- I'm totally a Rachel. But I'm also kind of a Cinderella
definitely from the brand new movie,
but with like a hint of season three Pam.
If that makes any sort of sense to you.
If you've ever logged onto Pottermore,
if your parents have ever lamented the fact
that your generation looks up to movie stars
instead of them, not that that's a personal anecdote.
Stick around, get cozy
'cause today we're gonna talk about why young millennials
use pop culture to help us define our personalities
and identities.
We'll talk about how that affects us
and really what the most important part about that is,
and honestly, the reason that we do this
is just really sweet and innocent,
and will make you a thousand times less annoyed
the next time someone shares
which 'Office' character they really are.
Before we get into any more pop culture references
let's do a quick lesson
in the two psychological things at play here.
Narrative identity and personality,
AKA how you as a human define yourself.
I'll let Kate McLean
a professor of psychology who specializes
in how people construct narratives about themselves explain.
- So narrative identity is the idea
that we as humans construct stories
about the kind of person that we are
and the way that we narrate those different experiences
says a lot about who we are.
It's a lot of individual differences in how we talk
about our low points, for example,
and through the process of considering all these events
and how they fit together,
we start to weave together a larger story
which is a life story
and narrative identity really tries to capture that storied
nature of how we define ourselves.
- So do you think you're a loser
or a winner?
Do you think you're the hero
or the villain?
- I think a personality having several different levels.
So one level would be our personality traits.
Things like how extroverted or introverted we are
and it's really useful to understand our personality traits.
So it helps us from an evolutionary perspective
to know where we are in the group.
- You know, he wild card, the nice one,
the one whose relationship he can't figure out.
Both of these start to emerge in our development as babies
but narrative identity is actually post modern,
and by post modern, I mean post industrialization.
In case you're not up on your areas of humanity.
As you've been more mobile, less certain, you know
less connected to our community,
the stories that we tell ourselves
bring more stability into our lives.
So if you think you're a winner
that kind of gives you a blueprint for how situations
in your life are gonna pan out.
Even if you think you're a loser loser
- Get in loser we are going shopping.
- There's comfort in knowing that you're a loser,
but I'm sure you don't feel uncertain
about anything in your life, right?
You don't feel the need
for everything to have a purpose, right?
So let's look specifically now why you
as a millennial really feel the need to define yourself.
In more information that you wouldn't know anything about.
Millennials don't live in their home towns.
They are twice as likely as boomers to not have religion
or to not identify as a gender,
and they take longer to get into serious relationships.
Don't we know it!
And if you're Gen Z,
all of these things are even more true for you.
All of these things, 911,
2008 Recession, fortune spent on avocado toast
lead to the instability felt by millennials.
I don't need to tell you this.
These also lead to the lack of classic social connections
which means that we're spending more time with ourselves
getting to know ourselves.
So to round it up, you're lonely, unstable
searching to be seen for who you really are.
Sound about right?
- I guess could use a little social interaction.
- And what have you had at your fingertips
ever since you've been sentient?
Media. Millennials have grown up
and if we're 30, we're still growing up, right?
With exponentially more media than the previous generations.
We have thousands of TV, movie, video game
even book characters to look up to and model after,
and we form bonds with these characters.
Those are called parasocial relationships
and that is a whole other part of pop culture psychology.
And if you were confused as to why
media representation matters
ask the whole generation of gay men
or black men
or black women
or indigenous people
if they had fully developed characters
to look up to his kids
and this members of the jury
is the foundation of why we look to take
and share personality quizzes.
Personality quizzes like the ones on Buzzfeed,
aren't really telling us anything we don't know right?
We've spent a lot of time defining ourselves
through things whether it's an Enneagram
or Meyer-Briggs
or astrology
and it's definitely interesting
that the characters that we choose to define ourselves by
have more than just personality traits, right?
They have narratives
and paths that we might align
with our own narrative identities.
Which like more power to those of you relating
to the "Game of Thrones" characters
because you're setting yourself up for dosey of a life.
In fact, Kate McLean, hypothesizes
that because adults already have the skills
that children develop
while they're exploring their narrative identities.
We might be doing this exploration
for that very sweet reason that I mentioned before.
- So if you are reading a novel
or watching a movie and you see someone
who really you think exemplifies the way you see your life
that's an interesting imaginative tasks.
Thinking about what it's like for an adult
or an emerging and adult to do this
who already has perspective taking skills developed,
makes me wonder if there's some degree
of wanting to belong that comes with that
rather than practicing something like perspective,
taking skills.
- We just wanna belong,
it's really sweet,
and we take that desire to belong.
That desire to be seen,
and we share our quiz results, right?
I mean, you share it if it's right.
If the answer is wrong then you take it again
and then you share.
According to Kate, we think that we define ourselves,
but it's being seen by other that makes us truly whole.
And because we're all media
and pop culture obsessed
these quizzes have become a shorthand for us to share
who we really are.
So if I say I'm an Angela instead of a Pam
even though that sounds like a terrible personality
you know what I'm talking about.
Which is all to say, keep taking the personality quizzes,
keep relating to your favorite TV characters,
even if their stories are insane.
And, you know keep sharing those personality quizzes
with your friends on Facebook,
but make sure you're doing the work to analyze the bits
and pieces, don't just live out the life
of your favorite TV character.
I know it sounds stupid,
but people do it.
We may be lonely media, obsessed souls
but we've been given a great opportunity
to really explore ourselves in that position, on the couch
that's giving us all a back pain.