfied they were with the choice of their current major. Those participants who felt like they knew who they really were reported being more satisfied with their choice. This effect emerged whether we measured perceived true self-knowledge or experimentally manipulated it (Schlegel et al., 2013)—when we asked our participants to briefly question whether they knew their true selves well, they also briefly questioned whether they were in the right major. This same effect was observed for the choice of what college they attended, and decisions related to their social relationships (such as joining a campus Greek organization [fraternity/sorority]).
When these types of effects begin to accumulate over time, across a variety of decisions in your life, they can result in the feeling that your life’s path is a meaningful expression of who you really are. Indeed, our data patterns find that people who are more in touch with their true selves typically find their lives, as a whole, to be more meaningful (Schlegel et al., 2009; Schlegel et al., 2011).
Is the True Self Objectively Real?
As we hinted at earlier, there is some debate about whether true selves actually exist in any real, measurable sort of way. In fact, that’s one of the most common questions people ask us. We, jokingly, call ourselves “true self agnostics” because, as far as we can tell, it’s impossible to say for sure whether the “true self” actually exists.
However, a core principle of social psychology is that there are forces beyond our awareness that influence our behavior, and that we can be quite inaccurate at inferring the reasons behind our own behavior. That principle leads some to argue that it is near impossible to actually know ourselves, and even that the “self” itself (not to mention a true self!) may not actually exist, being instead an illusion we maintain because it helps us make sense of our experiences (e.g. Hood, 2012). Consider our earlier example that people tend to believe they’d be largely the same person even if they were born under entirely different circumstances in a completely different time period. If we think about what psychological science has done to document the incredibly powerful influence of situations on behavior, the likelihood of that sort of true-self invariance begins to unravel.
If true selves really do exist, then it’s possible that when we take the advice to “follow our true selves” we make different kinds of decisions than when we use other decision-making strategies, such as thinking rationally or following intuitions. For example, in some of our studies, we ask college students to make a series of hypothetical career decisions using different decision-making strategies. Our participants report these career decisions are more satisfying when they are instructed to use their true self as guide, and it is possible that this is due to the unique choices that consulting the true self empowers them to make. For example, maybe they chose to become a culinary chef, which allows them to express their deeply valued creativity and love of food, rather than the accountant job they would have chosen under their more “rational” considerations of job stability, salary, and benefits packages.
The Perception of the True Self is Real—And It Matters!
However, if true selves don’t exist, then choices people think they make based on their true-self concept are only perceived to be in line with the true self. In our work, we’ve investigated the possibility that just the mere perception we’ve used our true self is enough to make people’s decisions feel like better, more satisfying, more meaningful decisions, regardless of whether they would have made the same decision using alternate strategies. From this perspective, the same choice to become, say, a lawyer, becomes more meaningful when we consider how being a lawyer is in line with our core value to fight for justice, as opposed to considering how being a lawyer could earn us money and prestige.
To test this possibility, we asked participants to write about any of their prior major life decisions (getting married, accepting a new job, moving to a new city). Then, we also asked participants to consider and write about how they might have used one of four strategies in their decision: rational thinking, following their intuition, considering who they ideally wanted to be (ambitions and aspirations), or listening to and following their true self. Then we measured their satisfaction with those decisions. Data patterns showed that participants rated these past major life decisions as more satisfying when they thought about how they might have used their true self to guide those decisions, compared to any of the other strategies (Kim et al., 2021).
It’s important to emphasize that, in the abovementioned studies, the decisions were already made before participants came to our lab. Thus, our experimental manipulation wasn’t actually changing the way they made the decision; it was only changing the mental lens through which they were perceiving the decision. Therefore, the only explanation is that framing a decision as being made using your true self can change how you perceive and feel about a decision—even when it isn’t possible for that framing to have actually impacted the decision itself.
Whether or not true selves exist, the perception that they guided our behavior can have a powerful influence on how we feel about our decisions. This suggests that even illusions of authenticity are likely to feel good.
Why are True-Self Concepts So Powerful?
Primarily, and in line with the work we discussed earlier, considering our true self may tap into our beliefs about the essence of what it means to be a person, and our bias to believe that our true selves are morally good. Decisions in line with the true self may more satisfying because we see these choices as expressions of the good essence that we believe exists deep within us. How can a decision be bad if we see it as emanating from our moral core, the very center of our identity?
Living life by being “true to yourself” is both internally agentic and can serve as a cue that you’re on the path to living a “good life.”
Second, the claim that you’ve used your true self can be difficult for others to criticize or falsify. Someone can criticize whether a decision you’ve made is actually a rational choice, can claim your intuition is flawed, or tell you that you will never reach your ideal self (ouch!), but you are the utmost authority on whether your decision is in line with your true self. No one else is privy to the all the insight and knowledge that, deep down inside you, forms your “true self.” In many cases, claiming that you’ve used your true self to guide a life decision needs no further justification. The claim that “I became a scientist because it allows me to be who I truly am” is, in the minds of most people, enough of a reason to justify the choice (Bellah et al., 1985).
Third, a decision made with the true self is both internally agentic and fulfills the external cultural mantra to “be true to yourself.” We’ve argued that the combination of the sense of personal agency, and the cultural popularity of this mantra, can help explain the dozens of research studies documenting the relationship between feelings of authenticity and well-being. When we feel authentic, rather than considering external influences, we look inside ourselves to make decisions which can help us experience ourselves as agents acting on the world in meaningful ways. But, especially given that typical socialization processes promote the internalization of cultural standards and values into our understandings of ourselves, the feeling of “being true to yourself” may serve as a cue that we are on the path to living a “good life” (Rivera et al., 2019).
Just Be Yourself—Or, Just Be Who You Think You Are!
Our research findings don’t negate the possibility that true selves are objectively real, but they do suggest that the perception of true selves is powerful, and potentially more important. It is interesting to think about what this might mean in your own life. Can you think of a time when you were unsure if you made the right decision? Did you take the right job? Should you have learned a different skill? What if you hadn’t ended that relationship?
If you take a moment to think about how those decisions were in accordance with your understanding of who you really are, it may free you up to enjoy the choice you made and not worry so much about the paths not taken. This work also points to other recommendations: if you can’t easily see how your behavior or decisions are rooted in your true self, then there may be other valid reasons for it, of course; but if you want to feel like you’ve made meaningful and satisfying decisions then maybe think about using your true-self concept as a guide to choose a new (more authentic) path forward.
Dr. Grace Rivera is Assistant Professor at University of Mississippi. Dr. Rivera takes an interdisciplinary approach to her three primary lines of research. For example, her work on true self beliefs is informed by insights from existential philosophy and cultural psychology, while her work on beliefs about social inequality is informed by Africana studies theories and sociological perspectives. Finally, in a third line of research that investigates beliefs about virtuous character traits, she draws on philosophical and developmental theories about virtue development, parenting practices, and child-parent relationships. Her research is guided by an interest in how lay-theories (i.e., beliefs people hold about the way the world works) influence the way we approach life and the people around us. Lay theories are not necessarily rooted in fact and are largely shaped by our cultural context and social identities, yet can have profound impacts on individual and interpersonal outcomes (e.g., psychological well-being, decision-making, relationship satisfaction, social perceptions, and racial biases).
Dr. Rebecca (Becca) Schlegel is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. Becca’s research is in social and personality psychology, with a focus on existential psychology. She studies issues related to self/identity, authenticity, and meaning in life. Much of her work has focused specifically on the idea of a “true self” and the ways in which people use beliefs surrounding their avowed true self to imbue their life with meaning. This work tries to move beyond the question of whether the true self is something that is ontologically real, and instead examines the nature of true self beliefs, the origin of true self beliefs, and the functional importance of the true self-concept in everyday life. Her research has been supported by the John Templeton Foundation. Becca currently serves as an associate editor at the Journal of Research in Personality and Collabra: Psychology.