Do you ever talk to yourself? Yeah, me too. This is called your inner voice or sometimes your internal monologue. Ever wonder why? Well psychologists from Lev Vygostky to modern professors have been studying this for years. Watch the video to learn what we know about why you talk to yourself.
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Script:
Have you ever been talking to yourself when a friend walks in the room? Yeah, super awkward. But why? Everyone talks to themselves. Whether it’s out loud or just in their head. When I’m on super long road trips I usually end up having a full on conversation with myself. Or if other people are around, the conversation just simply moves into my head.
Scientists call this our internal monologue or sometimes refer to it as our inner voice. It’s so weird, because not only are we constantly having silent conversations with ourselves, but it often feels like we can actually hear our conversations out loud even though it’s happening in our heads.
Since the dawn of the study of psychology, psychologists have been studying our inner voice. The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygostky believed that our inner voice occurred because of the internalization of external speech. So for example when you hear yourself or another speak out loud, you internalize the sound of it and recreate the sounds you’ve perceived in your mind. That’s why your inner voice sounds like your voice and when you are thinking about what your mom might say to you after doing another bump of Chuck Norriss, you recreate the sound of her nagging voice asking you why you haven’t settled down with a nice girl and gotten married yet.
You see, scientists have found through neurological experiments that the same part of brain used when we talk out loud is used when we are using our inner voice. This is called Broca’s area – and you guessed it, it’s named after the scientist who discovered the link between speech and that part of the brain. And as we use Broca’s area, simultaneously we are using the same muscles in our throat that we use just before we make sound come out of our mouths – the Larynx. Wonder where that word came from? Well, look it up ‘cause I have no idea.
Anyways, almost everyone talks to themselves. For many years, some professor at the University of Las Vegas studied this shit and found that while it is still unclear as to why exactly we have an inner voice, we almost all do. Of course there are exceptions such as some dyslexic and deaf people who both report having an inner voice that is made up of mostly visual pictures or symbols rather than sounds like normal people do. And by normal I don’t mean that dyslexic and deaf people are abnormal, rather that – well no I guess that’s what I’m saying.
Speaking of abnormal people, those who have auditory hallucinations probably think they are hearing voices due to the fact that their inner speech may just be not recognized by them as self-produced. The evidence shows that the same parts of the brain that are active during inner speech are active during auditory hallucinations. In a 2012 Finish study, it was found that during auditory hallucinations, the part of the brain that is tied to self-awareness is less active, meaning that auditory hallucinations might be a result of hearing one’s own inner speech without being self-aware that they are having inner speech.
Ok. But why do we talk to ourselves? Well I hate to break it to you, but the answer to that isn’t quite known. It might be an evolutionary step as our inner voices actually help us with tasks. For example chess players whose inner voices are suppressed aren’t able to perform as well as those whose inner voices aren’t interrupted. You may experience this when a person is talking to you while you are in the middle of a project. While out of politeness you may continue to converse with the person, you silently want to cuss them out because you just f’ed up the Lego Star Wars Sandcrawler that you had been working on for hours.
Our inner voice can also act as a motivator and help us overcome difficult situations by urging us to strive on and not give up. However, it can be just as damaging as helpful. Many describe their inner voice to be nasty or cruel. We’ve all been there. But you, know, don’t let it get you down.
