The Importance of Clarity in Relationships

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People care about authenticity, even though I don't know what it means. It's really like integrity of self. This is who I am. It's matters to me. And that suggests that those boundaries, those limitations are comforting. They give you a place in the world. Right. Like it's hard to have meaning in the world where you don't understand your own place in it. When people start to disrupt the nature of that meaning, this is why I think there's not a live and let live on issues of significant identities.

There is an image, especially in Western cultures, of the rugged, authentic, self-made individual choosing how to navigate the intricacies of the social world. But there is no mystical soul within us, manifesting as the immutable essence of self. What we think of as our "self" is shaped by our environment and our genes, and most of all by our interactions with other people. Psychologist Brian Lowery argues for a strong version of this thesis, positing that our sense of self is largely a social construct. We talk about the implications of this idea, and what it means for shifting notions of personal identity.

Post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/06/12/239-brian-lowery-on-the-social-self/

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Brian Lowery received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California Los Angeles. He is currently Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. His new book is Selfless: The Social Creation of "You."

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