Category Archives: Explorations Outside the Box

The Self-Control Triad

Explorations Outside the Box

Self-control operates much like a cybernetic feedback system and includes 3 interacting components: the setpoint, a discrepancy, and the correction (or reduction of discrepancy). In order to successfully exercise self-control, one must have a setpoint (where do I want to be: a goal), detect discrepancies between where am I now and the setpoint, and then have the ability to reduce or eliminate the discrepancy. Put simply: self-control requires a goal, an obstacle, and the ability to overcome the obstacle.

Self-control training must target all three parts of the triad.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Everything is more complicated than a few sentences.

References:
Michael Inzlicht, Lisa Legault, and Rimma Teper , Exploring the Mechanisms of Self-Control Improvement. Current Directions in Psychological Science 2014, Vol. 23(4) 302–307.

Cziko, Gary The Things We Do: Using the Insights of Bernard and Darwin to Understand the What, How and Why of Behavior, published by MIT Press 2000.

Willpower and the Big Picture

Explorations Outside the Box

Kelly McGonigal defines willpower as “the ability to do what you really want to do when part of you really doesn’t want to do it.” It consists of three competing elements: 1) I will – the ability to do what you need to do; 2) I won’t – the other side of self-control; the inability to resist temptation; and 3) I want – your true want, the ability to remember the big picture of your life.

Often when we castigate ourselves for impulsive actions, we  say we weren’t “thinking”. I interpret that as saying we weren’t considering the Big Picture. We were operating on a concrete level, not thinking beyond the moment.

Reference: McGonigal, K. (2012). The willpower instinct: How self-control works, why it matters and what you can do to get more of it. New York: Avery.

The mind doesn’t wander – it goes places.

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness

“Mind wandering” conjures up an image of random, accidental, and aimless thought fragments going hither and yon like a drunken sailor.  My perspective is much more like Smallwood and Schooler (2006), in which they describe mind wandering as a “goal-driven process”. A lot of mind wandering does seem to be on a mission of sorts: rehearsing, planning, rehashing – as if trying to achieve resolution to some sort of unfinished business. Unfinished business implies a goal – something has not been achieved.

Of course, many of these mental missions are aborted mid-stream, as life and other missions intervene.

Reference: Smallwood, J.,&Schooler, J.W. (2006). The restless mind. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 946–58.

Acceptance and Elaboration

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness

We’ve all been advised to “accept” some bad thing. You know: “it is what it is”, “embrace the suck”, and variations thereof. But what does it mean to accept something? How does acceptance come about? Acceptance seems to set up a desensitizing process, where the initial stage of an unpleasant reaction isn’t resisted but allowed to waft through one, allowing the reaction to ebb and flow out and not amplify into a full-blown attack of overwhelming emotion.

A variation on attachment theory may shed some light on why acceptance may have desensitizing effects. If one is intentionally allowing the feeling, there is an internal counterweight that functions like an anchor, providing a calmer point of reference. Like a safe haven in the attachment literature, but instead of being Mama, it’s internal – a point of calm: “I’m here – go out, explore, but know I’m here and you can come back to me any time”. Yes, it can be scary and sad out there but I’m here.

In academic circles, “getting caught up” in thoughts is sometimes called “elaboration”. Elaboration is often considered a pathological process that can lead to intensification of depression (how much does life suck? Let me count the ways), anxiety (what awful things have happened or might happen?) and addictive cravings (oh, how good it’s going to be when I get my hands on some …). In some circumstances and for some people, elaboration can be harmful or at least unproductive.

But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Elaboration is a thought-generative process and generating thoughts can be a good thing. Whether trying to figure out what went wrong when a well-laid plan went astray, when a good intention backfired, or when receiving an unexpected bad work performance review – thinking back, reconstructing, examining past behavior, looking for possible lacuna that led to bad decisions, throwing out hypotheticals and – yes, a little obsession – can be useful. This type of elaboration can help us learn from our mistakes.

Elaboration also promotes creativity, planning, and problem-solving. Thinking about possible obstacles to goals is essential to goal achievement. So is thinking about what matters and what’s rewarding. Coming up with counterfactuals is part of strategic thinking. Considering how one’s own behavioral tendencies may undermine important values and goals, that’s good. Endless rumination over one’s weaknesses or bad behavior maybe not so good. It all depends….

Loosen Those Chains of Certainty!

Explorations Outside the Box

For those who want to understand the Other Side better, here’s a few do’s and don’ts:

Don’t paint the Other Side with a broad brush; realize there is a range of opinions within all groups.

Don’t attribute the opinions of the most extreme of the Other Side to the whole group.

Don’t psychologize or otherwise reduce opinions you don’t share to the personal qualities or motives of those who hold them.

Don’t mindread – that is, ignore the Other Side’s expressed thoughts and motivations in favor of what you consider their “real” thoughts and motivations.

Don’t indulge in caricature or cartoonish portrayals of the Other Side.

Do try to engage the Other Side’s arguments on their merits.

Do try to see that many disagreements turn out to be a matter of degree and not absolutes.

Do try to find the common ground – and then try to expand it.

Do try to understand the relation between what seems to be irrational statements and the broader reality they speak to. When in doubt, ask – start a dialogue.

Be humble. Loosen those chains of certainty. Listen. Disagreements about fact or emphasis won’t completely disappear but the extent of disagreement will shrink, making compromise and constructive problem-solving much more likely.

Observing Thoughts and Surrendering to Thoughts

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness

Observing thoughts is like registering words without trying to understand what is being said. If we’re talking to someone, we want them to listen to us, not observe us. Listening requires relinquishing control, allowing oneself to enter another world – to be taken into that world. To follow the sprites. Listening involves a lot of non-listening – attention to something other than the just the words: gestures, facial expressions, inflections, interpretations of what we’re hearing, inchoate reactions, incipient responses partly rehearsed. All this happens very quickly, on the order of seconds and milliseconds, much of it non-verbal. Thanks to echoic and working memory, and a speed of cognitive processing faster than the speed of talking, we can still do a pretty good job of following what somebody is saying even though our attention is not always fastened on the words.

So it is with listening to our thoughts:  they speak and we weave in and out of listening to them, weaving out being just as important to understanding, learning, accepting, rejecting, appreciating, inferring, having one’s assumptions tested, realizing an unknown that had been an unknown unknown, and all those other happy accidents made possible by a mix of control and surrendering control that enriches our lives.  Going astray is part of the risk of yielding. We try to control risk by pulling back and “observing” but there is no movement without being sucked in.

Does psychotherapy work and why

Explorations Outside the Box, Scientific Encounters

Let’s define “work” simply as of perceived benefit to the individual.

In a previous Scientific Encounters post, I provided “percentage of variability of outcomes” in psychotherapy – care of Laska and Gurman (2014) and Lambert and Bergin (1994).

Here they are again:

Factors common to all effective therapies: 43%

Differences between treatments – <1.0

Specific ingredients of therapies and treatments – 0.0

Adherence to protocol – <0.1

Rated competence in delivering particular treatment – 0.5

Extra-therapeutic events: 40%

Placebo effect (expectations): 15%

Per Laska and Gurman, “common factors” are those that are “necessary and sufficient for change: (a) an emotionally charged bond between the therapist and patient, (b) a confiding healing setting in which therapy takes place, (c) a therapist who provides a psychologically derived and culturally embedded explanation for emotional distress, (d) an explanation that is adaptive (i.e., provides viable and believable options for overcoming specific difficulties) and is accepted by the patient, and (e) a set of procedures or rituals engaged by the patient and therapist that leads the patient to enact something that is positive, helpful, or adaptive.” (p. 469)

Given that trust in a therapist and an “adaptive” explanation create expectations of improvement, it seems to me that the distinction between common factors and the placebo effect is somewhat arbitrary and artificial. Be that as it may, the picture in clear: subtract common factors, placebo effect, and life events, and the actual type of therapy doesn’t seem to matter all that much.

I don’t quite buy it. Partly because separating out the variables in such a clean-cut way is devilishly hard. For instance, did the authors of these studies distinguish between “extra-therapeutic events” that were probably independent of therapy, such as inheriting a ton of money, and those that may have come about, at least in part, because of therapy, such as finding a soul mate. After all, certain behaviors make certain events more or less likely and therapy often targets behavior and the things that influence behavior, like anxiety, social competence and self-confidence.

It may be that successful therapies work not only because of the common factors and  placebo effect but because they include specific ingredients that make it more likely beneficial life events will occur. The efficacy of these ingredients may be hard to detect, because their effects vary according to the person and situation. Some approaches/skills/strategies are useful for some individuals and situations but not for others – no one size fits all. But that isn’t saying the effects aren’t there.

References

Kevin M. Laska and Alan S. Gurman Expanding the Lens of Evidence-Based Practice in Psychotherapy: A Common Factors Perspective 2014, Vol. 51, No. 4, 467–481.

Lambert, M. J., & Bergin, A. E. (1994). The effectiveness of psychotherapy. In A. E. Bergin & S. L. Garfield (Eds.), Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change (4th ed., pp. 143–189). New York, NY: Wiley.

Variations of Power

Explorations Outside the Box

A few types of Power: Control over Resources, Control over Rewards, and Coercion/Punishment. Power is subject to the Law of Personal Exploitation – the person/entity who cares less has the power to exploit the person who cares more (applicable to government services to employer-employee relations to marriages, etc.). This Law is based on the Principle of Least Interest – the person/entity who cares less about continuing & maintaining the relationship has more power (e.g., the person who is less emotionally involved had more power – hence the appeal of “not caring” or coolness as a way to project power).

Powerful people tend to be more authentic (less prone to impression management; less socially anxious; more likely to speak their mind/heart) but also overly self-confident and  prone to excessive risk-taking. Think Donald Trump.

 

Time as a Scarce Resource: Abundance can be Bad for You

Explorations Outside the Box

Having too much time on one’s hands, as in “today I really don’t have to do anything, although I know I should” often leads to inertia and procrastination, which feeds on itself: the longer one delays doing something, the harder it is to just do it. Not doing erodes self-confidence in one’s ability to achieve something through doing. Self-confidence isn’t a willed attitude – if it’s healthy and not delusional, self-confidence is based on accumulating evidence one can do what it takes for the task at hand.

The longer one is out of it, the more psychological barriers to getting back in. None of this is casting aspersions on anyone. I’m not talking about “character”. I’m talking about conditions that undermine moving forward.

Monopolies, Political Communication and the Milgram Experiments

Explorations Outside the Box, Politics and Economics

The thing about monopolies is that they are mostly harmful when they are truly monopolies – that is, there is no real competition for the product/service they provide and the price of entry is steep for potential competitors. But what constitutes the competition is not always obvious. Take Greyhound. Greyhound could be considered a monopoly in some areas of the country, but only when competition is defined as other companies of the same kind, i.e., other bus companies. We know that’s absurd. Greyhound’s competitors are also other forms of transportation: cars, planes, trains. Seen that way, Greyhound is just a teeny company struggling to survive in a jungle full of giants.

Likewise, with political communication: the competition for political ads isn’t just political ads of the unlike-minded; it’s a much broader spectrum of the communicative diet we all feed on: newspapers, movies, TVs, novels, and of course the whole internet. Insofar as one is exposed to a diversity of viewpoints, one is less susceptible to being manipulated to agree with any particular viewpoint. A few alternative sources of information and opinion greatly diminish the influence of Powerful Others, whether they be moneyed interests or scientists in lab coats.

Speaking of which, remember the infamous Milgram experiments? This was where subjects were manipulated to “torture” (in their own minds) people with electrical shocks when scientists in white lab coats bid them to do so – even though much of the time, the subjects expressed qualms and seemed pained by what they were doing. Those experiments produced a “truth” that has passed into the cultural meme-basket: it doesn’t take much to make people do awful stuff. The trappings of authority are enough to command obedience.

My take-home message from the Milgram study is totally different, based on a less well-known variation of the experiment: sometimes another “subject” (actually in cahoots with the researchers) would be witnessed by the real subject. If that phony subject disobeyed requests to administer electric shocks past a certain intensity, chances were the real subject would also refuse. In fact, witnessing just one other “subject” who is seen to disobey the white-coated researcher reduced the level of subject obedience to 10%.

The essential idea here is when there is only one product or viewpoint and there is no exposure to competing products or viewpoints, resistance crumbles.  Even a little competition can make a huge difference.