Self Beliefs
Participate in brand new research!
In a major, new Templeton-funded project, we have adapted the methods we used to discover the main primal world beliefs to unearth our major self beliefs.
We are now inviting the general public to participate in this breakthrough research at a very early stage. Be one of the first people in the world to find out your fundamental beliefs about yourself.
To learn your own self beliefs
Take the Survey
What are self beliefs?
These are the most basic views you have about yourself—whether you are loved or unloved, competent or incompetent, etc. They are not what you do or what others think of you, but who you think you are, deep down.
Why do self beliefs matter?
Researchers have found people’s beliefs about themselves influence their success, relationships, and mental health. For example, if you see yourself as being competent, you might walk into a meeting with more confidence.
But until now, scholars have not systematically mapped people’s beliefs about themselves to get a comprehensive view of the self.
Your participation in this research will help in the effort to understand why and how self beliefs matter. Once we have a fully, scientifically validated measure of these self beliefs, follow-on research will test how specific self beliefs influence people’s lives.
To learn your own self beliefs
Take the Survey
How We Identified Self Beliefs
We began by carefully defining what does and does not count as a self belief. We then conducted 11 projects to identify potential beliefs:
- In our first three projects, we analyzed 4 million tweets, 475,000 Reddit posts, and 2,000 Weibo posts (a Chinese social media platform) that use phrases like “I am a _____ person…”.
- In the fourth project, we gathered 7,800 quotes from 2,500 of the most influential texts in global human history (treatises, sacred texts, films, autobiographies, novels, and more).
- For the fifth and sixth projects, we classified the 1,200 most-used adjectives and 1,200 most-used ends of key phrases in contemporary American English based on a database of 1 billion words as well as another with 14 billion words.
- In the seventh project, we analyzed 5,200 evaluative terms in the dictionary (e.g., worthy, stupid).
- In the eighth and ninth projects, we surveyed over 10,000 people and interviewed 37 others in-person to capture how people thought about themselves.
- In the final two projects, we consulted 32 psychologists and recruited scholars in 9 fields (e.g. philosophy, cultural anthropology, art history) to write full-length reviews of self beliefs studied in their areas of expertise.
About halfway through these projects, we stopped finding major new ideas (i.e., saturation). Then, we administered questions representing the ideas we found to thousands of people.
Using sophisticated statistical tools to analyze people’s responses, we were able to see which ideas collapsed together and which stood on their own. This empirical evidence suggested that many self beliefs cluster into four main beliefs (take the survey to find out!)
To learn your own self beliefs
Take the Survey
But, we are still in the early stages of understanding what these beliefs are, how they relate to one another, what they impact, and what impacts them. There are so many questions left to answer.
That’s where you come in.
How can you help?
Right now, the biggest way you can help is by taking the survey. To answer key scientific questions, we need a lot of data from all sorts of different people, just like you. In thanks for completing the survey, you will receive a free report on your self beliefs, with exclusive access to brand-new research findings.
To learn your own self beliefs
Take the Survey
Would you consider supporting our research with a donation? Any amount—even $5—makes a difference! 100% of our funding comes from donations and grants.
Click below to make a tax-deductible online donation—it takes two minutes. You’ll go to an official Penn donation page. All donations made via this link support our work specifically. Feel free to ignore the “gift options” menu.
