Dr. Ethan Kross
speaker
968 appearances
6 recordings
6 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Dr. Ethan Kross’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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So when we think, we are not always thinking in full sentences. We're thinking in these sound bites that have deep meaning. And when you spell out what those sound bites are equivalent to, you get essays in your mind. And I'm sure you've felt this kind of bombardment of information when you find yourself going down that rabbit hole. It's like our mind is
pinballing all over the place verbally and we're just inundated, which is in part why when we find ourselves kind of racked with chatter, it can feel so oppressive. This is one of the reasons why writing about our experiences, doing something we call expressive writing can be so helpful for folks because it helps us organize our thoughts so that we're not pinballing all around. Yeah.
So when scientists like myself use this phrase, self-talk, or the inner voice, what we're talking about is our ability to silently use language to reflect on our lives. And it turns out that is a remarkable tool that we possess for navigating this crazy world. So let me flag four key functions that this ability to use language silently provides.
Number one, we're the same vintage here, you know, age-wise more or less.
When we were growing up, what would you do when you wanted to remember a phone number or a name?
In your head?
Yeah.
Right. So that's probably the most basic function that your inner voice serves for us. It's part of what we call our verbal working memory system.
That's one function. So you could think of your inner voice as like a Swiss army knife. Multi-purpose tool. It does many different things for you.
We're going to get there. Okay. We're going to get there. Don't you worry. So number one, memorizing a phone number, repeating a phone number, repeating a name. going to the grocery store and asking yourself, what was I supposed to buy? Milk, cheese, yogurt. I guess I'm in the dairy aisle. But the whole point here is you're doing that silently, typically, not out loud.
That's one thing your inner voice lets you do. Another thing your inner voice lets you do Simulate and plan. So before, well, you do a lot of presentations as part of your job. You ever go over what you're going to say before you go on stage in your head? Always. Okay. That's your inner voice. You are silently rehearsing, preparing, simulating for what you need to do.
There you go. You're simulating and planning. People do this before interviews, before consequential conversations that they are going to have. I am not as good at giving a presentation if I don't do this simulation beforehand. My favorite function, so the name of my lab at University of Michigan is the Michigan Emotion and Self-Control Lab. I love the topic of self-control.
We use our inner voice to control and motivate ourselves. So, all right. So Mel, tell me, what do you do to exercise?
Do you ever talk to yourself when you're exercising?
We have room for intervention here. do we? We have tons of room. If you're already doing fine in the gym, we're going to make you do a lot better by the time this episode is over. So that's another thing. If you're listening, you're going to take home with you.
Absolutely. You can change your self-talk. But if we just go back to a second, this is one of my favorite questions to ask people when I'm giving talks on this stuff. I just kind of scan the room for what do you say to yourself when you're exercising?
Lots of people talk to themselves and what they say varies tremendously from what you just described to come on, you got this to I really want a bagel right now. And so on and so forth. And we know that people who are skilled at harnessing this voice to be motivating and encouraging, they actually perform better in those contexts. So I, knowing this stuff...
I'm very strategic about how I harness my self-talk when I'm exercising. I will be motivating. Come on, man, you've got this. That's right. I refer to myself in the second and third person. We'll talk more about how that works. I also can become somewhat in my head aggressive towards the instructor that is telling me to do painful things. Oh, like the woman that I was like-
Why don't you try doing that? I don't like the way you're talking to me. I want to do it this way. I don't say that out loud. I smile out loud. But in my head, right, I'm having that kind of conversation. So the point here is another thing your inner voice helps you do is control and motivate yourself. The fourth and final thing I want to flag here.
To me, I describe this as the most magical feature of our inner voice. Your inner voice helps us make sense of this messy world that we live in. We are bombarded by things all the time that have the potential to lead us astray. we get rejected, we get into arguments, we experience anxiety about what may come.
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