Going through a hard time? Think about yourself in the third person

Going through a hard time? Think about yourself in the third person: Being detached from problems helps deal with trauma

Having problems in life? Then you need to detach from your issues and try to see the world through someone else's eyes.

Research has found the best way to tackle a heartbreaking or personal trauma is to distance yourself and think about the problem in the third person.

During tests, people faced with the idea of a cheating spouse, for example, were more likely to think wisely about the situation, if they considered it as an observer would.

Scientists have claimed that people who are trying to recover from personal trauma such as a cheating spouse are more likely to make more rational decisions if they imagine themselves in someone else's shoes, rather than trying to cope with making their own decision

Professor Igor Grossmann, of the University of Waterloo, Canada, and Professor Ethan Kross from the University of Michigan, asked study participants to reflect on a relationship conflict of their own or someone else’s, such as a spouse’s infidelity with a close friend, and think about the conflict in the first and third person.

DO WE GET WISER WITH AGE?

• A previous study by the University of California found you do get wiser when you get older.
  
• According to research, although the brain slows down with age, this simply helps older men and women develop greater insight.
  
• The reason for this is that, unlike the young, elderly brains are not ruled by the chemicals that fuel emotion and impulse. So their slower responses really are more thoughtful and 'wiser'.
  
• For the study, scientists looked at the brain scans of 3,000 Californians aged between 60 and 100.
  
• These showed that what older people lose in reaction times, they make up for in better decision-making.

Results from the experiments indicated that participants who were asked to reason about a friend’s relationship conflict made wiser responses than those who were asked to reason about their own.

In a second experiment, Grossmann and Kross investigated whether personal distance might make a difference.

The procedure was similar to the first experiment, but this time they explicitly asked participants to take either a first-person perspective ('put yourself in this situation') or a third-person perspective ('put yourself in your friend’s shoes') when reasoning about the conflict.

The results supported those from the first experiment: participants who thought about their own relationship conflict from a first-person perspective showed less wise reasoning than those who thought about a friend’s relationship conflict.

But taking an outsider’s perspective seemed to eliminate this bias: participants who thought about their own relationship conflict through a friend’s eyes were just as wise as those who thought about a friend’s conflict.

The findings suggest people are also able to make better decisions for their friends as opposed to tackling their own problems, because it is more easy to make a rational decision when someone is emotionally detached from a situation.

'These results are the first to demonstrate a new type of bias within ourselves when it comes to wise reasoning about an interpersonal relationship dilemma,' said Professor Grossmann.

'We call the bias Solomon’s Paradox, after the king who was known for his wisdom, but who still failed at making personal decisions.'

The experiments indicated that we are wiser when reasoning about others’ problems compared to our own. The reason for this discrepancy is because we distance ourselves from the issue.

In a third experiment the researchers compared results from younger adults aged 20 to 40 and those aged 60 to 80.
Contrary to the adage that with age comes wisdom, the older adults were not more likely to reason wisely about their personal dilemma than their younger counterparts.

'We are the first to demonstrate that there is a simple way to eliminate this bias in reasoning by talking about ourselves in the third person and using our name when reflecting on a relationship conflict,' said Professor Grossmann.

'When we employ this strategy, we are more likely to think wisely about an issue.'
The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science.

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