Two Minds Blog

William Miller and Stephen Rollnick’s motivational interviewing (MI) is an approach to conversations that promotes behavior change. Its creators define MI as “a method for exploring and resolving ambivalence.” This method is undeniably effective in promoting behavior change, even among people who don’t initially want to change — MI is supported by over 100 randomized controlled trials with a wide range of problematic behaviors . But why MI is helpful remains an open question. Miller has identified a set of principles underlying the method, and Rollnick suggested that a newer model called self-determination theory might explain why MI works. But at its heart the approach is atheoretical, a set of techniques that works rather than a methodology derived from theory. Miller says that he developed MI in an early practice experience when everything he learned in school had failed, and he stopped to ask the substance abuse patients he was supposed to be treating what he could do that w

Dr. Kathy Sward spoke at the CU College of Nursing on January 31st about monitoring devices and how informatics will continue to shape the future of health care. As more people have their own personal sensor devices, health systems are beginning to recognize the need for access to users' data. Dr. Sward noted that most people are highly interested  in seeing their own health data (at least for an initial period after receiving the sensor devices), and that they sometimes change their behavior  in response to data. She gave an example from an asthma study, in which a personal air quality sensor revealed more airborne particles after vacuuming, which the study participant tended to do just before her children with asthma came home from school. After seeing the data she started vacuuming earlier in the day, and her children's asthma symptoms were reduced as a result. Personal monitoring devices now include a large array of sensor types, including temperature sensors like th

Behavioral economics research is an important source for Two Minds Theory.  Behavioral economics is notable for its proposal of bounded rationality , meaning that people do not always think logically because the Narrative System has limited capacity. Therefore, the Intuitive System makes many decisions (although in TMT we argue that the Intuitive system makes all decisions, behavioral economics suggests only that it makes many  of them). To explain the operations of the Intuitive System, behavioral economics researchers have proposed a list of heuristics (mental shortcuts) and biases  (perceptual errors). The exact content of this list varies depending on who is summarizing the literature. Occam's razor is a thinking tool, which suggests that the simplest explanation for any phenomenon is usually the best. Simplicity is evident in many scientific advances, such as Mendelev's periodic table which reduced a long list of elements to just 2 basic principles — atomic weight and