Psychological distancing refers to the way language can create emotional separation from experiences or situations. By using different pronouns, individuals can alter their psychological connection to events. For instance, saying 'the Eagles lost' establishes distance from the team, whereas 'we lost' fosters a sense of unity. This concept extends to personal narratives, where first-person language ('I had a terrible day') closely ties the speaker to their feelings, while third-person language ('Angela had a terrible day') creates distance. High-profile examples, like LeBron James referring to himself in the third person, demonstrate this subtle mechanism in action, revealing how we can unconsciously distance ourselves from our own experiences.
What happens when three psychologists walk into a magic show? What’s Angela’s problem with the word “talent”? And why does LeBron James refer to himself in the third person?
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RESOURCES:
- "4 Ways to Get Into the Magic Castle," by Stephanie Breijo (TimeOut, 2023).
- "The Trouble With Talent: Semantic Ambiguity in the Workplace," by Daniel A. Southwick, Zhaoying V. Liu, Chayce Baldwin, Abigail L. Quirk, Lyle H. Ungar, Chia-Jung Tsay, and Angela L. Duckworth (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2023).
- "A Decade of Power Posing: Where Do We Stand?" by Tom Loncar (The Psychologist, 2021).
- "Influencing Choices With Conversational Primes: How a Magic Trick Unconsciously Influences Card Choices," by Alice Pailhès and Gustav Kuhn (PNAS, 2020).
- "If You Want Your Marketing Campaign To Succeed, Choose Your Words Carefully," by Allan Hug (Forbes, 2019).
- "What's Next for Psychology's Embattled Field of Social Priming," by Tom Chivers (Nature, 2019).
- "Silent Third Person Self-Talk Facilitates Emotion Regulation," by Christopher Bergland (Psychology Today, 2017).
- "Disputed Results a Fresh Blow for Social Psychology," by Alison Abbott (Scientific American, 2013).
- "A Proposal to Deal With Questions About Priming Effects," email by Daniel Kahneman (2012).
- "Behavioral Priming: It's All in the Mind, but Whose Mind?" by Stéphane Doyen, Olivier Klein, Cora-Lise Pichon, and Axel Cleeremans (PLoS One, 2012).
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011).