You may have noticed that you’re often better at solving other people’s problems than your own. Because you’re less enmeshed in others’ details than they are, you’re able to see the full picture in ways they cannot. In fact, Kross and Igor Grossmann of Canada’s University of Waterloo have shown that when people step back and assess their own situation the way they’d evaluate other people’s situations, they close this perceptual gap. They reason as effectively about their own problems as they do about others’ problems.
