The framework introduced by Veissière and colleagues provides a compelling account of enculturation as a process of thinking through other minds (TTOM). However, their account may fall short of providing a thorough model of cognition. I agree with the authors’ proposal that humans outsource most of their thinking unto other minds in order to minimize cognitive load, essentially by engaging others’ expectations and inferences. However, I find their claim that all solitary human thinking is “social through and through” (sect. 3.6, para. 2) rather extreme and wish to highlight ways in which it could be nuanced. I will present evidence from research on identity processes which suggest that individuals vary in the degree to which they adhere to social norms and the expectations of others when they engage in identity construction.

Berzonsky's research on identity processing styles (Berzonsky Reference Berzonsky1989; Reference Berzonsky, Schwartz, Luyckx and Vignoles2011) identified individual differences in the tendency to use normative information for self-definition processes. He showed that individuals with a normative identity style tend to base their self-view on the relevant social norms and standards that their group and significant others value and adopt. In contrast, individuals with an informational identity style come to think about themselves on the basis of a complex exploration process. That is, they actively seek out self-relevant information by testing out beliefs, activities, and interests and assessing the degree to which they fit to themselves (e.g., Do I really want to be a lawyer?). In contrast, individuals high in normative identity style tend not to question their culturally prescribed commitments (e.g., of course, like my father, I will be a lawyer because it is a well-paid and respectable job).

The fact that individuals with a normative identity style prefer to cut short the taxing process of deeply questioning and exploring their identity is consistent with Veissière and colleagues’ framework, in that norms are herein recruited as a short-cut to a great deal of uncertainty (or free energy). Consistent with this idea is the finding that normative identity style is related to higher levels of need for structure and need for cognitive closure (Soenens et al. Reference Soenens, Duriez and Goossens2005). However, I am not sure that informational identity style could be understood through Veissière and colleagues’ framework. How should we understand that some cultured agents seek and tolerate the uncertainty of questioning their identity beyond social norms and voluntarily go about a long process of thinking autonomously about themselves, rather than using norms as an antidote to this uncertainty?

Mclean and colleagues (McLean & Syed Reference McLean and Syed2015; McLean et al. Reference McLean, Lilgendahl, Fordham, Alpert, Marsden, Szymanowski and McAdams2017) make similar observations in their research on identity development, which focus on the relationship of identity and society in personal narratives. This team focuses on the narratives that are the cultural templates for the experiences one should expect to have in their lives, which they call master narratives. They define the latter as shared narrative expectations regarding what is a culturally valued biography. They found evidence that individuals develop their identities by negotiating the degree to which these narratives are maintained or changed when individuals create their own life story.

A particularly relevant result is that individuals who develop alternative narratives (i.e., changed relative to the master narrative) are also engaged with more identity work (McLean et al. Reference McLean, Lilgendahl, Fordham, Alpert, Marsden, Szymanowski and McAdams2017). Specifically, it was found that those who develop alternative narratives made a greater number of explicit connections between life events and their selves and displayed higher levels of identity exploration. These results are consistent with Veissière and colleagues’ framework because they suggest that identifying with cultural norms requires less effort. However, these results also challenge the TTOM framework because they suggest that some individuals decide to exert the effort of developing alternatives to these cultural norms.

Social norms are attractive because they provide ready-made answers to the difficult and urgent questions we face throughout our lives. This may explain why conformism is endemic but does not preclude that some individuals are willing and able to go about the costly process of questioning these social norms. Furthermore, this questioning might be an essential part of the iterative process underlying the cumulative culture phenomena described by Tomasello et al. (Reference Tomasello, Kruger and Ratner1993). Individuals thinking about norms in a unique and original way instead of just blindly assimilating them may catalyze the generation of useful ideas and solutions that are integrated in culture and passed on to future generations. The adaptiveness of today's culture may owe a lot to individuals in past generations who distanced their thinking from their culture. If we lose the thinker in others mind, we may lose much of the adaptive potential of culture.