Through the Character: labels, expectations and the stories we learn about ourselves

Ralph’s problem is built in to his name. He is Wreck-It Ralph. His job is to break things. The people around him expect him to break things. When the work is finished, somebody else is celebrated for repairing the damage while Ralph returns to the role that has already been decided for him.

And yet, Ralph wants something that does not fit neatly inside that role: he wants to be seen as more than the person who wrecks things. That makes his story psychologically interesting, because people do not develop an understanding of themselves completely in isolation. Our identities are shaped partly through experience, but also through the expectations, reactions and labels we repeatedly encounter from other people.

Research on self-fulfilling prophecies gives us one way of understanding this process. Jussim (1986) described a sequence in which one person develops expectation about another, behaves differently towards them because of that expectation, and may then contribute to behaviour that appears to confirm the original belief. Importantly, later research suggests that these effects are generally more modest and complicated than popular accounts sometimes imply (Jussim & Harber, 2005). Expectations do not simply determine who somebody becomes; but they can matter.

That distinction feels important for Ralph. He is not a wrecking machine without agency, nor is everyone around him solely responsible for what he does. But when one role is repeatedly assigned to somebody – this is what you do, therefore this is who you are – it can become increasingly difficult to imagine a version of yourself outside it.

Ralph’s story asks a deceptively simple question: What happens when everybody knows what you are supposed to be, but you are no longer sure that is all you are?

When a role becomes an identity

Ralph does not simply do the wrecking. Over time, wrecking becomes the story everybody tells about who he is, and excludes him as a result.

At the end of each working day, Fix-It Felix is celebrated. The residents gather around him, thank him and give him a place within their community. Ralph, meanwhile, is expected to return to the dump alone. The contrast raises an important point: one character is repeatedly associated with repair, recognition and belonging; while the other is associated with destruction, rejection and exclusion.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Ralph becomes preoccupied with the medal Felix receives. The medal is not really valuable because it is shiny. To Ralph, it represents evidence that another version of himself might be possible – somebody worthy of recognition, friendship and a place at the table.

Psychologists Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius (1986) used the term possible selves to describe the different versions of ourselves that we imagine we might become, would like to become, or fear becoming. These imagined identities can influence motivation because they provide a connection between who we understand ourselves to be now and who we believe we could become.

Ralph has spent years being shown one possible self: The bad guy who wrecks things.

The medal offers another: Ralph the here.

But his story also demonstrates something more complicated. Changing how we see ourselves can be difficult when the social world around us continues to reinforce the old identity. It is one thing for Ralph to believe he might be capable of heroism; it is another for the people who have known him only as the villain to imagine the same possibility.

Markus and Nurius argued that our possible selves do not develop in a vacuum. They are influenced by the social world around us – by the roles, examples and possibilities that are made available to us. That makes Ralph struggle about more than wanting everybody to like him. He is trying to answer a much harder question: How do you become something different when everybody around you keeps reminding you who you have always been?

When exclusion reinforces the label

Ralph’s identity as the “bad guy” is not reinforced only by the work he does. It is also reinforced by where he is – and is not – allowed to belong.

One of the clearest examples comes when the residents of Niceland celebrate the anniversary of their game. Felix is invited inside. Ralph is not. When Ralph eventually enters the party, the discomfort is immediate: his presence is treated as disruptive before he has really done anything at all. The message is difficult to miss. Ralph may be necessary to the game, but that does not mean he is considered part of the community.

Psychological research suggests that belonging is not a trivial social luxury. Baumeister and Leary (1995) argued that human beings have a fundamental need to belong: a strong motivation to form and maintain stable, positive interpersonal relationships. Research on ostracism has similarly shown that being ignore or excluded can threaten needs including belonging, self-esteem, control and a sense that our existence matters (Williams, 2007). Seen through that lens, Ralph’s desire for a medal begins to look different.

He says he wants to be treated like Felix, but what he appears to want most is not Felix’s job. He wants what Felix’s role gives him: recognition, inclusion and evidence that other people believe he has value.

The difficulty is that exclusion can create exactly the conditions in which the original label becomes harder to escape. Ralph is treated as though he is disruptive and dangerous; his frustration grows; he behaves in ways that become increasingly disruptive; and those behaviours can then be used as proof that the community was right about him all along.

That does not make Ralph powerless over his choices. Exclusion des nt automatically produce harmful behaviour, and feeling rejected does not excuse what somebody does next. But it does ask us to consider an uncomfortable possibility: sometimes we respond to somebody as though they are already the person we fear they will become, and then overlook the part our response may have played in what happened afterwards.

Ralph is repeatedly told, in words and in actions, “you are the bad guy”. Eventually, the psychologically interesting question is not simply why he behaves like one. It is how much opportunity he was ever given to practice being anything else.

When proving them wrong becomes another trap

Ralph eventually decides that if being the “bad guy” is what keeps him outside the community, then perhaps becoming a hero will finally earn him a place inside it. The medal becomes proof; if he can win one, the people of Niceland will have to see him differently.

That desire is understandable. When somebody has spent a long time being defined by what they do wrong, external recognition can begin to feel like evidence that they are worth something after all. But there is a risk in allowing our sense of worth to depend entirely on proving other people wrong.

Crocker and Wolfe (2001) described contingencies of self-worth: areas in which people come to base their self-esteem on meeting particular standards or receiving particular forms of validation. When our worth becomes contingent on succeeding, being approved of, looking a certain way or achieving something specific, changes in those areas can produce corresponding changes in how we feel about ourselves.

For Ralph, the medal begins to carry far more psychological weight than the object itself could ever hold. He does not simply want to accomplish something difficult. he wants the medal to answer a question that has followed him for years: Am I still worthy of belonging if I am not the person everyone celebrates? The difficulty is that no medal can answer that question.

Ralph’s eventual growth comes not simply from succeeding at something traditionally heroic, but from beginning to separate what he does from what he is worth. His capacity for loyalty, sacrifice, friendship and care was not created by winning recognition. Those qualities were already part of him, even when the people around him could not see it.

That may be one of the more powerful effects of being repeatedly labelled. Eventually, we can become so focused on disproving somebody else’s version of us that our lives remain organised around their judgement anyway. Sometimes moving beyond a label means proving it wrong. Sometimes it means reaching the point where we no longer need the person who gave us the label to decide who we are.

We are more than one thing

Ralph’s world encourages a remarkably simple way of understanding people. Felix fixes. Ralph wrecks. One is the hero, one is the villain. Their roles are clear enough to fit into their names. Real identities are rarely so tidy.

Psychologist Patricia Linville’s work on self-complexity offers a useful way of thinking about this. Linville (1985, 1987) proposed that people can understand themselves through multiple different aspects of identity – perhaps as a friend, student, sibling, colleague, creative person, caregiver or countless other things. Her research suggested that having a more complex representation of the self can sometimes buffer the emotional impact of setbacks, because difficulty in one part of life does not automatically become a judgement on the whole person.

Ralph is initially afforded very little self-complexity. He is not Ralph-who-wrecks-things-and-also-feels-lonely, wants connection, can form friendships and is capable of extraordinary courage. He is simply the wrecker. Yet the story gradually gives us access to all the parts that label leaves out.

His relationship with Vanellope is particularly important. She does not meet Ralph simply as the villain from Fix-it Felix Jr, she comes to know somebody funny, insecure, loyal and occasionally selfish, protective and capable of caring deeply about another person. Ralph does not stop being someone who wrecks things. Instead, wrecking stops being sufficient to explain who Ralph is. That distinction matters outside fiction too.

A behaviour can be true without being the whole truth about a person. Someone may have behaved aggressively and also be frightened. Someone may repeatedly struggle at school and still be intelligent and curious. Someone may be exceptionally capable and also need help. Understanding those additional parts does not require us to deny the behaviour we can see. It requires us to resist turning something a person does into everything a person is.

Perhaps that is what spends most of the film trying to discover. He does not ultimately need to become the opposite of Wreck-It Ralph. He needs to realise that Wreck-It Ralph was never all that he was.

When someone sees more than the label

One of the most important things that happens to Ralph is not that he finally wins a medal. It is that he meets somebody else who has also been reduced to a label.

Vanellope is repeatedly described as a glitch. Like Ralph, one characteristic is treated as though it explains everything important about her. She is excluded from racing, mocked by the other characters and positioned as somebody who does not quite belong in her own world. Their friendship is messy. They argue, hurt each other and make mistakes. But they also begin to offer one another something neither has consistently received elsewhere: the possibility of being seen as more complicated than the role assigned to them.

Research on relationships and self-esteem suggests that these things can influence one another over time. In a large meta-analysis, Harris and Orth (2020) found reciprocal links between the quality of people’s social relationships and their self-esteem across the lifespan. Positive relationships can contribute to how people come to value themselves, while self-esteem can also influence the relationships they form and maintain.

That makes Ralph and Vanellope’s friendship particularly interesting. Neither magically gives the other a new identity. Instead, each provides evidence that the existing label is incomplete. Vanellope can see that the “bad guy” is capable of loyalty and care. Ralph can see that the “glitch” is talented, determined and deserving of a place in her own game. And perhaps, being seen differently by another person sometimes makes it easier to consider seeing ourselves differently too.

This does not mean that our identity should depend entirely on somebody else recognising our worth. Ralph’s journey ultimately requires him to develop a sense of value that is not dependent on applause, medals or approval. But relationships can still matter enormously while that process is happening. Sometimes another person cannot tell us who we are, they can simply be the first person to notice that the story everybody as been telling about us is missing a few chapters.

Next month in Through the Character

On November 1st, we turn to a character whose entire identity is built around being the person who can fix things:

What Bob the Builder Knows About Always Having to Fix It

A look at reliability, responsibility, competence – and what happens when being the person everyone can depend on becomes the role you are expected to carry all the time.

References & Further Reading

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.

Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. T. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth. Psychological Review, 108(3), 593–623.

Harris, M. A., & Orth, U. (2020). The link between self-esteem and social relationships: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(6), 1459–1477.

Jussim, L. (1986). Self-fulfilling prophecies: A theoretical and integrative review. Psychological Review, 93(4), 429–445.

Jussim, L., & Harber, K. D. (2005). Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies: Knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(2), 131–155.

Linville, P. W. (1985). Self-complexity and affective extremity: Don’t put all of your eggs in one cognitive basket. Social Cognition, 3(1), 94–120.

Linville, P. W. (1987). Self-complexity as a cognitive buffer against stress-related illness and depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(4), 663–676.

Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969.

Williams, K. D. (2007). Ostracism. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 425–452.