Send us Fan Mail Stop wasting all of your good advice on everyone else. Let's figure out how to take a step back and save some of that sage wisdom for ourselves. Grossmann, I., & Kross, E. (2014). Exploring Solomon's paradox: Self-distancing eliminates the self-other asymmetry in wise reasoning about close relationships in younger and older adults. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1571–1580. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614535400 Free-access alternative: author-uploaded PDF via ResearchGate. Plain language: across three studies (~700 people total), people were consistently wiser reasoning about someone else's relationship problem than their own identical one, until they were instructed to view their own problem from an outside observer's perspective, which erased the gap. Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., Bremner, R., Moser, J. S., & Ayduk, O. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–324. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035173 Free-access alternative: University of Michigan/Berkeley RASCL lab repository (PDF). Plain language: across seven studies (~585 people), switching from "I" to one's own name or "you" during self-talk under stress, even silently, improved emotional regulation and clearer thinking, without requiring any other reframing effort. The (Paradoxical) Wisdom of Solomon, Association for Psychological Science, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/were-only-human/the-paradoxical-wisdom-of-solomon.html (last accessed Aug. 9, 2026).Support the show
