Chatter

by Ethan Kross

  creating positive personal narratives: For review, see Dan P. McAdams and Kate C. McLean, “Narrative Identity,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 22 (2013): 233–238.

  temporal distancing: Emma Bruehlman-Senecal and Özlem Ayduk, “This Too Shall Pass: Temporal Distance and the Regulation of Emotional Distress,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (2015): 356–375. Also see Emma Bruehlman-Senecal, Özlem Ayduk, and Oliver P. John, “Taking the Long View: Implications of Individual Differences in Temporal Distancing for Affect, Stress Reactivity, and Well-Being,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 111 (2016): 610–635; S. P. Ahmed, “Using Temporal Distancing to Regulate Emotion in Adolescence: Modulation by Reactive Aggression,” Cognition and Emotion 32 (2018): 812–826; and Alex C. Huynh, Daniel Y. J. Yang, and Igor Grossmann, “The Value of Prospective Reasoning for Close Relationships,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 7 (2016): 893–902.

  James Pennebaker: For reviews, see James W. Pennebaker, “Writing About Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process,” Psychological Science 8 (1997): 162–166; James W. Pennebaker and Cindy K. Chung, “Expressive Writing: Connections to Physical and Mental Health,” in The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology, ed. H. S. Friedman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 417–437; also see Eva-Maria Gortner, Stephanie S. Rude, and James W. Pennebaker, “Benefits of Expressive Writing in Lowering Rumination and Depressive Symptoms,” Behavior Therapy 37 (2006): 292–303; Denise M. Sloan et al., “Expressive Writing Buffers Against Maladaptive Rumination,” Emotion 8 (2008): 302–306; and Katherine M. Krpan et al., “An Everyday Activity as a Treatment for Depression: The Benefits of Expressive Writing for People Diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder,” Journal of Affective Disorders 150 (2013): 1148–1151.

  creates distance from our experience: Jiyoung Park, Özlem Ayduk, and Ethan Kross, “Stepping Back to Move Forward: Expressive Writing Promotes Self-Distancing,” Emotion 16 (2016): 349–364. As Park and colleagues discuss, this doesn’t mean that distance is the only factor explaining why expressive writing helps.

  Chapter Four: When I Become You

  frequency illusion: Also referred to as the “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, Baader-Meinhof,” Oxford English Dictionary, April 6, 2020, https://www.oed.com/​view/​Entry/​250279.

  LeBron James: Interview by Michael Wilbon. Henry Abbott, “LeBron James’ Post-decision Interviews,” ESPN, July 9, 2010, https://www.espn.com/​blog/​truehoop/​post/​_/id/​17856/​lebron-james-post-decision-interviews and Jim Gray, “LeBron James ‘The Decision,’ ” ESPN, July 8, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=bHSLw8DLm20.

  Malala Yousafzai: Malala Yousafzai, interview by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Oct. 8, 2013.

  Jennifer Lawrence: Brooks Barnes, “Jennifer Lawrence Has No Appetite for Playing Fame Games,” New York Times, Sept. 9, 2015.

  Gallic Wars: Julius Caesar, Caesar’s Gallic War: With an Introduction, Notes, and Vocabulary by Francis W. Kelsey, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1895).

  The Education of Henry Adams: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1918).

  powerful techniques: Sally Dickerson and Margaret E. Kemeny, “Acute Stressors and Cortisol Responses: A Theoretical Integration and Synthesis of Laboratory Research,” Psychological Bulletin 130 (2004): 355–391.

  public speaking: Ethan Kross et al., “Self-Talk as a Regulatory Mechanism: How You Do It Matters,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106 (2014): 304–324.

  marker of negative emotion: For a historical review and meta-analysis, see Allison M. Tackman et al., “Depression, Negative Emotionality, and Self-Referential Language: A Multi-lab, Multi-measure, and Multi-language-task Research Synthesis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 116 (2019): 817–834; and To’Meisha Edwards and Nicholas S. Holtzman, “A Meta-Analysis of Correlations Between Depression and First-Person Singular Pronoun Use,” Journal of Research in Personality 68 (2017): 63–68.

  For example: The two studies I discuss in the text were published after our work on self-talk. As the papers cited in the previous endnote demonstrate, however, research stretching back multiple decades had already revealed a link between first-person singular pronoun usage and negative affect. I present these newer studies as evidence for that link because they represent particularly compelling evidence of the relationship. Tackman et al., “Depression, Negative Emotionality, and Self-Referential Language: A Multi-lab, Multi-measure, and Multi-language-task Research Synthesis”; and Johannes C. Eichstaedt et al., “Facebook Language Predicts Depression in Medical Records,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (2018): 11203–11208.

  distanced self-talk: For reviews, see Ethan Kross and Özlem Ayduk, “Self-Distancing: Theory, Research, and Current Directions”; and Ariana Orvell et al., “Linguistic Shifts: A Relatively Effortless Route to Emotion Regulation?,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 28 (2019): 567–573.

  third-person “he” or “she”: It’s worth asking whether using “they” for those who identify as nonbinary would lead to a similar result. Although we have not tested this idea directly, theoretically we would expect this pronoun to serve the same distancing, emotion regulatory function.

  Other experiments: Kross et al., “Self-Talk as a Regulatory Mechanism”; Sanda Dolcos and Dolores Albarracin, “The Inner Speech of Behavioral Regulation: Intentions and Task Performance Strengthen When You Talk to Yourself as a You,” European Journal of Social Psychology 44 (2014): 636–642; and Grossmann and Kross, “Exploring Solomon’s Paradox.” For other domains in which distanced self-talk has revealed benefits, see Celina Furman, Ethan Kross, and Ashley Gearhardt, “Distanced Self-Talk Enhances Goal Pursuit to Eat Healthier,” Clinical Psychological Science 8 (2020): 366–373; Ariana Orvell et al., “Does Distanced Self-Talk Facilitate Emotion Regulation Across a Range of Emotionally Intense Experiences?,” Clinical Psychological Science (in press); and Jordan B. Leitner et al., “Self-Distancing Improves Interpersonal Perceptions and Behavior by Decreasing Medial Prefrontal Cortex Activity During the Provision of Criticism,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12 (2017): 534–543.

  2014 Ebola crisis: Ethan Kross et al., “Third-Person Self-Talk Reduces Ebola Worry and Risk Perception by Enhancing Rational Thinking,” Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being 9 (2017): 387–409.

  most chatter-provoking scenarios: Aaron C. Weidman et al., “Punish or Protect: How Close Relationships Shape Responses to Moral Violations,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 46 (2019).

  “shifters” refer to words: Orvell et al., “Linguistic Shifts”; and Roman Jakobson, Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Russian Language Project, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 1957). For discussion, see Orvell et al., “Linguistic Shifts.”

  within milliseconds: For discussion, see Orvell et al., “Linguistic Shifts.”

  One tiny second: Jason S. Moser et al., “Third-Person Self-Talk Facilitates Emotion Regulation Without Engaging Cognitive Control: Converging Evidence from ERP and fMRI,” Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 1–9.

  overtaxed people’s executive functions: Ibid.

  Catch-22 of sorts: Orvell et al., “Linguistic Shifts.”

  typed to himself in 1979: Robert Ito, “Fred Rogers’s Life in 5 Artifacts,” New York Times, June 5, 2018.

  think of it as a challenge: Jim Blascovich and Joe Tomaka, “The Biopsychosocial Model of Arousal Regulation,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 28 (1996): 1–51; and Richard S. Lazarus and Susan Folkman, Stress, Appraisal, and Coping (New York: Springer, 1984).

  Several studies back: For review, see Jeremy P. Jamieson, Wendy Berry Mendes, and Matthew K. Nock, “Impr
oving Acute Stress Responses: The Power of Reappraisal,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 22 (2013): 51–56. Also see Adam L. Alter et al., “Rising to the Threat: Reducing Stereotype Threat by Reframing the Threat as a Challenge,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46 (2010): 155–171; and Alison Wood Brooks, “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-performance Anxiety as Excitement,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143 (2014): 1144–1158.

  Seventy-five percent: Kross et al., “Self-Talk as a Regulatory Mechanism.”

  see it in people’s bodies: Jim Blascovich and Joe Tomaka, “The Biopsychosocial Model of Arousal Regulation”; Mark D. Seery, “Challenge or Threat? Cardiovascular Indexes of Resilience and Vulnerability to Potential Stress in Humans,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 35 (2011): 1603–1610.

  cardiovascular systems functioned: Lindsey Streamer et al., “Not I, but She: The Beneficial Effects of Self-Distancing on Challenge/Threat Cardiovascular Responses,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 70 (2017): 235–241.

  Batman Effect: Rachel E. White et al., “The ‘Batman Effect’: Improving Perseverance in Young Children,” Child Development 88 (2017): 1563–1571. Stephanie and her colleagues have examined the Batman Effect in additional contexts. In one direction, they’ve shown that this tool can promote executive functioning among five-year-olds: Rachel E. White and Stephanie M. Carlson, “What Would Batman Do? Self-Distancing Improves Executive Function in Young Children,” Developmental Science 19 (2016): 419–426. In other work, they’ve shown that this tool is uniquely effective for young children and vulnerable children characterized by low levels of self-control when they work on frustrating tasks that have no solution: Amanda Grenell et al., “Individual Differences in the Effectiveness of Self-Distancing for Young Children’s Emotion Regulation,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 37 (2019): 84–100.

  loss of a parent: Julie B. Kaplow et al., “Out of the Mouths of Babes: Links Between Linguistic Structure of Loss Narratives and Psychosocial Functioning in Parentally Bereaved Children,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 31 (2018): 342–351.

  normalizing experiences: Robert L. Leahy, “Emotional Schema Therapy: A Bridge over Troubled Waters,” in Acceptance and Mindfulness in Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Understanding and Applying New Therapies, ed. J. D. Herbert and E. M. Forman (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 109–131; and Blake E. Ashforth and Glen E. Kreiner, “Normalizing Emotion in Organizations: Making the Extraordinary Seem Ordinary,” Human Resource Management Review 12 (2002): 215–235.

  Sheryl Sandberg: Sheryl Sandberg Facebook Post About Her Husband’s Death, Facebook, June 3, 2015, www.facebook.com/​sheryl/​posts/​10155617891025177:0. Also see Sheryl Sandberg in conversation with Oprah Winfrey, Super Soul Sunday, June 25, 2017, http://www.oprah.com/​own-super-soul-sunday/​the-daily-habit-the-helped-sheryl-sandberg-heal-after-tragedy-video.

  gaining helpful emotional distance: Park, Ayduk, and Kross, “Stepping Back to Move Forward.”

  “generic ‘you’ ”: Ariana Orvell, Ethan Kross, and Susan Gelman, “How ‘You’ Makes Meaning,” Science 355 (2017): 1299–1302. Also see Ariana Orvell, Ethan Kross, and Susan Gelman, “Lessons Learned: Young Children’s Use of Generic-You to Make Meaning from Negative Experiences,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 148 (2019): 184–191.

  another type of linguistic hack: Orvell et al., “Linguistic Shifts.”

  asked to learn from their experience: Orvell, Kross, and Gelman, “How ‘You’ Makes Meaning.”

  Chapter Five: The Power and Peril of Other People

  Then he opened fire on them again: Steven Gray, “How the NIU Massacre Happened,” Time, Feb. 16, 2008, content.time.com/​time/​nation/​article/​0,8599,1714069,00.html.

  Amanda Vicary and R. Chris Fraley: Amanda M. Vicary and R. Chris Fraley, “Student Reactions to the Shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University: Does Sharing Grief and Support over the Internet Affect Recovery?,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36 (2010): 1555–1563; report of the February 14, 2008, shootings at Northern Illinois University, https://www.niu.edu/​forward/​_pdfs/​archives/​feb14report.pdf; Susan Saulny and Monica Davey, “Gunman Kills at Least 5 at U.S. College,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 2008; and Cheryl Corley and Scott Simon, “NIU Students Grieve at Vigil,” NPR, Feb. 16, 2008, https://www.npr.org/​templates/​story/​story.php?storyId=19115808&t=1586343329323.

  one Virginia Tech student: Vicary and Fraley, “Student Reactions to the Shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University.”

  September 11 attacks: Mark D. Seery et al., “Expressing Thoughts and Feelings Following a Collective Trauma: Immediate Responses to 9/11 Predict Negative Outcomes in a National Sample,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 76 (2008): 657–667. The measure used to index expressing emotions following 9/11 consisted of an open-ended prompt asking participants to share their thoughts about 9/11. The authors used this prompt as a proxy for assessing people’s tendency to express emotions with others (pp. 663, 665). Critically, the authors demonstrate that people who completed the open-ended prompt also reported seeking out more emotional support and venting to others after the attacks (p. 664).

  For additional resources indicating that expressing emotions is not always beneficial, see Richard McNally, Richard J. Bryant, and Anke Ehlers, “Does Early Psychological Intervention Promote Recovery from Posttraumatic Stress?,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 4 (2003): 45–79; Arnold A. P. van Emmerik et al., “Single Session Debriefing After Psychological Trauma: A Meta-analysis,” Lancet 360 (2002): 766–771; George A. Bonanno, “Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events?,” American Psychologist 59 (2004): 20–28; Bushman, “Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame?”; Bushman et al., “Chewing on It Can Chew You Up”; and Rimé, “Emotion Elicits the Social Sharing of Emotion.”

  earliest proponents of this approach: Aristotle, Poetics (Newburyport, MA: Pullins, 2006). Also see, Brad J. Bushman, “Catharsis of Aggression,” in Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, ed. Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007), 135–137; and The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Catharsis,” Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  Sigmund Freud and his mentor: Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria, 1893–1895 (London: Hogarth Press, 1955).

  earlier stage of our development: I drew on Bernard Rimé’s excellent synthesis of the role that developmental processes play in establishing emotion regulation as an interpersonal process for this section. Rimé, “Emotion Elicits the Social Sharing of Emotion.”

  basic need we have to belong: Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995): 497–529.

  “tend and befriend” response: Shelley E. Taylor, “Tend and Befriend: Biobehavioral Bases of Affiliation Under Stress,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 15 (2006): 273–77.

  seek out other people: Research indicates that simply thinking about caring for others, activating a mental snapshot of them, is sufficient for activating an inner coach like a script in people’s heads. According to psychologists Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver, two pioneers in attachment research, the unspoken mental script goes like this: “If I encounter an obstacle and/or become distressed, I can approach a significant other for help; he or she is likely to be available and supportive; I will experience relief and comfort as a result of proximity to this person; I can then return to other activities.” Mario Mikulincer et al., “What’s Inside the Minds of Securely and Insecurely Attached People? The Secure-Base Script and Its Associations with Attachment-Style Dimensions,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 (2002): 615–633.

  This script ide
a played into a set of studies I performed in 2015 with my colleague, Cornell psychologist Vivian Zayas, and her students, to examine whether glancing at pictures of attachment figures would have implications for helping people manage chatter. Specifically, we asked people to think about a negative experience that caused chatter and then asked people to look at a picture of either their mother or someone else’s mother. Just as Mikulincer and Shaver would have predicted, looking at a picture of their mother reduced their emotional pain; they rated themselves as feeling much better. Emre Selcuk et al., “Mental Representations of Attachment Figures Facilitate Recovery Following Upsetting Autobiographical Memory Recall,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103 (2012): 362–378.

  emotional needs over our cognitive ones: Christelle Duprez et al., “Motives for the Social Sharing of an Emotional Experience,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 32 (2014): 757–787. Also see Lisanne S. Pauw et al., “Sense or Sensibility? Social Sharers’ Evaluations of Socio-affective vs. Cognitive Support in Response to Negative Emotions,” Cognition and Emotion 32 (2018): 1247–1264.

  interlocutors tend to miss these cues: Lisanne S. Pauw et al., “I Hear You (Not): Sharers’ Expressions and Listeners’ Inferences of the Need for Support in Response to Negative Emotions,” Cognition and Emotion 33 (2019): 1129–1243.

  co-rumination: Amanda J. Rose, “Co-rumination in the Friendships of Girls and Boys,” Child Development 73 (2002): 1830–1843; Jason S. Spendelow, Laura M. Simonds, and Rachel E. Avery, “The Relationship Between Co-rumination and Internalizing Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy 24 (2017): 512–527; Lindsey B. Stone et al., “Co-rumination Predicts the Onset of Depressive Disorders During Adolescence,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 120 (2011): 752–757; and Benjamin L. Hankin, Lindsey Stone, and Patricia Ann Wright, “Co-rumination, Interpersonal Stress Generation, and Internalizing Symptoms: Accumulating Effects and Transactional Influences in a Multi-wave Study of Adolescents,” Developmental Psychopathology 22 (2010): 217–235. Also see Rimé, “Emotion Elicits the Social Sharing of Emotion.”