Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Generally speaking, more people identify the brain as the location of the self than the heart, according to new research conducted at Rice University and scheduled for publication in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Hajo Adam, an assistant professor of management at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, and his colleagues set out to investigate the hypothesis that, while most people tend to locate their sense of self in the brain, those that have an independent self-construal (those who define themselves based on internal abilities and traits) are the most likely to do so.
“We view our research as a first step toward reviving the debate about which part of our body contains the seat of the self – a debate that dates back to the ancient Greek philosophers,” Adam explained in a statement on Wednesday.
“Our findings demonstrate not only that the preference for the brain versus the heart as the location of the self systematically depends on a person’s self-construal,” he added, “but also that the location of the self has important implications for people’s opinions on contentious medical issues as well as prosocial contributions.”
Men, Americans most likely to place the self in the brain
The study authors conducted a series of eight studies to explore the issue. In the first, participants were told that a person’s identity and sense of self were a key part of their humanity, and that the team was interested in discovering where this feature was located. They asked participants which parts of the body were most connected to their overall sense of who they were.
Over the next several studies, they wanted to analyze each participants’ perception of the self’s location in a more subtle fashion to gather evidence to underscore how robust the effect truly was. During the first six studies, Adam’s team discovered that self-construals consistently influenced the location of the self in the participants.
Their investigation revealed that the likelihood to place the location of the self in the brain was stronger in men than women, as well as stronger in Americans than in Indians. In all six studies, the majority of participants placed the location in the brain instead of the heart, but those with an independent self-construal were the most likely to cite the brain as the self’s location.
Influence of placement of self on charity, controversial issues
In the seventh study, the perceived location of the self influenced the participants’ judgments of several controversial medical issues such as the legal definition of death and abortion laws. The eighth study revealed the amount of money or effort that a participant was willing to put into a charitable cause supporting heart or brain disease research.
For example, those who believed that the brain was the home of the self contributed more than twice as much money to a charity fighting Alzheimer’s disease than those who believed that the heart contained the self, and those who felt that the heart was where the self was located gave two times as much to charities combating heart attacks that members of the other group.
“These results suggest that where people locate the self might be a notable characteristic that shapes people’s psychological processes and decision-making,” said co-author Otilia Obodaru, an assistant professor of management at Rice. “Consequently, there may be great value in better understanding the antecedents and consequences of being a ‘brain person’ or a ‘heart person.’”
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