Brain Or Heart? Most People Locate Their Sense Of Self In The Brain

Self-conscious, self-aware, self-important… selfish! Though it may be obvious what we mean when we use the word self, there are differences in how people use the term and also how they see themselves. ‘In a series of experiments, Rice University researchers explored concepts of the self. Generally, most people locate the self in the brain rather than the heart, the researchers discovered, and this common self-perception has very real consequences in people’s lives.

Commonly, social psychologists say Westerners have an independent self-construal, while East Asians possess an interdependent self-construal, where self-construal is defined as the underlying basis for self-definition.

An independent self-construal suggests people believe themselves to be separate from others and so they naturally place individual goals above those of the group. Interdependent self-construal implies people see themselves as connected with others and so they commonly place group goals above individual needs.’

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