Two Minds Blog

We're leery of people lying to us, and often we are well-aware that we can have trouble sorting fiction from truth. That's in part because humans are social animals, highly attuned to what others might think of us, with corresponding pressure to get along and not question the honesty of others in our group. Con men and women are well aware of these facts, and rely on our credulity to take advantage of us, using various persuasion strategies that get around our rational decision-making capabilities. We worry that someone will take advantage of us in this way, and therefore we are highly motivated to detect dishonesty. Penalties for lying can sometimes be extreme, because a lie threatens to undermine the social order of the group. There are lots of proposed ways of detecting a lie, including the idea that someone who looks to one side when speaking isn't telling the truth, the proposal that people who seem hesitant aren't being honest, or the more scientific-sounding appr...

It's great when you are able to successfully make a change in a healthy behavior, like getting more sleep , improving your diet , or reducing your alcohol use. But what happens when you hit a bumpy spot, and things stop going so well for a while? One of the great paradoxes of behavior change is called the abstinence violation effect , also sometimes known as licensing , or simply feeling like you have permission to indulge yourself in an unhealthy behavior. The problem is that when people stop  a new, healthy pattern (for whatever reason), they sometimes really  let things go, and it can be even harder to get back on track than it was to initiate the new behavior in the first place. Let's look at each step in the sequence : First, people work hard to initiate a new behavior. This can take up to 3-6 months of conscious effort before the new habit becomes fully ingrained and automatic, and there are lots of opportunities to get lost along the way. People work hard at changing du...

  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...