Solomon’s paradox describes the tendency to interact in additional clever reasoning for others’ issues than one’s personal. This phenomenon is called after King Solomon of the Hebrew Bible, the third chief of historical Israel who requested God to grant him knowledge. People would journey from afar to hunt Solomon’s knowledge; nevertheless, when it got here to his private life, Solomon lacked perception, which ultimately led to the downfall of his kingdom.
A examine revealed in Frontiers in Psychology suggests Solomon’s Paradox may be defined by the distinction between constructive have an effect on and self-transcendence when interested by private – versus others’ – conflicts.
In psychological literature, self-transcendence is outlined as “the expansion or dissolution of ego boundaries and an increase in feelings of connectedness with a larger context.” Empirical work on this topic stems from Viktor Frankl’s autobiographical guide, Man’s Search for Meaning, during which the psychiatrist argues that devoting oneself to a trigger or cherished one – to the extent that it encourages self-forgetfulness – can result in self-actualization.
Relatedly, Abraham Maslow, finest recognized for the creation of Maslow’s hierarchy of wants depicting “self-actualization” as the height, revised this hierarchy shortly earlier than his loss of life, including “self-transcendence” as the pinnacle of human wants; he envisioned a state of self-transcendence pushed by values increasing past self-actualization.
Self-transcendence is related to constructive have an effect on. This emotional state can broaden one’s attentional highlight, promote holistic notion, broaden social boundaries and improve the flexibility to transcend previous numerous self-imposed limitations. Thus, emotional states might assist clarify the noticed variations in self-transcendence and clever reasoning throughout several types of battle.
In this work, Wentao Xu and colleagues examined the function of temper and self-transcendence in Solomon’s paradox.
A complete of 399 members have been recruited from MTurk, an internet crowdsourcing platform. After responding to a demographic questionnaire, members have been randomly assigned to certainly one of two situations: the self or different battle group. They have been prompted to consider a relationship that’s not going nicely (their very own vs. their good friend’s) and describe their ideas and emotions about it. They subsequent accomplished a scale assessing clever reasoning (e.g., “Tried my best to find a way to accommodate both of us”), constructive and adverse have an effect on (e.g., excited, offended), self-transcendence (e.g., “My sense of self does not depend on other people and things”), and emotional intelligence (e.g., “I have good control of my own emotions”).
Xu and colleagues discovered that members confirmed much less self-transcendence when interested by their very own interpersonal conflicts; this resulted in much less clever reasoning. As nicely, self-transcendence defined the connection between battle kind and clever reasoning.
The authors write, “This not only creatively develops a new paradigm of self-transcendence manipulation but also directly explains the occurrence mechanism of Solomon’s paradox and expands the depth and breadth of research in both fields, which should be integrated at theoretical and empirical levels in the relationship between the two in the future.”
Further, constructive have an effect on and emotional intelligence positively predicted self-transcendence and clever reasoning; as such, there could also be a hyperlink between knowledge, feelings, and associated talents. There was additionally a mediating function of constructive have an effect on in Solomon’s paradox, suggesting “the complexity of the underlying mechanisms, where essential positive affect suppression beyond the cognitive perspective and self-transcendent mindset can lead directly to impaired wise reasoning endorsement.”
A limitation the researchers notice is the comparatively small impact sizes of the important thing findings.
The examine, “The Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Solomon’s Paradox: Impact of Mood and Self-Transcendence”, was authored by Wentao Xu, Kaili Zhang, and Fengyan Wang.
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