28 | it's rickey time

One of my goals for 2025 was to listen to and archive every broadcast of Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure radio program. I am 186 shows into that effort, which means I have gotten a good sense of the artists that perhaps influenced Petty the most. Among those is Jerry Lee Lewis, who frequently can be heard referring to himself in the third person with his nickname, Killer. Curious about the origins of that label, I found the following in his obituary:

His beginnings sounded like myth. His father, Elmo, and mother, Mamie, mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano, after he climbed onto a piano bench and, without ever having touched a keyboard before, began to play. His nickname, Killer, had nothing to do with his playing, but came from a schoolroom fight in Ferriday when he tried to choke a grown man with his own necktie; still, it fit the man, the musician to come, but there was more to him than a barroom piano pounder who sometimes kept a pistol in his pants.

I have no idea whether the origin story is factual, but I can say that Lewis definitely played the piano like a man who believed it was! Which, if you follow the Constanza Principle, makes it true.

It was merely a punchline in a television show, but, when it comes to performance, the Constanza Principle seems to have merit. There is ample evidence for the power of both third person language (e.g., distanced self-talk and self-interest) and the power of embodying a character (e.g., The Batman Effect) when performing a task. Importantly, the evidence aligns with something that has been proven to me time and time again in my work with athletes: believing what is helpful is generally more important than attempting to discern what is true.

And both third person language or even alter egos have often proven to be quite helpful. They may create distance from the performance to lessen the personal sting of falling short. They may allow athletes to isolate the characteristics they want to bring to the arena and temporarily shelve those that won’t enhance their play. They may make it easier to play freely and automatically and think less.

The greatest sports example from my era was Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson. Henderson was legendary for speaking about himself in the third person, with some teammates even noting that his use of the third person seemed to correlate with his play. Note the following the story from former MLB first-baseman Will Clark (aka Will the Thrill):

When Rickey got to first base, he always talked in the third person...He goes, 'Thrill, Rickey wants to run,'...I look in the dugout to Roger Craig and go, 'He's running right here,'...So we pitch out, Rickey slides in safe at second, he jumps up and starts pointing at me and says, 'I told you, Thrill, Rickey gone!'

Personally, one of my favorite baseball memories is attending a St. Louis Cardinals playoff game against the San Diego Padres in 1996. My seats were in left field, so I was in prime position to observe Henderson as he engaged with fans throughout the game. At times, he seemingly wasn’t even watching the game as multiple pitches were thrown! Is that what really happened? Or did the myth alter my experience? Or just my memory of it? I can’t say for sure but don’t know if it really matters. I believe it. Constanza Principle. It’s true. QED.

In fairness, the fictional George Constanza and the actual Jerry Lee Lewis are both morally and ethically complex characters. So I wouldn’t look to them for life advice. And, as the research around distanced language suggests, the approach may lead to more selfish decision-making. If the question is simply around in-the-moment sport performance, however, the ideas are definitely worth exploring. It certainly worked for Rickey Henderson!

For this issue, I will leave you with 3 studies referenced in the issue spotlight. Reach out if you want a full text but can’t access it on your own!

Izzy Gainsburg & Ethan Kross. 2020. Distanced self-talk changes how people conceptualize the self. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 88.

Abstract: Converging evidence indicates that distanced self-talk (i.e., using one's own name and other non-first person pronouns to refer to the self) promotes self-control and wise reasoning. However, no research has examined how this process affects how people conceptualize the self. We addressed this issue across two experiments. In Study 1, participants who were randomly assigned to describe themselves using their own name (vs. I) used more abstract descriptors and talked less about their social identities. Study 2 directly replicated these effects in a high-powered pre-registered experiment. It also demonstrated that using one's name to think about the self led to greater shifts in self-concept than those associated with thinking about other people (i.e., a “socially distant” target). Together, these finding demonstrate how subtle shifts in language that promote psychological distance influence the way people cognitively represent the self. They also highlight the need for future research to distinguish between self- and social distance.

Izzy Gainsburg, Walter J. Snowden, Brittany Drake, Warren Herold, & Ethan Kross. 2022. Distanced self-talk increases rational self-interest. Scientific Reports, 12, 511.

Abstract: Does stepping back to evaluate a situation from a distanced perspective lead us to be selfish or fair? This question has been of philosophical interest for centuries, and, more recently, the focus of extensive empirical inquiry. Yet, extant research reveals a puzzle: some studies suggest that adopting a distanced perspective will produce more rationally self-interested behavior, whereas others suggest that it will produce more impartial behavior. Here we adjudicate between these perspectives by testing the effects of adopting a third-person perspective on decision making in a task that pits rational self-interest against impartiality: the dictator game. Aggregating across three experiments (N = 774), participants who used third-person (i.e., distanced) vs. first-person (i.e., immersed) self-talk during the dictator game kept more money for themselves. We discuss these results in light of prior research showing that psychological distance can promote cooperation and fairmindedness and how the effect of psychological distance on moral decision-making may be sensitive to social context.

Rachel E. White, Emily O. Prager, Catherine Schaefer, Ethan Kross, Angela L. Duckworth, & Stephanie M. Carlson. 2017. The ‘Batman Effect’” Improving Perseverance in Young Children. Child Development, 88(5), 1563-1571.

Abstract: This study investigated the bene ts of self-distancing (i.e., taking an outsider’s view of one’s own situation) on young children’s perseverance. Four- and 6-year-old children (N= 180) were asked to complete a repetitive task for 10 min while having the option to take breaks by playing an extremely attractive video game. Six-year-olds persevered longer than 4-year-olds. Nonetheless, across both ages, children who impersonated an exemplar other—in this case a character, such as Batman—spent the most time working, followed by children who took a third-person perspective on the self, or nally, a rst-person perspective. Alternative explanations, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

I will stick with my hometown St. Louis Cardinals and turn the spotlight on Bob Gibson (and Denny McLain). Shortly after taking the mound as opponents in the 1968 World’s Series, McLain and Gibson appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Gibson beat McClain twice during the series, but took the L in Game 7 as the Detroit Tigers took the crown. Today’s equivalent would have been a Walker Buehler / Gerrit Cole duet on Jimmy Fallon post 2024 series!

Check out the screen grab below or a video of the performance over on Twitter.

She returns to the first person immediately after, but perhaps it is telling that Missy Elliott commences the track with a third person reference to set it all in motion!

Missy be puttin' it down
I'm the hottest 'round
I told y'all mother- (skrrt)
Y'all can't stop me now

missy elliott GET UR FREAK ON

I searched for songs using keywords that were related to lying: lies, liar, lying, etc. Enjoy these songs about lying, or, if you believe them, songs about truth!

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