To begin describing the motivation behind social behaviors already runs the risk of treating the experience of hate, love, and all the vigorous social emotions, as mechanical and without dignity or value on their own. You cannot feel the full love if you are convinced that you love someone is for financial security or biological compatibility.

To posit a general theory of social motivation is to go into the entire project with the assumption that behavior has reasons that can be fully uncovered. And if we assign reason the human behavior, it must be good for the organism or its genes, it must fit the scientific narrative. My intent is not to convince you that our social behavior is mere selfishness, but in order to describe a theory of social behavior, I will seem to neglect the realness of true flesh and blood relationships. In the end, I will ensure that you see that dignity of relationships can be restored by the nature of the discussion.

The “Use” of Others

We are one of the few animals who readily use tools. Because of this, we see and use great portions of the world as means to ends. It can be a natural inclination to manipulate things, like a child who discovers quickly how to access nourishment or cry for attention from those his survival depends. Or our ends may be a reasoned or symbolic goal. If we aim at some definition of love, we might use flowers and chocolates to attain it. We rely on the tools to complete these meaningful tasks. And in having to make efforts and be patient, we realize that we ourselves are the ultimate tool for completing a goal. And our self and the other means to ends become intertwined and the same. Tools become part of ourselves.

To the carpenter, a broken saw could be a broken identity of the carpenter herself. The security that the tool promises is lost with the security of the user of that tool—the house may not be built in time. If you don’t believe me that our tools become ourselves, consider the catastrophy of breaking one’s phone, we realize that our identity has been so tied to it that once we cannot use it, we are different, with the case of social media we feel we do not exist without it.

“In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Me is the sum total of all that he can call his.”

William James – Psychology: The Briefer Course

There are so many things which are a categorized in the self, some to greater and some to lesser degrees, based on how much you rely on them; but what is always the case for us, is our relationships seem to be of vital importance to all of us.

Even if you do not think yourself social, how you relate to others is still a huge part of your motivation. All of us who survived childhood were once totally reliant on others, usually our parents, to survive. We are alive because in some way our parents were a used as a means to survival. And this pattern lives on in the adult. To put it crudely, our loved ones (and even those we hate) are tools for our ends.

In an effort to describe how we seem to want to possess things, including relationships, psychologists have come up with a “self-expansion theory.” The theory uses an evolutionary framework to help us understand our attachments and how they become such a large part of our lives.

Resources and Self

“The first overarching principle of the self-expansion model is that people seek to expand the self in the sense that they seek to enhance their potential efficacy by increasing the physical and social resources, perspectives, and identities that facilitate achievement of any goal that might arise.”

Arthur Aron, Elaine N. Aron, and Christina Norman – Self and Social Identity

We seem to be highly motivated to collect resources that we predict might be useful when the time comes. This is obvious when we see how much of our culture is built on securing these resources (i.e., savings accounts, the institution of marriage, insurance companies, property laws). I say this without cynicism, for it is a good thing for us (relatively wimpy animals) to prepare for dangerous or urgent situation. We may need that weapon if prey or predator is near.

In this framework our relationships are no different than other things we use. Evolutionary psychology gives us reasons to believe that friendships, belonging to groups, romances, and family bonds are all necessary for increasing the chances of survival and reproduction—not in the exact moment, but possible in the future. Let someone borrow food when you have plenty, and maybe you will receive food when you are starved.

So are our relationships really this tit-for-tat game of gathering up social capital for security and survival? Are we mistaken when we take our relationships seriously?

The theory I am using is not called “accumulation of tools.” It is called self-expansion theory. We make ourselves means to ends in our use of tools and attempts at self-control. The things that are used as a means to an end are no less dignified than your own body and mind as you use them to navigate your goals.

In a beautiful description of the material self, William James shows his understanding of how our relationships are as close to our “self” as our own bodies:

“Next, our immediate family is part of ourselves. Our father and mother, our wife and babes, are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our very selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If they are insulted, our anger flashes forth as readily as if we stood in their place.”

William James – The Principles of Psychology Vol. 1

In this way, if you are going to say that relationships are mere instruments, you must also claim that your experience, your thinking, and all the efforts you make are mere instruments. But we find, even if one accepts that intellectually, our minds are not equipped to discard the authenticity of our experience.

Mistake 1: The Life-Denying Cynic

The argument that I deny is that we are merely selfish creatures.

For some people the world is a tit-for-tat game. Every altruistic act is interpreted as somehow to benefit the doer. At their gentlest, this person might give advice like, “if you are good to others, people will be good to you.” But generally, they cannot be convinced that the actual well-being of others is directly related to their own.

Much of our collecting of objects and relationships produce in us an instinctual experience of a good in itself. It can be biological or learned but we experience things not as means but as something with value. Instincts are the biological creations of values and prescriptions of actions. Emotions and habits, derived from biology and experience, can also make us experience value. And finally, things incorporated into the self are seen with value or at least an ambivalent attachment, even after the object was merely a means. We cannot escape a world of valuing things as ends in themselves, no matter how intellectual and sterile our minds have become.

We cannot say truthfully, “I need a friend to support my future self” or “I need a mate because I need to spread my genes.” The reasons for our actions are never complete, but they are always somehow motivated. Converting, in your mind, people into mere resources or means to ends is not a neutral position. It is a way of avoiding the full emotional impact of the world. And by doing that you take a position in the social world that you do treat as important. In denying the authenticity of relationships, the cynic forms his own defensive relationship to the world. This is not unlike Simone de Beauvoir’s criticism of the nihilist.

“Instead of integrating death into life, he sees in it the only truth of the life which appears to him as a disguised death. However, there is life, and the nihilist knows that he is alive. That’s where his failure lies. He rejects existence without managing to eliminate it. He denies any meaning to his transcendence, and yet he transcends himself.”

Simone de Beauvoir – The Ethics of Ambiguity

We have to accept that we cannot escape giving value to our relationships, and that value means something for us that relates to our subjective well-being.

Mistake 2: The Ignoramus

You may read this and think that all your relationships, which you feel have innate value because of the emotion and authenticity you feel. But you can very well be hiding your ulterior motives behind a vail of feeling justified.

How can you be sure that you are not using your lover selfishly as a means for self-confidence? How can you be sure that the friendship with your coworker isn’t a means for climbing the corporate ladder?

We are programmed for these types of abuse of people, and psychology can help us to become more aware that we might have these dark motives. We cannot plead ignorance in the selfishness of our own acts. We have the duty to “know ourselves” and see our effects on others.

Can we synthesize a world where people are both means to ends and ends themselves?