What Research Says about the Third-Person Narrative
Here are some recent studies that confirm how helpful a third-person perspective can be when viewing our own emotions and life.
• Stanford University psychologists studying emotion regulation asked a group of women who were hooked up to a machine measuring heart rate, pulse, and perspiration to recall a scene that made them angry. At first, the women’s ruminations sent their nervous systems into overdrive. Then the women were asked to visualize the incident as a neutral observer, or to assume the perspective of another person, and their bodies became calmer and their anger diminished.4
• University of California and University of Michigan researchers used a psychologically distancing vantage point when asking participants to reflect on negative memories. Not only did participants report less emotional pain, less rumination, improved problem solving, and greater life satisfaction, they also gained new insights into those memories without feeling as emotionally overwhelmed.5
• In an Ohio State University study, students who recalled humiliating moments in high school in the third-person narrative were more likely to describe themselves as having overcome obstacles than those who recalled similarly embarrassing moments from a first-person perspective. Participants in this group often portrayed themselves as victims. The study concluded that feeling like you’ve changed gives the confidence and momentum to act in ways that support a perceived new and improved self.6
• In a Columbia University study, students were asked to describe recently upsetting thoughts or feelings, and these bad memories were recalled with less hostility by those using the third-person perspective.7
• A University of Michigan study was done through the use of a six-day worry log. Results showed people writing in the third person reported higher life satisfaction. Researchers concluded that “self-distancing…provides a valuable framework to help people reframe stressful events in adaptive ways.”8
This makes sense when we consider how much our identity is deeply intertwined with our first-person narrative — the big “I,” otherwise known as the ego. A good, healthy “I” is necessary for establishing relationships, launching enterprises, and navigating life’s ups and downs. If we didn’t have a healthy sense of “I,” we might find it difficult to distinguish our thoughts and feelings from those of the people around us, so that we mostly mimicked or reflected our parents, peers, and society while losing our sense of individuality and autonomy. For these reasons, our “I” perspective is very important to us, and it can be hard to see past it.
I, I, I: The Negating Narrators
And yet, sometimes we invest so much in our “I” that this perspective gets in the way of adopting a helpful bird’s eye view of our story. The third-person perspective can be easily obstructed by our censoring ego and our inner critic, or what I like to describe as our two “negating narrators.”
The first type of negating narrator, and the least harmful, is like a worried helicopter parent who keeps you from straying too far outside your comfort zone. The motivation of the “censoring ego” is to keep you safe, free from self-discoveries that can potentially overwhelm you by contradicting your preconceived self-image. One of the challenges of this narrator is that it often underestimates the strength and bandwidth of your character.
The other type of negating narrator, the inner critic, is like a parent for whom nothing is ever good enough. When this negating narrator takes charge, self-exploration can easily degenerate into criticism. It reads your story through the lens of judgment, pointing out your mistakes and shortcomings. Its motivation is to keep you small, and it often leaves you feeling deflated.
Because they’re protecting our ego, negating narrators tend to show up when we write or think about ourselves in the first-person voice. When we declare “I am this” or “I think that,” our negating narrators can guide and cling to the descriptors that follow. For example, if we say “I am a successful stockbroker” or “I am a stay-at-home mother,” we may be misled into believing that is all we are while discounting other valuable parts of our personality. Such distorted thinking may trigger an identity crisis if that label is challenged by external circumstances, like the market crashing or children leaving the nest.
The genius of writing in the third person is that it sneaks us past our negating narrators, who think that we are describing someone else’s life. After all, you’re not writing about yourself (wink, wink), you’re describing the character of your first, second, or third novel!
Writing about yourself in the third person creates an opening to be more curious about the direction of your own unfolding story. For example, instead of fearing the unknown, you might wonder what this protagonist will do next — will she accept the marriage proposal or join the Peace Corps and go to Africa? Such a viewpoint can increase your sense of satisfaction and compassion toward yourself, or alternatively, it can serve as a wake-up call if the character you are playing doesn’t fit the picture of who you imagine yourself to be.
This latter point is comically depicted in the fantasy film Stranger than Fiction, in which Harold Crick, a robotic IRS agent played by Will Ferrell, begins to question his mundane existence when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life and foreshadowing his untimely death. The narrator in his head casts him in the role of a bureaucratic automaton whose tragic demise is a justifiable response to his passionless, unexamined life. When he discovers that he is not the master of his own destiny, but rather a fictional character dreamed up by an eccentric British author named Karen Eifel, Crick tracks down his creator and, by taking a more active role in his life, convinces her to rewrite the ending of his story. Not only does Crick survive the bus accident that is supposed to kill him, he gets the girl, saves a child, and emerges from the whole experience with a richer, more vibrant, and deliciously textured perspective on the meaning of life.
While both strange and fictional, Crick’s journey is a wonderful illustration of the exciting possibilities that await us when we reclaim the coauthorship rights of our personal narratives. From the perch of the third-person narrative, we can step out of our stories, check out the landscape, and determine whether to stay on the road we’re taking or reroute. From there, who knows what we’ll discover?
First Person vs. Third Person Warm-up
Now, see for yourself the difference between writing in the first and third person in this simple warm-up exercise. In it, you can get a sense of what it feels like when you switch narrative perspectives.
First, write a paragraph in the first-person voice describing a time in the recent past when you did something that you really didn’t want to do, but you did it because you knew it was in your best interest. This might be a difficult conversation with a friend or your boss, or perhaps it was a chore for a loved one. Be sure to describe your feelings before and after the event. For example:
I didn’t want to look at it — the stack of papers on my desk, with all kinds of evidence of how I had been negligent in attending to my taxes the past year and of all the income I had hoped to but didn’t make. I had fooled myself into thinking that I had done okay financially, managed to cover my rent, pay my bills, fill my refrigerator, buy some new clothes, and even have a few