Moving Parts

Abstract

Human psychology is complicated. This sentence might win an award for banality, but it is an important point in the world of social science, where theories about human behavior require simplifying assumptions and domain-specific models. For the purposes of testing theories, it is helpful if one’s theory involves a straightforward notion of what motivates human behavior, such as self-interest, status, a need for acceptance, or the desire to follow social roles. All of these motives have been supported empirically, though eventually we should be able to model the social actor using more than any one of these motivations. Human beings have many conscious and unconscious motivations, and to understand people we need to focus on how these motivations emerge, conflict, and get overshadowed in the situations we are in.² Abstract simplifications have their place, but any one motivation can get overshadowed and may only operate at one of our dual-processing levels.

The self … is a constant process of self-interpretation, as the present self interprets the past self to the future self.

George Herbert Mead¹