Two Minds Blog

Eric Schwitzgebel’s (2013) book, Perplexities of Consciousness , offers some interesting observations that call out the limitations of the Narrative mind. Think about your own experiences with the following: Do you dream in color? This question can be surprisingly hard to answer. If you said "yes," are you sure that you actually experienced  your dream in color, versus remembering  it in color now? Schwitzgebel reviews historical data showing that before the 20th century most observers of the mind (e.g., Aristotle, Descartes, Freud) wrote about their dreams with details suggesting they were in color. But in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s less than 40% of people said they dreamed in color, and the well-known psychologist Calvin Hall even said that people had rare "technicolor" dreams that were the exception to the rule. Then, in surveys conducted from 1962 onward, the number of people reporting that they dreamed in color changed to 75% or more. Given that the human br...

In the initial article describing Two Minds Theory, we argued that mindfulness interventions work by strengthening connections between the Narrative and Intuitive systems. We suggested that mindfulness helps to focus the Narrative System on experiences occurring at the Intuitive System level, which could improve decision-making. Like motivational interviewing , mindfulness is a popular intervention approach without a single, clear theoretical foundation, and we suggested that TMT might provide a basis for understanding its effects. A recent review on the state of mindfulness research showed a dramatic increase in references to mindfulness since 2005 in both scientific literature and popular media. But despite this popularity there are still major gaps in the literature including the lack of a standard definition of mindfulness. In some studies mindfulness refers only to an awareness of one’s self or one’s surroundings, while in others it means a set of formal practices such a...

William Miller and Stephen Rollnick’s motivational interviewing (MI) is an approach to conversations that promotes behavior change. Its creators define MI as “a method for exploring and resolving ambivalence.” This method is undeniably effective in promoting behavior change, even among people who don’t initially want to change — MI is supported by over 100 randomized controlled trials with a wide range of problematic behaviors . But why MI is helpful remains an open question. Miller has identified a set of principles underlying the method, and Rollnick suggested that a newer model called self-determination theory might explain why MI works. But at its heart the approach is atheoretical, a set of techniques that works rather than a methodology derived from theory. Miller says that he developed MI in an early practice experience when everything he learned in school had failed, and he stopped to ask the substance abuse patients he was supposed to be treating what he could do that w...

Dr. Kathy Sward spoke at the CU College of Nursing on January 31st about monitoring devices and how informatics will continue to shape the future of health care. As more people have their own personal sensor devices, health systems are beginning to recognize the need for access to users' data. Dr. Sward noted that most people are highly interested  in seeing their own health data (at least for an initial period after receiving the sensor devices), and that they sometimes change their behavior  in response to data. She gave an example from an asthma study, in which a personal air quality sensor revealed more airborne particles after vacuuming, which the study participant tended to do just before her children with asthma came home from school. After seeing the data she started vacuuming earlier in the day, and her children's asthma symptoms were reduced as a result. Personal monitoring devices now include a large array of sensor types, including temperature sensors like t...

Behavioral economics research is an important source for Two Minds Theory.  Behavioral economics is notable for its proposal of bounded rationality , meaning that people do not always think logically because the Narrative System has limited capacity. Therefore, the Intuitive System makes many decisions (although in TMT we argue that the Intuitive system makes all decisions, behavioral economics suggests only that it makes many  of them). To explain the operations of the Intuitive System, behavioral economics researchers have proposed a list of heuristics (mental shortcuts) and biases  (perceptual errors). The exact content of this list varies depending on who is summarizing the literature. Occam's razor is a thinking tool, which suggests that the simplest explanation for any phenomenon is usually the best. Simplicity is evident in many scientific advances, such as Mendelev's periodic table which reduced a long list of elements to just 2 basic principles — atomic weig...

This month the Colorado state legislature is considering expanding an effort by the CU College of Nursing to develop new treatment options for opioid use disorders in rural areas of the state. The College's program was featured in a January 4th article in the Denver Post , and also last week in a piece on health care innovations by Colorado Public Radio . Addiction is perhaps the classic example of Intuitive-System processes overriding Narrative-System ones. But the intractable problems associated with drug use involve both mental systems. The hallmarks of drug addiction are physiological phenomena: tolerance  (needing more of a drug to get the same effect) and withdrawal  (iatrogenic symptoms caused by the lack of a drug when it leaves the body). Together, these processes produce a subjective experience of craving  in which the person has a very strong desire for the drug, a desire that may be experienced as outside of one's own control. In fact, recent research s...

In the health sciences, our students are often taught not to cite papers that are more than 5 or 10 years old. The idea is that knowledge advances rapidly and we shouldn’t be relying on old information. In that context, why does Two Minds Theory make arguments drawn in part from classical sources? One reviewer of our initial theory paper strongly suggested that Plato was a dated reference and therefore should be removed. Our position is that a good theory should be able to accommodate insights from astute observers of the phenomenon in question, regardless of when those observers collected their data. In this case, the phenomenon is human behavior, something that has been of concern to political, religious, and philosophical leaders throughout human history. Humans have evolved slowly enough that our mental apparatus today is substantively the same as it was during each of those historical periods. Therefore, Freud’s observations from 100 years ago should fit within TMT, as should...