We often hear that we should unlock our inner potential—to figure out what our talents and abilities are and to develop them as much as we can. But how important of a goal is this? Plenty of other pursuits can be just as valuable, if not more. For example, should we make sure financial needs are met and focus on wealth? Or deepen our social relationships? Or simply focus on achieving happiness? A recent study by University of Chicago Center for Practical Wisdom researchers, doctoral candidate Yena Kim and Dr. Fan Yang, principal investigator of the Human Nature and Potentials Lab, found that adults value potential-realization more than other major social and psychological goals across varying contexts and cultures.
The Pursuit of Potential-Realization:
On a new publication by Yena Kim & Fan Yang
When thinking about potential-realization, lead author Yena Kim stated, “We think of it as having three steps. First, to identify your talents and abilities. This means having a personal sense of what you could have a knack for or some interest in. It could be cooking, gardening, swimming—the list can be endless. Then, you try to develop your skills by practicing or learning how to improve. If it’s cooking, then maybe you take the time to try making new recipes or learn new cutting techniques. Finally, you find opportunities to apply what you know in different facets of your life. If we continue with the cooking example, this can look like pursuing a career in the food industry, but it can also be as simple as hosting dinner parties for friends and family.”
In the publication, Kim and Yang note the lack of research in whether people feel they should pursue potential-realization as a primary goal.
Fan Yang noted, “Even though Western philosophy has a long tradition in emphasizing the potentialities and essence within people and while psychology has revealed many important factors helping people to realize their potential, surprisingly little is known about how much people actually value its pursuit. This question is especially important given that modern life is becoming increasingly demanding and materialized, where materialistic and hedonic pursuits might be more valued.”
In the publication, the authors also discuss the role of life circumstances and how not having basic needs met may influence potential-realization. They wondered if people might believe potential-realization is a luxury. To understand all these nuances, the paper is divided into three studies. The first study examined how Americans value potential-realization more than social belonging and status but less than obtaining material resources. Study 2 further observed the role of potential-realization in Americans while considering life circumstances. They report that U.S. adults do indeed value potential realization more than these other major goals, except in deprived conditions where they value material resources more. In Study 3, the authors recruited a sample of adults from a more collectivist culture, China, and found both individualist and collectivist cultures valued the pursuit of potential-realization more than status, hedonic happiness, and even social belonging. The divergence they reported between cultures is that in China, even in impoverished conditions, people report valuing potential-realization as highly as material resources.
Generally, Kim says, “Our findings suggest that people have a strong tendency to value pursuing potential-realization, highlighting it as a critical path to understanding ourselves and what a good life is.”
In their publication, Kim and Yang nod to new directions in motivational science and suggest future research directed toward examining why people hold potential-realization to such a high value in their lives.
Yang says, “This is the first step toward understanding people’s valuation of different life pursuits. Moral psychology has long studied how people treat others but have not engaged much with questions about how people treat themselves and what pursuits they value in life. These questions—how we should live our life and what it means to live well—sit at the intersection of existential cognition and moral psychology. We hope our research could bring this new line of inquiry to people’s attention, and we would like to conduct more theoretical and empirical research to help advance existential morality as an emerging field.”
After reading their research, one is left pondering ‘How much do I value the pursuit of my own potential? What skills have I tried to develop? How have I unlocked my human potential?’ One only needs to look at Yena Kim’s assertion, “This journey of figuring out who we’re meant to be is key to the pursuit of potential-realization,” and to know that asking these questions is heading down the path toward understanding the self and a good life.
To read more, click on the citation to find the publication:
About the authors:
Yena Kim is a Joint-PhD candidate in cognitive psychology and behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is interested in understanding the social and cognitive factors underlying personal change. She is also a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.
Fan Yang is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, the principal investigator of the Human Nature & Potentials Lab, and the lead investigator of the Moral Transcendence project at the Center for Practical Wisdom. Her research program focuses on how children and adults engage with big questions in life, from happiness and meaning to morality and sense of self.
