You are the groups you belong to
Most people think of the “self” as a package of specific personality traits and capabilities that define how they deal with the world each day. But for Alex Haslam, CIFAR researcher and University of Exeter social psychologist, the elusive “I” that has fascinated thinkers through history is more of a process than a fixed mental operating system.
“In most contexts,” he says during a phone interview from Brisbane, Australia, “our sense of who we are is based on group membership. More important is the ‘we’ of the self.”
Human beings, according to Haslam’s research, define themselves in terms of their group memberships, and these vary constantly – not just over the course of a lifetime, but during an ordinary day. On the job, a person’s sense of self reflects her participation in a workforce, an office or a profession.
Riding home on the subway, a person may identify herself as a commuter and likely conduct herself by the prevailing norms established by commuters as a group. Back home, that same individual takes on another role defined by her prevailing family structure.
Haslam says this fluidity explains why some people may be aggressive or driven at work but very mild and laid back at home.
“Who we are is negotiated as part of the social context,” says Haslam. “All the time, the self is constantly being updated and modified to deal with the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves. And most of those circumstances are social.”
More than two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed that man is “a social animal.” But Haslam’s explanation of the self goes well beyond an affirmation of that philosophical hypothesis.
When individuals lose access to valued group memberships – due to illness, retirement, etc. – they find themselves far more vulnerable to a range of health problems. In medical literature, he observes, the gravest threat to human health – more than bad genes or even risky behaviours like smoking and poor diet – is social isolation.
“Without social interaction, our sense of self is thoroughly compromised,” he says. “If people are cut off from a valued group, they experience something akin to a sharp physical pain.” Others, like frail seniors who’ve had to move into nursing homes full of strangers, can lose the will to live.
Conversely, Haslam’s recent research has shown that among individuals who have suffered strokes or head injuries, those most likely to recover are those who also maintain strong affiliations with social groups and are generally satisfied with their lives.
Haslam says individuals would be well advised to maintain multiple group memberships as a kind of psychological hedging strategy against the risk of being cut off from one such group due to unforeseen events. Especially for professionals who derive much of their identity from their jobs, it’s crucial to maintain a work-life balance, he adds. “You really don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
Alex Haslam Fellow, CIFAR’s Social Interactions Identity and Well-Being program
Dr. Alexander Haslam is a social psychologist and Fellow of CIFAR’s Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being program. His work examines how social identities and group memberships influence our interactions with others. He researches such questions as: How does belonging to groups and organizations shape the way we think, feel and behave? How do individuals and groups in turn shape the nature of organizations and society?
Dr. Haslam began his investigations at Macquarie University in Australia, where he earned his PhD as a Commonwealth Scholar. He is now a Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Exeter in England and has published several books on social and organizational psychology. Dr. Haslam is the former Associate Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and was the Chief Editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Currently, he is on the editorial board of seven international journals, including Scientific American Mind.
He is the author of Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach (2001) (2nd ed., 2004), which was short-listed for the British Psychological Society (BPS) Book Award in 2003. Dr. Haslam is also the co-author of The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power (2010). In 2005, he was awarded the Kurt Lewin Award for outstanding contribution to research in social psychology from the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology and was short-listed for the Times Higher Education (THE) Research Project of the Year for his work on ‘The Glass Cliff’ with Michelle Ryan.