Several Versions of Oneself for Different People

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself, section 51: Project Gutenberg #1322.

What this article is about

With their parents a person is one way, with friends another, at work a third. Usually this is noticed in passing, but sometimes the question becomes sharp: if I carry myself so differently with different people, do I have a real face at all, or only a set of masks?

This article approaches the question from two sides. The first is an observation older than psychology: William James, the Analects, the letters of the apostle Paul and the Qur'an all describe a different manner with different people, and they judge it differently. The second is research: how psychologists measure differences in self-descriptions across roles, how much one person changes over a working day, what is known about switching between cultures and about self-presentation on social media. We propose a way to tell adjustment to the listener from fragmentation. It is the authors' argument, not a tested method; the article does not promise wholeness and does not replace help from a professional. The example below is invented by the authors.

I. As many selves as circles

That a person shows themselves differently to different people is not a malfunction but the ordinary arrangement of social life, described long before modern research. A hypothetical example: a man of about forty jokes and argues himself hoarse with his friends, is reserved and brief with his boss, and is patient and unhurried with his seven-year-old son. He notices this only on the day when all three end up at the same party: the friend expects jokes, the boss expects a businesslike tone, the son tugs at his sleeve, and it is unclear who to be.

In 1890 William James wrote in The Principles of Psychology (vol. 1, ch. X, The Consciousness of Self): “Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind.” But people fall into groups, and in practice, James continues, “he has as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares” (Project Gutenberg #57628). To each group a person usually shows a different side. James's example is a young man who is well-behaved in front of his parents and teachers yet curses and shows off among his rowdy friends. And the general rule: “We do not show ourselves to our children as to our club-companions, to our customers as to the laborers we employ, to our own masters and employers as to our intimate friends.”

James is describing a norm, not an illness. The social self, for him, is how a person is known and remembered by others; an injury to that image is an injury to the person. The idea of many roles appears in the culture much earlier as well. In Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It (Act II, Scene 7) Jaques says: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts” (Project Gutenberg #100). But for Jaques the parts follow one another through the ages of life, infant, schoolboy, lover and so on, while James speaks of different sides of oneself shown to different people at one and the same time. Our question concerns the second.

II. Discordant splitting or division of labor

Right after listing the social selves, James distinguishes two cases, and this distinction is central to the article: what matters is not the number of versions but how they relate to one another. The division of a person into several selves, he writes, may be “a discordant splitting, as where one is afraid to let one set of his acquaintances know him as he is elsewhere”. Or it may be “a perfectly harmonious division of labor, as where one tender to his children is stern to the soldiers or prisoners under his command.”

In our reading, James judges here not the degree of difference but how the versions stand to each other. The tender father and the stern commander differ greatly in manner, yet they hide nothing from each other: the children may know that their father is strict on duty, the soldiers that their commander is gentle at home, and neither side collapses under that knowledge. Discord begins where one version has to be concealed from the circle that knows another, and where the person is afraid of this. Hence the working question to which we return in the practical section: can my versions know about each other? James does not put it this way; it is our conclusion from his distinction.

James adds another observation: a person's honor is usually also one of these divisions, namely how he is seen by his own circle, which has its own requirements. An ordinary citizen may flee a town struck by cholera, whereas a priest or a doctor would regard such flight as beneath his honor (paraphrase). So a version of oneself is not only a manner but also the obligations a person has accepted within a particular circle. It is worth telling versions apart along two lines, then: how they differ on the surface and what promises each of them keeps.

A caveat is needed. James wrote in 1890 as a theorist and observer; The Principles of Psychology is not an empirical study, and his distinction has to be tested against other data. As we will see, the data answer this question only in part.

III. Village and court: manner as propriety

In the Analects, the record of Confucius's sayings and conduct collected by his disciples, a different manner with different people is described as exemplary, not as pretence. Book X is almost entirely devoted to how the Master carried himself in different places. It opens: “Confucius, in his village, looked simple and sincere, and as if he were not able to speak.” And further: “When he was in the prince's ancestorial temple, or in the court, he spoke minutely on every point, but cautiously.” (Book X, ch. 1, translated by James Legge, Project Gutenberg #4094).

The same difference is then drawn even more finely. At court he talked openly and directly with officers of lower rank, and mildly but exactly with those of higher rank; in the ruler's presence he was respectfully uneasy yet composed (Book X, ch. 2, paraphrase of Legge's translation). The manner changes with the place and the relationship: fellow villagers, the prince's ancestral temple, the court, the ruler himself.

There is not a shadow of reproach here. In our reading, within this frame the question of which Confucius is the real one, the village one or the court one, simply does not arise: the model is the person who behaves fittingly in each place. Unity rests not on sameness of manner but on fidelity to the relationships this manner expresses, toward fellow villagers, toward ancestors, toward the sovereign. Silence in the village and detailed speech at court are two forms of one respect, addressed to different people.

The limit of the comparison matters. Book X is a description of a teacher's exemplary conduct compiled by disciples; it is not psychology and not an account of inner experience. We do not know whether Confucius felt himself to be different selves, and we do not ascribe the notion of social selves to the text. Carrying it over into our question is our move. It shows one thing: a variety of manners can be a norm if it has a common meaning, understood both by the person and by those around them. In James's terms this is closer to a division of labor than to discordant splitting, but the frame is different: James offers a psychology of the social self, the Analects rules of fitting conduct.

IV. “I am made all things to all men”

The apostle Paul describes a deliberate change of self-presentation for the sake of one purpose, and he names that purpose openly. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians he describes becoming like a Jew among Jews, like one under the law among those under it, like one outside the law among those outside it, and weak among the weak, and he sums up: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” (1 Cor. 9:22, King James Version, Project Gutenberg #10; the Russian edition of this article quotes the Russian Synodal translation, azbyka.ru).

Two details matter. The first is the purpose: all the changes serve one task, and it is stated aloud in a letter read by the whole community. In our reading, Paul does not hide one version from another: the Corinthians learn what he is like with Jews and with Gentiles from his own letter. The second is the limit: in the same passage he specifies that in becoming as one without law he does not cease to be under the law before God (1 Cor. 9:21, paraphrase). The manner changes; the allegiance does not.

The Epistle of James offers the opposite image: “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:8, King James Version). In the context of the letter this concerns the one who asks God while wavering, and who is therefore like a sea wave pushed and thrown about by the wind (James 1:6, paraphrase). Double-mindedness here is a division of faith and intention, not a different manner with different people.

In our reading, the two passages together yield a distinction that will be useful later: a change of appearance with one purpose (Paul) and a division of the purpose itself (James). A person can be very different in different circles and still not be double, if in each circle they serve one thing. And conversely, one can behave the same way with everyone and waver in what matters most.

Applying these words to work, friendship and family is our interpretation. Paul speaks of preaching, James of faith in prayer; neither describes the psychology of self-presentation. But both passages show that the tradition posed the question of being different with different people as a question of purpose and allegiance, not of outward sameness.

V. When versions contradict each other in substance

There is a case that the Qur'an judges without ambiguity: one version refutes another, and the difference is kept secret. The second sura of the Qur'an, The Cow, speaks of people who, when they meet the faithful, say “We believe;” and when they are apart with their own say “Verily we hold with you, and at them we only mock.” (2:14 in the usual numbering; translated by J. M. Rodwell, Project Gutenberg #2800).

Outwardly this resembles Paul: a person carries themselves differently with different people. But the difference is fundamental. With Paul the manner changes while the purpose is openly named. Here the content differs: what is said to the faithful is denied among one's own, and the difference itself is concealed, since the faithful must not learn what is said about them in private. In our reading, this is the extreme case of what James called discordant splitting: one version cannot be shown to another circle because it negates it.

The limit of the comparison is essential here as well. The Qur'an speaks of faith, deception of the community and accountability before God; the next verse says that God himself will turn the mockery back on the mockers (2:15, paraphrase). This is not a psychology of roles, and the judgment cannot be transferred to every discrepancy between versions of oneself: a person who is reserved with the boss and cheerful with friends is not a hypocrite.

From comparing the three passages, Paul, James and this sura, we derive a practical distinction. A difference of manner, meaning tone, topics, vocabulary and degree of openness, is not the same as a difference of claims in substance: what I promise, what I say I believe, what I report about the facts of my life. The first is ordinary adjustment to the listener. The second requires that the versions never meet. Then a person begins to dread the party where all their circles will gather, and that is no longer a matter of tact but of what exactly is being hidden.

VI. A person does not coincide even with themselves

Difference between versions is not only difference between listeners: a person also changes over time, and this variability is ordinary in itself. Montaigne wrote in the chapter Of the Inconstancy of Our Actions: “We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others” (Essays, Book II, ch. 1, translated by Charles Cotton, Project Gutenberg #3600).

A similar proportion has been found in data. Didem Gundogdu and colleagues (2017) followed 54 employees of a research centre in northern Italy for six weeks. Three times each working day the participants described what they had been like during the previous half hour: how outgoing, warm, dependable, calm and open to new experiences. Meanwhile wearable sensors recorded their face-to-face encounters with colleagues. One person's variability over time turned out, as a rule, to be greater than the average differences between people: for all five state measures the within-person variance exceeded the between-person variance, most strongly for extraversion. In the authors' words, people tend to differ more from themselves over time than from one another on average.

Transitions between states were associated with whom, and in what configuration, a person met. For example, a move to a warmer, more agreeable state was more likely when, between two surveys, the person had interacted with two colleagues who were themselves in an agreeable state. The authors call such cases attraction to one's partners; there were also opposite cases, in which a person seemed to complement the behaviour of others.

The limits of these data are named by the researchers themselves: 54 people from one organization, working hours only, states split into high and low, and a study that identifies only associations and does not allow conclusions about causes. But for our question the scale is what matters: in these data one person's variability over time was not a small correction but a magnitude greater than the differences between people at the average level. In our reading, Montaigne and these data agree on the fact and differ in the assessment. Montaigne sees in inconstancy a reason to be more cautious in judging a person by single actions; the researchers see normal variability of behaviour linked to the situation.

VII. What “difference across roles” actually measures

When psychologists ask whether a strong difference between versions of oneself is harmful, they rely on measures that are themselves open to doubt. A common method is to ask people to rate how well the same traits describe them in different roles, for example as a student, a partner, a son or daughter, a friend, a worker. The more the ratings diverge, the higher the so-called self-concept differentiation.

Aleksandra Pilarska and Anna Suchańska (2015) tested whether different ways of calculating it agree with each other. The data come from three samples of Polish students and young adults with a college degree (336, 544 and 131 people aged 18 to 35). The answer is rather negative: the index based on the spread of ratings across roles correlated only weakly with the two others (r = −0.27 and 0.27), although in an earlier study, as the authors note, the measures converged well. Moreover, the spread was related to how favourably a person viewed themselves: those who rated a positive trait as highly descriptive of themselves had a smaller spread of that trait across roles. The scale consisted of only seven positive traits, and the authors allow that such an index partly reflects self-esteem rather than the structure of the self.

An association with the sense of identity was found, but a limited one. In one of the samples a greater difference across roles went together with a weaker global sense of identity, even after accounting for the mean trait rating; it explained about 4 % of the differences. In another sample, when differentiation was considered together with other measures of self-structure, no independent association remained. The authors' conclusion is cautious: these measures may not capture what they are supposed to capture, and once confounding factors are taken into account the remaining effects of self-structure were minor, though they point to a link between well-being and a stable, coherent self-concept. Drawing definite conclusions, in their words, would be premature.

Two more observations from the same paper bear directly on our topic. Citing other researchers, the authors note that a task in which people divide themselves into aspects of their own choosing may direct attention to a pleasant feeling of social specialization, whereas a task with predefined roles may direct it to the unpleasant feeling of wearing many masks. And they allow a more general conclusion: describing ourselves across situations and experiencing ourselves may be two different things.

VIII. Difference across roles and agreement with oneself

Where an association between difference across roles and well-being is found, in the studies we read it ran partly, in statistical terms, through a sense of agreement with oneself; how the versions are connected also turns out to matter. Chaoyang Zhu and colleagues (2021) surveyed 158 retirees of Henan University in China, whose average age was 71. Participants rated themselves in five roles, parent, son or daughter, worker, friend and partner, on 40 traits; those who no longer had a role recalled what they had been like in it. The more the self-descriptions differed across roles, the lower the psychological well-being, the higher the anxiety and depression scores (correlations of about 0.3 to 0.4 in absolute value) and the weaker the sense of self-consistency and congruence (r = −0.34). In the statistical model, the association with well-being ran partly through this sense of consistency. Among the younger retirees, at around 62, no such mediation was found, only at average and older ages.

The authors interpret high differentiation as a sign of fragmentation rather than specialization of roles, and even call its impact universal for East and West. In our reading, the data of one correlational survey of educated retirees from a single university cannot bear such breadth. The authors themselves note that the specificity of the sample reduces the generalizability of the results, and that age cannot be manipulated in an experiment.

A similar picture, but with an important twist, comes from data on third culture kids, people who in childhood and adolescence lived for more than a year in a culture other than their parents'. Magdalena Mosanya and Anna Kwiatkowska (2023) surveyed 399 such students at an international university in the UAE, whose average age was 21. Those who described their identity as including all their cultures tended to have higher well-being; those who identify with one culture at a time, keeping them separate, tended to have lower well-being. Part of this association ran statistically through self-concept consistency: the scale asked, for example, whether a person acts alike at home and in public. The authors themselves call this mediated effect weak and stress that a cross-sectional study does not allow conclusions about causes.

The twist is this. Those who singled out one of their cultures as the main one also reported greater consistency, but their well-being was not associated with this strategy. The authors suggest that such consistency is achieved by suppressing parts of oneself. In our reading, this is close to James's distinction: consistency bought by hiding part of oneself and consistency in which the different sides are acknowledged as one's own are not the same thing. But this is our parallel: the study measured the configuration of cultural identity by questionnaire, not the fear of being recognized in another circle.

IX. Switching between cultures: benefit in the stories, cost in the numbers

A systematic review of cultural frame switching shows a divergence that should not be smoothed over. By switching the authors mean subconsciously adjusting speech, appearance, expressions and behaviour in response to the environment, in people who carry two or more cultures. E. Garcha and colleagues (2025) found 11 eligible studies in a pre-registered review: six qualitative, three quantitative and two mixed-methods.

In all eight studies with qualitative findings, participants described benefits of switching: it helped them maintain relationships with family and friends, work, adjust to society and navigate their cultural identity. But five of the eight also described a cost, an internal identity conflict. Participants said they sensed pressure to hold back part of their identity, and this was experienced as devaluation and loss. According to the authors' synthesis, the quantitative studies consistently showed an association between switching and lower well-being: lower life satisfaction, more psychological symptoms, perceived discrimination. Yet there are only five quantitative findings, the authors themselves note heterogeneity in the strength of the associations, and in their own table the confidence interval for life satisfaction in one of the two studies includes zero. Positive effects, the authors stress, were reported only in the qualitative studies.

They suggest the divergence may be due to methods: interviews capture flexibility in a specific context, while standardized scales capture overall well-being. The limits of the review are also named. There are few studies and they are heterogeneous, so no meta-analysis was carried out; publication bias is possible; confounding factors such as age, education, generation and religion are likely to have affected the results. Because of the small number of studies, the authors regard the findings as somewhat preliminary.

In our reading, the review gives no answer to whether switching is good or bad. It shows that people experience one and the same skill both as a resource and as a cost. And the line runs roughly where James drew it: participants describe a benefit when switching frames helps keep a connection with both circles, and a cost when it requires repressing part of oneself. This is our comparison; the review did not test James's criterion and did not measure the fear of being recognized.

X. A version for everyone: self-presentation on social media

A special case of a version for many people is a social media profile; here researchers measured how far self-presentation departs from how a person describes themselves. Erica Bailey and colleagues (2020) compared two personality portraits of 10,560 Facebook users: how people rated themselves on a test and what their personality looked like from their Likes and status updates, as estimated by an algorithm. The closer the portraits, the higher, on average, the life satisfaction. The effect was robust but small: the largest standardized coefficient was 0.11. In an additional analysis, it was specifically self-enhancement, rating oneself higher than one's online behaviour suggested, that was associated with lower well-being, while self-deprecation showed no such association.

Since these are correlations, the authors also acknowledge the reverse direction: perhaps people with higher well-being simply express themselves authentically more often. To test the direction, they ran a pre-registered experiment. 90 students, instead of the planned 200 because the lab was closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, posted as they are for one week and in an idealized way for another; the order of the weeks was randomly assigned. Comparing the same people with themselves, mood and positive affect were higher after the authentic week than after the idealized one (effect size about 0.4), while there was no significant difference in life satisfaction. Comparing the groups after the first week, no differences were found.

The study concerns social media only and does not explain why people depart from their self-description, whether through lack of self-awareness or on purpose. Authenticity as a value is the subject of another article in the series. For our question, in our reading, something else matters: in these data it was not every discrepancy between the public version and the self-description that was associated with well-being, but specifically self-enhancement. This bears on the distinction between manner and content only in part: what was enhanced in these data was the self-rating on the test relative to online behaviour, and the study did not test whether a person told the audience things about themselves that were not there.

XI. Objection and limits

The strong objection to this article lies in the data themselves: if difference across roles is associated with worse well-being, would it not be better to be the same with everyone? We think the studies we read do not show this, for three reasons.

The first is design. The associations of differences between versions of oneself with identity and well-being come from correlational surveys of particular groups: Polish students and young adults, Chinese retirees, students in the UAE. The direction is not established: perhaps poor well-being makes self-descriptions less consistent, rather than the other way round. The experiment by Bailey and colleagues varied not difference across roles but the instruction to post as one is or in an idealized way, and it showed shifts in mood and positive affect among 90 students, but not in life satisfaction.

The second is measurement. Pilarska and Suchańska showed that different indices of difference across roles agree poorly with one another, and that the index based on the spread of ratings is related to how favourably people rate their own traits. They also recall that, according to a number of cultural psychologists, people in collectivistic cultures should be expected to behave less consistently across situations, and consistency with oneself is thought to matter for good functioning in individualistic cultures but not in collectivistic ones.

The third is that sameness is not wholeness. In Mosanya and Kwiatkowska's study, singling out one culture as the main one went together with greater consistency but not with greater well-being. One can be the same with everyone at the price of never showing part of oneself.

The limit of our own conclusion must also be named. None of the studies we read tested James's criterion directly, the fear that one circle will see you as another circle knows you. Closest to it are the sense of self-consistency in Zhu and colleagues and the integration of cultural identity in Mosanya and Kwiatkowska, but both were measured by self-report. So the question of whether my versions can know about each other is the authors' argument, resting on James and the traditions, not a tested marker.

What this means in practice

Below are questions for self-examination that follow from James's distinction and from the data we read. This is the authors' suggestion for reflection; these steps have not been tested in research.

List three to five circles you are part of regularly: family, friends, work, neighbours, social media. For each, write down in two or three words what you are like there.
Separate manner from content. Tone, topics, vocabulary and degree of openness usually change, and that is adjustment. Note separately where claims of substance differ: what you promise, what you say you believe, what you report about the facts of your life.
Ask James's question of each pair of circles: if the people here saw me as I am there, would it be awkward or frightening? Awkwardness is normal. Fear is a reason to look more closely at that pair.
Name what stays common across all circles: values, promises, care for someone. If it is hard to name, that too is an answer worth thinking about.
Look at the direction of the difference: where do your description of yourself and the way you actually behave there diverge, and in which direction? In the social media study one direction was associated with lower well-being, namely rating oneself higher than one's online behaviour suggested, while the opposite showed no such association; this is a correlation, not a rule.
If you find a difference of substance, you do not have to make all versions the same. Sometimes it is enough to stop hiding one from another: to tell a colleague that you are different at home, or your family that you are stricter at work.

What not to expect. The aim of these questions is not sameness with everyone. In studies of switching between cultural frames, people describe it both as a resource and as a cost, and the data on the harm of difference across roles are correlational and disputed in their measurement. If the feeling that there is no real self, or the fear of being exposed between circles, does not let go and gets in the way of life, it is sensible to consult a doctor or psychologist. If thoughts of harming yourself arise, seek help right away, and in immediate danger contact the emergency services of your country.

The man in our example may find at the party that he feels awkward but not afraid: jokes, reserve and patience are three manners of one person who deceives no one. Then the party is not an exposure, just a complicated evening.

Key quotation

“From this there results what practically is a division of the man into several selves; and this may be a discordant splitting, as where one is afraid to let one set of his acquaintances know him as he is elsewhere; or it may be a perfectly harmonious division of labor, as where one tender to his children is stern to the soldiers or prisoners under his command.”

William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, ch. X, The Consciousness of Self, section on the social self (1890): Project Gutenberg #57628.

The quotation gathers the main move of the article: what matters is not the number of versions or how unlike they are, but whether one has to be hidden from another. It does not follow that every difference is harmless: James describes two extreme cases and does not measure where the boundary between them lies.

Connections between traditions

Comparison (side A ↔ side B)	Meeting point (similarity)	Essential limit
James, The Principles of Psychology, ch. X ↔ Analects, Book X, ch. 1–2	A different manner in different circles is a norm, not a vice: in James a person shows each group a different side; Confucius is simple in the village and detailed but cautious at court	James describes the psychology of the social self (a theoretical text of 1890); the Analects give a model of a teacher's ritual propriety recorded by disciples, without a notion of social selves and without an account of inner experience
1 Cor. 9:20–22 ↔ Qur'an 2:14 (tr. Rodwell)	Outwardly similar conduct: a person carries themselves differently with different people	Paul names his purpose openly and specifies that he remains under the law before God; the sura speaks of a hidden contradiction in substance, faith in words and mockery behind people's backs, that is, of deception
Montaigne, Essays, II.1 ↔ Whitman, Song of Myself, 51	A person does not coincide with themselves: there is “as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others”; “I contain multitudes”	Montaigne draws a sceptical conclusion about how hard it is to judge people by their actions; Whitman affirms multiplicity as fullness, without judging actions
Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.7 ↔ James, ch. X	A person as a player of many parts	For Jaques the parts follow one another through the ages of life; for James different sides of oneself are shown to different people at one and the same time
James 1:8 (KJV) ↔ Pilarska and Suchańska, 2015; Zhu and colleagues, 2021	Division goes with instability: in James the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways; in the studies a greater difference in self-descriptions across roles went together with a weaker sense of identity or lower well-being	James speaks of wavering faith in prayer, not of roles; the studies offer correlations in particular samples, and in Pilarska and Suchańska the measures of difference agree poorly with each other
Montaigne, Essays, II.1 ↔ Gundogdu and colleagues, 2017	A person differs from themselves no less than from others: in the data one person's variability over time exceeded the differences between people at the average level	Montaigne observes actions and manners; the study uses self-reports of states during the previous half hour from 54 employees of one organization, working hours only, and only associations, without conclusions about causes
Paul, 1 Cor. 9:22 ↔ Garcha and colleagues, 2025	Changing one's manner to connect with different people; in the qualitative studies of the review, participants described benefits of switching for relationships	Paul speaks of preaching and one purpose; in the review the quantitative studies associate switching with lower well-being, and the authors do not resolve this divergence

The table compares only the passages indicated. Shared motifs do not mean a shared teaching, and we do not claim any historical connection between the traditions. The studies give sample averages and correlations; they should be applied to an individual with care.

Primary sources

The texts of the traditions were read in copies from Project Gutenberg and azbyka.ru; the English quotations are given in the editions listed, and the Russian edition of this article quotes 1 Cor. 9:22 in the Russian Synodal translation. The research articles are open under Creative Commons Attribution licences; their full texts were read in Europe PMC copies, and the findings were taken from the methods, results, discussion and limitations sections, not from the abstracts. The example is the authors' own.

James W. The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, 1890 (Project Gutenberg #57628). Ch. X, The Consciousness of Self, section on the social self: the paragraph on social selves and the following paragraph on honor.
The Bible, Russian Synodal translation: 1 Corinthians 9 (azbyka.ru). Verses 19–22; quoted in the Russian edition of this article.
The Holy Bible, King James Version (Project Gutenberg #10). 1 Cor. 9:20–22; James 1:5–8.
Confucius. The Chinese Classics, vol. 1: Confucian Analects, tr. J. Legge (Project Gutenberg #4094). Book X, ch. 1–2.
Montaigne M. de. Essays — Complete, tr. Ch. Cotton, ed. W. C. Hazlitt (Project Gutenberg #3600). Book II, ch. I, Of the Inconstancy of Our Actions, the paragraph on lumps.
Whitman W. Leaves of Grass (Project Gutenberg #1322). Song of Myself, section 51.
The Koran, tr. J. M. Rodwell (Project Gutenberg #2800). Sura II, The Cow, verses 14–15 in the usual numbering (Rodwell gives no verse numbers).
Shakespeare W. As You Like It (The Complete Works, Project Gutenberg #100). Act II, Scene 7, Jaques's speech.
Pilarska A., Suchańska A. Self-Complexity and Self-Concept Differentiation – What Have We Been Measuring for the Past 30 Years? Current Psychology, 2015, 34 (PMC4703609). Method, results, general discussion, limitations; three survey studies, correlations and regressions; CC BY 4.0.
Zhu C., Zhu M., Gao X., Liu X. How Does Self-Concept Differentiation Work in Chinese Retirees: A Moderated Mediation Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 2021, 12 (PMC7930060). Methods, results, discussion, limitations; survey of 158 retirees, mediation model; CC BY 4.0.
Mosanya M., Kwiatkowska A. Multicultural Identity Integration versus Compartmentalization as Predictors of Subjective Well-Being for Third Culture Kids. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2023, 20 (PMC10002138). Methods, results, discussion, limitations, conclusions; cross-sectional survey of 399 students; CC BY 4.0.
Gundogdu D., Finnerty A. N., Staiano J., Teso S., Passerini A., Pianesi F., Lepri B. Investigating the association between social interactions and personality states dynamics. Royal Society Open Science, 2017, 4 (PMC5627072). Methods, results, discussion and the limitations paragraph; six-week observation of 54 employees; CC BY 4.0.
Garcha E., Qureshi A., O'Driscoll C., Shaikh M. The impact of cultural frame switching on wellbeing — systematic review. PLoS ONE, 2025 (PMC12459798). Method, results (qualitative and quantitative synthesis), discussion, strengths and limitations, conclusion; systematic review of 11 studies; CC BY.
Bailey E. R., Matz S. C., Youyou W., Iyengar S. S. Authentic self-expression on social media is associated with greater subjective well-being. Nature Communications, 2020, 11 (PMC7538578). Results of both studies, discussion, limitations paragraphs, methods; correlational study and experiment; CC BY 4.0.

About the authors

Andrey Zarinsh is the author and founder of United Wisdom. He explores inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut is a co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside her research, she seeks to test these ideas in practice and observe how principles of unity and mutual understanding work in real life between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.