Two Minds Blog

Our church secretary changes her sign with funny messages each week. This was the one we saw on January 5th, and I thought that it neatly summed up the dilemma of new year's resolutions. Resolutions are a topic of great interest for health behavior change researchers like me. They are fascinating because everyone makes them, despite the fact that everyone also knows they are going to break them! One could see this as a triumph of hope over experience. But our self-awareness about the problem suggests that it's more than that. Instead, it is a classic example of the intention-behavior gap highlighted in Two Minds Theory. Famous psychologists have been interested in this problem. Stanley Schacter studied self-change efforts among smokers , and concluded that people are actually more successful than we might think in improving their health behaviors. It just seems to take them a long time and multiple attempts. James Prochaska, famous for developing the stages of change ,

Two Minds Theory suggests that Intuitive-level variables have a strong effect on people’s  everyday experiences and behaviors (and in fact, that  only  the Intuitive system is involved in producing behavior).  Because the Intuitive system operates outside of conscious awareness, TMT also suggests that people  aren’t aware of all the things that affect their immediate experiences and behaviors. We tested these  key  propositions in  a  study  just published  in the January/February issue of the  Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care , in which we used  daily surveys and ambulatory sensor measures (Fitbit Alta HR devices) to predict everyday ups and downs in the experience of fatigue among people living with HIV.  Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms reported by people with HIV, and it can seriously impair people’s ability to  accomplish everyday tasks. We asked people to complete a validated short survey on fatigue every day on their smartphones, at random times.