Analogies Offer Value Through the Struggle to Make Them Work: Making Sense of the Psychological Immune System

Abstract

ions of the mind. We begin by highlighting questions that arose from our efforts to fully embrace and play out the analogy. In so doing, we seek to clarify (and at times speculate on) the nature of the psychological immune system and thus the maladaptive traps into which it may fall. At that point, we turn to a consideration of the role of the interconnectedness of the self’s structures, a topic of particular interest both in understanding current social trends and in explaining previous research that was not considered through the lens of ego defense. Finally, we close by considering how social perceptions fit within the project of self-enhancement. In the process, we identify a basic question that, to our surprise, decades of research on self-enhancement seem not to have addressed. Understanding the Connection Between the Biological and Psychological Immune Systems What does the psychological immune system monitor versus aim to gauge? Several of the recent COVID-19 vaccines train the body to monitor for the spike protein on the virus’s surface in an effort to gauge the presence of the virus. Diabetics who use a glucometer monitor the numbers on their readers’ display in an effort to gauge their blood glucose levels. In each case, the symptom is ultimately dissociable from the underlying state. The mRNA vaccines encourage production of the spike protein but not the virus itself; glucose readers can malfunction. What one thus hopes to monitor (to decide if supplemental action is necessary) is an imperfect guide to what one is ultimately trying to gauge. If the psychological immune system aims to achieve psychological homeostasis, what does this mean in terms of what it monitors, and what it is ultimately trying to gauge? What is the symptom, and what is the real threat? Sedikides describes psychological homeostasis as modulating or CONTACT Andr!e Vaz arvaz@campus.ul.pt, aomata@psicologia.ulisboa.pt Faculdade de Psicologia, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013, Lisboa, Portugal. ! 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 2021, VOL. 32, NO. 4, 230–239 https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815 reducing negative affect, achieving emotional equilibrium, and helping with the desire to achieve the most favorable emotional life that people can attain. This is a provocative claim: Is the psychological immune system merely a mood maintenance system, not one that is on the lookout for selfevaluative threat in particular? At its core, we consider this a question of whether the psychological immune system looks to James’s (1950 [1890]) “I” or “me.” The “I” is not merely a volitional executive, but is accompanied by affectively rich phenomenological experience (Gregg et al., 2011). When people feel paralyzed by crippling anxiety or inspired by the promise of future possibility, the “I” experiences a weight or boost as it navigates its environment. In contrast, the “me” is an object of evaluation, a catalog of resources that can serve the self and its goals. Determining that one lacks the vocal range to land a recording contract or that one’s writing can deftly illustrate through relevant examples both entail conclusions about the “me.” We suspect that the psychological immune system is largely attentive to and thus triggered by the phenomenological experience of the “I,” but that the self’s (understandable) egocentrism means that analyses of the resources of the “me” disproportionately guide the “I”’s general emotional state. On first consideration, such a conclusion may seem incompatible with previous researchers’ identification of self-enhancement (held in check by the reality constraints of self-assessment; Trope, 1980, 1986) as the paramount motive with which other human motives must not conflict (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). This primacy of self-enhancement might seem to elevate self-evaluation to a special status. But if the psychological immune system monitors one’s present emotional state, what do such states aim to gauge? Life events inspire emotions to the extent that they make contact with one’s goals. Of course, emotions are experienced not merely when people achieve or fail to achieve their goals, but when their pathways to future goal fulfillment are facilitated or blocked. Lottery winners experience elation before any of their jackpot is spent, much less hits their bank accounts. And people’s life plans and pursuits almost always require the involvement of, and thus a look to, the self’s own resources. This likely explains why selfevaluation is a hefty contributor to emotional well-being. Furthermore, the self’s ability to mentally time travel allows it to bask in its previous successes and fret over its past defeats. Of course, such previous episodes often portend future successes and failures, both due to what they suggest about the self’s abilities and due to the lingering reputational consequences of previous endeavors. Accepting that the psychological immune system is attuned to how one feels instead of how one feels about self-aspect X helps to explain why there is so much substitutability between different means of ego repair (Gregg et al., 2011; Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Tesser, 2000). Furthermore, it would explain why apparent needs for selfesteem repair can be addressed by alternate emotionally comforting routes (e.g., attachment and worldview defense; Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005) that relate to interpersonal and societal resources that may aid in pursuing one’s goals. That is, addressing the self’s feelings of frustration, disappointment, and anxiety about its ability to pursue its own needs does not require that the self be personally equipped to address them. As a false alarm blares, one may feel panic at not knowing how to shut it off. But we suspect that this anxiety subsides whether one possesses the resources and knowledge to turn it off oneself or whether a knowledgeable other appears to deal with the issue. Emotional states are sensitive to what is currently focal. And to be clear, this is where the self and its resources do take center stage. Before the “I” can act, it often needs to consult the “me”; it is, necessarily, always nearby. Because the self is typically first on the scene to solve its own problems, it is understandable why there has seemed to be such a close connection between self-evaluation in particular and the psychological alarm bells that suggest the self’s future comfort, success, and fulfillment is in jeopardy. There is not always an able aide waiting in the wings. But the attentional allure of the negative—combined with the mind’s ability to easily transport itself from the here and now to consider the past and the future (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2010)—exacerbates a flaw of the psychological immune system. It does not adopt a dispassionate, balanced perspective of the state of the self and its life pursuits, but can enter into a ruminative spiral (Martin & Tesser, 1996; Mikulincer, 1989), one that is particularly counterproductive when consciousness’s capacity to relive the disappointments and embarrassments of the past can lead it to become stuck there. Losing one’s voice in the middle of a speech sounds alarm bells not only in the moment, but for the subsequent days in which one mentally replays this event over and over. And given that people tend to overblow the reputational implications of one-off failures (Moon, Gan, & Critcher, 2020; Savitsky, Epley, & Gilovich, 2001), the psychological immune system can be inspired to declare war after what was only a mild dust-up. Sedikides seems to argue that many of the apparent faults of the psychological immune system are simply inevitable shortcomings. But a tolerance for a system’s flaws should not be confused with a passive acceptance of them. The fact that a home’s smoke detector will occasionally be activated by safe, contained cooking activity is not a reason to rip it from the ceiling, but it may be a reason to start using one’s vent hood. And it is here—in considering the self’s response to psychological alarm bells—that we urge further analysis of what would constitute more or less adaptive responses to threat instead of simply accepting that the system’s functioning is generally adaptive. If the psychological immune system is ultimately aiming to gauge whether one can navigate one’s world effectively, then one should prioritize means of mood repair that will aid with this goal. The smoke detector loses its adaptive function if homeowners’ response to it is to search for their noise-canceling headphones. We thus have less faith that the psychological immune system—by monitoring emotional states instead of the underlying COMMENTARIES 231