It’s tempting to believe that the self is a constant. That it’s a core component of who we are from the time we’re born.

But social psychologist and Stanford Professor Brian Lowery has a different view. He believes the self we are today is a product of our social relationships – our friends, our families, our communities, our technologies, even our geography. That as our circumstances change, so does the self we believe ourselves to be. In this interview, we talk about this and more from his book, Selfless: The Social Creation of You.

Brian’s argument explains so much about how we operate in the world, and he gives us another reason to prioritize social relationships in our lives.

Episode Links

A Provocative Theory of Identity Finds There is No ‘You’ in Self

Brian Lowery on the Myth of Rugged Individualism and What This Means for the America of the 2020s

Interview with Gregory Burns

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