Scientific Definition
Thinking about yourself in the third person reduces emotional reactivity and improves judgment.
Plain-English Definition
Thinking about yourself in the third person reduces emotional reactivity and improves judgment.
Feynman Explanation
Talk to yourself the way you'd talk to your most trusted advisor.
Core Principle
Thinking about yourself in the third person reduces emotional reactivity and improves judgment.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Thinking about yourself in the third person reduces emotional reactivity and improves judgment.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
High-stakes personal decisions benefit from forced distance.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Talk to yourself the way you'd talk to your most trusted advisor.
Examples
- Solomon's paradox — wise about others, foolish about ourselves.
- High-stakes personal decisions benefit from forced distance.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Write the call as if a colleague were facing it.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Write the call as if a colleague were facing it.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
Inattention or forgetfulness caused by low attention, hyperfocus, or distraction.
Forgetting to compare an offer with the next-best alternative.
Outcomes that could have happened but did not.
Overthinking a situation so that decision-making stalls.
The first number on the table silently sets the range for every number after it.
Tversky & Kahneman's classic: identical outcomes flip from 'risk averse' to 'risk seeking' when framed as lives saved vs. lives lost.
Our perception is shaped by what we selectively pay attention to.
Favoring suggestions from automated systems over conflicting human judgment.
A color appears different depending on adjacent colors.
Decisions are constrained by available information, cognitive limits, and time.
The ability to focus on one voice in a noisy environment.