One of the key principles of Solution-Focus practice is that “The Action is in the Inter-Action”, as Mark McKergow and Paul Z Jackson brilliantly put it. Which means that we “co-construct” meaning and solutions in the interaction.

But how?

This is where microanalysis comes in. Pioneered and extensively used by Janet Beavin Bavelas and her research group at the University of Victoria, microanalysis is defined as “the detailed and reliable examination of observable communication sequences as they proceed, moment by moment, in the dialogue”….

My guest post on Microanalysis in Coert Visser’s Blog.

Read more here >>>>>> http://solutionfocusedchange.blogspot.com/2012/01/microanalysys-showing-details-of-how.html

Tags: added words, CBT, Change, empiricism, InterAction, Janet Beavin Bavelas, language, MI, microanalysis, positive content, science, SFBT, Solution Focus

Here is my rule-of-thumb regarding “social media”:

- I use this blog to share observations, thoughts, reflections about (Solution-Focused) Coaching, Training and Consulting.

- I use my business FaceBook page http://www.facebook.com/paoloterni to post daily links to articles or blog posts that might be relevant to Coaches,  Therapists, Trainers and Consultants. If interested, just “like” the page and the links will appear in your FB newsfeed.

I decided to break my own guidelines and post here the following link —>  http://lifehacker.com/5867049/nine-stubborn-brain-myths-that-just-wont-die-debunked-by-science

And here is the summary:
Nine Stubborn Brain Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science
Brain games will make you smarter! The internet is making you dumber! Alcohol is killing your brain cells! The brain is a mystery we’ve been trying to solve for ages, and the desire to unlock its secrets has led to vast amounts of misinformation. Many of these false notions are more widely believed than the truth. We took our healthy skepticism and a bunch of brain research to find the truth behind some of the most common myths about intelligence and our brains. Here’s what we learned.

Tags: alcohol, Brain, brain games, Debunking, internet, left-brain, memory, Mozart effect, Myths, neuroscience, research, right-brain, science, Skepticism

I loved reading Timothy Wilson’s Strangers to Ourselves. It introduced me to the concept of “Adaptive Unconscious”. And it is the book on which Malcolm Gladwell based his bestseller, Blink.

I loved even more reading Timothy Wilson’s latest book, “Re-Direct: the Surprising New Science of Psychological Change“. A must-read. Science-based. Full of interesting information and insights. And the “story-editing” approach Wilson advocates shares with Solution-Focus the same strategy: a brief intervention that has self-sustaining effects leading to long lasting changes in behaviors.

Wilson’s approach is based on the idea that it is all about the interpretations we give to events – not about the events themselves.
Not a novel idea, since it was one of the cornerstones of Stoic thinkers.
But now we have the science to test this approach and… it works!

The interventions Wilson puts under the “story editing” umbrella follow one of the following strategies to change the stories people tell themselves:

• redirecting the narrative in a way that leads to lasting change: exercises, like Pennebaker’s writing protocol, which are useful for people who have failed to come up with a coherent interpretation of an event that does not make sense and / or it is unpleasant to think about (e.g., trauma)
• story prompting – redirecting people down a particular narrative path with subtle prompts; for example, by giving people information that would allow them to reframe their experiences. E.g. students might interpret their academic difficulties when they start college as a sign they are not cut out for it; simply showing them data that tells them experiencing difficulties at first isnormal, in addition to a video of peers saying they too experienced difficulties when they started, is enough to have a significant impact
• do good, be good; as Aristotle said, “we become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlling by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.”  So by acting in a certain way, people shape their narratives in ways that are helpful to them. E.g., they act kindly and so they get to think of themselves as kind persons.

One of the most interesting point made by the author is that while we thoroughly test drugs before putting them on the market, we do not do the same with psychological interventions. As a result, much money and effort has been spent on programs that seem to make sense – but do not work. One example: D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education).

It gets worse. Not only some programs or interventions do not work – they might actually be harmful. Among these: CISD (Critical Incident Stress Debrief); “Scared-straight” programs like R.I.P. (Restoring Inner-city Peace). Bottom line: test first, roll out later. Not vice-versa!

But as I mentioned, the book is not about what does not work – it is about what works in facilitating self-sustaining, and therefore long-lasting, change.

You will learn about a technique that, again, was conceived by the Stoics – negative visualization. You will learn about the power of volunteering for keeping teenagers out of trouble. You will learn about the tricky but effective “minimal sufficiency principle“. And you will learn about how a simple 15-minute writing assignment allowed students to close the achievement gap. Among many other things… and it is all in —> here.

Tags: attribution theory, book, long-lasting change, psychological change, Re-Direct, research, review, science, small interventions, Story-editing, strangers to ourselves, Timothy D. Wilson, What works, Wilson

Michael Shermer’s “The Believing Brain” is a gem: a treatise on the brain as a “belief engine”.

I strongly recommend it: Shermer shows how “dependent our beliefs are on a multitude of subjective, personal, emotional and psychological factors”; how belief systems are “formed, nourished, reinforced, changed and extinguished”; how belief systems operate ‘”with regard to belief in religion, the afterlife, God, extraterrestrial, conspiracies, politics, economics and ideologies”; and finally how we know which beliefs are true and which are false.

Here are a few selected quotes – I hope you find them intriguing enough to make you want to get the book and read it.

On how we form beliefs:

“The first process I call patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data.

…

The second process I call agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.

…

These meaningful patterns become beliefs, and these beliefs shape our understanding of reality. Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs..”

On belief- dependent realisms:

“In fact, all models of the world, not just scientific models, are foundational to our beliefs, and belief-dependent realism means that we cannot escape this epistemological trap. We can, however, employ the tools of science, which are designed to test whether or not a particular model or belief about reality matches observations made not just by ourselves but by others as well.”

“What you believe is what you see. The label is the behavior. Theory molds data. Concepts determine percepts. Belief-dependent realism.”

On the relationship between “believing weird things” and intelligence:

“A common myth most of us intuitively accept is that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and belief: as intelligence goes up belief in superstition or magic goes down. This, in fact, turns out not to be the case, especially as you move up the IQ spectrum… once people commit to a belief, the smarter they are the better they are at rationalizing those beliefs. Thus: smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.”

On why it makes sense we evolved to err on the “false positive” side, i.e. believing something is real when it is not

“If you assume that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator but it turns out that it is just the wind, you have made what is called a Type I error in cognition, also known as a false positive, or believing something is real when it is not. That is, you have found a nonexistent pattern.

…

“If you assume that the rustle in the grass is just the wind but it turns out that it is a dangerous predator, you have made what is called a Type II error in cognition, also known as a false negative, or believing something is not real when it is. That is, you have missed a real pattern.”

“[our] default position is to assume that all patterns are real; that is, assume that all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators and not the wind.”

…

“Several psychological studies appear to support [seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch] Spinoza’s conjecture that the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit acceptance of its being true, whereas disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection,…”

On science vs. anecdotal thinking:

“Anecdotal thinking comes naturally, science requires training.”

On how behaviors that were highly adaptive in the past misfire in today’s environment:

“(A) sweet and rich foods are strongly associated with (B) nutritious and rare. Therefore, we gravitate to any and all foods that are sweet and rich, and because they were once rare we have no satiation network in the brain that tells us to shut off the hunger mechanism, so we eat as much as we can of them.”

On uncertainty and “magic thinking”:

“Uncertainty makes people anxious, and anxiety is related to magical thinking.”

On reductionism:

“All experience is mediated by the brain. The mind is what the brain does. There is no such thing as “mind” per se, outside of brain activity. Mind is just a word we use to describe neural activity in the brain. No brain, no mind.”

On the relationship between creativity and madness:

“The connection between patternicity, creativity, and madness comes from a thinking style that is too all inclusive and that indiscriminately sees patterns everywhere.”

On religious attitudes and genetics:

“approximately 55 percent of the variance in religious attitudes is genetic, approximately 39 percent can be attributed to the nonshared environment, approximately 5 percent is unassigned, and only about 3 percent is attributable to the shared family environment”

On liberals vs. conservatives:

“Liberals are higher than conservatives on 1 and 2 (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity), but lower than conservatives on 3, 4, and 5 (in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity).”

…

“…a more reflective approach is to recognize that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral values and tend to sort themselves into these two clusters.”

On being realistic vs. political utopias:

“Good fences make good neighbors because evil people really are part of the moral landscape.”

On libertarianism:

“Ludwig von Mises was first among equals; he taught me that interventionism leads to more interventionism, and that if you can intervene to protect individuals from dangerous drugs, what about dangerous ideas?”

“Principle of Freedom: all people are free to think, believe, and act as they choose, so long as they do not infringe on the equal freedom of others.”

“… a dozen essentials to liberty and freedom that need shielding from encroachment:   1. The rule of law.   2. Property rights.   3. Economic stability through a secure and trustworthy banking and monetary system.   4. A reliable infrastructure and the freedom to move about the country.   5. Freedom of speech and the press.   6. Freedom of association.   7. Mass education.   8. Protection of civil liberties.   9. A robust military for protection of our liberties from attacks by other states. 10. A potent police force for protection of our freedoms from attacks by other people within the state. 11. A viable legislative system for establishing fair and just laws. 12. An effective judicial system for the equitable enforcement of those fair and just laws.”

“Organizing libertarians is like herding cats.”

On science:

“Feynman echoed Galileo’s principle in his observation about determining if your theory is right or wrong: “If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

“Science begins with something called a null hypothesis.

…

the hypothesis under investigation is not true, or null, until proven otherwise. A null hypothesis states that X does not cause Y. If you think X does cause Y then the burden of proof is on you to provide convincing experimental data to reject the null hypothesis.”

“So many claims of this nature are based on negative evidence. That is, if science cannot explain X, then your explanation for X is necessarily true. Not so. In science lots of mysteries remain unexplained until further evidence arises, and problems are often left unsolved until another day.”

On skepticism:

“A skeptic simply does not believe a knowledge claim until sufficient evidence is presented to reject the null hypothesis (that a knowledge claim is not true until proven otherwise).”

_______________

And this is just a sample.

In the book you can also find: a complete and detailed list of cognitive biases; an interesting account of the neuroscience of beliefs; a great (and very respectful) chapter on religion, atheism and agnosticism; insightful stories about Michael Shermer’s own life; well written stories about the emergence of science (e.g. about Galileo and the reaction to his discoveries)… and more!

Tags: beliefs, cognitive biases, libertarianism, Michael Shermer, neuroscience, science, Skepticism, The Believing Brain

Since I am taking a short vacation, I will not be posting again in 2 weeks (my usual interval between posts) but in 4 weeks. To compensate for it, here is an extra-long post. Enjoy!

I am going to contrast and compare two different books: Dan Ariely’s latest, The Upside of Irrationality; and Daniel Pink’s  Drive.

Both books are terrific. They read very well. They are very engaging. The authors make an extra effort to illustrate their concepts in the simplest and most understandable way. They both use metaphors that are clear and effective in their power to explain. Not only these two books are a pleasure to read – they are also very informative.

Ariely’s book is sort of a sequel to his hugely successful Predictably Irrational: the Hidden Forces that Shape our Behavior. However in The Upside of Irrationality Dan Ariely’s takes a more compassionate stance towards the bias that make us irrational decision makers, a.k.a. humans. In keeping with this softer perspective, the book shines with many personal stories that are going to touch the reader. And it is no accident that the focus of this book is not “the consumers’” behavior but how people behave at work and in their own personal life. So we have 5 chapters about “how we defy logic at work”, and another 5 about “how we defy logic at home”.

Dan Pink’ s Drive feeds on the work of Ariely and many others on the science of motivation. Pink is a master in making the insights gained by recent research  understandable and readily usable by managers and businessmen. Drive is a call for a general and comprehensive rethinking of the ways in which we organize what we do.  Pink’s metaphor of assumptions that societies have about human behavior as being their operating system is brilliant and enlightening in and of itself! Moreover, the second part of the book is a treasure trove of practical advice - simple strategies to implement the ideas illustrated in Drive.
Continue reading…

Tags: book review, brief coaching, coaching, Dan Ariely, Daniel Pink, Drive, epistemology, marketing, motivation, psychological bias, science, The Upside of Irrationality, training

In Solution-Focused practice we ask clients to visualize their perfect future, usually by asking the “Miracle Question”. Research has demonstrated that visualization does not work to help people change. Doesn’t this result invalidate a very important tool of SF practitioners?

This is the question that we are going to answer in this post.

First of all, let’s see what research has shown so far.

According to some studies, visualizing a perfect future, where all your goals have been achieved, is:
a) ineffective to help people change
b) effective for feeling good.

a) ineffective to help people change
In a study by Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor at the University of California, students were asked to visualize themselves getting a high grade in an important mid-term exam; they were then asked to keep track of the amount of hours they studied. Compared to a control group of students, the experiment subjects ended up studying less and getting worse grades.
Gabriele Oettingen & colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania conducted  several studies about entertaining positive fantasies. The result: those who have more positive fantasies do worse than those who have negative fantasies. For example: obese women taking part in a weight-loss program were asked to imagine how they would behave in different tempting situations related to food, e.g. being tempted by ice cream at a friend’s house. The women who had more positive visualizations (e.g. “I would not budge, I would just ignore the ice cream, keep chit chatting and be good”) lost on average, after a year, 26 pounds LESS that those with more negative visualizations (e.g. “I would sit there and feed my face with the ice cream”).  Oettingen found that the same negative effect of entertaining positive fantasies applies in the realm of romantic relationships. hip replacement surgery and career success (e.g., in a two-year follow-up, among Oettinger’s students who, as seniors, were asked how often they fantasized about getting a dream job, those who fantasized the most about it had submitted fewer job applications, received a lower number of job offers and had lower salaries than the others).
Why visualizing a positive outcome does not help is not clear; professor Richard Wiseman, in his book 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, speculates that subjects who fantasize positive outcomes are either not prepared for the inevitable setbacks they might encounter in their path towards their goals or they indulge in the fantasy and so are less likely to actually do something to make the fantasy real.

But wait! There is more!!
It turns out that “event-simulation” is better than “outcome simulation”.
Some UCLA students were divided into 3 groups: a control group, an “event-simulation” group and an “outcome simluation” group (study described here, p.210-211).
They were all asked to think about a problem that was “stressing them out” and they were all given some generic instructions about problem-solving. Then the “control group” was sent home. The “event-simulation” group was asked to visualize how the problem arose: “visualize the beginning of the problem, going over in detail the first incident… Go over the incidents as they occurred step by step. Visualize the actions you took. Remember what you said, what you did. Visualize the environment, who was around, where you were”. The “outcome-simulation” group was asked instead to visualize a positive outcome: “picture this problem beginning to resolve, you are coming out  of the stressful situation… Picture the relief you feel. Visualize the satisfaction you would feel at having dealt with the problem. Picture the confidence you feel in yourself, knowing that you have dealt successfully with the problem.”
The “event-simulation” group did much better: by the first day they had a positive mood boost compared to the other groups; a week later, they were more likely to have taken action to solve the problem, to have sought advice and support from others; they were also more likely to report growth and learning.

…mmmm… the evidence for visualization as a tool for change seems to converge on one result… it does NOT work.

b) effective for feeling good.

There is however a silver lining in all this research: outcome visualization does work in making people feel better. Laura King at Southern Methodist University had subjects write about their ideal future, i.e. a future where all had gone as well as could reasonably be expected and in which all their aspirations had been met. Compared to a group that was asked to write about a negative event that happened to them and a control group what was asked to write about their plans, those who elaborated on their perfect future ended up significantly happier than those in other groups.

So were does all this research leave us?
Should we throw away the Miracle Question and the concept of “preferred future”?

No.
And here is why.

As usual, it is all in the details.

The kind of visualization investigated in the above mentioned studies is very different from visualizing a preferred future, as it is understood in SF practice.
In SF practice, clients are asked to imagine their problems have been miraculously solved. In a way, this is an “outcome-based” suggestion – clients’ goals have been met, they made it.
However, this is just the first part of the “Miracle Question”.
This part has value: as demonstrated by the research mentioned above, visualizing the perfect future does make people feel better – it boosts positive moods. And we know that when people are in a good mood, they think better, they are more creative and they make better decisions – this is the core of the “broaden and build theory” put forward by Barbara Fredrickson. I am not the first one to make this connection: see the excellent article by Carey Glass published in the May 2009 issue of InterAction Journal.

Then there is the second part of the “Miracle Question”.
As Insoo Kim Berg and Peter De Jong remarked, the “Miracle Question” is just an opening gambit – the SF practitioner needs then to exploit the impact of the question with a proper follow-up.
The proper follow-up is, for all intent and purposes, an “event-simulation”: clients are asked what the first small signs are that tell them a miracle happened. They are invited to go through the “day after the miracle” focusing on small, concrete, observable specific behaviors.

Clients are not asked to elaborate on how great they would feel, they are not encouraged to indulge an escapist fantasy – rather, they are invited to elaborate on the behavioral details that tell them they are feeling great; on how other people would notice; on what they would be doing differently, then. In the study mentioned above, participants in the “event-simulation” condition are asked to notice what they said, what they did, where they where, who was around them. These very same questions are part of the proper follow-up to a Miracle Question – the only difference is that instead of simulating the problem, we are asking clients to simulate the solution (not the outcome – i.e. we are asking clients to describe what they are doing differently that leads them to the desired outcome rather than just describing the desired outcome). Incidentally, “event-simulation” visualizations are even more effective if people see themselves from the perspective of a third person – this is additional scientific support for the SF practice of always introducing a third-party perspective in the follow-up to the Miracle Question, when going through the “day after the miracle” with clients.

Notice another thing. If you clicked on the links above to Oettinger’s papers, you would have noticed that Oettinger and her team made a distinction between expectations and fantasies: study participants with positive expectations but negative fantasies had the best outcomes, while participants with pessimistic expectations but positive fantasies were the ones with the worst outcomes. In this article I am making the case that in SF practice we are NOT asking clients to fantasize; on the other hand, SF practice is all about creating positive expectations, as brilliantly demonstrated by Coert Visser here.

A clue that SF is on the right track in the use of visualization procedures that work is in the solution of the dilemma presented by Prof. Wiseman: how can me use the positive aspects of outcome visualization, i.e. boosting positive moods, without having the negative aspects (less actions taken to actually solve the problem)? Prof. Wiseman’s answer, based again on the research carried out by Oettingen and others: a procedure that involves asking people first “to fantasize about reaching the goal” and “noting the top two benefits that would flow from such an achievement” and then “to reflect on the kind of barriers and problems that they are likely to encounter… and again make note of the top two issues”. Once participants have done that, a sort of back-and-forth movement between fantasy and reality is implemented: people are asked to reflect and to elaborate on their first benefit, and then to think about the biggest hurdle, more specifically what they would do if they encountered the difficulty. True, this is not SF. However, we can appreciate some of the same ingredients and the same dynamic. E.g.: people are asked to elaborate on the benefits, i.e. on how their life would be different once they reach their goals – this is what we do when we ask clients to describe what they would be doing differently once their problem is solved or their goal is reached. Then people are asked to elaborate on reality, e.g. what to do re obstacle X; in SF we ask people what they did in the past that worked re overcoming obstacle X. We can also appreciate the same dynamic: in the work of Oettinger it is a back-and-forth movement between “fantasy about a desired future” and “reflections on present reality”; in SF the movement is between the  ”preferred future”and “exceptions in reality”.

That SF is on the right track, i.e. its protocols use  visualization that works, is demonstrated by how a third group of students performed in the mid-term exam in the study carried out by Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor mentioned at the beginning of our article. Remember that one group was asked to visualize themselves as obtaining good grades, while the control group was not asked anything; there was a third group. Participants in this third group were asked to visualize themselves in the process of studying, including details of when, where and how they intended to study. This is the group that had the best outcome: they put in more hours and they got higher grades than any of the other two groups.
So it turns out the best use of visualization is to picture oneself performing successfully rather than just having achieved success.
Isn’t this what we are inviting clients to do when we ask them what they are doing differently in their preferred future?

Tags: evidence, preferred future, research, science, Solution Focused, visualization