Entailed are just some tidbits I heard on Npr a little earlier today. A group of people have been running tests conjunctively relating to self recognition and white matter. It seems a good number of people put alone in a room will not recognize their own voice among a number of other voices placed throughout the space. The voice says 'come over here,' and while these people may not consciously realize it's their voice, their body still reacts by sweating and through electrical activity. So those are two disparate perceptions contained in one person.
A correlation is drawn between this and lying. Another researcher found that compulsive liars tend to have 30% more white matter in their brains. White matter simply put, being the substance that connects information among itself. Thus their ability to have immediate recall in a situation is heightened. It is not certain whether this is a product of lying, or a genetic predisposition. At the age of 2 most humans shoot up in white matter growth, gaining to ability to lie.
With these findings in mind another group of researchers formulated a number of questions that can be considered fairly universally true of homosapiens. For example, have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements? Have you ever worried about being sexually inadequate? Have you ever fantasized about being raped or raping someone?! Ever considered killing yourself? One may disagree with a few of the questions, but in my opinion the majority were something people probably would have thought about at least once. These questions were asked of a range of people. One striking group was a team of swimmers, which had players with very similar physical abilities. The striking conclusion was that the players who performed the best and most consistently were the ones who also answered no across the board on these questions. Suggesting that in order to function successfully under many social environments it helps to lie to yourself. This turned out to be true in the business world and other areas as well. It was also suggested that these 'no' answerers were also happier.. but I assume they were asked how happy they were, and that could be factored into the unclear self image as well. This is a somewhat more subjective area than success I realize.
So, overall it seems if you let your conscious mind relax and structure things the way it likes, and let your subconscious mind take care of the 'truths,' you may be a faster swimmer, bigger money earner, and bigger progenitor. I also suggest that it is not some line between these two polar people, but rather a majority of people living somewhere in the middle.... and to go a little eastern on you I say we should unify the east and west not live in the middle. The ego and the self.
