Category Archives: Business Communication

Business Communication

Coaching Can Increase Goal Achievement, Performance

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Anthony Grant

Anthony Grant

Coaching is a collaborative process to facilitate coachees’ self-directed learning, personal growth, and goal attainment, according to University of Sydney’s Anthony Grant.

Anthony Grant modelHe integrated practices from solution-focused approaches and cognitive-behavioral interventions into Solution-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral (SF-CB) Coaching and a “Coach Yourself” program with Jane Greene.

Participants reported increased:

John Franklin

on the Self-Reflection and Insight Scale, developed with Macquarie University colleagues John Franklin and Peter Langford.

Two types of empirical studies provide evidence about coaching’s efficacy:

  • Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT), in which participants receive one of several interventions or no intervention.
    This is considered the more credible research approach.
  • Peter Langford

    Peter Langford

    Quasi-Experimental Field Studies (QEFS), which use “time series analysis” but not random participants to measure outcomes.

Linley Curtayne

Linley Curtayne

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) found several effects among executives who received 360-degree feedback and four coaching sessions over ten weeks:

Lower stress, according to Grant with University of Sydney colleagues Linley Curtayne and Geraldine Burton,

Geraldine Burton

Geraldine Burton

  • Greater goal attainment compared with an eight week educational mindfulness-based health coaching program, reported by University of Sydney’s Gordon B. Spence, Michael J. Cavanagh and Grant,
  • Gordon Spence

    Gordon Spence

    • Increased goal commitment, and environmental mastery, compared with peer coaching among adults in a Solution Focused/Cognitive Behavioral (SF/CB) life coaching program, according to research by Spence and Grant,
  • Lindsay Oades

    Lindsay Oades

    • Increased goal striving, well-being, hope, with gains maintained up to 30 weeks, reported by Grant and Green with University of Wollongong colleague Lindsay G. Oades.
C. RIck Snyder

C. RIck Snyder

Increased hope is crucial to pursue any goal, according to University of Kansas’s C.R. Snyder, Scott T. Michael of University of Washington, and Ohio State’s Jennifer Cheavens.

Individuals seeking change are more effective when they:

  • Develop one or more ways to achieve a goals (“pathways”),
  • Use these routes to reach the goal (“agency”).
Edward Deci - Richard Ryan

Edward Deci – Richard Ryan

Three additional elements contribute to goal achievement, suggested University of Rochester’s Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan:

  • Competence,
  • Autonomy,
  • Relatedness.

According to their Self-Determination Theory (SDT), these characteristics are associated with increased:

  • Goal motivation,
  • Enhanced performance,
  • Persistence,
  • Mental health.
Kristina Gyllensten

Kristina Gyllensten

The other category of research, Quasi-Experimental Field Studies (QEFS), reported that coaching for managers of a federal government:

  • Stephen Palmer

    Stephen Palmer

    • Decreased anxiety and stress among UK finance organization participants, in findings by Kristina Gyllensten and Stephen Palmer of City University London.

These empirical studies validate coaching’s contribution to participants’ increased goal attainment and increased satisfaction, well-being, and hope.

-*How do you “coach yourself” and others toward increased goal attainment and performance?

-*What are the “active ingredients” of effective coaching practices?

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©Kathryn Welds

 

Transference in Everyday Life Biases Inferences, Emotional Responses

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-*Do you re-enact scenarios from your past, but with different people?

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

 Sigmund Freud described this experience as “transference,” redirecting feelings toward one person in the past onto a different individual in the present.

The current recipient of feelings may have different characteristics, motivations, and behaviours than the original person, but something about the present individual triggers earlier feelings and actions.

Susan Andersen

Susan Andersen

NYU’s Susan Andersen and Alana Baum demonstrated transference in lab studies when they asked volunteers to describe important people in their lives for whom they had positive feelings or negative feelings.
They also described other people’s significant others.

Later, Anderson and Baum described a person seated in the adjacent room, using either emotionally-positive or emotionally-negative descriptions of someone from the volunteer’s life or someone else’s life.

Participants more accurately recalled the stranger’s description when it resembled their own significant other.
Recall was enhanced because the significant other’s description was memorable, suggesting transference.

Biased inference can result from a memory’s “accessibility” and distinctiveness, according to Anderson’s collaborators Steve W. Cole and Noah Glassman.

Transference is an outgrowth of attachment to others in the past, according to Queens College’s Claudia Chloe Brumbaugh and R. Chris Fraley University of Illinois.

R. Chris Fraley

R. Chris Fraley

Participants in their study read profiles of two potential dating partners:  One description resembled a romantic partner from the person’s past, and another description matched a different participant’s former partner.

Volunteers reported feeling more comfortable and more anxious toward potential dating partners described as similar to previous significant others.
Brumbaugh and Fraley noted that participants “applied attachment representations of past partners” to any potential future partner, and when the new partner’s description resembled an important past partner.

Susan Fiske

Princeton’s Susan Fiske described this transfer of affective responses to a new individual as schema-triggered affect.
Andersen used this framework and a socio-cognitive explanation in a paper with Berkeley’s Serena Chen.

Serena Chen

Serena Chen

People modify views of themselves and others in transference situations, reported Katrina Hinkley and Andersen.
Volunteers in their research demonstrated biased recall about a new person when the person resembled of a previous significant other.
When participants were re-tested, their recall of the new person’s attributes included elements of themselves when they were with the former significant person.

Michael Kraus

Michael Kraus

Transference occurs even when a target person possesses an attribute incompatible with the significant other’s characteristics, found University of Illinois’s Michael W. Kraus with Berkeley’s Chen, Victoria A. Lee, and Laura D. Straus.

Participants demonstrated transference in biased memories and judgments about a person they perceived as similar to a former significant other.

The research team elicited positive impressions even when the target was from a different ethnic group.
This suggests that stigma and discrimination may be reduced by evoking positive transference from past experiences to present actors.

Baum and Anderson observed that participants’ current mood was more positive when the target of their transference resembled their significant other and occupied a similar role to the original person.

Transference in the workplace can be problematic when employees react to one another as they responded to others from the past, introducing unconscious emotional elements to work situations.

-*How do you manage transference reactions in work and social situations?

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©Kathryn Welds

Ask for What You Want: You Have More Influence Than You Think

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Most people underestimate the likelihood that requests for help will be granted, particularly after previous refusals, according to Stanford’s Daniel Newark and Francis Flynn with Vanessa Lake Bohns, then of University of Waterloo.

Francis Flynn

In fact, most people agree with a subsequent request, possibly to reduce discomfort of rejecting others’ overtures for help.

Vanessa Bohns

Vanessa Bohns

Participants estimated they would need to ask 10 people to get three people to lend their mobile phones for brief calls.
Results showed that volunteers had to ask just six people for help before they received assistance.
The team concluded that most people have a pessimistic bias about the likelihood that others will provide assistance.

In another study, volunteers requested two favours from people they did not know: 

1. Complete a brief survey
2. Take a letter to a nearby post office.

Help seekers predicted that people who refused the first request to complete the survey would be less likely to take the letter to the post office.

More people agreed to the second request than to the first request.
Requesters tended to “anchor” on the first refusal, and hesitated to make a second request.
This finding suggests that requesters have a greater chance of agreement after initial refusal, so it’s advisable to persist.

The researchers concluded that help-seekers and potential helpers analyzed requests according to different criteria. Help-seekers typically considered the magnitude of the “ask,” whereas potential helpers considered the inconvenience costs of saying “yes” compared with the interpersonal and self-image costs of saying “no.”

Requesters benefit from expanding the pool of those they ask, not just those who consistently agree.
Potential helpers to can assist by reducing help-seekers’ subjective discomfort even if they decline the request.

Mahdi Roghanizad

Mahdi Roghanizad

Bohns analysed interpersonal discomfort when people decide whether to commit an unethical act in research with University of Waterloo colleagues Mahdi Roghanizad and Amy Xu.

People who observed the unethical act but didn’t participate in it underestimated their influence over those who committed the actions.
Interpersonal discomfort caused participants to commit the asocial act to avoid conflict, they concluded.

Volunteers asked people they didn’t know to tell a small untruth or to commit a small act of vandalism after predicting the ease of enlisting others in these acts.
In related investigations, online participants responded to hypothetical vignettes about buying alcohol for children, and taking office supplies home for personal use.

These results suggest that most people underestimate their influence, particularly in situations that can evoke interpersonal discomfort, including in the workplace.

This pessimistic bias can limit employees’ willingness to:

  • Lead business transformation initiatives,
  • Recognize one’s own contributions to others’ performance issues,
  • Voice concerns about unethical workplace practices.

This underestimation bias may be reduced by:

  • Eliciting comparative judgments,
  • Objectifying an influence target,
  • Comparing actual degree of personal influence compared to perceived influence,
  • Considering the means of influence, including incentives, suggestions, reinforcements, punishments,
  • Invoking organizational culture. 

These findings suggest the benefit of asking for what you want, even after rejection and that you have more influence over others than you expect.

-*How do you assess your likelihood of getting what you want when you ask?

-*How likely are others to influence you by evoking social discomfort to increase your compliance?

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How Accurate are Personality Judgments Based on Physical Appearance?

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Laura Naumann

People pictured in full-body photographs were evaluated by volunteers for likeability, self-esteem, loneliness, religiosity, and political orientation based on their photographed clothing and non-verbal behaviours. 

Simine Vazire

This study, conducted by Sonoma State University’s Laura Naumann, with Simine Vazire then of Washington University, teamed with University of Cambridge’s Peter Rentfrow, and Samuel Gosling of University of Texas, also investigated volunteers’ accuracy in judging Big Five personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism), proposed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae of the U.S. National Institutes of Health

Peter Jason Rentfrow

These ratings were compared with evaluations by people acquainted the photographed person.

Samuel Gosling

Samuel Gosling

Observers’ judgments were accurate for extraversion, self-esteem, and religiosity when people were photographed in a standardized pose.
Raters were correct for additional personality traits when judging photographs in spontaneous informal poses.

Paul Costa

These findings suggest that candid photographs provide more accurate cues to some personality characteristics than planned poses.

Robert McCrae

Robert McCrae

Judgments based on clothing cues were associated with less accurate judgments of personality characteristics.
In contrast, facial expression and posture enabled observers to make more accurate judgments.

John Irving

John Irving

Observers can make accurate inferences about some personality characteristics based on visual cues, according to these findings.
Novelist John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany noted that “Things often are as they appear. First impressions matter,” just as these researchers concluded.

-*How accurate are your judgments of personality traits for people you don’t already know?
-*How accurate are other people’s inferences about your personality traits?

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Women Undermine Salary Negotiations with Excessive Gratitude

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Andreas Leibbrandt

Candid self-disclosure hurt women’s salary negotiation outcomes when they revealed that a salary exceeded their expectations, in a study by Monash University’s Andreas Leibbrandt and John A. List of the University of Chicago.

John List

John List

Some women applying for administrative assistant jobs were told that the wages were “negotiable,” and these women achieved higher pay offers than women who received no information. Volunteers in the no-information group frequently revealed that they were willing to work for a lower hourly rate, and they received lower average salary offers.

Edward E. Jones

Edward E. Jones

Though this approach likely leads to lower salary, it could be considered strategic ingratiation to enhance the future working relationship>
However, this approach could lead the negotiation partner to question the applicant’s judgment and confidence.
In addition, this maneuver may delay salary increases because the candidate expresses satisfaction with the original offer.

Strategic ingratiation is observed in several behaviours, according to Duke University’s Edward E. Jones:

-Self-presentation: Self-enhancement or “one-down” humility, providing favors or gifts,

-Flattery: “Other-enhancement” by sharing credible positive comments,

-Agreement: Opinion-conformity and matching non-verbal behaviour.

Steven H. Appelbaum

Steven H. Appelbaum

Positive outcomes from “strategic ingratiation” included promotion or pay increase, observed in a study by Concordia University’s Steven H. Appelbaum and Brent Hughes.

This contradictory finding  was explained by situational and individual factors including:

  • Machiavellianism,
  • Locus of control,
  • Work task uniqueness.
Jeffrey Flory

Jeffrey Flory

In another of Leibbrandt and List’s randomized field studies, collaborating with Concordia colleague Jeffrey Flory, men did not wait for permission to negotiate when no statement was made about salary discussions.

In fact, male participants said they prefer ambiguous salary negotiation norms or“competitive work settings”  in which salary negotiation was typically expected.

Women frequently do not negotiate unless given explicit permission.
but when they are invited to negotiate, they obtained higher salaries as frequently as men

Leibbrandt, List, and Flory concluded that women accept “competitive” workplaces when “the job task is female-oriented” and the local labor market offers few alternatives.

Women who seek higher salaries benefit from proposing their “aspirational salaries” rather than waiting for permission to negotiate.
Women negotiators can achieve better outcomes when they offer moderate expressions of gratitude and avoid revealing their “reserve” salary figure.

-*In what work situations have you benefited from applying ‘strategic ingratiation’?

-*To what extent have you seen expressions of gratitude in negotiation undermine bargaining outcomes?

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©Kathryn Welds

Loneliness as Health Risk; Reframing Can Help

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Julianne Holt-Lundstad

Julianne Holt-Lundstad

Loneliness increases mortality risk by 26 percent, comparable to health risks of obesity, cigarette smoking, and excessive alcohol use, according to Brigham Young University’s Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris, and David Stephenson.
Loneliness harms people’s health in addition to triggering emotional discomfort.

Timothy Smith

Timothy Smith

Loneliness and social isolation differ.
Some people report feeling lonely in the presence of others, whereas socially isolated people may not report loneliness.
However, both loneliness and social isolation increased risk for mortality in a meta-analysis of more than 3 million participants in studies of loneliness, social isolation, and living alone.

Megan Knowles

Megan Knowles

Lonely individuals benefited more from learning to cope with social performance anxiety than from developing social skills, found Franklin & Marshall College’s Megan L. Knowles, Gale M. Lucas of University of Southern California, Florida State University’s Roy Baumeister, and Wendi L. Gardner of Northwestern.

Gale M. Lucas

Gale M. Lucas

More than 85 volunteers completed a loneliness self-report, then identified emotions expressed on computer-presented faces.
Self-described lonely people out-performed non-lonely people when social sensitivity tasks were described as measures of “academic aptitude.”

Roy Baumeister

However, lonely participants performed worse when tasks were presented as tests of “social aptitude.”
These volunteers also reported difficulty forming and maintaining friendships, suggesting that social anxiety leads to “choking” in social “performance” situations.
The result is continued loneliness.

Wendi Gardner

Wendi Gardner

Lonely people may be more socially competent than the non-lonely: They were more skilled at remembering social information in studies by Northwestern’s Wendi L. Gardner, Cynthia L. Pickett of University of California Davis, and Ohio State University’s Marilynn B. Brewer.
The team assessed social recall by presenting volunteers with a simulated computer chat task that provided brief acceptance or rejection experiences, then a diary containing both social and individual events.

Cynthia L. Pickett

Cynthia L. Pickett

When social anxiety could be reattributed to an external cause , task  performance increased.
Volunteers consumed a non-caffeinated energy beverage and were told that any jitters they might experience could be attributed to the “caffeine” they’d just consumed.
This explanation provided a plausible but false rationale for anxious feelings.

Alison Wood Brooks

Alison Wood Brooks

Similarly, Harvard’s Alison Wood Brooks found that reframing nervousness as “excitement” helped people perform better on stressful tasks.

An additional coping approach for lonely people is modifying personal mindsets following social loss cues.

Carol Dweck

Carol Dweck

Fixed mindset, identified by Stanford’s Carol Dweck, is a belief that personal capabilities are limited to present capacities.
This perspective is similar to security-oriented, prevention-focused behaviors of lonely people observed by University of Southern California’s Lucas with Knowles, Gardner, Daniel C. Molden and Valerie E. Jefferis of Northwestern.
This mindset can lead to fear, anxiety, protectiveness and guardedness.

Daniel Molden

Daniel Molden

In contrast, growth mindset is similar to promotion-focused responses like attempts at social engagement.
This developmental mindset holds that personal capabilities can expand based on commitment, effort, practice, instruction, and correcting mistakes.
This view enables teamwork, collaboration, and social interaction.

Marilynn Brewer

Marilynn Brewer

To demonstrate these effects, Lucas’s group gave volunteers cues of acceptance or rejection.
People who received positive primes were more likely to develop a promotion-focused growth mindset.
These participants also reported more effective social thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.

People who experience social anxiety and loneliness can reduce social avoidance by reframing discomfort as “excitement” and by embracing learning and new experiences in a growth mindset.

-*How do you manage loneliness?

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©Kathryn Welds

Workplace Incivility is Contagious, Damaging

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James Bartlett

James Bartlett

Workplace incivility has measurable negative consequences including reduced employee engagement and productivity, according to North Carolina State University’s James E. Bartlett and Michelle E. Bartlett with Florida Atlantic University’s Thomas G. Reio.

Trevor Foulk

Trevor Foulk

Rudeness in the workplace is contagious and leads people to be vigilant for subsequent slights, reported University of Florida’s Trevor Foulk, Andrew Woolum, and Amir Erez.
They suggested that low-level workplace hostility enables similar behavior throughout the organization, leading to eroded culture and productivity.

Andrew Woolum

Andrew Woolum

Ninety volunteers practiced negotiation with partners, and those who rated their initial negotiation partner as rude were more likely to be rated as rude by a subsequent partner.

Participants seemed to assimilate and convey the first partner’s rudeness.
The effect persisted during the week between the first and second negotiations.

Amir Erez

Amir Erez

Foulk’s team staged interactions between an apologetic late-arriving participant and the study leader, who responded neutrally or rudely.
Then, volunteers completed a timed task to distinguish real words from nonsense words.

Participants who observed the leader’s rude response more quickly identified rude words in a task than participants who had observed the neutral interaction.
Observing rude interactions can “prime” people’s awareness and sensitivity to future uncivil interactions.

Walter Mischel

Walter Mischel

People who witnessed rudeness were more likely to be rude to others, confirming the impact of observing aggression on future behavior, earlier demonstrated in often-cited “Bobo” experiments by Stanford’s Walter Mischel, Dorothea Ross and Sheila Ross.

Mischel's experiment with Bobo doll

Mischel’s experiment with Bobo doll

Foulk’s group also observed this priming effect when volunteers watched a video of a rude workplace interaction, then answered a fictitious customer neutral-toned email.
Participants’ responses were more likely to be hostile than those who viewed a polite interaction before responding.

“Rudeness will flavor the way you interpret ambiguous cues,” noted Foulk, who contended that harsh interactions can reduce collaboration and trust in the workplace.

-*How do you stop the spread of workplace incivility?

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When Do Women Talk More than Men?

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Women talk more than men.
Women talk less than men.

-*Which is true?

It depends.

Kay Deaux

Kay Deaux

Social context and expectations determine when females talk more than males, according to NYU’s Kay Deaux and Brenda Major of University of California Santa Barbara.

Brenda Major

Brenda Major

One investigation used electronic audio monitoring devices (digital “sociometers”) to identify gender associated with talk volume during a work collaboration project, and during lunchtime social conversations at work. This study was conducted by Harvard’s Jukka-Pekka Onnela and Sebastian Schnorf, with David Lazer of Northeastern and MIT colleagues Benjamin N. Waber and Sandy Pentland.

Jukka-Pekka Onnela

Jukka-Pekka Onnela

During the work project women talked significantly more than men, except when groups included seven or more people.
In contrast, women spoke less than men in larger groups during the work project.  
In addition, women sat closer to other women in larger project groups.

Sebastian Schnorf

Sebastian Schnorf

During social conversations, women talked the same amount as men, and more than men when the group was large.
Group size is associated with women’s verbal participation in groups depending on the task focus vs. social focus.

Matthias Mehl

Matthias Mehl

These findings support earlier reports of equal verbal participation by women and men by University of Arizona’s Matthias R. Mehl, collaborating with Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis. Their collaborators included University of Connecticut’s Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, with Richard B. Slatcher of Wayne State and University of Texas’s James W. Pennebaker.
This team analyzed voice recordings from more than 390 participants, and concluded that women and men both spoke about 16,000 words per day.

David Lazer

David Lazer

Women in large group social settings spoke more than women in collaborative work projects, found Onnela’s team.
The strongest difference in gender participation related to relationship strength and group size.

Scott E. Page

Scott E. Page

These results have implications for work groups that develop problem solutions and innovations.
Contributions from all women and men in diverse work groups are required to produce the largest number and most innovative solutions, according to Loyola University’s Lu Hong and Scott E. Page.
They found that diverse work groups produce superior solutions compared with homogenous groups, even if groups were composed of uniformly top performers.

In fact, a group’s “general collective intelligence factor” is most closely associated with:

  • Proportion of females in the group,
  • Average social sensitivity of group members,
  • Equal conversational turn-taking.
Anita Wooley Williams

Anita Wooley Williams

This “collective intelligence factor” was not related to the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members, found Carnegie Mellon’s Anita Williams Woolley, Christopher F. Chabris of Union College, with MIT colleagues Sandy Pentland, Nada Hashmi, and Thomas W. Malone.

Women can apply these insights by increasing verbal participation at work to establish visibility and credibility, while contributing to group performance.

-*How do you determine your degree of verbal contribution in work groups?


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Anxiety Linked to Risk of Behaving Unethically

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Sreedhari Desai

Sreedhari Desai

Anxious people were more likely to act with self-interested unethical behavior in studies by University of North Carolina’s Sreedhari Desai and Maryam Kouchaki of Northwestern.

Maryam Kouchaki

Maryam Kou

Anxiety was also associated with increased threat perception and decreased concern about personal unethical actions in simulated subordinate–supervisor pairs.

Desai noted that “individuals who feel anxious and threatened can take on self-defensive behaviors and focus narrowly on their own basic needs and self-interest.
This can cause them to be less mindful of principles that guide ethical and moral reasoning – and make them rationalize their own actions as acceptable.”

Charles Carver

Charles Carver

Engaging in unethical behaviors may offer more options and greater control over outcomes, found University of Miami’s Charles Carver and Michael Scheier of Carnegie Mellon.
Unethical behavior was also associated with feelings of greater autonomy and influence, particularly in ambiguous situations, according to Ohio State’s  Roy Lewicki.

Michael Scheier

Michael Scheier

People who violate ethical norms can experience a ‘cheater’s high‘ instead of guilt, found University of Washington’s Nicole E. Ruedy and Celia Moore of London Business School.

Roy Lewicki

Roy Lewicki

Cheaters in Ruedy’s research reported emotional uplift and self-satisfaction instead of guilt, and Paul Ekman of University of California, San Francisco referred to this exuberance among some cheaters as “duping delight.”

Nicole Ruedy

Nicole Ruedy

In Ruedy’s studies, nearly 180 people completed a four-minute anagram task to earn $1 for every correctly unscrambled word.
Participants then rated current feelings from positive to negative, both before and after the task.

Celia Moore

Celia Moore

Volunteers’ actual answers on the task were compared from imprints between their answer sheets to determine which participants reported inaccurate results.

More than 40% of these volunteers wrote in additional answers to increase their earnings, and reported significantly positive feelings after cheating on the task.

Even when Ruedy’s team told volunteers that researchers knew participants may be providing inaccurate reports in an insoluble anagram task, more than half the participants reported implausibly high scores.

Cheaters had higher levels of positive affect even when confronted with the team’s awareness of their potential deceit.
They also showed higher levels of self-satisfaction and feeling clever, capable, accomplished, satisfied, and superior.

Earning more money didn’t add to the “cheater’s high,” suggesting a top threshold for positive feelings associated with cheating.

Maurice Schweitzer

Maurice Schweitzer

These findings suggest that organizational leaders can increase employee quality-of-life and diminish unethical workplace behaviors by clarifying roles, which reduces anxiety.

Leaders also can reduce employees’ anxiety by:

Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman:

  • Setting realistic expectations for employee workload,
  • Adopting Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) and flex time,
  • Emphasizing the value of experimentation, flexibility, and innovation.

-*How have you seen high-anxiety workplaces affect employees’ ethical judgment?

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Self-Distancing Pronouns Use Can Increase Self-Management

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Ethan Kross

Ethan Kross

Despite years of popular guidance to use self-statements for difficult conversations with partners, spouses, and bosses, research argues for using self-distancing alternatives to manage stress and increase self-control.

Emma Bruehlman-Senecal

Emma Bruehlman-Senecal

University of Michigan’s Ethan Kross, Jiyoung Park, Aleah Burson, Adrienne Dougherty, Holly Shablack, and Ryan Bremner with Emma Bruehlman-Senecal and Ozlem Ayduk of University of California, Berkeley, plus Michigan State’s Jason Moser studied more than 580 people’s ability to self-regulate reactions to social stress by using different ways of referring to the self during introspection.

LeBron James

LeBron James

One example of variations in self-reference is LeBron James’ statement, “One thing I didn’t want to do was make an emotional decision. I wanted to do what’s best for LeBron James and to do what makes LeBron James happy.”

The team demonstrated that using non-first-person pronouns (such as “he” or “she”)  and one’s own name (rather than “I”) during introspection enhanced self-distancing, or focusing on the self from a distant perspective.

Stephen Hayes

Stephen Hayes

Distancing, also called “decentering” or “self as context,” allows people to observe and accept their feelings, according to University of Nevada’s Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, Akihiko Masuda and Jason Lillis collaborating with Frank Bond of University of London.

Ozlem Ayduk

Ozlem Ayduk

Self-distancing verbalizations were associated with less distress and less maladaptive “post-event processing”  (reviewing performance) when delivering a speech without sufficient time to prepare, and when seeking to make a good first impression on others.
Post-event processing can lead to increased social anxiety, noted Temple University’s Faith Brozovich and Richard Heimberg.

Faith Brozovich

Faith Brozovich

They found that participantsexperienced less global negative affect and shame after delivering a speech without sufficient preparation time, and engaged in less post-event processing.

Adrienne Dougherty

People who talked about themselves with non-first person pronouns also performed better in speaking and impression-formation social tasks, according to ratings by observers.

Participants who used self-distancing language appraised future stressors as less threatening, and they more effectively reconstrued experiences for greater coping, insight, and closure, in another study by Kross and Ayduk.

Ryan Bremner

Ryan Bremner

People with elevated scores on measures of depression or bipolar disorder experienced less distress when applying a self-distanced visual perspective as they contemplated emotional experiences, noted Kross and Ayduk, collaborating with San Francisco State University’s David Gard, Patricia Deldin of University of Michigan, and Jessica Clifton of University of Vermont.

David Gard

Using second-person pronouns (“you”) seems to be a self-distancing strategy when people reflect on situations that involve self-control, noted University of North Carolina’s Ethan Zell, Amy Beth Warriner of McMaster University and University of Illinois’s Dolores Albarracín.

Ethan Zell

These findings demonstrate that small changes in self-referencing words during introspection significantly increase self-regulation of thoughts, feelings, and behavior during social stress experiences.

Self-distancing references may help people manage depression and anger about past and anticipated social anxiety.

Dolores Albarracín

-*What impact do you experience when you use “self-distancing language”?

-*How do you react when you hear others using “self-distancing language,” like referring to “you” when speaking about their own experience?

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