Distancing (psychology)

Last updated

Distancing is a concept arising from the work of developmental psychologists Heinz Werner and Bernard Kaplan. Distancing describes the process by which psychologists help a person establish their own individuality through understanding their separateness from everything around them. This understanding of one's identity is considered an essential phase in coming to terms with symbols, which in turn forms the foundation for full cognition and language. [1] Recently, work has been done in psychological distancing in terms of development, personality and behavior.

Contents

Language development

Distancing in the context of language development is the increase in “qualitative” dissimilarity between the referenced object (known as the "referent") and the way by which it is referenced (vehicle). For example, an apple would be the referent and the way in which this object is communicated either through sounds or words would be the vehicle of representation. All young children initially imitate any sounds they hear and then begin to use some of these sounds to express their needs. As they designate a sound to a need there is a “shift in function” from imitation to depicted imitation, indicating the shift from a random sound to a sound associated with a need. As a result of depicted imitation, a slight distance occurs between the sounds uttered and the event they represent. This is known as naturalistic onomatopoeic depiction. [1]

Representation of an 18-month old's vocabulary Vocaburlary Spurt around 18 months.JPG
Representation of an 18-month old's vocabulary

As the distance between the referent and vehicle grows, children transition from speaking a “baby” language to standard language. This transition occurs in two directions, in distancing the referent from the vehicle and the vehicle from the referent. As the distance between the referent and vehicle grows there is a decrease in concreteness between the referent and the vehicle. For example, a sound that has come to represent a particular cat would then be applied to all cats. [1]

The increased distance in the vehicle from the referent occurs in four types of transitional forms of linguistic representations. In the first type, children use their own onomatopoeic expressions but in conventional ways. For example, forming the verb “bumer” (= to fall) from the original word bum (boom). The second type is when children modify their words to form composite forms, like using the infantile word poch for hammering and forming the word pochmaker to mean workman. In the third type, children use a combination of their own words and conventional words like bah-sheep. The fourth type is when children are asked to repeat standard words and they respond with their own equivalent word. Children transition into normal speech when the words they use become symbols instead of signals. For example, Helen Keller was often told of what the word w-a-t-e-r represented by her teacher Miss Sullivan. It was not until she placed her hand under the spout that she was able to understand what the word water meant. [1]

The development of dialogue allows children to understand the difference between their thoughts and another's. The psychological distance is the difference in these thoughts. In turn, psychological distancing allows for greater psychological complexity such as allowing for the representation of motivation, multiple meanings, invention, intention, deceit, and lying. [2]

Treatment

Werner and Kaplan's work was later expanded by the pioneer in deaf-blind patient therapy, Dr. Van Dijk, and later refined by the work of Dr. Susan Bruce. [3] [4] Primarily of use in working with deaf-blind patients, distancing gradually leads the subject through a course of physical interactions which encourage the patients to respond. At first, responses may be simple repetitions of pleasurable acts, but eventually events that take place in the present tense are replaced in the subject's mind with more complicated concepts, such as desires, requests, or other expressions which reflect symbolic cognition and understanding of past events. As the subject progresses through these stages, he is eventually able to move from communicating his desires simply (as in early childhood) to a more complicated treatment of symbols in communication. Once the communication barrier is removed, more conventional therapies and educational methodologies are then possible.

The breakdown of distancing

Kaplan and Wiley also use psychological distancing to describe dreaming and schizophrenia states. During dreaming, the distance between an individual to others, words, and objects they are referring to decreases. With decreasing distance between words and what they are referring to, the words begin to carry the object of reference. As a result, polysemy is riddled throughout dream speech as individuals merge imagery and gestures together. For example, the phrase “commando-red” reported during a dream means she sang (commando) at dawn (red). Schizophrenia is an extreme shrinkage of psychological distance because the waking individual is no longer able to discern the difference between themselves and others, referential object and symbolic vehicle. The decrease in distance between the schizophrenia patient and the object of reference causes these individuals to believe that the objects are an extension of themselves reflecting the person's emotions. [1]

Self-distancing perspective

Brodmann Areas Gray727-Brodman.png
Brodmann Areas

Self-distancing occurs when an individual views their experience as an observer. In contrast to self-distancing, self-immersed individuals recall events in first-person. Current research has shown that self-immersed individuals experience increased activity in emotional, autobiographical memory recall, and self-reflecting neural networks in the brain such as the medial prefrontal cortex, and brodmann area 10 (BA10). [5] Additionally self-immersed individuals have increased activity in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and brodmann area 25 (BA25). Overactivation of the BA25 has been linked to depression. A self-distanced perspective can be adopted spontaneously and has been shown to negatively correlate with emotional reactivity. Individuals adopting a self-distanced perspective were also shown to be able to reconstrue and derive meaning from negative events as opposed to simply recalling the play-by-play details of what occurred in the memory. [6] So far, this effect has been demonstrated among the Americans and Russians. [7] Viewing events from a self-distanced perspective has the potential to allow people to work through their experiences and provide insight as well as closure to traumatic events. Moreover, it has been shown to promote wise reasoning about interpersonal [8] [9] and political conflicts, attenuating polarized attitudes toward outgroup members, [10] and fostering intellectual humility, open-mindedness, and empathy over time. [11]

Rumination is when a person continues to focus on the causes and consequences of their stress. Studies have indicated that rumination delays the amount of time it takes for a person to recover from negative events physiologically because they are continually reliving their past experiences. [12] [13] When individuals adopt a self-distancing perspective, they have been found to have lower blood pressure compared to those with self-immersed perspective both at the initial time of reflection and over time recounting the experience. This suggests that self-distancing may impact physical-health as well. [6]

Coping mechanism

The term distancing is also applied as an attachment style. Attachment theory is a theory describing the formation of emotional bonds between people and the effects of a person's attachment history on emotion regulation and other aspects of personality. Studies have shown that a person's attachment style (secure, anxious, or avoidant) becomes stable with age. Attachment style is assessed by what kind of insecurity an individual has, either through attachment-related anxiety or attachment-related avoidance (distancing). Secure individuals, those with low levels of anxiety and avoidance, cope well with stress because they seek support from trusted attachment figures or use mental depictions of support from the past. Insecure individuals, those with high levels of anxiety or avoidance, do not feel as confident in the availability and responsiveness of others. [14]

Brodmann Area 47 is the lateral prefrontal cortex Gray726-Brodman-prefrontal.svg
Brodmann Area 47 is the lateral prefrontal cortex

Subcallosal cingulate cortex (SCC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) are areas of the brain associated with regulation and suppression of thoughts and emotions. In a neuro-physiological study, it was found that both anxious and avoidant individuals activate the ACC and MPFC regions when told not to think about an event. [14] However, avoidant individuals were found to have an increase in levels of activation of the SCC as opposed to anxious participants. Anxiety individuals also had lower levels of activation in the SCC and the LPFC areas, in line with previous studies, which have shown a decrease in blood flow to prefrontal areas during task-induced deactivation. [15] Avoidant individuals failed to fully deactivate LPFC and SCC regions while suppressing thoughts and emotions. This is comparable to behavioral studies in which these individuals failed to maintain suppression when under cognitive load (such as remembering seven numbers) as opposed to the non-avoidant people who could maintain suppression. [16] [17]

Other dimensions of distancing

Distance also has temporal, spatial, social, and probabilistic dimensions. For example, increased distance between words and what they refer in terms of time and space allows for mental travel into the past and future. [2] [18] In the beginning of development, there is a short distance between words and what they mean and children are only able to comprehend and speak about the concrete. As the distance widens children are able to comprehend location, past, present and future. [1] Language then allows for the communication of abstract and remote ideas. Additionally, being able to look backwards and forwards in time allows for the formation of basic cognition such as prediction, evaluation, and action. [19]

The dimensions of distancing move together, as people remember events from the past also have a unified sense of distance in the future. [20] Politeness implies formal social distance where speaking less formally implies closeness. Participants that read a formal description of an event perceive that the event will happen in the future, implying spatial distance. Probabilistically, people anticipate common occurrence to occur to those close to them as opposed to rare circumstances. [2] [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, assuming that working memory allows for the manipulation of stored information, whereas short-term memory only refers to the short-term storage of information. Working memory is a theoretical concept central to cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wishful thinking</span> Formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attachment theory</span> Psychological ethological theory about human relationships

Attachment theory is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory concerning relationships between humans. The most important tenet is that young children need to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for normal social and emotional development. The theory was formulated by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby.

The Levels of Processing model, created by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart in 1972, describes memory recall of stimuli as a function of the depth of mental processing. Deeper levels of analysis produce more elaborate, longer-lasting, and stronger memory traces than shallow levels of analysis. Depth of processing falls on a shallow to deep continuum. Shallow processing leads to a fragile memory trace that is susceptible to rapid decay. Conversely, deep processing results in a more durable memory trace. There are three levels of processing in this model. Structural processing, or visual, is when we remember only the physical quality of the word E.g how the word is spelled and how letters look. Phonemic processing includes remembering the word by the way it sounds. E.G the word tall rhymes with fall. Lastly, we have semantic processing in which we encode the meaning of the word with another word that is similar of has similar meaning. Once the word is perceived, the brain allows for a deeper processing.

Self-control, an aspect of inhibitory control, is the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses. As an executive function, it is a cognitive process that is necessary for regulating one's behavior in order to achieve specific goals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prefrontal cortex</span> Part of the brain responsible for personality, decision-making, and social behavior

In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, and BA47.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affective neuroscience</span> Study of the neural mechanisms of emotion

Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate within the field of affective neuroscience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delayed gratification</span> Resistance of an immediate reward in return for a later reward

Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, is the resistance to the temptation of an immediate pleasure in the hope of obtaining a valuable and long-lasting reward in the long-term. In other words, delayed gratification describes the process that the subject undergoes when the subject resists the temptation of an immediate reward in preference for a later reward. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later. A growing body of literature has linked the ability to delay gratification to a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social rejection</span> Deliberate exclusion of an individual from social relationship or social interaction

Social rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction. The topic includes interpersonal rejection, romantic rejection and familial estrangement. A person can be rejected or shunned by individuals or an entire group of people. Furthermore, rejection can be either active, by bullying, teasing, or ridiculing, or passive, by ignoring a person, or giving the "silent treatment". The experience of being rejected is subjective for the recipient, and it can be perceived when it is not actually present. The word "ostracism" is also commonly used to denote a process of social exclusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Executive functions</span> Cognitive processes necessary for control of behavior

In cognitive science and neuropsychology, executive functions are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals. Executive functions include basic cognitive processes such as attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Higher-order executive functions require the simultaneous use of multiple basic executive functions and include planning and fluid intelligence.

In psychology, the theory of attachment can be applied to adult relationships including friendships, emotional affairs, adult romantic and carnal relationships, and, in some cases, relationships with inanimate objects. Attachment theory, initially studied in the 1960s and 1970s primarily in the context of children and parents, was extended to adult relationships in the late 1980s. The working models of children found in Bowlby's attachment theory form a pattern of interaction likely to continue influencing adult relationships.

Emotional self-regulation or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. Emotional self-regulation belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.

In psychology and neuroscience, executive dysfunction, or executive function deficit, is a disruption to the efficacy of the executive functions, which is a group of cognitive processes that regulate, control, and manage other cognitive processes. Executive dysfunction can refer to both neurocognitive deficits and behavioural symptoms. It is implicated in numerous psychopathologies and mental disorders, as well as short-term and long-term changes in non-clinical executive control.

In psychology, context-dependent memory is the improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same. In a simpler manner, "when events are represented in memory, contextual information is stored along with memory targets; the context can therefore cue memories containing that contextual information". One particularly common example of context-dependence at work occurs when an individual has lost an item in an unknown location. Typically, people try to systematically "retrace their steps" to determine all of the possible places where the item might be located. Based on the role that context plays in determining recall, it is not at all surprising that individuals often quite easily discover the lost item upon returning to the correct context. This concept is heavily related to the encoding specificity principle.

Priming is the idea that exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. The priming effect refers to the positive or negative effect of a rapidly presented stimulus on the processing of a second stimulus that appears shortly after. Generally speaking, the generation of priming effect depends on the existence of some positive or negative relationship between priming and target stimuli. For example, the word nurse might be recognized more quickly following the word doctor than following the word bread. Priming can be perceptual, associative, repetitive, positive, negative, affective, semantic, or conceptual. Priming effects involve word recognition, semantic processing, attention, unconscious processing, and many other issues, and are related to differences in various writing systems. Research, however, has yet to firmly establish the duration of priming effects, yet their onset can be almost instantaneous.

The self-reference effect is a tendency for people to encode information differently depending on whether they are implicated in the information. When people are asked to remember information when it is related in some way to themselves, the recall rate can be improved.

Attachment and Health is psychological model which considers how attachment theory pertains to people's preferences and expectations for the proximity of others when faced with stress, threat, danger or pain. In 1982 the American Psychiatrist, Lawrence Kolb, noticed that patients with chronic pain displayed behaviours with their healthcare providers akin to what children might display with an attachment figure, thus marking one of the first applications of attachment theory to physical health. Development of adult attachment theory and adult attachment measures in the 1990s provided researchers with the means to apply attachment theory to health in a more systematic way. Since that time, it has been used to understand variation in stress response, health outcomes and health behaviour. Ultimately, the application of attachment theory to health care may enable health care practitioners to provide more personalized medicine by creating a deeper understanding of patient distress and allowing clinicians to better meet their needs and expectations.

The mere ownership effect is the observation that people who own a good tend to evaluate it more positively than people who do not.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interpersonal neurobiology</span> Interdisciplinary framework associated with human development and functioning

Interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) or relational neurobiology is an interdisciplinary framework that was developed in the 1990s by Daniel J. Siegel, who sought to bring together scientific disciplines to demonstrate how the mind, brain, and relationships integrate. IPNB views the mind as a process that regulates the flow of energy and information through its neurocircuitry, which is then shared and regulated between people through engagement, connection, and communication. Drawing on systems theory, Siegel proposed that these processes within interpersonal relationships can shape nervous system maturation. Siegel claimed that the mind has an irreducible quality which informs this approach.

Ozlem Nefise Ayduk is an American social psychologist at U.C. Berkeley researching close relationships, emotion regulation, and the development of self-regulation in children. She is a fellow at the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. She has contributed content to several psychology handbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Werner, Heinz; Bernard Kaplan (1963). Symbol formation; an organismic-developmental approach to language and the expression of thought . New York: Wiley.
  2. 1 2 3 Cocking, Rodney; K. Ann Renniger (1993). The development and meaning of psychological distance. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  3. ↑ Van Dijk, J (1967). "The non-verbal deaf-blind and his world: His outgrowth toward the world of symbols". Proceedings of the Jaasrverslag Instituut voor Doven.
  4. ↑ Bruce, Susan M. (2005). "The Application of Werner and Kaplan's Concept of "Distancing" to Children Who Are Deaf-Blind". Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness. 99 (8): 464–477. doi:10.1177/0145482X0509900803. S2CID   147039754.
  5. ↑ Kross, Ethan; Matthew Davidson; Jochen Weber; Kevin Ochsner (2009). "Coping with Emotions Past: The Neural Bases of Regulating Affect Associated with Negative Autobiographical Memories". Biology Psychiatry. 65 (5): 361–366. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.10.019. PMC   2726992 . PMID   19058792.
  6. 1 2 Özlem, Ayduk; Ethan Kross (2010). "From a distance: Implications of spontaneous self-distancing for adaptive self-reflection". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 98 (5): 809–829. doi:10.1037/a0019205. PMC   2881638 . PMID   20438226.
  7. ↑ Grossmann, Igor; Kross, Ethan (2010-07-12). "The Impact of Culture on Adaptive Versus Maladaptive Self-Reflection". Psychological Science. 21 (8): 1150–1157. doi:10.1177/0956797610376655. ISSN   0956-7976. PMID   20624935. S2CID   4831400.
  8. ↑ Grossmann, Igor; Kross, Ethan (2014-06-10). "Exploring Solomon's Paradox: Self-Distancing Eliminates the Self-Other Asymmetry in Wise Reasoning About Close Relationships in Younger and Older Adults". Psychological Science. 25 (8): 1571–1580. doi:10.1177/0956797614535400. ISSN   0956-7976. PMID   24916084. S2CID   3539860.
  9. ↑ Grossmann, Igor; Oakes, Harrison; Santos, Henri C. (May 2019). "Wise reasoning benefits from emodiversity, irrespective of emotional intensity". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 148 (5): 805–823. doi:10.1037/xge0000543. ISSN   1939-2222. PMID   30688474. S2CID   59306284.
  10. ↑ Kross, Ethan; Grossmann, Igor (2012). "Boosting wisdom: Distance from the self enhances wise reasoning, attitudes, and behavior". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 141 (1): 43–48. doi:10.1037/a0024158. ISSN   1939-2222. PMID   21728454. S2CID   4847160.
  11. ↑ Grossmann, Igor; Dorfman, Anna; Oakes, Harrison; Vohs, Kathleen D.; Santos, Henri Carlo; Scholer, Abigail. "Training for Wisdom: The Illeist Diary Method". doi:10.31234/osf.io/a5fgu. S2CID   241766680.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. ↑ Gerin, W; Davidson KW; Christenfeld NJ; Goyal T; Schwartz JE. (2006). "The role of angry rumination and distraction in blood pressure recovery from emotional arousal". Psychosomatic Medicine. 68 (1): 64–72. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.493.2433 . doi:10.1097/01.psy.0000195747.12404.aa. PMID   16449413. S2CID   17014041.
  13. ↑ Suchday, S; Carter MM; Ewart CK; Larkin KT; Desiderato O. (2004). "Anger cognitions and cardiovascular recovery following provocation". Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 27 (4): 319–41. doi:10.1023/b:jobm.0000042408.80551.e1. PMID   15559731. S2CID   2492553.
  14. 1 2 Gillath, Omri; Silvia A. Bunge; Phillip R. Shaver; Carter Wendelken; Mario Mikulincer (2005). "Attachment-style differences in the ability to suppress negative thoughts: Exploring the neural correlatesi". NeuroImage. 28 (4): 835–847. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.06.048. PMID   16087352. S2CID   15872346.
  15. ↑ Mazoyer, B; Zago L; Mellet E; Bricogne S; Etard O; Houdé O; Crivello F; Joliot M; Petit L; Tzourio-Mazoyer N. (2001). "Cortical networks for working memory and executive functions sustain the conscious resting state in man". Brain Research Bulletin. 54 (3): 287–98. doi:10.1016/s0361-9230(00)00437-8. PMID   11287133. S2CID   35769744.
  16. ↑ Mikulincer, Mario; Phillip R. Shaver (2004). Steven W. Rholes, Jeffry A. Simpson (ed.). Security-Based Self-Representations in Adulthood: Contents and Processes. New York: Guilford Publications. pp. 159–195.
  17. ↑ Mikulincer, M; V. Florian (2000). "Exploring individual differences in reactions to mortality salience: does attachment style regulate terror management mechanisms?". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 79 (2): 260–273. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.2.260. PMID   10948979.
  18. ↑ Trop, Yaacov; Nira Liberman (2010). "Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance". Psychological Review. 117 (2): 440–463. doi:10.1037/a0018963. PMC   3152826 . PMID   20438233.
  19. 1 2 Maglio, Sam J.; Yaacov Trope; Nira Liberman (2013). "The Common Currency of Psychological Distance". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 22 (4): 278–282. doi:10.1177/0963721413480172. S2CID   4835870.
  20. ↑ Maglio, Sam J.; Nira Liberman; Yaacov Trope (2013). "Distance From a Distance: Psychological Distance Reduces Sensitivity to Any Further Psychological Distance". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 142 (3): 644–657. doi:10.1037/a0030258. PMID   23025560.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.