Kross, E. (2009). When the Self Becomes Other
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VALUES, EMPATHY, AND FAIRNESS ACROSS SOCIAL BARRIERS When the Self Becomes Other Toward an Integrative Understanding of the Processes Distinguishing Adaptive Self-reflection from Rumination Ethan Kross University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1109, USA How can people adaptively analyze and “work through” negative feelings without rumi- nating? This paper will briefly review findings from an integrative program of research, which suggests that a critical factor determining whether people’s attempts to adap- tively reason about negative experiences succeed or fail is the type of self-perspective they adopt. That is, whether people analyze their feelings from a self-immersed or self-distanced perspective. The implications of shifting self-perspectives for subjective experience, autonomic nervous system reactivity, and neural activity are discussed. Key words: rumination; emotion regulation; self-reflection; psychological distance; fMRI; self-regulation; coping; mindfulness Viktor Frankl, one of the great psychiatrists of negative events in ways that promote mean- the 20th century, devoted much of his life to un- ing making-that provide people with “why’s” derstanding how people can adaptively cope to explain their “how’s-have been shown to with distressing life events. After enduring life facilitate adaptive coping across a variety of in a Holocaust concentration camp, Frankl1 de- circumstances.2–5 What has also become clear scribed the conditions that allowed him and his during this time, however, is that people expe- fellow prisoners to survive as follows: rience enormous difficulty doing this precisely ...Nietzche’s words, ‘He who has a why to live when it matters most—when negative feelings for can bear with almost any how’, could be the are intense and people are motivated to under- guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psy- stand their feelings in order to improve them. chohygienic efforts... whenever there was an op- Rather than facilitating adaptive self-reflection, portunity for it, one had to give [Holocaust Con- focusing attention on one’s feelings under centration Camp Prisoners] a why – an aim – for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the such circumstances often gives rise to rumina- terrible how of their existence. (Frankl 1959, p. 84) tion, which serves to maintain and exacerbate distress.6–9 Six decades have passed since Frankl first Putting these findings together, a challenge penned these words. During this time a great emerges: to understand why people’s attempts deal of evidence has accumulated to support to understand negative feelings at times succeed his thesis—self-regulatory strategies and clini- and at other times fail. This paper will address cal interventions that lead people to reconstrue this issue by reviewing findings from an inte- grative set of studies, which suggest that a criti- Address for correspondence: Ethan Kross, Department of Psychology, cal factor distinguishing adaptive self-reflection 530 Church Street, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109. from dysfunctional rumination is the type of self- Voice: 734-763-5640. [email protected] perspective people adopt while analyzing negative This paper was based on a lecture delivered at the Barcelona Social Brain conference. feelings. Values, Empathy, and Fairness across Social Barriers: Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1167: 35–40 (2009). doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04545.x c 2009 New York Academy of Sciences. 35 36 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Processes Distinguishing Adaptive quently, participants rated the extent to which and Maladaptive Self-reflection: they relived their negative feelings during the The Role of Self-perspective experiment and described in writing the stream of thoughts they experienced as they analyzed Prior research indicates that when people their feelings. The latter thought content essays recall negative emotional events, they typi- were coded for the extent to which they con- cally do so from a self-immersed perspective.10 tained recounting statements (i.e., statements From this perspective, self-relevant events and in which participants indicated thinking about emotions are experienced in the first person, the specific chain of events and emotions expe- through one’s own eyes. However, experiences rienced) and reconstruing statements (i.e., state- can also be focused on from a self-distanced ments demonstrating insight and closure). perspective in which the individual becomes The results indicated that participants in an observer of the self (for example, see Refs. the self-distanced group displayed significantly 11–16). In prior research, Kross, Ayduk, and lower levels of emotional reactivity compared Mischel17 proposed that whether people adopt to participants in the self-immersed group. a self-immersed versus self-distanced perspec- In addition, analyses of participants’ thought tive would critically influence their ability to content essays indicated that participants who analyze negative experiences adaptively. They analyzed their feelings from a self-distanced predicted that when individuals focus on nega- perspective focused relatively less on what hap- tive feelings from a self-immersed perspective, pened to them (i.e., recounting) and relatively episodic information concerning the specific more on reconstruing the event (e.g., I under- chain of events (i.e., what happened) and emo- stand why the fight happened; it might have been ir- tions experienced (i.e., what did I feel?) would rational but I understand his motivation now). Con- become accessible, serving to increase nega- sistent with the experimenters’ predictions, this tive affect. In contrast, they predicted that an- shift in the content of people’s thoughts about alyzing negative feelings from a self-distanced their past experience—less recounting and perspective would lead people to focus less on more reconstruing—mediated the effect of the the episodic features of their recalled experi- self-perspective manipulations on emotional ence and more on reconstruing it in ways that reactivity.18 promote insight and closure. In turn, they pre- dicted that this shift in the content of people’s thoughts about their past experience—less re- Incremental Utility: Comparisons counting and more reconstruing—would lead to Distraction to reductions in negative affect. The findings reviewed above suggest that di- recting individuals to analyze negative feelings Emotional Reactivity from a self-distanced perspective helps attenu- and Construals ate emotional reactivity in the short term. But to what extent are these reductions in negative To test these predictions, Kross and col- affect substantively significant? One way to ad- leagues17 recruited participants for a study on dress this question is to compare the effects of memory and language. Participants were first self-distancing against distraction, a technique instructed to recall a specific time from their that has been shown to be extremely effective at past in which they felt overwhelming feelings of reducing negative affect relative to rumination anger and hostility. They were then randomly manipulations in prior work.7 Drawing from re- assigned to analyze their feelings from either a search indicating that distraction and cognitive self-immersed or self-distanced perspective. Subse- reconstrual strategies are equally effective at Kross: Self-Reflection 37 facilitating self-control,19–20 Kross and Ayduk21 distancing may have important physical health hypothesized that self-distancing and distrac- implications. tion would lead to statistically equivalent reduc- tions in negative affect. Findings from a study that compared the effects of self-distancing, Long-Term Buffering Effects self-immersion, and distraction on short-term emotional reactivity were consistent with this The findings reviewed thus far demonstrate prediction. Whereas both distraction and self- that self-distancing is effective at reducing emo- distancing led to significantly lower levels of tional and physiological reactivity in the short emotional reactivity relative to self-immersion, term. But what about protective buffering ef- distraction and self-distancing led to the same fects? Does analyzing feelings from a self- relatively low levels of emotional reactivity.21 distanced perspective enable people to adap- tively “work through” and process disturbing experiences in ways that reduce their future From Mind to Body: Implications negative impact? for Cardiovascular Reactivity To address these questions Kross and Ay- duk21 recruited participants for two short-term Another question raised by our initial find- longitudinal studies. During Session 1 of each ings was whether these different ways of analyz- study,participants recalled a depression-related ing negative experiences impact people on the experience and were then randomly assigned physiological level. Prior research indicates that to a self-immersion, self-distancing, or distrac- rumination delays the amount of time it takes tion condition. Participants then returned to people to physiological recovery from negative the laboratory either 24 h (study 1) or 7 days events because it leads people to continually re- (study 2) later for additional testing. During this hash the emotionally evocative details of past second session all participants recalled and an- experiences.22–24 To the extent that analyzing alyzed the same experience they thought about negative experiences from a self-distanced per- during Session 1, without receiving any addi- spective attenuates