Open AccessWhen you are talking to yourself, is anybody listening? The relationship between inner speech, self-awareness, wellbeing, and multiple aspects of self-regulation
Author(s) -
Paul Verhaeghen,
Grazia Mirabito
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of personality psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2451-9243
DOI - 10.21827/ijpp.7.37354
Subject(s) - psychology , active listening , mediation , self compassion , psychology of self , self , foundation (evidence) , social psychology , rumination , self control , self awareness , developmental psychology , action (physics) , mindfulness , cognition , self efficacy , cognitive psychology , clinical psychology , psychotherapist , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , political science , law , history
This correlational study of 433 adults (260 college students and 173 Mechanical-Turk workers) examined how the selfreported functions and experienced phenomenology of habitual inner speech (action guidance, problem solving/search, memory/attention regulation, emotion regulation, evaluate/motivate, other voices, inner dialogue, condensed speech) relate to self-awareness (self-reflection and controlled sense-of-self in the moment), potentially influence high-level aspects of self-regulation (self-preoccupation, self-compassion, wisdom, and the moral foundations of individualizing and binding), and psychological wellbeing. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed partial and mutual mediation between inner speech variables and self-awareness variables. Self-awareness was more consistently associated with self-regulation. The only inner speech variables associated with self-regulation in a beneficial way were memory/attention regulation (for wisdom about the self and the individualizing moral foundation) and evaluate/motivate (for the binding moral foundation). These findings suggest that, with the exception just described, inner speech (with the present dependent variables, and in adults) is easiest understood as an epiphenomenon.