Viewing yourself as others do can help nudge you toward personal goals,study

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Viewing yourself as others do can help nudge you toward personal

goals, studies at Cornell find

15 Apr 2005 Medical News Today

Trying to lose weight, be less nervous when speaking publicly or

improve in some other way? One strategy that can help is to switch

your point of view from the first-person to a third-person

perspective when reviewing your progress, according to a series of

studies conducted at Cornell University.

" We have found that perspective can influence your interpretation of

past events. In a situation in which change is likely, we find that

observing yourself as a third person -- looking at yourself from an

outside observer's perspective -- can help accentuate the changes

you've made more than using a first-person perspective, " says

Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell. When people perceive

change, they get some satisfaction from their efforts, which, in

turn, can give them more motivation to keep on working toward a

personal goal, he says.

Gilovich and former graduate students K. Libby, Cornell

Ph.D. '03 and an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State

University, and Eibach, Cornell Ph.D. '03 and an assistant

professor of psychology at Yale University, conducted a series of

studies to examine the effects of memory perspective on perceiving

personal change. Their work is published in a recent issue of the

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 88, No. 1, 2005).

The social psychologists asked participants to picture a particular

event from their lives either from a first-person or third-person

perspective. The volunteers then evaluated how much they thought they

had changed since the event had occurred.

For example, in one study 38 college students who had been in

psychotherapy were asked either to recall their first appointment

through their own eyes (first person) or " from an observer's visual

perspective " (third person). Those who recalled their appointment

from a third-person perspective reported that they had made

significantly more progress in treatment than did those who took a

first-person perspective.

The researchers also found that memory perspective can affect

behavior. They recruited college students who said they had been

socially awkward in high school and asked them to visualize an

occasion of their social awkwardness either from a first- or third-

person perspective. Not only were those who recalled their

awkwardness from a third-person perspective more likely to say they

had changed, but they also were more likely to be more socially

adept -- initiating conversations, for example -- just after the

experiment when they did not know they were being observed.

" When participants recalled past awkwardness from a third-person

perspective, they felt they had changed and were now more socially

skilled, " said Libby, the first author of the study. " That led them

to behave more sociably and appear more socially skilled to the

research assistant. "

Gilovich points out, however, that a third-person perspective

accentuates perceived changes when people seeking self-improvement

are focused on differences between their present and past selves. But

when the volunteers were asked to focus on similarities from the past

by visualizing a past event that was positive, such as something they

were proud of, the third-person perspective tended to promote

perceptions of continuity between the present self and a positive

past self.

" In other words, recalling memories from a third-person perspective

produces judgments of greater self-change when people are inclined to

look for evidence of change, but lesser self-change when they are

inclined to look for similarities from the past or evidence of

continuity, " concludes Gilovich.

The research suggests that the saying, " It depends on how you look at

it, " has literal truth when it comes to assessing personal change.