Two Minds Blog

Conspiracy thinking is common and problematic: From one-third to one-half of Americans endorse conspiracy theories related to Qanon, the COVID-19 pandemic, or both, with smaller but still substantial percentages believing in longer-standing conspiracy theories related to climate change, UFOs, assassinations, fluoride, genetically-modified foods, broadcast signals, Pearl Harbor, medical science, or fluorescent lights. I previously wrote about Intuitive-level cues that might make false news items more convincing to people, and some research has shown that conspiracy beliefs are more likely among people who simply use their Narrative system less . But in this post, I will argue that many sources of conspiracy thinking are simple logical errors that exploit vulnerabilities of the Narrative mind. To take a relatively harmless example, let's examine a conspiracy belief that scientists are concealing the existence of the Loch Ness Monster . The Conspiracy Theory Handbook  uses the acron...

About 2.5 out of every 100 Americans is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a very heritable mental illness that is characterized by cyclical periods of intense negative or positive mood. A particularly strong cognitive characteristic of the manic (very positive) mood state is a lack of impulse control. This can result in people spending money at a rapid pace, jumping on a plane at a moment's notice, quitting a job without thinking it through, or taking up with a new romantic partner without consideration for existing relationships. Impulsive behavior is generally seen as reflecting problems with executive functioning, a mental ability that's strongly localized in the prefrontal cortex and therefore associated with the logical, sequential, and language-based Narrative mind.  In a detailed analysis of specific mental functions, Bora et al. found that response inhibition  was the most pronounced cognitive problem associated with bipolar disorder. This was true even among people wi...

My first iteration of Two Minds Theory was called “Temporal Immediacy Theory,” emphasizing one key difference between the Narrative and the Intuitive minds. Immediacy is the idea that the Narrative mind is concerned with stories about the past or the future, while the Intuitive mind focuses on one's experience in the present moment. Other differences between the two mental systems sometimes seem more salient: For instance, the Intuitive mind’s connection to the limbic system often makes it the more “emotional” of the two minds, while the Narrative mind seems rational and detached. Alternately, the Narrative mind has a limited ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time, while the Intuitive mind is a constant and successful multitasker . And the Intuitive mode takes less time and effort than the Narrative mode, leading to Kahneman’s characterization of the two minds as “ Thinking, Fast and Slow .” However, it’s my contention that the temporal focus of someone's ...

  The idea of tailored messaging sounds great: Just deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time, and in the right context ( Kiesler, 1966 ). But implementation can be challenging. What is the "right message," for example, and how does it vary from person to person, or for a single person from one point in time to another? There are various approaches to creating tailored messages, and my research team has tried several of them in previous research.  A first pass at message tailoring might involve personalization . For instance, if you pick a message about exercise that was written specifically for 50-year-old White men with a family history of heart disease, I'm likely to pay attention because it speaks to my own situation and my personal risk factors. A generic message like "exercise is good for your heart" is less persuasive because it's not specifically about me, even though it is equally true. One common type of message tailoring, t...

  Jerome Frank's 1961 book Persuasion and Healing  popularized the idea of "common factors" that explain the benefits of psychotherapy, building on ideas that were first articulated by Saul Rosenzweig in 1936 and again by Sol Garfield in 1957. Frank's book emphasized the importance of (a) the therapeutic relationship, (b) the therapist's ability to explain the client's problems, (c) the client's expectation of change, and (d) the use of healing rituals. Later theorists emphasized other factors like feedback and empathy that are sub-components of the therapeutic relationship, and that can be clearly differentiated from specific behavior-change techniques like cognitive restructuring or behavioral reinforcement . Additional aspects of therapy that are sometimes identified as common factors include the opportunity to confront difficult past experiences, the opportunity for a "corrective emotional experience" with the therapist, and the chance t...

A colleague sent me this video from the UK's Royal Society, about overcoming bias in the review process for scientific grants:  https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2015/unconscious-bias/ . I particularly like the depiction of bias as Alice falling down the rabbit hole, although I'm not sure the Mad Hatter is the best representative for rational thought! The video's main argument is that bias is primarily a function of the Intuitive Mind, which uses fast-and-cheap heuristics to make snap judgments about the world. Unfortunately, Intuitive-level heuristics sometimes lead us astray, for example resulting in fewer successful applications by minority scientists, or from people who didn't attend the top tier of schools in their own education. The video suggests that the Narrative Mind can provide an antidote to this kind of flawed thinking, which is also Daniel Kahneman's primary message in the book that popularized the idea of two mental systems, Thinkin...

With Aimee Techau In a new review article , my colleague Aimee Techau looks at the effect that chronic inflammation might have on people’s ability to follow through with treatment for substance use disorders. Many people who start treatment for substance use disorders drop out in the first few months — in our recent research as many as 70%! Dropping out doesn’t necessarily mean that people relapsed, but it certainly suggests they aren’t getting the full benefit of treatment. In a number of studies, predicting treatment failures of this kind has proven difficult. Aimee’s new paper suggests a biological marker — inflammation — that might help to explain why some patients drop out, and that might therefore be useful in predicting or even preventing this problem. Inflammation is a problem that’s common to many chronic diseases . It’s part of the body’s basic response to infection and helps the immune system do its work. But inflammation also can result from long-term illness or psychologic...