Two Minds Blog

  This week I’m considering a powerful tool for behavior change: the humble checklist. The oldest historical example of this writing genre may be the Sumerian King List from 1800 B.C., but people were likely using lists even earlier for mundane tasks connected to record-keeping and trade. Benjamin Franklin tracked his progress in developing moral virtues using an elaborate list system. The popular FranklinCovey planner system  therefore takes its name from America's first ambassador. Checklists in their current widespread form also benefitted from the advent of mail-order catalogs in the mid-1800s, which encouraged consumers to list the items they wanted ( Franklin also had a hand in developing the first printed catalogs!). Lists helps us to keep track of things that we might otherwise forget, to put things in a meaningful order, and give us permission to drop things from our memory when we don’t need to remember them any longer.  A checklist has two essential features...

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly called “multiple personality” disorder, is one of the more unusual conditions in the spectrum of mental health. It is relatively rare, affecting only about 1.5% of people in the world over the course of their lives, and despite its intense and distinctive symptoms it is frequently misdiagnosed as one of several other behavioral conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder , or depression . The prior name "multiple personality disorder" (MPD) was confusing because DID was never considered to be a personality  disorder -- those are a cluster of problems related to people's interactions with others or the world, which tend not to be distressing to the patient but are often distressing to those around them. DID, by contrast, is often confusing or frightening to the person experiencing symptoms. The disorder's key characteristic is "disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, w...

The  Theory of Planned Behavior , originally proposed in 1967 by psychologists Izak Ajzen and Martin Fishbein as the  Theory of Reasoned Action , remains one of the most widely-used psychological theories in the field of health behavior today. It's a classic for a reason -- its predictions have held up in hundreds of studies, it is intuitively appealing, and it is complex enough that much research can still be done around the edges. I have used the Theory of Planned Behavior  in my own research , and I recently worked with two junior colleagues who are using it as the basis for their papers or grant applications. I truly do admire this model. The only problem, as I hope to demonstrate, is that it doesn't predict behavior. The basic theory, shown at the top of the page, proposes that people hold three different types of attitudes about a health behavior, and that each of these affects their level of intention to engage in the behavior. People's intentions are then expected...

People are fond of talking about social media use as an " addiction ," and even describe the process of weaning ourselves off using it as " withdrawal ." Research does suggest that social media use can produce a dopamine release in the brain's reward centers, and that it is particularly appealing for people (a) who have a generally less organized approach to life [low "conscientiousness" personality trait], and/or (b) have higher than normal levels of narcissism. Extroverts and introverts can both be heavy social media users, although for different reasons: Extroverts do it to enhance their self-perception or their own reputation, while introverts do it to compensate for difficulty connecting with people in other ways.  Excessive social media use does have some documented negative effects, particularly for adolescents in terms of sleep deprivation, impaired academic performance, and increased suicidal ideation or behavior. High levels of social media...

  The corpus callosum  is a thick bundle of neural fibers that runs down the middle of the cortex, at the bottom of the longitudinal fissure (the long fold in the brain that divides its two hemispheres). Because of the longitudinal fissure, signal traffic between the left and right side of the cortex is limited. The corpus callosum is the superhighway through which most of that traffic flows. Signals can still get from one place to another using side routes, of course, again much like a road system. But it's a lot slower and less efficient to go the long way around, and fewer signals can make it through that way. Note that only the brain's cerebral cortex  is divided in this way -- the "gray matter" that forms the outside of the brain, and where we like to think that our "higher thinking" resides. The "white matter" on the inside of the brain doesn't have the same left/right dichotomy, only the cortex does.  You might recall that I argue for a...

Readers of my blog may be interested in this recent event from Valparaiso University’s Christ College, where students debated the proposition “on balance, the rise of Artificial Intelligence harms students more than it helps them.” (So the “pro” team was arguing against students using AI, and the “con” team was arguing that it’s OK). If you work in education, or are just an interested observer, you might be intrigued by what these bright students thought were the most compelling reasons for and against their own use of emerging artificial intelligence technologies. I should note that both sides were explicitly instructed not to bring up the issue of reliability or AI-generated “hallucinations,” because it was felt that this would distract from the main question. That’s probably fair, as hallucinations have gotten a lot of press yet are also decreasing in frequency and severity with each new iteration of the technology. My daughter Ruth was one of the speakers for the “pro” side, but I ...

Here's a story about a very unusual experience that I had in connection with the Regenerating Images in Memory (RIM) technique that my research team is currently studying. It's a fish story, and like all good fish stories you can decide what you'd like to believe about it. At the end of the fall semester, when everyone was overwhelmed with final grades and holiday events, my colleague Laurra Aagaard led an activity in our monthly faculty meeting to help us manage our stress. After asking us to close our eyes and breathe deeply, she asked us to descend into whatever part of our body felt like a source of calm in the end-of-the-semester storm. For me, this felt like sinking deep into my chest, but also like I was going deep underwater. It was calm and cool there, far from the activity back up on the surface. Laurra suggested that a resource would appear to support us. Because I was underwater, what I noticed near me was a fish.  It wasn't just any fish. In fact, I realize...