Your true self?

Posted by: Dauragon c mikado

Your true self? - 12/13/05 08:15 AM

Are you your true self when your on the forums?
Do you try and give yourself off as an interesting activist when in fact your a boring old fart!?

I slightly change my personality on here to try and not be such a nutcase.....I hope it does'nt come through too much...
Posted by: harlan

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 08:21 AM

(Suggestion: think this thread would be better in the Talk forum)

Hmmm...navigating Ego and Honesty: I think that I express my inner self pretty well...with all the messy conundrums (a woman's mind? ). However, how well that gets through to others has a lot to do with their filters.
Posted by: ButterflyPalm

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 08:42 AM

You have to be a nutcase to show your true self around here; we are MARTIAL ARTISTS; we NEVER show any weaknesses to anyone.
Posted by: eyrie

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 08:50 AM

Depends on which of my 67 distinct personalities you are talking to....
Posted by: harlan

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 08:50 AM

Speak for yourself. I'm no 'martial artist'. I'm martially inclined and artistically challenged.
Posted by: Ed_Morris

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 11:19 AM

I'm not nearly as much a wise-guy in person. I listen more than talk (opposite on the forum). I don't push my points of view as aggressivly in person. My forum personality matches my fighting style more than my social personality.

Maybe because I view the forum as a form of full-contact verbal sparring as oppossed to a social gathering with tea and crumpets.

I do take breaks with occational fits of nonsense...this is the same as in person.
Posted by: PierrePressure

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 12:05 PM

Ehhhhh......well, I thought I was different on here than I am off line, but I'm beginning to realize that I warm up to people online the same way I do off. I take awhile, test the waters to see where everybody's at, then slowly begin to reveal my "true" personality. 'Course I'm more private about my personal life when I'm on here (like where I live, my real name, etc.) and I always will be (no offense to anyone here), but otherwise, I don't see a real problem opening up some and getting involved in a conversation of sorts on these boards. So I'm not too different from the way I am off line .
Posted by: harlan

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 12:10 PM

You mean, you really are like Martha Stewart?
Posted by: nenipp

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 01:33 PM

I'm a boring old fart both on and off the forum
Posted by: Ed_Morris

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 02:02 PM

Quote:

...with all the messy conundrums (a woman's mind? ). However, how well that gets through to others has a lot to do with their filters.



lol. is this what you mean by a Woman's mind?: it's the filters fault and not the communicator. ...or is that part of the messy conundrums?
Posted by: harlan

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 02:07 PM

Ahhh...this is where faith comes in and bypasses filters. Just accept that you are flawed, and repeat the daily mantra "It's my fault" and you will be enlightened.
Posted by: Ed_Morris

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 02:19 PM

ok. It's my fault...again.

although...I have this flaw weakness (on the forum and in person) of listening to a Woman more attentively when they are weilding a weapon that they have been trained to use, and they know where I live...
Posted by: nenipp

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 02:47 PM

Weakness comes in many shapes, for some it's monkeys and for some it's women.
Posted by: DullBlade42

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 03:08 PM

I admit, on the forums, I come off a little more "duller" than usual.

I don't see point in not being your true self around people you don't know. I don't think I can do that if I tried.

Oh, but unfortunately, my sense of humor is the same no matter what.
Posted by: Ed_Morris

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 04:38 PM

Quote:

Weakness comes in many shapes, for some it's monkeys and for some it's women.



or sheep.
Posted by: still wadowoman

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 05:57 PM

Do you all think it's OK that I have no weakness for women, monkeys or sheep?
Sharon
Posted by: Ed_Morris

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 06:43 PM

I think it makes you normal...but I'm guessing.
Posted by: BuDoc

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 08:57 PM

Quote:

Quote:

Weakness comes in many shapes, for some it's monkeys and for some it's women.



or sheep.





In this case I'm guessing two out of three is bad

Page
Posted by: PierrePressure

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 11:34 PM

Quote:

You mean, you really are like Martha Stewart?




Oh heck yes! Complete with a flaming, irrational temper and.....uhhhhh.......money issues that aren't "a good thing" for me to talk about.........*awkward*

Posted by: JoelM

Re: Your true self? - 12/13/05 11:36 PM

I am probably just as much of a wise-guy, if not more, in person. Granted that I am among friends. If I'm with people I only slightly know or strangers I am a lot more quiet, a listener more than a talker.
Posted by: chickenchaser

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 01:40 AM

i think i have more time to think when i am on a forum. so in that sense i may be more level headed on here.it's possible
Posted by: Dauragon c mikado

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 05:02 AM

If this forum was a mirror of your personalities I would say your all bonkers!!
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 08:19 AM

Quote:

repeat the daily mantra "It's my fault" and you will be enlightened.




Being a married man that is my mantra already.
Posted by: ButterflyPalm

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 08:23 AM

Quote:

If this forum was a mirror of your personalities I would say your all bonkers!!




That's a bit strange coming from someone calling himself '...Mikado'

"bonkers" Ah! haven't heard that word since it was reffered to me during my time in London in the early 70s. I was putting soya sauce on fish and chips then I was single-handedly trying to educate the general British public on the finer points of eating their national dish; I failed miserably of course
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 08:24 AM

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Weakness comes in many shapes, for some it's monkeys and for some it's women.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


or sheep.


What about sheepish monkeys? (he asks sheepishly)

Personally I'm more collected on forum but not as handsome.
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 08:26 AM

"bonk" can also mean to bang something (in both senses). In Polish it means bumble bee.

Got to admit it caused some excitemnet when a girl ran towards me pulling off her top and shouting 'bonk!'
Posted by: ButterflyPalm

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 09:46 AM

And was the excitement resolved satisfactorily?
Posted by: oldman

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 12:44 PM

Like sheep we have gone astray. Back on task please.
Posted by: Foolsgold

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 02:28 PM

I'm a better person here.

Dang, that's just depressing; somebody needs to interject a funny comment!
Posted by: DullBlade42

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 02:34 PM

Quote:

I'm a better person here.

Dang, that's just depressing; somebody needs to interject a funny comment!





Someone's a sad Bi-Polarbear.

[Crickets]
Posted by: Ed_Morris

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 02:43 PM

a funny thing just occurred to me about this thread.

The answers we are giving to this question...are they with our forum personalities or answering with our real personality?
Posted by: ButterflyPalm

Re: Your true self? - 12/14/05 10:22 PM

That's the whole point and fun of it; nobody really knows; at least I don't.

Opps!!! I've just shown a weakness. Damn...I forgot to take my prune juice this morning.
Posted by: phoenixsflame

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 01:23 AM

I've spent a lot of time online, so I really don't parse between myself and my "online persona" if anything I just speak more articulately because I'm able to type faster than I think...

Silly ButterFly Palm, you should know better than to not drink your Prune Juice. Otherwise you're schedule is off, and you get cranky...
Posted by: still wadowoman

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 04:48 AM

Offline, in public, I am pretty much the same person as I am here. I am told that in private I am "softer" but that's probably tue of many people here.
Sharon
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 05:58 AM

Quote:

I am told that in private I am "softer"




Any comment I could make would probably be rightly deemed sexist and offensive, so I won't and I apologise immediately!!!!!!!

Back on track, arguably even if we are posing on this forum we are being our true selves because we are acting the way we would like to act if we weren't restricted by our external personality. OR the forum is a mirror image of ourselves and therefore reflects the real image.

(BTW, I talk crap in everyday life too)
Posted by: Dauragon c mikado

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 06:38 AM

Good observation.
But the thing is do we consider to be our trueselves when we are with others (real life/ forum) or when are alone left to our own devices.

J.Kristnamurti made the observation that we learn more of our true selves through interaction with others, the idea is that the way we react to people and the things people do will reveal our true selves is a good one, but dont we also learn of our selves when we are alone?

Alone time, a chance to reflect on our lives and on our decisions.
Providing we have the correct state of mind at the time we can look back on what weve done, whats happened to us and how we reacted to it in time weve had.
We can judge ourselves and decide and make the decisions on whether we were happy about what we did, from this point we can choose if we wish to become better people.
Is this not learning of ones own nature?
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 07:53 AM

Hmm, I'll think about that. However, meantime.... some anthropologist I can't recall pointed out we have different roles in our everyday life and have to adopt a different persona for each (more disciplined here, calmer here etc).

I imagine this gives us free rein to indulge the many parts of our Self.
Posted by: RazorFoot

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 08:25 AM

I am pretty much the same on or off the forum. However, I tend to curb my sarcasism a bit here for the sake of PC-ism. I am a bit of a smart a$$ at times too but I am behaving myself.

Everything else is basically who I am.

*slides goth related material under bed, hides small farm animals in closet, packs away surface to air missle launcher in trunk, and turns off "Air Supply" CD*
Posted by: nenipp

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 02:07 PM

Quote:

Good observation.
But the thing is do we consider to be our trueselves when we are with others (real life/ forum) or when are alone left to our own devices.

J.Kristnamurti made the observation that we learn more of our true selves through interaction with others, the idea is that the way we react to people and the things people do will reveal our true selves is a good one, but dont we also learn of our selves when we are alone?






Yes, we can learn about ourselves when we're alone, if we choose to.
When we interact we don't necessarily have time to reflect upon the motives, feelings and presumptions behind our actions and reactions (unless we are trained to).
Posted by: nenipp

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 02:10 PM

Quote:

(BTW, I talk crap in everyday life too)




I may be on to your nickname, trevek, the first part is france and the later part is german, aren't they (misspelled of course)?

Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 04:38 PM

Pardon monsieur nenipp, aber jetzt ich bin sehr intrigued...

I'm afraid oyu have read more into my name than I have (more afraid cos I can't work it out... 'tres' 'weg'? Give me a clue here cos it sounds fun)
Posted by: DullBlade42

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 05:29 PM

I always thought that trevek was an acronym standing for:

Tedious
Rapper
Enjoying
Various
Exotic
Kiwi
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/15/05 05:35 PM

wow, how did you know about the kiwi... i thought i'd cleared all the feathers away. (I only rap in the bath)
Posted by: Dauragon c mikado

Re: Your true self? - 12/16/05 06:03 AM

I could twist 'I only rap in the bath' in so many weired ways but I wont cause I dont want to get banned from the forum
Posted by: nenipp

Re: Your true self? - 12/16/05 01:19 PM

Trevek, or tres weg as it were.

Tres is mucho, isn't it?
And weg can mean away or gone or lost, or something like that?

That would make you not quite "at home" wouldn't it?

And if you take my silly little excuse for a joke seriously, I will take the first avaliable plane to Poland and search you up and whip your *ss (I should warn you, I know karate)
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/17/05 06:58 AM

Nenipp, that is soooooooooo strange!

On a thread about true selves you work that one out? As French and German are two languages I left by the wayside (and have felt guilty about it ever since) and the fact I am not from Poland, means my real self is indeed shown through an unconcious expression.

I really am far away!

As for your karate, ha! I do Tai Chi. I'll kick your butt (but it will take a lot longer and be slower)
Posted by: trevek

Re: Your true self? - 12/17/05 07:00 AM

Yes, rapping in the bath can have many drawbacks.

Maybe your suggestion shows your true self
Posted by: nenipp

Re: Your true self? - 12/17/05 02:27 PM

Wow! That's kinda cool.

"As for your karate, ha! I do Tai Chi. I'll kick your butt (but it will take a lot longer and be slower)"

That's good, 'cos I'm in no hurry to get my butt kicked
Posted by: LastGURU

Re: Your true self? - 12/17/05 07:55 PM

I am wiser online than I am offline...

but the topic itself reminded me of a koan I read in the book called "Tao of meditation" bu Jou Tsung Hwa. Unfortunately (for you), the book I have is written in Russian, and I am not so good at translating texts a 3AM, especially given that I am too lazy to reach for my big dictionary, so my BAD translation with lost of errors follows:

once a student came to a master, which highly valued the student's reputation:

"i heard that you are an extremely clever student, and that if somebody asks you one question, you give ten different answers; and if somebody asks you ten questions, you give a hundred different answers. I will ask you only one question: what is your true image (or self, or self-image???), the one, which you had before the conception, the one you had before the current image that your parents gave you?"

the student was completely lost, and could not give any answer. he started remembering all the books he ever read, trying to find anything that could help him to find the answer, but unfortunately he found out that no lesson he ever studies could not give him the lead.all the books he ever read looked now to hime like a drawn bread, which you can never eat.

since then he was following the master and asking the answer to this puzzle, but the master was always refusing: "you will be accusing me and complaining about me later, if I will give you an answer now. And anyway, my answer is only mine, and it will never be truly your. the only answer you should seek is the one you shall find yourself."

the student was extremely disappointed, he burned all his books and agrily said to himself: I will never read a book to find the enlightenment. I will beter become wandering spirit, visiting ancient temples and saint mountains". he came to Nanyang [sp?], where one famous master spent his life. he dicides to stay there for some time. one day, walking in a park, he found a piece of tile. He threw it away, and it hit a trunk of bamboo, and cracked in two with cracking noise. hearing this natural sound, he suddenly reached his enlightenment. imediately he bowed to his master, which was far away, and prepared a letter for him:
"Master, your kindness and patience was more important for me than the care my parents gave to me. If you would simply answer my question, I would never looked inside myself, and reached enlightenment"
he also wrote a poem, but unfortunately it is in ancient Chinese, and even the author of the book I took this koan from, could not translate it, although he is Chinese himself.
Posted by: RangerG

Re: Your true self? - 12/18/05 08:57 AM

I try to be old an wise on here *snort*, with a touch of humor. I wish I were as wise in real life. I tend to be much more reserved and observant in person. I strive to be respectful of everyone...
Posted by: harlan

Re: Your true self? - 05/14/07 12:30 PM

Some reading on the subject (a crosspost from another FA.thread):

http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html#trueself
Posted by: TimBlack

Re: Your true self? - 05/14/07 03:57 PM

Interesting reading. Although I come at this from a philosophical angle, not a psychological one, my thinking has lead me to the tentative conclusion that the 'self' is a conceptual aggregation of behaviour. When someone says X is like Y, they tend to describe him/her in terms of behaviour - obviously, since what else can an individual know about another? Therefore, the personality must be conditioned by the perceived behaviour of the individual. However, I am not yet decided as to whether a personality is simply a conceptual aggregation of behaviour (that is, non-real and entirely able to be broken down into it's component parts without losing any of the original meaning), or whether personality is greater than the sum of its parts.

But, hey, my thought is constantly evolving here, so thoughts are always appreciated.
Posted by: Ed_Morris

Re: Your true self? - 05/14/07 11:44 PM

interesting link...seems natural shrinks continue to analyize online personna. I'm sure they'll get to some really juicy psychosis if they start collecting data in-person of people who are online.
Speaking of which, I was watching a documentary about gamer geeks...they showed a guy who quit his job and opened his own business selling 'game levels' and online established 'reputation'. See, these online community games where people interact as charactors eventually build up abilities (levels) and reputations. Well, this guy does just that and then sells the charactor to someone. he also gets paid to spend the time 'leveling up' a customer's charactor for them as a service.
Seems nuts to me - and indicitive of the fact there are people who will pay money before putting in the time to get something they didn't earn, yet easily convince themselves they own it....and all that money and self-deceit for suppossedly an enjoyable passtime?
Sound familiar? superimpose that onto the mentality of mail-order dan rank attainment and 7 year old black-belt ninjas.

many people seem to want to feel they are more than what they are...they want it now, so shortcuts are taken. lying about ourselves online seems to fit that shortcut mentality pattern.
Posted by: clmibb

Re: Your true self? - 05/21/07 02:40 PM

Online I'm pretty much the same person as I am off. I'll talk to just about anyone as long as they don't creep me out. I listen to my "inner voice" a lot and take it seriously when it says it's time to go. I think I'm a little more fun offline than on (after all you can't see and hear all the "Casey-isms" online).

Casey
Posted by: harlan

Re: Your true self? - 05/22/07 12:27 PM

Interesting news article about how we 'tell our stories'...our 'real' selves:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/health/psychology/22narr.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=all

NY Times, 5/22/07

This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It), By BENEDICT CAREY

For more than a century, researchers have been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, the sweetness and neuroses that make Anna Anna, the sluggishness and sensitivity that make Andrew Andrew. They have largely ignored the first-person explanation — the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why.

Stories are stories, after all. The attractive stranger at the airport bar hears one version, the parole officer another, and the P.T.A. board gets something entirely different. Moreover, the tone, the lessons, even the facts in a life story can all shift in the changing light of a person’s mood, its major notes turning minor, its depths appearing shallow.

Yet in the past decade or so a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality. And a burst of new findings are now helping them make the case. Generous, civic-minded adults from diverse backgrounds tell life stories with very similar and telling features, studies find; so likewise do people who have overcome mental distress through psychotherapy.

Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life — and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave, new studies find. By better understanding how life stories are built, this work suggests, people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones.

“When we first started studying life stories, people thought it was just idle curiosity — stories, isn’t that cool?” said Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and author of the 2006 book, “The Redemptive Self.” “Well, we find that these narratives guide behavior in every moment, and frame not only how we see the past but how we see ourselves in the future.”

Researchers have found that the human brain has a natural affinity for narrative construction. People tend to remember facts more accurately if they encounter them in a story rather than in a list, studies find; and they rate legal arguments as more convincing when built into narrative tales rather than on legal precedent.

YouTube routines notwithstanding, most people do not begin to see themselves in the midst of a tale with a beginning, middle and eventual end until they are teenagers. “Younger kids see themselves in terms of broad, stable traits: ‘I like baseball but not soccer,’ ” said Kate McLean, a psychologist at the University of Toronto in Mississauga. “This meaning-making capability — to talk about growth, to explain what something says about who I am — develops across adolescence.”

Psychologists know what life stories look like when they are fully hatched, at least for some Americans. Over the years, Dr. McAdams and others have interviewed hundreds of men and women, most in their 30s and older.

During a standard life-story interview, people describe phases of their lives as if they were outlining chapters, from the sandlot years through adolescence and middle age. They also describe several crucial scenes in detail, including high points (the graduation speech, complete with verbal drum roll); low points (the college nervous breakdown, complete with the list of witnesses); and turning points. The entire two-hour session is recorded and transcribed.

In analyzing the texts, the researchers found strong correlations between the content of people’s current lives and the stories they tell. Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail. The pride of college graduation is spoiled when a friend makes a cutting remark. The wedding party was wonderful until the best man collapsed from drink. A note of disappointment seems to close each narrative phrase.

By contrast, so-called generative adults — those who score highly on tests measuring civic-mindedness, and who are likely to be energetic and involved — tend to see many of the events in their life in the reverse order, as linked by themes of redemption. They flunked sixth grade but met a wonderful counselor and made honor roll in seventh. They were laid low by divorce, only to meet a wonderful new partner. Often, too, they say they felt singled out from very early in life — protected, even as others nearby suffered.

In broad outline, the researchers report, such tales express distinctly American cultural narratives, of emancipation or atonement, of Horatio Alger advancement, of epiphany and second chances. Depending on the person, the story itself might be nuanced or simplistic, powerfully dramatic or cloyingly pious. But the point is that the narrative themes are, as much as any other trait, driving factors in people’s behavior, the researchers say.

“We find that when it comes to the big choices people make — should I marry this person? should I take this job? should I move across the country? — they draw on these stories implicitly, whether they know they are working from them or not,” Dr. McAdams said.

Any life story is by definition a retrospective reconstruction, at least in part an outgrowth of native temperament. Yet the research so far suggests that people’s life stories are neither rigid nor wildly variable, but rather change gradually over time, in close tandem with meaningful life events.

Jonathan Adler, a researcher at Northwestern, has found that people’s accounts of their experiences in psychotherapy provide clues about the nature of their recovery. In a recent study presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in January, Mr. Adler reported on 180 adults from the Chicago area who had recently completed a course of talk therapy. They sought treatment for things like depression, anxiety, marital problems and fear of flying, and spent months to years in therapy.

At some level, talk therapy has always been an exercise in replaying and reinterpreting each person’s unique life story. Yet Mr. Adler found that in fact those former patients who scored highest on measures of well-being — who had recovered, by standard measures — told very similar tales about their experiences.

They described their problem, whether depression or an eating disorder, as coming on suddenly, as if out of nowhere. They characterized their difficulty as if it were an outside enemy, often giving it a name (the black dog, the walk of shame). And eventually they conquered it.

“The story is one of victorious battle: ‘I ended therapy because I could overcome this on my own,’ ” Mr. Adler said. Those in the study who scored lower on measures of psychological well-being were more likely to see their moods and behavior problems as a part of their own character, rather than as a villain to be defeated. To them, therapy was part of a continuing adaptation, not a decisive battle.

The findings suggest that psychotherapy, when it is effective, gives people who are feeling helpless a sense of their own power, in effect altering their life story even as they work to disarm their own demons, Mr. Adler said.

Mental resilience relies in part on exactly this kind of autobiographical storytelling, moment to moment, when navigating life’s stings and sorrows. To better understand how stories are built in real time, researchers have recently studied how people recall vivid scenes from recent memory. They find that one important factor is the perspective people take when they revisit the scene — whether in the first person, or in the third person, as if they were watching themselves in a movie.

In a 2005 study reported in the journal Psychological Science, researchers at Columbia University measured how student participants reacted to a bad memory, whether an argument or failed exam, when it was recalled in the third person. They tested levels of conscious and unconscious hostility after the recollections, using both standard questionnaires and students’ essays. The investigators found that the third-person scenes were significantly less upsetting, compared with bad memories recalled in the first person.

“What our experiment showed is that this shift in perspective, having this distance from yourself, allows you to relive the experience and focus on why you’re feeling upset,” instead of being immersed in it, said Ethan Kross, the study’s lead author. The emotional content of the memory is still felt, he said, but its sting is blunted as the brain frames its meaning, as it builds the story.

Taken together, these findings suggest a kind of give and take between life stories and individual memories, between the larger screenplay and the individual scenes. The way people replay and recast memories, day by day, deepens and reshapes their larger life story. And as it evolves, that larger story in turn colors the interpretation of the scenes.

Nic Weststrate, 23, a student living in Toronto, said he was able to reinterpret many of his most painful memories with more compassion after having come out as a gay man. He was very hard on himself, for instance, when at age 20 he misjudged a relationship with a friend who turned out to be straight.

He now sees the end of that relationship as both a painful lesson and part of a larger narrative. “I really had no meaningful story for my life then,” he said, “and I think if I had been open about being gay I might not have put myself in that position, and he probably wouldn’t have either.”

After coming out, he said: “I saw that there were other possibilities. I would be presenting myself openly to a gay audience, and just having a coherent story about who I am made a big difference. It affects how you see the past, but it also really affects your future.”

Psychologists have shown just how interpretations of memories can alter future behavior. In an experiment published in 2005, researchers had college students who described themselves as socially awkward in high school recall one of their most embarrassing moments. Half of the students reimagined the humiliation in the first person, and the other half pictured it in the third person.

Two clear differences emerged. Those who replayed the scene in the third person rated themselves as having changed significantly since high school — much more so than the first-person group did. The third-person perspective allowed people to reflect on the meaning of their social miscues, the authors suggest, and thus to perceive more psychological growth.

And their behavior changed, too. After completing the psychological questionnaires, each study participant spent time in a waiting room with another student, someone the research subject thought was taking part in the study. In fact the person was working for the research team, and secretly recorded the conversation between the pair, if any. This double agent had no idea which study participants had just relived a high school horror, and which had viewed theirs as a movie scene.

The recordings showed that members of the third-person group were much more sociable than the others. “They were more likely to initiate a conversation, after having perceived themselves as more changed,” said Lisa Libby, the lead author and a psychologist at Ohio State University. She added, “We think that feeling you have changed frees you up to behave as if you have; you think, ‘Wow, I’ve really made some progress’ and it gives you some real momentum.”

Dr. Libby and others have found that projecting future actions in the third person may also affect what people later do, as well. In another study, students who pictured themselves voting for president in the 2004 election, from a third-person perspective, were more likely to actually go to the polls than those imagining themselves casting votes in the first person.

The implications of these results for self-improvement, whether sticking to a diet or finishing a degree or a novel, are still unknown. Likewise, experts say, it is unclear whether such scene-making is more functional for some people, and some memories, than for others. And no one yet knows how fundamental personality factors, like neuroticism or extraversion, shape the content of life stories or their component scenes.

But the new research is giving narrative psychologists something they did not have before: a coherent story to tell. Seeing oneself as acting in a movie or a play is not merely fantasy or indulgence; it is fundamental to how people work out who it is they are, and may become.

“The idea that whoever appeared onstage would play not me but a character was central to imagining how to make the narrative: I would need to see myself from outside,” the writer Joan Didion has said of “The Year of Magical Thinking,” her autobiographical play about mourning the death of her husband and her daughter. “I would need to locate the dissonance between the person I thought I was and the person other people saw.”