Book Project — A Tour of the Self

This page contains an evolving outline of a book project provisionally titled “A Tour of the Self”.  The book represents an attempt to explain the broad themes of human motivation using the “four portraits” map.  Many of my blog posts and articles will be attempts to fill out pieces of this outline. I will also write some pieces explicitly for the book. I will insert links to relevant content within this outline as it appears.

A Tour of the Self

  1. Preliminaries
    1. Needs
      1. Physical — Ev Psych stuff/maslow — food, air, water, shelter, sex, children, biological urges.
      2. Psychological
        1. Social Roles
        2. Relationships
        3. Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness
        4. Others.
    2. Values and norms.
    3. Personal purpose, communal purpose, and stories.
  2. The Diagram
    1. First-Person/Third-Person Divide: body image
    2. Normative/Descriptive Divide
    3. 1p Actual Portrait: Social Identity, Personality, and other stuff
    4. 1p Ideal Portrait: Personal Ideals
    5. 3p Actual Portrait: The social self
    6. 3p Ideal Portrait: Social Ideals
    7. Perception Gap: Authenticity
    8. Aspiration Gap: Self-Improvement
    9. Expectation Gap: Social Pressure
    10. Value Gap: norms, values. (beliefs as expectations vs beliefs as values)
    11. The Dynamics of Gap Management. (what you aspire to depends on who you are, and how others judge. What you reveal to others depends on what you are, and what they expect. Etc, etc. — need to brainstorm on this more.
  3. Practical Applications
    1. Self-conscious thinking
    2. Cognitive sources of stress/anxiety/depression
    3. Persuasion ??
    4. Self-improvement
    5. Relationship management
    6. Normative change, belief change (normative pressures more than epistemological)
    7. Understanding Cultural change
    8. Understanding closets.
    9. Understanding Political personality
  4. Relationship to other Theories
    1. CJM — Community Justification Model — Normative Audience/Feeling-justified model — Personality and normative audience. (Who is in NA — to whom do you owe a justification? )
    2. Moral Foundations Theory (Personal Justification Tendencies — norms about managing norms)
    3. Ego/Id/Superego
    4. Self-Determination Theory (full theory)
    5. Social Identity Theory