Summary: Thinking or talking about oneself in the third person can lead people to consider themselves in similar ways to how they think about others, a new study reports. Researchers say talking about yourself in the third person may allow you to distance yourself from stressful experiences and help to regulate emotion.

Source: University of Michigan.

The simple act of silently talking to yourself in the third person during stressful times may help you control emotions without any additional mental effort than what you would use for first-person self-talk – the way people normally talk to themselves.

A first-of-its-kind study led by psychology researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan indicates that such third-person self-talk may constitute a relatively effortless form of self-control. The findings are published online in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal.

Say a man named John is upset about recently being dumped. By simply reflecting on his feelings in the third person (“Why is John upset?”), John is less emotionally reactive than when he addresses himself in the first person (“Why am I upset?”).

“Essentially, we think referring to yourself in the third person leads people to think about themselves more similar to how they think about others, and you can see evidence for this in the brain,” said Jason Moser, MSU associate professor of psychology. “That helps people gain a tiny bit of psychological distance from their experiences, which can often be useful for regulating emotions.”

The study, partially funded by the National Institutes of Health and the John Temple Foundation, involved two experiments that both significantly reinforced this main conclusion.

In one experiment, at Moser’s Clinical Psychophysiology Lab, participants viewed neutral and disturbing images and reacted to the images in both the first and third person while their brain activity was monitored by an electroencephalograph. When reacting to the disturbing photos (such as a man holding a gun to their heads), participants’ emotional brain activity decreased very quickly (within 1 second) when they referred to themselves in the third person.

The MSU researchers also measured participants’ effort-related brain activity and found that using the third person was no more effortful than using first person self-talk. This bodes well for using third-person self-talk as an on-the-spot strategy for regulating one’s emotions, Moser said, as many other forms of emotion regulation, such as mindfulness and thinking on the bright side, require considerable thought and effort.

In the other experiment, led by U-M psychology professor Ethan Kross, who directs the Emotion and Self-Control Lab, participants reflected on painful experiences from their past using first and third person language while their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI.

Similar to the MSU study, participants’ displayed less activity in a brain region that is commonly implicated in reflecting on painful emotional experiences when using third person self-talk, suggesting better emotional regulation. Further, third person self-talk required no more effort-related brain activity than using first person.

“What’s really exciting here,” Kross said, “is that the brain data from these two complimentary experiments suggest that third-person self-talk may constitute a relatively effortless form of emotion regulation.

“If this ends up being true – we won’t know until more research is done – there are lots of important implications these findings have for our basic understanding of how self-control works, and for how to help people control their emotions in daily life.”

Moser and Kross said their teams are continuing to collaborate to explore how third-person self-talk compares to other emotion-regulation strategies.

About this neuroscience research article

Source: Andy Henion – University of Michigan

Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to G.L. Kohuth.

Original Research: Full open access research for “Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control: Converging evidence from ERP and fMRI” by Jason S. Moser, Adrienne Dougherty, Whitney I. Mattson, Benjamin Katz, Tim P. Moran, Darwin Guevarra, Holly Shablack, Ozlem Ayduk, John Jonides, Marc G. Berman & Ethan Kross in Scientific Reports. Published online July 3 2017 doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04047-3

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]University of Michigan “Talking to Yourself in the Third Person Can Help You Control Stressful Emotions.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 26 July 2017.

<third-person-self-emotion-7182/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]University of Michigan (2017, July 26). Talking to Yourself in the Third Person Can Help You Control Stressful Emotions. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved July 26, 2017 from third-person-self-emotion-7182/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]University of Michigan “Talking to Yourself in the Third Person Can Help You Control Stressful Emotions.” third-person-self-emotion-7182/ (accessed July 26, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]

Abstract

Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control: Converging evidence from ERP and fMRI

Does silently talking to yourself in the third-person constitute a relatively effortless form of self control? We hypothesized that it does under the premise that third-person self-talk leads people to think about the self similar to how they think about others, which provides them with the psychological distance needed to facilitate self control. We tested this prediction by asking participants to reflect on feelings elicited by viewing aversive images (Study 1) and recalling negative autobiographical memories (Study 2) using either “I” or their name while measuring neural activity via ERPs (Study 1) and fMRI (Study 2). Study 1 demonstrated that third-person self-talk reduced an ERP marker of self-referential emotional reactivity (i.e., late positive potential) within the first second of viewing aversive images without enhancing an ERP marker of cognitive control (i.e., stimulus preceding negativity). Conceptually replicating these results, Study 2 demonstrated that third-person self-talk was linked with reduced levels of activation in an a priori defined fMRI marker of self-referential processing (i.e., medial prefrontal cortex) when participants reflected on negative memories without eliciting increased levels of activity in a priori defined fMRI markers of cognitive control. Together, these results suggest that third-person self-talk may constitute a relatively effortless form of self-control.

“Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control: Converging evidence from ERP and fMRI” by Jason S. Moser, Adrienne Dougherty, Whitney I. Mattson, Benjamin Katz, Tim P. Moran, Darwin Guevarra, Holly Shablack, Ozlem Ayduk, John Jonides, Marc G. Berman & Ethan Kross in Scientific Reports. Published online July 3 2017 doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04047-3

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