Which research grounds which part of the map
TEG-Blue is grounded in science: established research underwrites specific, nameable parts of the Gradient. The architecture that holds those parts in relation is TEG-Blue’s own contribution. This page shows which research grounds which part, and marks where each part’s support ends.
What “grounded in science” means here
Established fields each make one part of the pattern visible. TEG-Blue places those parts in relation. That relation is the architecture, and the architecture is what TEG-Blue contributes.
So the phrase carries four commitments at once:
How a source becomes part of the map
Research does not enter TEG-Blue as a citation attached to a sentence. It enters by answering what a finding makes visible, and then being placed where it belongs in the sequence:
A citation supports a sentence. Established research underwrites part of the architecture. Those are different acts, and collapsing them is how a framework starts borrowing authority it has not earned.
Moving downstream does not strengthen a claim. A tool built from the Gradient is not evidence that the Gradient is validated.
Research areas behind the map
Each area is named for the structural work it does — and paired with the point where its support runs out.
Biology and physiology
How a body mobilises energy, protects itself, shifts arousal, shuts down, and becomes available or unavailable for repair. This is the load-bearing ground for reading positions as organism-level organisation rather than as descriptions of character.
It grounds how patterns organise in a body. It does not let anyone measure a state, infer physiology from behaviour, or treat the map as a biological assessment.
Autonomic neuroscience
State organisation, arousal, mobilisation, inhibition, shutdown, and the flexibility to move between them. This underwrites the safety-to-shutdown axis the Gradient is built on.
Naming a specific autonomic pathway is a citation-level claim, not a general one. No single theory of autonomic function proves the map.
Affective neuroscience
Primary emotional systems, emotional salience, and action readiness — why an emotion arrives with urgency attached rather than as a neutral report.
One brain model does not prove the whole framework. Where a named model is used, it is named.
Perception, attention, and appraisal
How attention narrows, how situations get appraised, and how prediction and memory shape what feels true. This underwrites the claim that state changes perception, not only feeling.
The map is not reducible to cognition. Showing that perception shifts is not showing that a person misperceived.
Interoception and body awareness
How inner signals become available, muted, or hard to name — and why losing contact with body state can leave thinking coherent but working from incomplete information.
Body signals are real information. They are not automatically the whole truth, and cognition is not automatically more accurate than they are.
Attachment research
Relational safety, proximity, separation, rupture, and repair — how expectations about others form and repeat.
Attachment patterns are not fixed identity labels, and a Gradient position is not an attachment style.
Trauma research
Adaptation to chronic threat: hypervigilance, defensive reorganisation, dissociation, and protection that persists past the conditions that built it.
TEG-Blue neither diagnoses nor treats trauma. Chronic organisation in the map is not a trauma finding.
Clinical and personality psychology
Rigidity, defensive organisation, relational impact, and the limits of repair — the research angles most relevant to the chronic side of the map.
These fields must never be used to diagnose a person through TEG-Blue. A Gradient position is not a disorder, and no position corresponds to one.
Developmental science
How capacity, expectation, regulation, and relational learning take shape early, and how an organisation that once served becomes the available default.
Avoid deterministic stories. Early conditions shape what became available; they do not specify an adult pattern.
Sociology, social psychology, anthropology
Belonging, status, group effects, norms, and power — the scale at which the same patterns appear between people rather than inside one.
This is a deeper scale than the current public doorway. It locates overlapping parts of the map; it does not own the architecture.
Contemplative traditions and attention research
Witnessing, self-observation, and direct experience — the practices that make one’s own state noticeable while it is happening.
These are named for what they are. They are not presented as laboratory science.
What each position is read across
The same dimensions are read at every position. That is what makes the map comparable rather than a set of descriptions:
The science for these dimensions exists in the fields above. What TEG-Blue adds is reading all of them at each position, so the relationships between them become visible as one map.
What research supports, and what it does not
Some things established research supports well, and some it does not support at all. Keeping the second list visible is part of the method, not a disclaimer bolted on at the end.
- Prove a person’s internal state, or their intent, from what is visible outside.
- Guarantee that one position produces one specific behaviour.
- Validate the seven acute and seven chronic positions as a complete or clinical taxonomy.
- Replace clinical assessment, therapy, medical care, legal support, or crisis support.
- Turn an explanation of a mechanism into a justification for its impact.
That last one matters most. The Gradient explains how an organism is organising itself under the conditions it is reading. It does not explain away what that organisation does to other people. Responsibility rises with awareness, repetition, power, available choice, refusal to repair, and impact.
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