When responding to past negative experiences, people often alternate between two perspectives. One is called the self-immersing perspective, from which individuals visualize events through their own eyes, and the other is called the self-distancing perspective, through which individuals see themselves in their experience from the perspective of an observer. Both are common techniques in responding to negative experiences, but which one is more adaptive and useful in properly assessing each experience? We argue that relying heavily on one of these perspectives to view negative experiences may put individuals at greater risk of developing a deteriorated sense of psychological well-being, compared to alternating between both perspectives to view each experience. We propose that moving people away from the self-perspective (i.e., self-immersing and self-distancing) that they typically use to a perspective that they do not adopt often – which we call complementary perspectives – will provide a new lens for reflection and result in better psychological well-being (Wang, Lin, Huang, & Yeh, 2012). Next, to further investigate if using the same perspective inevitably causes more emotional reactivity and a higher tendency to recount versus reconstrue, we propose moderational models from which people with higher mindfulness are exempted from a worse effect even though they do not switch their perspective.
Three studies explored these questions. In Study 1, we aim to investigate our hypotheses in real-life settings. We assessed this concept multiple times across different situations in daily life by employing a 14-day diary study. The results demonstrated that perspective flexibility can benefit individuals’ thought contents. Study 2 examined this concept through a one-shot experimental setting, indicating that shifts in perspectives benefit regulating emotion. In Study 3, we used an approach focused on individual differences through which people were assessed of their habitual self-perspectives and were then randomly designated to use either a complementary or identical perspective in responding to their negative experiences. Together, these findings demonstrate that shifting the perspectives that people use to respond to their negative experiences influences their ability to regulate their emotion and thought contents.
Keywords: Complementary perspectives, Self-distancing, Self-immersing, Mindfulness