The name was coined by psychologists Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross, who in 2014 studied a curious asymmetry: people systematically reason more wisely, prudently, and objectively about other people's problems than about their own — even if the problems are structurally identical. They named the effect after the biblical King Solomon, who was famous for his wise counsel to others, but, according to sources, made rather questionable decisions in his own personal life.
The mechanism of this effect is linked to psychological distance. When we analyze someone else's situation, we automatically view it somewhat from the outside: we see a broader context, notice contradictions, and more easily allow that both sides of a conflict may be right. When a situation concerns ourselves, this distance collapses — emotional involvement, self-defense, and tunnel vision kick in. Moreover, this does not depend on a person's general level of intelligence or expertise — the effect is consistently reproduced even among people with high wisdom scores in other contexts.
For HR, this provides a direct explanation for several familiar situations at once. An experienced manager who brilliantly consults colleagues on conflicts within their teams may become completely lost in an identical conflict within their own. An HR business partner who excels at breaking down someone else's complex personnel issue may spend months avoiding an honest decision regarding their own direct subordinate.
It is not a matter of competence — it is about the fact that for oneself, objective distance is physically inaccessible in the same way it is for another person's situation.
The practical takeaway: institutionalize an outside perspective rather than relying on a strong manager to figure out their own situation alone. Mentoring and coaching sessions, reviews of managerial decisions by peer colleagues, and the mandatory practice of "analyzing your situation as if it were not yours, but a colleague's" before a tough decision — all of this works not because it replaces expertise, but because it brings back the very distance that is impossible to create alone.