Two Minds Blog

Hemispheric differentiation  is a popular theory that describes people or behaviors as either "left-brained" using a logical, impersonal, detail-oriented mind, or "right-brained" using a second mind that is more emotional, relational, and expansive. The cortex, which is the top layer of the human brain, does have left and right halves that are separated by a deep canyon called the central sulcus, and each half of the cortex can operate semi-independently. Hemispheric differentiation suggests that differences in behavior arise from different modes of functioning in the left versus right hemispheres of the cortex. TMT would agree in some ways with this analysis, in suggesting that people do have two minds with sometimes divergent goals and characteristically different ways of approaching the world. But TMT locates humans' two minds at different levels of the brain — neocortex versus cingulate cortex and deep-brain structures — rather than in a division between t...

"Reframing" is a technique commonly used in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to replace problematic or unhelpful narratives with more useful or adaptive ones. Here's a fun online tool to help reframe your own narratives:  https://reframe.thnk.org/tool/step/1/   My trial result is shown above. CBT is an evidence-based counseling technique, supported by a large number of high-quality studies . Furthermore, CBT has demonstrated efficacy for a wide range of conditions including mental health conditions, chronic pain, fatigue, substance use, insomnia, eating disorders, self-management of chronic medical conditions, and even reduction of criminal behaviors. Central to CBT is the idea that "dysfunctional thinking (which influences the patient's mood and behavior) is common to all psychological disturbances" and that "when people learn to evaluate their thinking in a more realistic and adaptive way, they experience improvement in their emotional state and...

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...