ARECENT Wall Street Journal article (September 9, 2015) asked if a person’s identity is found in his intellect, memory or moral character, pointing to a new study from the University of Arizona and Yale University.
Researchers interviewed the families of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s, dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Some of these disorders lead to changes in a patient’s personality, and the researchers wanted to pinpoint what family members meant whenever they said their loved ones weren’t “the same person” anymore.
The family members were asked to compare how their loved ones were before and after being diagnosed with the neurodegenerative sickness. And they were made to rate the degree of change in 64 areas, such as the patient’s intellectual behavior, physicality, courteousness, optimism, patience, cheerfulness, assertiveness, adventure-seeking behavior, composure, sense of responsibility, sense of propriety and compassion, among others.
The study found it was changes in so-called moral behavior—or simply, how patients treated other people—that accounted for a change in the “perceived identity” of the loved one. Patients may have suffered memory loss (even to the point of not knowing who their loved ones were), but there was still something in how they treated others that made their family members believe they were still the same person.
An article on the same study illustrated this point with a story from Dr. Felipe Brigard of Duke University about the husband of one of his patients suffering from Alzheimer’s. The husband told Brigard, “There’s something about the way [my wife] interacts with me that makes me realize she knows who I am, even though she can’t remember me.” Brigard asked for an example. The husband answered, “Yes, every night when I put her to bed, she asks me to stay.”
What the University of Arizona and Yale University researchers found was apparently contrary to what generations of philosophers and psychologists have thought—that memories and accumulated knowledge are what form the core of our identities. In fact, morals and values do—as the study suggests.
In the run-up to next year’s presidential elections, that finding is worth remembering when choosing the next president.
Character matters.
E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.
1 comment
After saying that he has two wives and two girlfriends, this sounds like a dig at Duterte.