Two Minds Blog

One of the most exciting things about a new theory is that it can give us a different or deeper understanding of things that we didn’t originally consider when developing the theory itself. This post explores the writing of C. S. Lewis from the perspective of Two Minds Theory. C. S. Lewis is best known as a Christian apologist and the author of the Chronicles of Narnia children’s stories. However, two other facts make him an interesting case study: First, Lewis was a great observer of his own thoughts in books like his early allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Regress , his autobiography  Surprised by Joy, and the journal that he wrote after his wife’s untimely death, A Grief Observed. Second, Lewis was himself a theorist about the workings of the mind. He was an inveterate reader, considered the best-read man in England during his lifetime, and drew routinely on classical as well as contemporary sources in his arguments. This combination of characteristics makes him a fasc...

One of the most exciting things about this historical moment for studying our two minds is the widespread availability of cheap, accessible, consumer-grade sensor devices. Sensors provide data on physiological processes that (a) occur outside people's conscious awareness, (b) are happening all the time in the context of everyday life, and (c) are probably related to mental states or behaviors. These are the ideal characteristics for a measure of the Intuitive System. In previous years many devices were available but only in the context of an artificial laboratory situation, for example in a formal biofeedback intervention or in physiological research. Now many sensors can be worn all the time, and send data back to researchers via wireless upload. Time-stamped data can then be matched with information from other sources like environmental sensors, surveys, or participants' demographic and clinical characteristics (age, disease history, medications, race or ethnicity,  gender...

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...