Researchers have found that when people have been through a negative experience, they tend to use the word “you” rather than “I” when talking about it.The study, by researchers based at the University of Michigan, conducted nine experiments with nearly 2,500 people to understand the meaning behind the use of the word “you” in the context of speaking about and sharing insight on their own experiences.
“It's something we all do as a way to explain how things work and to find meaning in our lives,” said Ariana Orvell, a researcher in the Department of Psychology.“When people use ‘you’ to make meaning from negative experiences, it allows them to normalize（使正常化） the experience and reflect on it from a distance,” she said.
For example, when people use the sentence “You win some, you lose some”, it indicates that a person has failed in a situation, but by using the word “you”, they're expressing that the experience they went through could happen to anyone, said Ms Orvell. “Or saying that ‘When you are angry, you say and do things that you will most likely regret might actually explain a personal situation, but the individual attempts to make it something many people relate to,” Ms Orvell said.
In one of the experiments, the researchers asked participants to write about a personal experience.They had to write something about a negative event. They used the word “you” many times. The research also found that using the word “you” led people to view the event as being more distant. “We suspect that it's the ability to move beyond your own perspective to express shared, universal experiences that allows individuals to get broader meanings from personal events,” Orvell said.
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