Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam here with a classic episode
Speaker 1: from our archives. You know, I never thought that much
Speaker 1: about that intro line that I just said that I
Speaker 1: say something to the extent of at the beginning of
Speaker 1: every episode. I inherited the line from one of our
Speaker 1: former hosts, and I just sort of went with it.
Speaker 1: But this episode made me feel a number of ways
Speaker 1: about it. The question of the day is, how can
Speaker 1: talking about yourself in the third person make you feel better? Hey,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam here. In pop culture parlance,
Speaker 1: it's known as the Jimmy, the odd conversational quirk of
Speaker 1: referring to yourself in the third person, named after the
Speaker 1: Seinfeld character who bragged about his basketball skills as if
Speaker 1: he was his own biggest fans jim He's ready, dude check.
Speaker 1: Professional sports and politics are full of real life Jimmy's
Speaker 1: outsized personalities with the off putting habit of talking about
Speaker 1: themselves by name. Senator Bob Dole was mocked relentlessly on
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live for his Bob Dole is ums Lebron James,
Speaker 1: defending his controversial move from his hometown of Cleveland to
Speaker 1: the Miami Heat famously said I wanted to do what
Speaker 1: was best for Lebron James to make him happy. The
Speaker 1: real term for talking about yourself of 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 Emotion 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 particip 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 itself. Afterward.
Speaker 1: In a later study, Cross took f M R I
Speaker 1: brain scans of people engaged in first person versus third
Speaker 1: persons self talk. The scans revealed that I centered thinking
Speaker 1: it triggers the areas of the brain associated with negative
Speaker 1: self referential processes, while Jimmy style thinking does not. In addition,
Speaker 1: the third person self talk appears to bypass the cognitive
Speaker 1: or effortful parts of the brain. In other words, the
Speaker 1: positive effect is automatic. Cross recommends that everyone give it
Speaker 1: 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 studied. 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 arounds 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. Pele doesn't die, Pele will never die. Pile
Speaker 1: is going to go on forever. Today's episode is based
Speaker 1: on the article the Benefits of talking about yourself in
Speaker 1: the third person on House to Forks Dot com written
Speaker 1: by Dave Roose. Brainstuff is production by Heart Radio in
Speaker 1: partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: Four more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.