Illeism: The ancient trick to help you think more wisely

It’s hard to reason through problems, but there are ways to be more objective and less biased in your thinking.

As a writer specialising in psychology, I’ve come across hundreds of evidence-based tips for better thinking. Few have proven as useful to me as the ancient strategy of illeism.

Put simply, illeism is the practice of talking about oneself in the third person, rather than the first person. The rhetorical device is often used by politicians to try to give their words an air of objectivity. In his account of the Gallic War, for example, the emperor Julius Caesar wrote “Caesar avenged the public” rather than “I avenged the public”. The small linguistic switch seems intended to make the statement feel a little more like historical fact, recorded by an impartial observer

To the modern ear, illeism can sound a little silly or pompous – and we may even deride famous people who choose to talk in this way. Yet recent psychological research suggests that illeism can bring some real cognitive benefits. If we are trying to make a difficult decision, speaking about ourselves in the third person can help to neutralise the emotions that could lead our thinking astray, allowing us to find a wiser solution to our problem.

Solomon’s paradox

To understand these benefits of illeism, we must first examine the ways that scientists measure the wisdom of someone’s reasoning.

The scientific study of wisdom has been spear-headed by Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Grossmann first drew on the work of numerous philosophers to decide on a series of “metacognitive components” – including intellectual humility, acknowledgement of others’ viewpoints and search for compromise – that are commonly considered to be essential for wise decision making.

In one of his first studies, Grossmann asked participants to think out loud about their responses to various dilemmas – such as personal problems posed to the Dear Abby “agony aunt” column – while independent psychologists rated their spoken responses according to these criteria. Grossmann found that these tests of wise reasoning were better than IQ tests at predicting people’s overall life satisfaction and the quality of their social relationships. This suggested the studies were capturing something unique about their reasoning skills.

Grossmann’s later studies revealed that the wisdom of people’s reasoning can depend on the context. In particular, he found that their wise reasoning scores tended to be much higher when considering other people’s situations than their own personal dilemmas. Grossmann called this “Solomon’s Paradox” after the ancient Biblical king, who was famous for advising others wisely, while making a series of disastrous personal decisions that ultimately left his kingdom in chaos.

The problem seems to be that when making personal choices, we become too immersed in our emotions, which cloud our thinking and prevent us from putting our issues in perspective. If I have received negative feedback from a colleague, for example, my feeling of embarrassment might lead me to become overly self-defensive. I might therefore dismiss their opinions without considering whether their advice could be helpful in the long-term. 

How to be wise 

Could illeism resolve Solomon’s paradox? The idea makes intuitive sense: by switching to the third person, our descriptions of the situation will start to sound as if we are talking about someone else rather than ourselves. This sense of detachment would allow us to see the bigger picture, rather than getting caught up in our own feelings. 

And that is exactly what Grossmann found in a study with Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They showed that people employing illeism to talk about their problems showed greater intellectual humility, capacity to recognise others’ perspectives, and willingness to reach compromise – increasing their overall wise reasoning scores. 

The latest studies show that the regular use of illeism can bring about lasting benefits to our thinking.

Working with Abigail Sholer, Anna Dorfman and colleagues, Grossmann asked participants to keep a daily diary for one month in which they described a situation they had just experienced. Half were told to write their entries in the third person, while the other half were told to write in the first person. At the start and end of the study, the team also tested the subjects’ general wise reasoning. As hoped, the researchers found that, over the course of the intervention, the participants who had been encouraged to use illeism in their diaries saw a rise in their wise-reasoning scores over the course of the month.

By encouraging us to put our problems in perspective, the use of illeism may also help us to have a more balanced response to daily stresses. People who had completed the diary in the third person reported more positive emotions after challenging events, rather than dwelling solely on the sadness, frustration or disappointment.

Based on these findings, I now apply illeism to all decisions, small and big. Whether I’m facing trials at work, conflict with my friends, or strife in the family, I find that a few moments contemplating my problems from a third-person perspective helps me to see the issue more clearly. 

David Robson is a science writer and author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life, published by Canongate (UK) and Henry Holt (USA). He is @d_a_robson on Twitter.