Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog obam Here. In pop culture parlance, it's known
Speaker 1: as the Jimmy, the odd conversational quirk of referring to
Speaker 1: yourself in the third person, named after the Seinfeld character
Speaker 1: who bragged about his basketball skills as if he was
Speaker 1: his own biggest fan. Jimmy's ready dud check. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Jimmy played pretty good. Professional sports and politics are full
Speaker 1: of real life Jimmy's outsized personalities with the off putting
Speaker 1: habit of talking about themselves by name. Senator Bob Dole
Speaker 1: was mocked relentlessly on Saturday Night Live for his Bob
Speaker 1: doll Is ums. Lebron James, defending his controversial move from
Speaker 1: his hometown of Cleveland to the Miami Heat, famously said
Speaker 1: I wanted to do what was best for Lebron James
Speaker 1: to make him happy. And now the United States has
Speaker 1: a Jimmy in chief. President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred
Speaker 1: to himself as Trump or Donald Trump in debates, interviews,
Speaker 1: and tweets. For example, dismissing the allegations of collusion with
Speaker 1: Russia in the presidential elections, Trump tweeted in perhaps Trump
Speaker 1: just ran a great campaign which prompted this reaction from
Speaker 1: author J. K. Rowling. I wonder whether Trump talks to
Speaker 1: Trump's self in the third Trump person when Trump's alone.
Speaker 1: The real term for talking about yourself the third person
Speaker 1: is ilioism, and every armchair psychologist has a theory for
Speaker 1: why certain celebrities are rabbid iliasts. The easiest explanation is ego. Essentially,
Speaker 1: their ego gets so big and inflated that it takes
Speaker 1: on a life of its own. Same for narcissism. These
Speaker 1: folks love themselves so much that they need to address
Speaker 1: the object of their affection by name. But the truth
Speaker 1: is that no substantial research has been done on the
Speaker 1: question of why some A list athletes, actors, and politicians
Speaker 1: can't keep their own name out of their mouth. Interestingly, though,
Speaker 1: there is convincing evidence that regular folks like you and
Speaker 1: me can actually boost ourself confidence through the simple trick
Speaker 1: of thinking of ourselves in the third person. Ethan Cross
Speaker 1: is a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, where
Speaker 1: he runs the Motion and Self Control Laboratory. Cross studies
Speaker 1: the ways in which people regulate their emotions, including the
Speaker 1: handy trick of psychological distancing, taking a step back from
Speaker 1: intense anger or pain to think about the situation as
Speaker 1: an objective outsider. Cross said, what we've learned is that
Speaker 1: language provides people with a tool to distance themselves psychologically,
Speaker 1: including language that many people use spontaneously without even thinking
Speaker 1: about it. It turns out that all of us, not
Speaker 1: just celebrities, engage in what Cross calls third person self
Speaker 1: talk when we need a little emotional or psychological boost.
Speaker 1: Maybe it happens at the gym when we feel like
Speaker 1: quitting with five minutes left on the elliptical, Come on, Lauren,
Speaker 1: pushed through, or when we're trying to work up the
Speaker 1: nerve to ask our boss for a raise. You deserve this, Lauren,
Speaker 1: And as weird as that just felt it works. In
Speaker 1: his lab, Cross ran experiments comparing the performance of two
Speaker 1: groups in a stressful situation. One group that was prompted
Speaker 1: to psych itself up with eye statements and a second
Speaker 1: group that used use statements and their own name. When
Speaker 1: the participants were asked to give an extemporaneous speech in public,
Speaker 1: a true stress bomb. The Jimmy group came in with
Speaker 1: a healthier attitude performed better and was less critical of
Speaker 1: itself afterward. In a later study, Cross took fm R
Speaker 1: I brain scans of people engaged in first person versus
Speaker 1: third persons self talk. The scans revealed that I centered
Speaker 1: thinking it triggers the areas of the brain associated with
Speaker 1: negative self referential processes, while Jimmy style thinking does not.
Speaker 1: In addition, the third persons self talk appears to bypass
Speaker 1: the cognitive or effortful parts of the brain. In other words,
Speaker 1: the positive effect is automatic. Cross recommends that everyone give
Speaker 1: it a try the next time they're stressed or emotionally wrought.
Speaker 1: He said, compared to other emotional regulation strategies, third person
Speaker 1: self talk might be a little bit easier for people
Speaker 1: to implement, the costs are minimal, and the potential upshot
Speaker 1: is valuable. Does this mean that all the Lebrons, Jimmy's
Speaker 1: and Trumps of the world are talking about themselves in
Speaker 1: the third person because they're trying to establish psychological distance
Speaker 1: from stressful situations, maybe, says Cross, But it's not something
Speaker 1: that he or anyone else has study. Interestingly, in the
Speaker 1: famous clip of Lebron James defending Lebron James, he also
Speaker 1: tells the interviewer, What I didn't want to do was
Speaker 1: make an emotional decision. Maybe for James, the best way
Speaker 1: to distance himself emotionally and make an objective decision was too,
Speaker 1: As he put it, do what's best for Lebron James,
Speaker 1: not necessarily himself. One important difference between the lab experiments
Speaker 1: and examples of celebrity self name dropping is that the
Speaker 1: participants in Crosses study never spoke out loud. All of
Speaker 1: the self talk was internal or written out on paper.
Speaker 1: So there's still a possibility that when it comes to
Speaker 1: celebrity self talkers, that first theory we mentioned still applies. However,
Speaker 1: we'll leave you with an interesting case study soccer legend
Speaker 1: Pel was a world class Jimmy, but for an interesting reason,
Speaker 1: Born Edson arounts Pile, the person didn't identify with the
Speaker 1: global superstar that had crowds chanting his name. He told
Speaker 1: the Guardian, Edson is the person who has the feelings,
Speaker 1: who has the family, who works hard, and Pile is
Speaker 1: the idol. Pile doesn't die, Pele will never die. Pile
Speaker 1: is going to go on forever. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang for more
Speaker 1: on this and lots of other topics, but none of
Speaker 1: which make me feel so weird about starting out every
Speaker 1: episode by stating my name. Visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com