Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters
Kross and colleagues ran seven studies, with nearly six hundred participants in total, on a change small enough to sound trivial: whether people think about themselves using I or using their own name and you. The first studies established that the second kind of language creates psychological distance from the experience. The rest tested what that distance does under social stress. Compared with people using first-person language, those using their own name performed better in front of independent raters when trying to make a good impression and when giving a speech, reported less distress, and afterwards spent less time going over their performance in the damaging way that follows social anxiety. Two further studies explain why: the different language leads people to frame an upcoming stressful event as a challenge rather than a threat. A meta-analysis across the studies found the benefits were not limited to people low in social anxiety, which is what makes the technique practically useful.
Kross and colleagues ran seven studies, with nearly six hundred participants in total, on a change small enough to sound trivial: whether people think about themselves using I or using their own name and you. The first studies established that the second kind of language creates psychological distance from the experience. The rest tested what that distance does under social stress. Compared with people using first-person language, those using their own name performed better in front of independent raters when trying to make a good impression and when giving a speech, reported less distress, and afterwards spent less time going over their performance in the damaging way that follows social anxiety. Two further studies explain why: the different language leads people to frame an upcoming stressful event as a challenge rather than a threat. A meta-analysis across the studies found the benefits were not limited to people low in social anxiety, which is what makes the technique practically useful.
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What our sources record
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Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., Bremner, R., Moser, J. & Ayduk, O. (2014). "Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: how you do it matters." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304-324. See also Moser, J. S. et al. (2017). "Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control." Scientific Reports, 7, 4519.
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- Why Saying It Out Loud Makes It Feel Smaller, Why We Care
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035173
DOI: 10.1037/a0035173