Why We Give Better Advice to Others Than Ourselves

Solomons paradox describes how people can give better advice to others than themselves, but self-distancing can help close that gap.

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Solomons paradox describes a common difference in how people reason about their own problems versus someone else’s. When a problem feels personal, emotions and self-interest can make it harder to step back and consider other viewpoints, uncertainty, compromise, or how things might change. Research published in 2014 found that participants showed wiser reasoning when considering another person’s relationship problem than when considering the same kind of problem as their own. The researchers also found that asking people to use self-distancing, such as viewing their situation from a third-person perspective, removed this difference in the studies. A later meta-analysis of six studies and 20 effect sizes also found evidence for the phenomenon in interpersonal conflict, while noting that the size of the effect varied across research methods and participants.

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