Self Beliefs
Participate in brand new research!
In a new major Tempeton funded project, we have adapted the methods we used to discover what all the main primal world beliefs are to now unearth what the major self beliefs are.
We are now inviting the general public to participate in the breakthrough research at this very early stage. Be one of the first people in the world to find out what your fundamental beliefs about yourself are.
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 lucky or unlucky, 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 behavior, mood, and attitudes. For example, if you see yourself as being competent, you might walk into a meeting with more confidence.
But until now, scholars have not successfully, systematically mapped people’s beliefs about themselves.
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 behavior, mood, and attitudes.
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 _____ 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 billon words, and another with 14 billion words.
- In the seventh project, we analyzed 5,200 individual difference dictionary terms that personality researchers classified as too evaluative for their work.
- In the eighth and ninth projects analyzed paragraphs written by over 10,000 every-day people, and interviewed 37 other folks to capture how people thought about themselves in ordinary day-to-day life.
- In the final two projects, we interviewed 32 psychologists and had scholars from 9 different fields write reviews on self beliefs so we could include what experts already know.
About half way through all these projects, we stopped finding major new ideas. Then, we administered questions representing all the ideas we found to thousands of people.
Using sophisticated statistical tools to analyze people’s responses, we were able to see which ideas really went together, and which were off on their own. This empirical evidence suggested that many self beliefs cluster into four main beliefs.
To learn your own self beliefs
Take the Survey
But, we are still in the very 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 our new self belief survey. To start answering the questions we have, we need a lot of data from all sorts of different people, just like you. Our thanks to you for completing the survey is a free report on your self beliefs, with exclusive access to brand-new research findings.
To learn your own self beliefs
Take the Survey
You can also directly support our scientific research by donating to our project. 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.
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