- Thinking of yourself as a separate entity can reduce anxiety and increase confidence and determination
- Research suggests that there might be real psychological benefits to the strategy of developing a fictional persona as a way of coping with stressful situations
- Developing a persona is an extreme form of self-distancing which involves taking a step back from our immediate feelings to allow us to view a situation more dispassionately
“Self-distancing gives us a little bit of extra space to think rationally about the situation” (R. White)
- It allows us to rein in undesirable feelings like anxiety, it increases our perseverance on challenging tasks and boosts our self-control
- Self-distancing encourages greater feelings of self-efficacy — the sense that they could pro-actively cope with the situation and achieve their goals
Adopting an alter ego is an extreme form of ‘self-distancing’, which involves taking a step back from our immediate feelings to allow us to view a situation more dispassionately
- Alter egos reduce subjective ratings of emotions and objective measures such as changes in heart rate and blood pressure that usually accompany threatening events
- The possibility that self-distancing could increase willpower is particularly exciting for child psychologists, given that self-discipline is thought to be as important for academic performance as IQ