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The 2014 studies
Psychologists Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross named it Solomon's Paradox in a 2014 paper in Psychological Science. Across studies, 693 participants reasoned about relationship conflicts, some their own and some a friend's. On a friend's problem, they were more likely to acknowledge the limits of their knowledge, consider multiple perspectives, recognize that things might change, and see room for compromise.
Why distance helps
The mechanism is psychological distance. A problem that belongs to someone else gets a third-person view, which is more deliberate and less emotionally reactive. A problem that belongs to you gets a first-person view, which is emotionally hot, narrow, and driven by motivated reasoning: the pull toward conclusions that protect the self and past decisions.
Seeing it from outside
When participants were told to reason about their own problem as if watching it from the outside, their wise reasoning became indistinguishable from the way they reasoned about others'. Picture a product manager who spots at once that a competitor is chasing enterprise customers too early. Six months later, that manager's own team plans an equally expensive feature for its largest prospect, and nobody connects the two.
Why is it named after Solomon?
King Solomon of the Hebrew Bible was renowned for wise judgments in other people's disputes, most famously the case of two women claiming one baby. The biblical account also shows his own life going badly wrong, especially in his later years. Grossmann and Kross borrowed his name for the pattern of wisdom about others that does not carry over to oneself.
Does talking to yourself in third person really help?
Kross and colleagues found that people who refer to themselves by their own name, rather than as I, show less emotional reactivity when thinking about stressful events. A 2017 study in Scientific Reports by Jason Moser and colleagues recorded brain activity during this kind of self-talk. The difference in emotional response appeared within about one second.
How does motivated reasoning protect the self?
Psychologist Ziva Kunda described motivated reasoning in a 1990 paper in Psychological Bulletin. People tend to reach the conclusion they want, but only when they can build a justification that looks reasonable to themselves. The process feels like ordinary thinking, which is why the bias is hard to notice from the inside.
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