Self-Reflection with Non-First-Person Language: Moving Away from Oneself and Controlling One's Feelings, Thoughts, and Behaviors

Abstract

Previous research has shown that if we look at our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors from the perspective of others, rather than our own, that is, if we move away from ourselves, we can more easily control them, and current research hypothesized that if we use non-first-person pronouns (e.g., "he") and our own name to name ourselves instead of first-person pronouns (e.g., "I"), It becomes easier to get away from ourselves and then control ourselves. In order to test this hypothesis, a pilot experiment and a main experiment were performed. The Pilot experiment showed that the non-first-person group reported more than the first-person group seeing themselves from the perspective of others. In the main experiment, 86 female students with an average age of 21 years from Payam Noor University of Qom were sampled by convenience method and randomly assigned to two groups of first person (who thought about future stressful events with first person pronouns) and non-first person (who thought about the future stressful events with non-first-person pronouns and their names). Trait anxiety was measured by the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Leary, 1983) and state anxiety was measured by a researcher-made test. participants then performed a social interaction, and five judges rated their social performance. Repeated measures ANCOVAs showed that after social interaction, non-first-person group's state anxiety decreased faster than that of first-person group and non-first-person group received better scores in social performance.

Keywords

• anxiety
• non-first-person language
• self-control
• self-distancing
• self-reflection