Spontaneous Self-Distancing and Adaptive Self-Reflection Across Adolescence.

From a distance: implications of spontaneous self-distancing for adaptive self-reflection.

Although recent experimental work indicates that self-distancing facilitates adaptive self-reflection, it remains unclear (a) whether spontaneous self-distancing leads to similar adaptive outcomes, (b) how spontaneous self-distancing relates to avoidance, and (c) how this strategy impacts interpersonal behavior. Three studies examined these issues demonstrating that the more participants sponta...

Making Meaning out of Negative Experiences by Self-Distancing

Both common wisdom and findings from multiple areas of research suggest that it is helpful to understand and make meaning out of negative experiences. However, people’s attempts to do so often backfire, leading them to ruminate and feel worse. Here we attempt to shed light on these seemingly contradictory sets of findings by examining the role that self-distancing plays in facilitating adaptive...

Emotion The Effect of Self-Distancing on Adaptive Versus Maladaptive Self-Reflection in Children

The relationship between self-distancing and the duration of negative and positive emotional experiences in daily life.

Extant research suggests that self-distancing facilitates adaptive self-reflection of negative emotional experiences. However, this work operationalizes adaptive self-reflection in terms of a reduction in the intensity of negative emotion, ignoring other important aspects of emotional experience such as emotion duration. Moreover, prior research has predominantly focused on how self-distancing ...

Analyzing Negative Experiences Without Ruminating: The Role of SelfDistancing in Enabling Adaptive SelfReflection

Both common intuition and findings from multiple areas of research suggest that when faced with distressing experiences, it is helpful to understand one’s feelings. However, a large body of research also indicates that people’s attempts to make sense of their feelings often backfire, leading them to ruminate and feel worse. In this article, we describe a program of research that focuses on dise...