562 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
some individuals preoccupied by achieve -
ment, whereas others crave intimacy?
Psychology’s Most Puzzling Puzzle
In Principles of Psychology,  William James 
(1890) referred to the self as psychology’s 
“most puzzling puzzle” (p. 330). For the past 
century, psychologists have debated whether 
it is a puzzle worth puzzling about. In an ar -
ticle titled “Is the concept of self necessary?” 
Allport raised the possibility that the self is 
“an impediment in the path of psychologi -
cal progress” (1955, p. 25). Skinner (1990, 
p. 1209) argued that “there is no place in a 
scientific analysis of behavior for a mind or 
self.” Pinker (1997) described self-  awareness 
as an intractable problem that we as a spe -
cies are not sufficiently evolved to grasp, and 
Ramachandran (2007, 2011) characterized 
the self as “science’s greatest riddle and “the 
most challenging problem of all.”
Despite this daunting level of pessimism, I 
believe that a scientific understanding of the 
self is not only possible but is, in fact, funda -
mental to a science of personality. Research 
over the past few decades has documented 
many ways in which the self influences how 
people think, feel, and act in particular situ -
ations, the goals they pursue in life, and the 
ways they cope with and adapt to new en -
vironments. Many prominent areas of per -
sonality research assume a central role for 
the self, including the study of self-  conscious 
emotions such as pride and shame (e.g., 
Tracy, Robins, & Tangney, 2007; Tracy & 
Weidman, Chapter 23, this volume), traits 
such as narcissism (e.g., Donnellan, Acker -
man, & Wright, Chapter 29, this volume), 
internal working models of attachment (e.g., 
Collins & Allard, 2004; Fraley & Shaver, 
Chapter 30, this volume), narrative identity 
(McAdams, 2013; McLean & Lilgendahl, 
2019), self-  regulation (Carver & Scheier, 
Chapter 25, this volume; Hoyle & Davis -
son, Chapter 28, this volume), goals and 
motivation (e.g., Sommet, Elliot, & Sheldon, 
Chapter 4, this volume), and the study of 
personality development (McAdams, Shiner, 
& Tackett, 2019; Roberts & Nickel, Chap -
ter 11, this volume). In fact, self and identity 
processes are considered a key mechanism 
underlying consistency and change in per -
sonality (Roberts & Wood, 2006). Finally, and perhaps most important, the science of 
the self is in many ways the science of our 
field’s most cherished and widely used meth -
odological tool, self-  reports. Much of what 
we know about personality is based on self- 
report measures that depend critically on 
self- perception processes and accurate self- 
knowledge (Robins & John, 1997; Vazire & 
Wilson, 2012).
A Naturalist View of The Self
In the early days of scientific psychology, 
the self was an integral part of many general 
theories of the person. Indeed, many “clas -
sic” readings on the self come from the writ -
ings of the most influential theorists of the 
first half of the 20th century: James (1890), 
Baldwin (1897), Cooley (1902), Mead 
(1934), McDougall (1908/1963), Murphy 
(1947), Hilgard (1949), and Allport (1955). 
Three basic themes recur in these broad 
conceptions of the person. First, the self 
was seen as fundamental to understanding 
social behavior and personality processes, 
and many early theorists attempted to link 
self- processes to other basic psychological 
processes, such as memory, attention, and 
emotion. Specifically, the self was seen as an 
executive body coordinating the thoughts, 
feelings, and behavior of a highly complex, 
dynamic organism. Second, many of these 
perspectives emphasized the interplay be -
tween biological and social forces: The self 
is constructed out of the raw materials en -
dowed by nature and shaped by nurture. 
Third, the self was conceptualized from an 
evolutionary and functionalist perspective. 
The early theorists were working in the im -
mediate aftermath of Darwin, and many 
drew heavily on evolutionary thinking. In 
particular, James (1890) was committed to 
a naturalistic  explanation of the origin and 
function of self-  awareness, assuming that 
conscious mental life “emerged by way of 
natural selection because it gave our species 
certain survival, and therefore reproductive, 
advantages” (p.  52).1
For most of the latter half of the 20th cen -
tury, research on the self moved away from 
these three themes, as researchers came to 
conceptualize the self as a social and cul -
tural construction. In the past few decades, 
however, there has been renewed interest in 