Two Minds Blog

As I feel a wave of relief that 2020 is finally over, I wanted to take a look back and a look ahead at the status of this blog. This year I wrote 27 posts for the Two Minds Blog, and there were  477  uniqu e readers (many who came back repeatedly). That's up from 350 readers in the blog's first year; if you like what I've been writing here, please tell your friends and help readership continue to grow. Last January I had promised to write on the following topics: more on mindfulness, more case studies about the "two minds of ..." individual people, more links between Two Minds Theory and other psychological theories, more on intervention strategies, and more clinical applications. We had many of those things, but also quite a few digressions on topics inspired by the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, some of the most popular posts were coronavirus-related, including one with initial thoughts on how to cope with COVID-related distress , one on how the difference betwe

This week's blog is another case study of how people's two minds interact in real life, and focuses on University of Michigan psychologist Vic Strecher. I first became aware of Dr. Strecher's work in the late 1990s, when I read his studies about tailored messaging to improve people's adherence to medical recommendations (a topic that's right up my alley). I first heard him speak in 2000 when we were both presenters at a conference on adherence for pharmaceutical executives. My talk was so-so, but his was dazzling. He had some joke about sharks' teeth that people were talking about for days after. He was fast-paced, funny, surprising, entertaining, erudite. His sense of humor had a sharp edge to it. Based on my past experiences with very bright people who have those characteristics, I also had the thought (and I apologize Dr. Strecher if you're reading this) that he was kind of a jerk.  I was not too surprised a few years later when I learned that Vic St

The great novelist  Fyodor Dostoevsky proposed a challenge: Try not to think about a white bear. Close your eyes and do it now. After a minute, come back here. What happened? For most people, that bear keeps intruding behind your eyelids despite all your efforts to push him away. This phenomenon is so well-known that Dostoevsky's "trying not to think about a white bear" exercise has become the standard example of why thought suppression is such a difficult task. In fact, trying to consciously suppress a particular thought usually tends to increase  the frequency of that thought, a phenomenon confirmed by meta-analysis of controlled studies . The same principle holds in efforts to help someone decrease a problematic behavior: It's hard to just stop  doing something, but easier to replace it with an alternate behavior. People who try to quit smoking cigarettes, for example, are often encouraged to do something else like chew gum instead, or to fiddle with a ring inste