When the self becomes other: toward an integrative understanding of the processes distinguishing adaptive self-reflection from rumination.
How can people adaptively analyze and "work through" negative feelings without ruminating? This paper will briefly review findings from an integrative program of research, which suggests that a critical factor determining whether people's attempts to adaptively 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.
Kross
Ethan
E
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109, USA. ekross@umich.edu
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D012647:Self-Assessment