Looking inside the psychological black box

An overview of Super3io Self-Development Theory

Beyond the Black Box Era

OUR INNERMOST MOTIVATIONS are typically difficult to access—even amongst psychologists who study motivations. As is well known, over two thousand years of inquiries on the psyche took a turn—away from the mind—when American psychologist John B. Watson introduces Behaviorism to the world. Since the dawn of the last century, the mind and its contents have been deemed ‘inaccessible to scientific methods’ (Ryan 2019)—any attempt ‘to reify the unsubstantial and immaterial must be inhibited’ (Carr and Kingsbury 1938). Hence, the mind, amongst psychologists, was sealed and labelled the ‘black box’. Whilst this black-box movement helped to curb the many speculative psychologies and pseudo-psychologies in the 19th and 20th centuries that sought to introduce esoteric practices that might otherwise have gone a bit too far—and had since found a dominant place amongst the more empirically sensible academics—it limits our knowledge of the fundamental motivations in humans. These natural motivations and tendencies, precisely, lie deep inside the black box.

Thankfully, things have changed—things are changing. In The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Richard M. Ryan observes that present-day studies reflect a ‘quieter turn of events’, but one ‘just as revolutionary’ as behaviourism in the last century (Ryan 2019: 12). Contemporary motivational science reflects a ‘strong turn’ toward ‘a detailed understanding of the internal psychological processes and biological mechanisms underpinning behavior’ (2). At present, studies on motivations are ‘moving more and more from the outside in’, and research is ‘resoundingly focused on what is inside the black box’ (6). In fact, introspection as a formal discipline is nothing new in philosophy—the very birthplace of psychology. Introspection is widely regarded as a second empiricism; the first being ‘sense experience’, which involves ‘our five-oriented senses’, and, this other one being ‘reflective experience’, which includes ‘conscious awareness of our mental operations’ (Markie and Folescu 2021: 1). Introspective knowledge has a longstanding currency amongst a line of respectable philosophers from Augustine of Hippo, to René Descartes, to Edmund Husserl, to John Locke, and even David Hume (1739), the radical sceptic who would not acquiesce even to the notion of scientific causality. Descartes (1641), in particular, who might perhaps have taken things to an extreme, finds within the conscious subject the only indubitable touchstone of truth. For Descartes, everything outside of the self are susceptible to falsity. On an aggregate sum of philosophical viewpoints, hence, the conscious subject’s self-ascribed judgements on inner experiences—for example, I am in pain or I am happy—each carries the weight of infallibility (Schwitzgebel 2019: 46–47).

X is good

The notion that every behavior presupposes an underlying value—represented as ‘X is good’—is almost universal and gleans a 2,500-year longitude amongst philosophers. Christian Wolff (1720), in particular, suggests a philosophical psychology of ‘maxim’; according to which in natural behaviour, selection and evaluation are prerequisites in obtaining any particular course of action—which is every action insofar as every action requires particularity. In this way, Wolff's maxim converges nature and value on any given full-blooded human agency—natural behavior is valued behavior. Wolff's maxim is the necessary motivating ground of any and every human behavior (Kitcher 2003). Value, hence, is the ‘natural imperative’: a conflated and voluntary X-is-good that determines any particular course of action, a personal tendency that may be enacted consciously or otherwise, articulated or otherwise (Chong 2024)—but it is there, without which selection, and hence, action, cannot occur at all.

Different individuals have different X's. For one, Knowledge is good; for another, Merriment is good; and for still others, Dominance is good—and so forth. But in the ballpark, they share a common placeholder that has come to be called ‘happiness’—what is good is what makes me happy. The happiness thesis is another universal concept held amongst philosophers and many psychologists who derive their theories from a common seminal ancient idea: Aristotle's eudaimonia. The phenomenon of eudaimonia, however, is not straightforwardly happiness—it is and is not happiness. Hence, philosophers and psychologists alike struggle to put a firm finger to it; Aristotle himself tries to explain what it is: happiness and not-happiness. The famously—or infamously—ambiguous and homonymous term suggests a dual-import that may be captured more properly as ‘happy state’: or, more, precisely, ‘positive end state’ (PES) (Chong 2024). On this view, the acting subject tends—via a maxim—toward obtaining PES that is congruent to the self.

I am X

Hazel Rose Markus' psychology of self-schemata runs in a similar vein with Wolff's maxim. Markus' logic runs as follows: individuals are exposed at any given moment to a variety of information “vastly greater than a person can process,” which makes us necessarily “selective” in what we “notice”. These selective tendencies, Markus observes, “are not random but depend on some internal cognitive structures,” which she called “schemata.” “Self-schemata,” then, are cognitive structures of the self that “organize and guide the processing of self-related information contained in an individual’s...experience” (Markus 1977: 63). This is how the self associate with, or dissociate from, an external referent. For example, “This dress is very ‘me’,” or, “That book is not my cup of tea.” A general self-schema may be formulated as: “I am x.”  Like maxims (“x is good”), a self-schema, though deterministic and active, is not necessarily named or articulated; although when presented to individuals as a phrase, an association may be established instantly. The “x” in a self-schema is the one and same “x” in a maxim. Here are the nine general self-schemata; each with its varied expressions, and each corresponding to the taxonomy of eudaimonic dimensions (marked by underscore): 

Perfection and Integrity: “I am principled.” “I am objective.” “I am righteous.”

Preservation and Stability: “I am stable.” “I am steady.” “I am peaceful.”

Power and Vitality: “I am bold.” “I am strong.” “I am commanding.”

Relationship and Intimacy: “I am personal.” “I am caring.” “I am giving.”

Fascination and Vivacity: “I am lively.” “I am fun.” “I am free-spirited.”

Aspiration and Identity: “I am distinct.” “I am original.” “I am self-reflective.”

Success and Profitability: “I am efficient.” “I am savvy.” “I am accomplishing.”

Knowledge and Perceptivity: “I am analytic.” “I am knowing.” “I am self-adequate.”

Security and Predictability: “I am safe.” “I am compliant.” “I am vigilant.”

Like maxims, self-schemata are natural imperatives—we cannot not select and enact actions that are congruent to the self.

I am X!

Each of the above self-schemata are in situ virtuous: righteousness, peacefulness, boldness, originality, vigilance, and so forth. As a preliminary, and restricted within the parameter of ordinary behaviour, the natural imperative—x-is-good—a virtue—insofar as it is good—does appear also to be a same ground of ‘vice’ on a particular construal. The suggestion that virtue and vice are grounded on an identical property is supported by philosophical (e.g. Russell 2020), psychological (e.g. Pinker 2011), and psychiatric (e.g. Angyal 1965) scholarships.

Angyal writes (1965: 228; emphasis added):

'[Our] essentially healthy features exist not beside but within the neurosis; each neurotic manifestation is a distorted expression of an individually shaped healthy trend. The distortion must be clearly seen and acknowledged, but the healthy core must be found within the distortion itself'.

Hence, on the sort of psychiatric view produced by Angyal, ‘vice’ may be studied as a distortion of its more fundamental virtuous counterpart. An excessive psychological ‘press’ on the self-schematic virtuous natural imperative, say, ‘I am happy’ or ‘I am safe’ or even ‘I am good’ may result in unhealthy self-exaggerations, respectively, ‘I AM HAPPY!!!’ (overindulgence and addiction), ‘I AM SAFE!!!’ (‘paranoia’ and hypervigilance), and ‘I AM GOOD!!!’ (perfectionism and an over-inflated self-righteousness). Conversely, however, a deficiency in, say, the positive end-states (PES) of Merriment or Integrity, may potentially lead to unhealthy states of self-insipidity and self-corruptibility, respectively. Deficiency may be managed by re-targeting values that are not part of one's self-schemata, and excess can be mitigated via balance within one's or with others' diverse values.

Self-actualization

Abraham Maslow’s self-actualization has commonly been placed at the top of a pyramid of human needs to suggest that ‘lower’ needs such as food, shelter, and relationships must be met before one aspires and embarks on self-actualization. In fact, Maslow never represented his theory on a pyramid and he advised against positing the hierarchy as a ‘fixed order’ (Maslow 1943). Many psychologists today (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi 1990, Huta and Waterman 2013, Ryan and Deci 2000, Ryan et. al. 2019) recommend that self-actualization is a basic

psychological need in the same way that food and shelter are basic physical needs. There are two strands of value-based self-actualization in psychology: a Rogersian natural self-actualization, and a Maslowian ethical self-actualization (sometimes called ‘self-transcendence’) (Akrivou 2013, Kolto-Rivera 2006). Natural self-actualization involves an integrative psychology that converges a person's emotive and mental and instinctive self-schemata to attain overall PES. Ethical self-actualization, on the other hand, looks to re-targeted values that are not part of one's self-schemata to increase overall PES through self-expansive integration. In principle, natural and ethical self-actualizations are not mutually exclusive.

Value-based personal development requires introspective examination, since values reside in the deep recesses of the black box. Whereas looking inside the black box was once inhibited by many leading psychologists in the last century, introspection, it seems, is not only tenable but indispensable—if one must know, and develop from, their deeper motivations.