{"id":6105,"date":"2014-09-13T05:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T09:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/?p=6105"},"modified":"2019-06-07T13:38:48","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T17:38:48","slug":"step-outside-yourself-to-get-relationship-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/step-outside-yourself-to-get-relationship-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Step outside yourself to get relationship perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"To<\/a>
To get the benefit of wisdom that comes from age, researchers suggest using self-distance language to think about your relationship.
Photo by Neil Moralee used under a Creative Commons license.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nHave you ever looked back on a bad relationship and been astonished you didn’t see what was happening more clearly?
\nOr are you baffled when your friend simply doesn’t get the obvious about his or her relationship troubles?
\nResearch conducted at my alma mater, University of Michigan, indicates it’s a common problem, and suggests considering your problems from the outside to get better perspective.
\nMy former colleague at the U-M News Service, Diane Swanbrow, wrote about a press release<\/a> about research by social psychologists Igor Grossmann<\/a> at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and\u00a0Ethan Kross<\/a>, published in\u00a0Psychological Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grossmann and Kross asked study participants to reflect on a relationship conflict of their own or someone else\u2019s, such as a spouse\u2019s infidelity with a close friend. Participants were asked to think about this problem in the first-person and in the third-person, and offer advice on how to address the problem.
\nAccording to Grossmann, the results clearly show that when people think about problems in the first-person, people are wiser when reasoning about others\u2019 problems than their own, a bias that the researchers term \u201cSolomon\u2019s Paradox,\u201d after the Old Testament king who was known for his wisdom but who still failed at making personal decisions.
\n\u201cWhen people self-distance, they are capable of reasoning as wisely about their own interpersonal problems as about the problems of others,\u201d said Kross, associate professor of psychology and a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
\nSelf-distancing is straightforward to do, Kross and Grossmann say.
\n\u201cWe simply asked our participants to use their own name and other non-first-person pronouns such as \u201cyou\u201d when thinking about themselves,\u201d Kross said. \u201cInstead of saying, \u2018Why am I feeling this way?\u2019 you adopt a distanced perspective by asking yourself, \u2018Why are you feeling this way?\u2019\u201d
\nGrossmann and Kross also examined how age affects people\u2019s ability to make wise decisions.
\n\u201cThe belief that with age comes wisdom is not true when it comes to reasoning about our own personal problems,\u201d Kross said. \u201cOlder people may be wiser in giving advice to others, but not necessarily in deciding what to do themselves. If they adopt self-distancing techniques, they can be as effective as younger people in closing this wisdom gap.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sounds so simple, just changing the pronouns as you consider an issue. Instead of “What should I do?” try “What are you going to do?” or “What are your options?”
\nin a novel I began many years ago, and which stalled out shortly thereafter, my lead character is faced with a big life decision and she’s especially challenged because she always went to her dad for life advice and he’s recently died. She realizes her dad never actually told her what to do, but just asked her a series of questions about the situation and then suddenly the right thing to do seemed totally obvious. She begins to try playing both sides of the conversation — trying to find the answer through self distancing, though I didn’t realize that was the term.
\nNow there’s research showing I should be doing that more in real life, not just with fictional characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever looked back on a bad relationship and been astonished you didn’t see what was happening more clearly? Or are you baffled when your friend simply doesn’t get the obvious about his or her relationship troubles? Research conducted at my alma mater, University of Michigan, indicates it’s a common problem, and suggests considering your problems from the outside…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[57,58],"tags":[974,1318,1709,1710,1715,2149,2286,2296,2406,2652],"yoast_head":"\nStep outside yourself to get relationship perspective - Newvine Growing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/step-outside-yourself-to-get-relationship-perspective\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Step outside yourself to get relationship perspective - Newvine Growing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Have you ever looked back on a bad relationship and been astonished you didn’t see what was happening more clearly? 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