Thinking In Third

by Dish Staff

Research suggests that adding a little distance to how we think about ourselves might improve how we act:

Participants were told, upon entering the lab, that they faced a nerve-wracking task: to impress a member of the opposite sex, in one study, or to give a speech. To up the ante, they also knew their performance would be videotaped and later analyzed. But right before they began, they were told to prepare themselves for the task ahead. Some participants were assigned to do so by speaking to themselves in the first person; the rest were instructed to address themselves using their own first name, as well as non-first-person pronouns like she, he, or you.

Though we don’t tend to look kindly upon those who speak of themselves in the third person, the practice is not without its benefits. According to reviewers, who were blind to participants’ condition, those who’d avoided I and me in their pep talks actually appeared less nervous, and did a better job on the task at hand. Speaking to ourselves as though we are someone else, it seems, lets us distance ourselves from an overwhelmingly stressful experience.