If we’re trying to make a difficult decision, talking about ourselves in the third person can help neutralize the emotions that may lead to our thinking, allowing us to find a wiser solution to our problem.
As someone who writes on psychology, I’ve come across hundreds of evidence-based strategies for thinking better. Few have proved to be as useful to me as ileism.
Simply put, ileism is the practice of talking about yourself in the third person instead of the first. It’s a rhetorical device often used by politicians to try to give their words an air of objectivity.
In his account of the Gallic War, for example, Emperor Julius Caesar wrote “Caesar avenged the people” instead of “I avenged the people.”
The slight linguistic change seems capable of bringing the statement closer to the historical fact recorded by an impartial observer.
To the modern ear, ileism may sound a little silly or pompous, to the point where we ridicule celebrities who choose to talk about themselves in the third person.
Recent research in psychology points out, however, that it can bring concrete cognitive benefits. If we’re trying to make a difficult decision, talking about ourselves in the third person can help neutralize the emotions that may lead to our thinking, allowing us to find a wiser solution to our problem.
Solomon’s paradox
To understand these benefits, we must first look at the ways scientists measure the degree of wisdom in reasoning.
Igor Grossmann, of the University of Waterloo, Canada, was one of the pioneers of the scientific study of wisdom. Grossmann drew on the work of a number of philosophers to catalog a number of “metacognitive components”—intellectual humility, acknowledging the viewpoints of others, and seeking resolution, for example—that are commonly regarded as essential to a healthy decision process.
In one of his first studies, the researcher asked participants to think aloud about various trivial dilemmas while independent psychologists rated their answers against these criteria.
Grossmann found that these “thinking wise” tests were better than IQ tests at predicting people’s overall satisfaction with life and the quality of their relationships. An observation that indicated that the research was capturing something unique about human reasoning abilities.
Subsequent studies by Grossmann revealed that the level of wisdom in people’s reasoning can depend on the context. More specifically, she found that the scores she assigned to wise reasoning tended to be much higher when considering people’s situations regarding others versus their own personal dilemmas. The scientist called this phenomenon “Solomon’s paradox,” after the Biblical king famed for counseling others wisely while he made a series of disastrous personal decisions that ended up throwing his kingdom into chaos.
The problem seems to be that when we make personal choices, we immerse ourselves too much in our emotions, which clouds our thinking and prevents us from putting our issues into perspective.
If I’ve received negative feedback from a colleague, for example, my feeling of embarrassment can lead me to become overly defensive. This may cause me to dismiss the advice he gave me without even considering whether it would help me in the long run.
how to be wiser
Could Hyleism Help Solve Solomon’s Paradox?
The idea makes sense intuitively: By changing the key to third person, our problem descriptions will start to sound like we’re talking about someone else rather than ourselves. This sense of detachment would allow us to look at the situation in a larger perspective, rather than getting trapped in our own feelings.
And that’s exactly what Grossmann discovered in a study with Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan. They observed that people who employed ileism to talk about their problems showed greater intellectual humility, an ability to recognize the perspectives of others, and a willingness to compromise, boosting their overall wise reasoning scores.
The most recent studies indicate that regular use of ileism can bring lasting benefits to our thinking.
In an experiment with Abigail Sholer, Anna Dorfman and other researchers, Grossmann asked participants to keep a diary for a month in which they described the situations they were experiencing at the time.
Half of the group were asked to write in the third person, while the other half were asked to write in the first person. The reasoning of the participants was evaluated at the beginning and at the end of the trials. As expected, the researchers found that, over the course of the trial, participants who were encouraged to use ileism in their journals saw an increase in their wise reasoning scores.
By encouraging us to put our problems into perspective, the use of hylaeism can also help us find more balanced responses to everyday stressors. People who completed the journal in the third person reported more positive emotions after difficult events, rather than just focusing on feelings like sadness, frustration, or disappointment.
Based on these results, I now apply ileism to all decisions, big and small. Whether I’m facing trials at work, conflicts with my friends or family, I find that a few moments of contemplating my problems from a third person perspective help me see the problem more clearly.
*David Robson is a science writer and author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life (“The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life”, in literal translation), published by Canongate (UK) and Henry Holt (US).
read the full of this relationship on the website BBC Working Life.
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
