BELONGINGNESS

Personality inventories like the Big 5 and Myers-Briggs try to boil down personality to a handful of traits. These traits represent patterns of thought or behavior. Trait theory can be useful, but each trait has to be meaningfully different, and each has to explain a meaningful aspect of the human experience. I think there is an aspect of behavior that these theories miss. I call the missing trait “belongingness.” It isn’t often talked about because it’s highly abstract, but it needs to be talked about because it’s central to how people view the world and themselves.

Here is my working definition of belongingness: the degree to which people consider themselves part of—or find their identities in—things outside their own minds. I warned you that it’s abstract. To see exactly what this trait encompasses, we will examine the extreme ends of the spectrum.

People at the high end of belongingness are, in their perceptions, wholly integrated into the world. If you asked them to envision their lives, they would think of their friends and relatives, the organizations they belong to and roles they play, the places they live in and subcultures they represent. If you asked them who they are, they would talk about those relationships, occupations, and affiliations. They draw their identities from these attachments. That’s why they feel like they have lost part of themselves when they change jobs, move to a new place, or say goodbye to a close friend. They also draw meaning from their attachments. When their attachments are strong, they gain a sense of purpose or even spirituality. They can feel needed or supported by their communities. I’m not claiming that they always feel those things, only that they are capable of feeling them.

Now we’ll flip all that on its head. People at the low end of belongingness are, in their perceptions, utterly distinct from the world. If you asked them to envision their lives, they would think of their long-term goals and looming decisions or their aptitudes and experiences. If you asked them who they are, they would talk most likely about their goals, beliefs, and interests. They draw their identities from their own minds, their belief systems and thought processes. Rather than drawing meaning from groups, organizations, etc., they have to attribute meaning to these things based on their beliefs. Rather than feeling like they belong to a group, they view their participation as an investment in the group. Relationships, jobs, and affiliations are, to them, resources no different than time or money. If, on the high end of belongingness, life is about finding your place in the world, then, on the low end, it’s about managing resources to achieve your goals.

Let me be clear: belongingness isn’t a matter of emotional bonds. People extremely low in belongingness can form emotional bonds¬ as well as anyone else. They can love and hate as much as anyone else. It’s a matter of how people conceptualize themselves. At the bottom of the spectrum, people do not feel like they are part of the world. They feel like they are on the outside, looking in through a window.

At this point, we’ve seen some advantages of high belongingness and disadvantages of low belongingness, so let’s flip that around too. People low in belongingness are less likely to give in to peer pressure or groupthink and more likely to associate with people of different ages and backgrounds. People high in belongingness are more likely to resist change and hold on to prejudice. Both ends of the spectrum have pros and cons.

Belongingness affects every aspect of a person’s life. The patterns of thought and behavior represented by other personality traits do not seem to determine a person’s place on the spectrum (A person could be at one point on the belongingness scale and completely different points on other scales.); however, belongingness seems to affect the reasoning behind those patterns. As an example, we’ll look at the interaction between belongingness and extraversion.

Extraverts seek out social interaction for fun, emotional support, good conversation, etc. Those high in belongingness gain a sense of community: they feel like they are part of other people’s lives and other people are part of theirs. Those low in belongingness see their networks as assets worth maintaining. They see every new connection as a potential place to invest their knowledge and energy, helping the other person, or as a potential source of opportunities and information that might help them achieve their goals.

Introverts high in belongingness try to forge two or three extremely close relationships. They target people they see regularly—coworkers, neighbors, and church friends—looking for deep, mutual involvement in each other’s lives. Those low in belongingness target people with shared interests and beliefs, or compatible needs and aptitudes, even if every interaction with them has to be planned. They expect to mentor and be mentored by this select group.

From what I can tell, a person’s place on the spectrum is generally stable. I am on the extreme low end, and I can look back on my life and see how that influenced my thinking even as a child. If I were higher in belongingness, I might have derived some of my identity from being a man or an American or a member of my family or a product of two ethnicities. Instead, I see myself as a person who happened to be born a certain gender in a certain country to certain parents.

I wrote the following lines several years ago, when I didn’t know about this trait but knew I viewed the world differently than most people:

Most people don’t notice the culture they are accustomed to. It becomes normal to them, the benchmark by which to measure other things. Everything is strange to me. I look at the people and things around me like an outsider studying an alien society. … Groups don’t influence me. I’ve never done something because someone dared me to. … I am closer to my family than 95% of Americans, yet I’ve never defined myself in terms of my relation to them. Have I formed my self-concept in a vacuum? No, but it is closer to that than to the subconscious process most people seem to experience.

Do you see the effect of low belongingness? It is simultaneously isolating and freeing.

Hopefully, this article gives you the words to talk about another aspect of the human experience. Hopefully, it helps you understand yourself and the people around you a little better.