The answer to this question can tell a lot about a person and even predict his behavior in different situations.
Imagine that you are meeting a person, and you need to quickly figure out who is in front of you by asking a single question. What will you ask? “Are you an introvert or an extrovert?”, “Are you a liberal or a statesman?” Both (and the third!) answer will help you to know only one facet of his personality. Is there a question that allows you to break through to the very essence of man?
Yes, psychologists say. Although we most likely would not have thought to ask him: “Where do you think your “I” is located – in the head or in the heart?”
Researchers have been studying this “question of questions” for years. For example, North Dakota State University psychologists Adam Fetterman and Michael Robinson got interesting results. In 2013, they conducted a series of surveys among hundreds of students1. It turned out that the answer to this question intersects with a number of important psychological characteristics. Those who answered that their “I” lives in the heart (and this is about half of the respondents, more often women than men), in a situation of moral choice, were more inclined to be guided by emotions. Participants were presented with a brutal hypothetical conflict: “A sadistic prison guard threatens to kill your son and another prisoner if you do not kill your son yourself. What will you choose? Respondents who believed that their “I” was in the heart more often answered that they would refuse to kill their son – that is, they reacted more emotionally than rationally: after all, in this case, they would doom both their son and another person to death.
Another series of studies by the same authors revealed the characteristics of those who believed that their “I” is in the head. They performed better on general erudition tests and were less emotionally responsive to stress.
Read more:
- Emotional Intelligence: Manage your emotions to get things done
And here is some more interesting recent data: it turns out that people with different localizations of the “I” take, respectively, different positions on such controversial issues as the law on abortion or what is considered the death of a person – cardiac arrest or cessation of the brain. This conclusion was reached by a group of management experts from the School of Business at Rice University (Texas) and Columbia Business School (New York), led by Adam Galinsky2.
Hundreds of people from the US and India participated in the online survey. They were asked to think about a rather complicated situation: “Imagine that you agreed to donate your organs so that your “I” would live in other people after your death. In addition, you have 100 million dollars that you can bequeath to recipients. How would you distribute the money between them?” The overwhelming majority of participants answered that they would agree to give the lion’s share of this money to recipients of the brain and heart, and only a small part to recipients of other organs. And this is not surprising: in their view, along with the donor organ, their “I” received a second life. At the same time, the majority of men were inclined in favor of a brain transplant, and the majority of women – in favor of a heart transplant.
Daniel Goleman
“Emotional intelligence”
The term “emotional intelligence”, without which it is difficult to imagine modern practical psychology, has become so popular thanks to the psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman.
The same logic was traced in the reasoning of the participants regarding the law on abortion. Those who placed their “I” in the heart advocated a stricter restriction of abortion – from the moment when you can listen to the heartbeat of the fetus. Also, this group of participants believed that the criterion for determining the death of a person should be cardiac arrest. And those who believed that his “I” is located in the head, argued that death occurs with the cessation of the brain.
According to the authors, collectivist cultures (according to the results of a survey among Indians) are dominated by those who believe that the “I” is located in the heart. The opposite feeling is more characteristic of those cultures where a person feels like a separate independent person.
Adam Galinsky and colleagues suggest that a sense of the “location” of one’s “I” is perhaps one of the defining characteristics of personality. It is likely that this is associated with a propensity for a particular activity and relationships with other people. For example, those whose “I” is in the heart, most likely, will be attracted in people by kindness, warmth, and those whose “I” is in the head – intelligence.
The one whose “I” is in the heart …
- Supports study projects
heart disease
- Values belonging very much
to certain social groups.
- Endorses ban on early abortions
terms, from the moment when you can listen
fetal heartbeat
- More emotional in general
The one whose “I” is in the brain …
- Supports projects to study diseases of the brain
- Values their personal independence more
- More rational in making moral decisions
- Gets higher grades in college
has more erudition
1 A. Fetterman, M. Robinson «Do you use your head or follow your heart? Self-location predicts personality, emotion, decision making, and performance», Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013.
2 H. Adam et al. «Who you are where you are: Antecedents and consequences of locating the self in the brain or the heart», online publication from April 18, 2015 on the Elsevier website.
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