Two Minds Blog

  Last month's biggest news in the world of psychology was the death of Dr. Albert Bandura at age 95. Dr. Bandura's obituary noted that a 2002 survey rated him the fourth-most influential psychologist of the 20th century, after Freud  (who was actually a psychiatrist),  B.F. Skinner , and developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. Over the course of a 57-year research career, Bandura published 17 books and hundreds of articles, received 19 honorary degrees, and was awarded both the Order of Canada and the U.S. National Medal of Science. His work has resonated through the fields of psychotherapy, education, and public health. By the end of his life, Bandura was so famous that many people wrongly assumed he must be dead already! In response to one student's email asking "are you still alive?" Bandura answered "no, this message is coming to you from the other side." Even if you don't recognize Bandura's name, you know who he is: He invented the concep...

I  wrote recently  about a tailored messaging intervention to help people living with HIV manage fatigue, but it was a pretty labor-intensive approach. One of the research projects that I’m working on right now will automate the tailored messages, with a slightly different but related focus on exercise behavior. With modern antiretroviral medication treatments (ART), people living with HIV can expect to live a relatively normal life, but they are at higher than average risk for problems like heart disease and diabetes as they get older. The  latest research  on HIV shows that people with the virus not only need regular exercise to prevent heart and kidney problems, they need 30 minutes of higher-intensity exercise on most days of the week. That’s more exercise than most Americans without HIV manage to achieve.  In a  new article , just published in the  Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care , my colleagues and I describe t...