University of Waterloo
University of Michigan.
Psychol Sci. 2014 Aug;25(8):1571-80. doi: 10.1177/0956797614535400. Epub 2014 Jun 10.
Are people wiser when reflecting on other people's problems compared with their own? If so, does self-distancing eliminate this asymmetry in wise reasoning? In three experiments (N = 693), participants displayed wiser reasoning (i.e., recognizing the limits of their knowledge and the importance of compromise and future change, considering other people's perspectives) about another person's problems compared with their own. Across Studies 2 and 3, instructing individuals to self-distance (rather than self-immerse) eliminated this asymmetry. Study 3 demonstrated that each of these effects was comparable for younger (20-40 years) and older (60-80 years) adults. Thus, contrary to the adage "with age comes wisdom," our findings suggest that there are no age differences in wise reasoning about personal conflicts, and that the effects of self-distancing generalize across age cohorts. These findings highlight the role that self-distancing plays in allowing people to overcome a pervasive asymmetry that characterizes wise reasoning.
当人们反思他人的问题而不是自己的问题时，他们是否会变得更明智？如果是这样，自我疏远是否会消除这种明智推理的不对称性？在三个实验（N=693）中，与自己的问题相比，参与者在他人的问题上表现出更明智的推理（即认识到自己知识的局限性以及妥协和未来变化的重要性，考虑到他人的观点）。在实验 2 和 3 中，指示个体自我疏远（而不是自我沉浸）消除了这种不对称性。实验 3 表明，对于年轻人（20-40 岁）和老年人（60-80 岁）来说，这些效果都相当。因此，与“随着年龄的增长而变得明智”的格言相反，我们的研究结果表明，在个人冲突的明智推理方面，没有年龄差异，自我疏远的效果在不同年龄组中普遍存在。这些发现强调了自我疏远在克服明智推理中普遍存在的不对称性方面所起的作用。
