Dr. Kentaro Fujita

And just simply referring to myself as other people, not me, but as other people would create psychological distance in the space that gives me just enough to think of it as far as opposed to close.

I mentioned also a study that...

What would Jesus do, for example?

He did this with kids, Angela Duckworth and Rachel Carlson at the University of Minnesota.

They brought kids in, and in one condition, they just had them do a task that required self-control as they normally would.

But in the experimental condition, for the boys, they gave the children various costumes.

They could pick the costume that they wanted to wear the most.

It's like a little boy might put on a Batman costume.

Cape and Cal.

And then they were simply asked, as you do this task, we want you to ask the question, what would that character do?

So a boy might say, what would Batman do?

And they show that thinking like Batman made them have better self control.

Now, there's many reasons for this, but the reason that they emphasize was that Batman isn't the kid.

And so they created distance by emulating somebody else.

Research has suggested that the simulation of someone else's mind, in order to simulate someone else's mind, we actually activate the neural circuitry necessary

to have that mind.

So if I ask myself, what would Batman do?

I literally have to think like Batman.

I reactivate the kinds of thinking that I think Batman would have.

In other words, literally turning my cognitive system into somebody else.