Using a Fly on the Wall Perspective on Your Problems?

Research has shown that we can think about different experiences in our lives from different perspectives. When people adopt a third person, or a fly in the wall perspective, that tends to be linked with lower levels of emotionality. And that's true for both positive and negative events. In one set of studies, we found that when participants were provoked, if we asked people to reflect on the provocation from a distance, they were much less likely to be aggressive towards that experimenter. It was still a negative situation i was dealing with, but the intensity of it was diminished to a point where i could think about it more objectively and deliberately.