Why do we talk to ourselves?

Anyone who has ever watched a small child playing will have noticed that he or she will mumble phrases about what he or she is doing or thinking: “Now I’m going to build this house”, “The baby is going to sleep because he or she is sleepy”, “Watch out, the dragon is coming.” The child is not talking to anyone, or rather, he or she is: he or she is talking to himself or herself.

This behavior was first observed by Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist who studied children in the 1920s, concluding that this type of speech is a vital part of the developmental process, allowing the child to organize thoughts, regulate behavior and, probably, internalize the language, which he is still learning, as a tool for planning and problem-solving.

And even though we may feel embarrassed to admit it as adults – or ashamed when we’re caught – most of us still have conversations with ourselves, sometimes out loud, sometimes just inside our heads. It’s a very common behaviour, which psychologists and researchers in this field refer to as self-talk or self-dialogue , which can be divided into private speech (when we talk to ourselves out loud) and internal speech (when we talk to ourselves only in our thoughts).

“People talk to themselves for a variety of reasons. For example, to guide themselves through a problem, to motivate themselves, to generate new ideas or to practice social interactions,” explains Charles Fernyhough, director of the Centre for Research into Inner Experience at Durham University in the UK and author of the book The Voices Within . According to the researcher, studies show that this type of talk is beneficial in childhood, helping children to solve problems and maintain attention and, although there is less research on this topic in adults, there is reason to believe that it has some of the same positive effects.

Although it is difficult to quantify this phenomenon, some studies indicate that 96% of adults have these internal dialogues, while 25% say they talk to themselves out loud . “It is known that children are more likely to talk to themselves out loud and adults are more likely to do so in silence, but that, in challenging conditions, they can also resort to private speech [out loud].”

Thomas Brinthaupt , Professor Emeritus at Middle Tennessee State University in the United States, where he conducts research in the areas of Personality Psychology, Social Psychology and Identity Psychology, has this to say. He recalls that he first noticed that he was talking to himself out loud when, more than 30 years ago, he became a father and was dealing with the challenge of sleep deprivation. This is what led him to this area of ​​research, to try to answer the question: “What is the purpose of talking to ourselves, anyway?”

Three decades and dozens of studies on the subject later, he manages to sum up the answer to this question in a surprisingly simple sentence: “ There are probably as many reasons to talk to yourself as there are to talk to other people ,” he begins by answering. Despite this, he mentions that research has shown that “ one of the most common functions is self-regulation , that is, the attempt to control or adjust our thoughts and behaviors.”

The Self-Talk Scale (STS) , a scale developed to measure and identify the various types of self-talk, also identifies other functions, “such as self-criticism (for example, when we are upset with ourselves), self-reinforcement (i.e., when we are satisfied with ourselves), self-management (namely trying to understand what we need to do) and social evaluation (such as anticipating or repeating social interactions).” There are also other scales and studies developed by other authors that also refer to the functions of self-talk as trying to memorize or recall information, changing perspective on a situation or problem and reliving conversations already had with other people .

As for why we tend to have these conversations more often than not in our heads, without speaking them out loud, Thomas Brinthaupt stresses that although there is little research on the subject, one of the reasons is social inhibition, that is, people are embarrassed to be caught talking to themselves because it is associated with ideas such as being crazy or having a mental health problem. For this reason, we generally tend to limit self-talk out loud to situations where it is socially acceptable. “Like when a speaker says, ‘OK, where was I?’; when a person is trying to figure out what is wrong with their computer and says, ‘Why isn’t this working?’; or when athletes try to motivate themselves or focus during a competition, for example, by saying, ‘You can do this!’

And while it's true that sometimes self-talk, especially when it's disordered or incoherent speech, can be a symptom of a mental disorder, most of the time it's just a normal, very common and healthy way of trying to process and organize our thoughts, emotions and behaviors.