Scientists have shown that talking to oneself even mentally, help people to control their own impulsive behavior and to avoid hasty decisions, researchers reported in their article published in Acta Psychologica journal.
We give ourselves messages all the time with the intent of controlling ourselves – whether that’s telling ourselves to keep running when we’re tired, to stop eating even though we want one more slice of cake, or to refrain from blowing up on someone in an argument. The aim of our research was to determine how mental self-talk can help us in this, – said Alexa Tullett, the lead author of the publication, as quoted by the press service of the University of Toronto.
“Through a series of tests, we found that people make a lot of hasty impulsive actions in those cases when they could not “talk” to their inner voice. Someone not being able to express in words even mentally non-spoken messages to him/herself, to some extent lost his/her self-control”.
This study shows that talking to ourselves in this ‘inner voice’ actually helps us exercise self control and prevents us from making impulsive decisions’, concluded Tullett.
Source of the image: Photl.
