Igor Grossmann
Igor Grossmann is a psychologist at the University of Waterloo, where he directs the Wisdom and Culture Lab. He is first author of the 2014 paper on Solomon's paradox: people reason more wisely about somebody else's problem than about their own, and the gap closes when they are asked to think about their own problem from a distance. He is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award.
Who they are
Grossmann works on wise reasoning, intellectual humility, perspective-taking and forecasting. His approach to wisdom is unusual in that it is operational rather than philosophical. Instead of defining wisdom in the abstract, he scores what a person actually says for a set of markers: admitting the limits of your own knowledge, accepting that situations change, taking other viewpoints seriously, and looking for compromise.
The 2014 paper ran three experiments with 693 people in total. Participants reasoned about a conflict, either their own or someone else's, and the transcripts were scored on those markers. The distancing manipulation asked people to think about their own situation in the third person, or as though it were happening to someone else.
Credit belongs here, not to his co-author. He is first author and Ethan Kross is second. In popular retellings the finding is routinely attached to Kross, whose bestselling book made him the better-known name. That is precisely the error this publication's credit rule exists to prevent.
Key papers
Grossmann, I., & Kross, E. (2014). "Exploring Solomon's Paradox: Self-Distancing Eliminates the Self-Other Asymmetry in Wise Reasoning About Close Relationships in Younger and Older Adults", Psychological Science, 25(8), 1571 to 1580. First author. Three experiments, 693 participants.
Key ideas
It is a reasoning gap, not a harshness gap. The study measures the quality of the thinking, not how cruel anybody is to themselves. People reason less wisely about their own conflicts. Whether they are also crueller to themselves is a separate claim with separate evidence, and the two must not be blurred.
The study everybody assumes exists was not found. The obvious test, comparing advice written to a friend against advice written to yourself and scoring both for harshness, was not located in the vault's search. Its absence is recorded rather than papered over.
The distancing result is the practical half. The asymmetry is not fixed. Change the vantage point and it goes away, which means the problem is the position you are standing in rather than the mind you are standing there with.
Scoring wisdom by markers in what people say is what makes any of this testable. It is also the obvious place to aim an objection, since it measures how people talk about reasoning rather than the reasoning itself.
Concepts on this site
The Inside View and the Outside View
Find them elsewhere
Nothing confirmed. A search was run and no website or account could be tied to this person with enough certainty to publish. A name match on its own is not evidence, and a wrong link here would be worse than none.
Checked 2026-09-11. Handles and affiliations go out of date, so treat this block as a snapshot rather than a standing fact.
Sources
- Grossmann, I., & Kross, E. (2014). Psychological Science, 25(8), 1571 to 1580.
- Affiliation confirmed 2026-09-11 against the University of Waterloo School of Psychology faculty record.
- Vault note: no study comparing self-directed and friend-directed advice for harshness was located in this pass. Recorded as absent.