Inner speech, self-talk, internal monologue – we unpack the psychology of our thoughts

Text Patrick Heardman

The human brain has more possible neurological connections than there are atoms in the known universe – between ten quadrillion vigintillion, and one-hundred thousand quadrillion vigintillion – that’s quite a lot. So why does it come as a surprise to hear that most people don’t convert this immense computing power into words? If you asked most people, they would probably say that they ‘think in words’, or that they have an ‘internal voice’ at least some of the time, which they use for planning and day-to-day thinking. When you woke up this morning, you probably thought to yourself ‘ah fuck’, or, ‘here we go again’. But – and here’s the actual headfuck – did you actually think it in ‘words’, or did it feel more like a wave of existential dread? There is a population-spanning, plethora of ways that people experience inner thoughts – emotion, sound, feeling, text, imagery – and we’re also pretty hopeless at accurately articulating what our own inner experience is really like. A recent Twitter thread both fascinated and freaked people out on this very subject. Russell T Hurlburt, a professor in psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has devoted his entire career to studying the psychological phenomena of what he calls the ‘Pristine Inner Experience’, aka the shit that’s going on in your dome. Collating his research from over the years, he found that only 26 per cent of samples experienced ‘innerly speech’ – a figure taken from a 2011 blog he posted, which is what sparked the recent internet frenzy. In his tests he would expose participants to a beeping sound several times a day, and ask them to recount what was going on in their head just before they heard it. The idea being that they would get better and better at it and he would end up, after a few weeks, with an accurate portrayal of their mental landscapes. “Almost all research about inner speech says there is a lot of it. I think it is all mistaken” – Russell T Hurlburt, psychology professor, University of Nevada Dr Hurlburt is somewhat of a maverick in his field; his research hasn’t been warmly welcomed by the scientific community, despite the fact he has authored several books on the subject: “I’m trying for the n+1th time to make the point to scientific psychology that inner speech is not as common as we think it is,” he tells Dazed of his life’s work, “almost all research about inner speech says there is a lot of it. I think it is all mistaken.” Lev Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist and pioneer of research into inner thought, coined the term ‘Private Speech’ after his studies in the 1920s noted that children learn how to talk to themselves through talking to others. He was of the opinion that inner speech was an internalised form of speaking out loud. More recent research places importance on what is now known as ‘inner speech’, with Dutch neurobiologist Bernard Baars concluding in 2003 that when people reflect upon their own inner experience, they often report a verbal quality, and researchers Dolcos & Albarracín findings in 2014 showed that people often talk to themselves using the first‐person pronoun. But given methodological issues – measuring something in someone else's brain comes with a whole host of problems – research is generally limited. The very nature of asking someone “what is going on in your head?” results in a triggering of their “verbal apparatus”, says Dr Hulburt. He thinks current research on the subject – mainly in the form of written questionnaires – is flawed. By posing the question in a textual way, you’re inviting the person to look at their experience from a textual standpoint. “Therefore,” says Dr Hulburt, “it is likely that they will find verbal stuff to report back to you.”

Still thinking loads about the phenomenon of ‘inner speech’ and the stat that apparently only twenty six per cent of people experience it (which seems completely mad to me, I can’t understand what it’s like not to). https://t.co/eVNA9Q2t4q — Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley (@lottelydia) May 7, 2019

“I feel like language limits,” says Annabel, a 29-year-old marketing campaign manager who works in London, and who believes she thinks outside of the ‘textual realm’. “If I was getting out of bed in the morning and thinking that I need to get up and get some coffee, I see the picture of the coffee cup.” These icons floating above her head plague her until the tasks they illustrate are complete: “When I've made the coffee and drank it, then it stops. It’s almost like a Sim.” There’s more complexity to this way of thinking, though: “It’s not just the next action. That would be really quiet.” Her head is awash with symbols, icons, and sensations all at once: “I get frustrated when I need to think for specific words for things. If I’m worried about something, I’ll see an exclamation mark pop up in my head, and that’s all the explanation I need.” This seems like a very literal and direct way of visual processing, things aren't the same for all non-textual thinkers. For Elena, a PhD in linguistics at the University of Texas, her own inner language is a landscape of visual references that she has to strain to convert into the written or spoken word. It’s a world of associative imagery and metaphor, and is often overwhelmingly visceral – a blend of art, culture, fantasy, and personal experience. There are no words. No text. “My grandmother used to skinny dip with me when I was little,” Elena tells Dazed, “and then she would go back in the house when the moon came up. It was weird as my relationship with my grandmother changed in that moment. She became very stern again. She was playful until the moon came up. She was like a werewolf. That image became part of my inner language for a change in fate or change in relationship.”

via Adobe