Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters

Abstract

Does the language people use to refer to the self during introspection influence how they think, feel, and behave under social stress? If so, do these effects extend to socially anxious people who are particularly vulnerable to such stress? Seven studies explored these questions (total N ϭ 585). Studies 1a and 1b were proof-of-principle studies. They demonstrated that using non-first-person pronouns and one's own name (rather than first-person pronouns) during introspection enhances self-distancing. Studies 2 and 3 examined the implications of these different types of self-talk for regulating stress surrounding making good first impressions (Study 2) and public speaking (Study 3). Compared with the first-person group, the non-first-person group performed better according to objective raters in both studies. They also displayed less distress (Studies 2 and 3) and engaged in less maladaptive postevent processing (Study 3). Studies 4 and 5 examined how these different forms of self-talk influence the way people appraise social-anxiety-provoking events. They demonstrated that non-first-person language use (compared with first-person language use) leads people to appraise future stressors in more challenging and less threatening terms. Finally, a meta-analysis (Study 6) indicated that none of these findings were moderated by trait social anxiety, highlighting their translational potential. Together, these findings demonstrate that small shifts in the language people use to refer to the self during introspection consequentially influence their ability to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior under social stress, even for vulnerable individuals.Keywords: distancing, stress, social anxiety, rumination, self-regulation, emotion regulation During the summer of 2010, LeBron James, a future Hall-ofFame basketball player, faced a tough decision. Should he stay with the small market team that nurtured his career from its inception, or move to a larger city market? Shortly after making his choice (he joined the larger market team), he described his decision-making process in an interview noting, "One thing I didn't want to do was make an emotional decision. I wanted to do what's best for LeBron James and to do what makes LeBron James happy" (Greenberg, 2010).Notice how James begins by referring to himself using the pronoun I, but then quickly switches to using his own name after indicating that he does not want to make an emotional decision. Does this shift from I to James represent a mere quirk of speech? Or could it represent something more-a process, for example, that consequentially influences people's capacity to control their thoughts, feelings, and behavior? Here we suggest that it is the latter. Specifically, we hypothesize that using one's own name and other non-first-person pronouns to refer to the self during introspection is a form of self-distancing that enhances self-regulation. Harnessing Language to Promote Self-RegulationSeveral lines of research motivate this prediction. First, converging evidence ...

Mobile apps to reduce depressive symptoms and alcohol use in youth: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…A total of 20 studies (21 publications) reported the impact of mobile apps on the severity of depressive symptoms among youth (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020;Bruhns, 2021;Egilsson, 2021;Fish, 2019;Fitzpatrick, 2017;Flett, 2019;Hammonds, 2015;Hur, 2018;Kageyama, 2021;Kauer, 2012;Lee, 2018;Levin, 2020;Liu, 2022;McCloud, 2020;Ponzo, 2020;Reid, 2011;Sun, 2022;Teng, 2019;Thabrew, 2022;Torok, 2022;Visser, 2020).…”

“…Three additional studies compared the severity of anxiety symptoms among participants receiving mobile apps to those receiving withheld controls (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020;Egilsson, 2021;Kageyama, 2021), but the clinical heterogeneity arising from the variability of mental health therapy designs prevented the pooling of results. The mobile apps used different techniques to manage anxiety symptoms, including cognitive bias modification or positive stimulation (Kageyama, 2021), gamified health promotion (Egilsson, 2021), or social skill building to address loneliness (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020).…”

“…Four additional studies compared the severity of depressive symptoms among participants receiving mobile apps to those receiving withheld controls (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020; Egilsson, 2021;Hammonds, 2015;Kageyama, 2021), but the clinical heterogeneity arising from the variability of mental health therapy designs prevented pooling their results. The mobile apps used different techniques to manage depressive symptoms, including antidepressant reminders (Hammonds, 2015), cognitive bias modification or positive stimulation (Kageyama, 2021), gamified health promotion (Egilsson, 2021), or social skill building to address loneliness (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020). The four studies reported no statistically significant differences in depressive symptoms at followup between the intervention and the control groups (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020;Egilsson, 2021;Hammonds, 2015;Kageyama, 2021).…”

“…The mobile apps used different techniques to manage depressive symptoms, including antidepressant reminders (Hammonds, 2015), cognitive bias modification or positive stimulation (Kageyama, 2021), gamified health promotion (Egilsson, 2021), or social skill building to address loneliness (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020). The four studies reported no statistically significant differences in depressive symptoms at followup between the intervention and the control groups (Bruehlman-Senecal, 2020;Egilsson, 2021;Hammonds, 2015;Kageyama, 2021).…”