Interview with Wally Gingerich

By Coert Visser

Wallace Gingerich is Professor Emeritus of Social Work at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. As a core member of the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee (BFTC), Wisconsin, in the 1980s, he has been an important contributor to the development of the solution-focused approach. In this interview, he looks back on how and why he joined BFCT and on how the solution-focused approach emerged in the next few years after he joined. Also, he talks about the BRIEFER project and about a soon to be published review of the research on the effectiveness of the solution-focused approach. Finally, he reflects on the ways the solution-focused approach may further develop.

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Whistling Vivaldi And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Book Review)

BOOK REVIEW: Steele, C.M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Issues of Our Time). New York, W.W. Norton & Company.

By Coert Visser

This review was first published on Positive Psychology News Daily

This book by social psychologist and Columbia University provost, Claude Steele, is a splendid example of how psychologists can make valuable contributions to society. In the book, Steele writes about the work he and his colleagues have done on a phenomenon called stereotype threat, the tendency to expect, perceive, and be influenced by negative stereotypes about one’s social category, such as one’s age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, profession, nationality, political affiliation, mental health status, and so on.

Experiments demonstrating the impact of stereotype threat

When trying to understand certain performance gaps between groups, Steele and his colleagues did not focus on internal psychological factors.. Instead, they tried to understand the possible causal role of identity contingencies, the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity. Over the years they carried out a series of creative experiments* in which there was a control condition in which a task was given under normal life conditions. In the experimental condition, the identity contingency was either cleverly removed or it was deliberately induced. Here are three examples of experiments to clarify how they worked.

Experiment 1: Steele and Aronson (1995)

In this experiment the researchers had African American and white college students take a very challenging standardized test. In the control condition, the test was presented as these tests are always presented – as a measure of intellectual ability. This condition contained the stereotype that African Americans would be less intelligent. In the experimental condition the test was presented in a non-evaluative way. The test takers were told that the researchers were not interested in measuring their ability with the test but that they just wanted to use the test to examine the psychology of verbal problem solving. In the control condition, the African American test takers, on average, scored much lower than the white test takers. For the white test takers there was no difference in their scores between the control condition and the experimental condition. For the African American test takers there was a big difference between the control condition and the experimental condition. They solved about twice as many problems on the test in the experimental condition. Moreover, there was no difference between the performance of the black test takers and the white test takers.

Experiment 2: Aronson, Lustina, Good, Keough, Steele & Brown (1999)

In this experiment, the researchers asked highly competent white males to take a difficult math test. In the control condition the test was taken normally. In the experimental condition, the researchers told the test takers that one of their reasons for doing the research was to understand why Asians seemed to perform better on these tests. Thus, they artificially created a stereotype threat. In the experimental condition, the test takers solved significantly fewer of the problems on the test and felt less confident about their performance.

Experiment 3: Shih, Pittinsky & Ambady (1999)

In this experiment, a difficult math test was given to Asian women under three conditions. In condition one, they were subtly reminded of their Asian identity, in condition 2 they were subtly reminded of their female identity. In the control condition they were not reminded of their identity. The women reminded of their Asianness performed better than the control group, whereas those reminded of their female identity performed worse than the control group.

How does stereotype threat harm performance?

Today, research on stereotype threat effects is done throughout the world by many researchers. Much insight has been gained into what it is and how it works. Briefly, you know your group identity and you know how society views it. You are aware that you are doing a task for which that view is relevant. You know, at some level, that you are in a predicament: your performance could confirm a bad view of your group and of yourself as a member of that group. You may not consciously feel anxious but your blood pressure rises and you begin to sweat. Your thinking changes. Your mind starts to race: you become vigilant to all things relevant to the threat and to what your chances of avoiding it are. The book title comes from an observed behavior: an African American whistling Vivaldi to make clear that certain stereotypes attached to the group don’t apply. You get some self-doubts and start to worry about how warranted the stereotype may be. You start to constantly monitor how well you are doing. You try hard to suppress threatening thoughts about not doing well or about the negative consequences of possibly failing. While you are having all of these thoughts you are distracted from the task at hand and your concentration and working memory suffer.

Does it always happen? No. There is only one prerequisite for stereotype threat to happen: the person in question must care about the performance in question. The fear of confirming the negative stereotype then becomes upsetting enough to interfere with performance. It is now known that stereotype has the strongest negative impact when people are highly motivated and performing at the frontier of their skills.

Solutions: bridging performance gaps through small interventions

Can something be done about it? Yes. The promising news is that there are some rather small interventions which can help a lot. Experiments have shown that subtly removing or preventing stereotype threats can completely or largely eliminate performance gaps between stereotyped groups and non-stereotyped groups.

Examples of helpful interventions are:

1. Make it clear in the way you give critical feedback that you use high standards and let the person know that you expect him or her to be able to eventually succeed.
2. Improve the number of people from the social category in the setting so that a critical mass is reached.
3. Make it clear that you value diversity.
4. Foster inter-group conversations and frame these as a learning experience.
5. Allow the stereotyped individuals to use self-affirmations.
6. Help the stereotyped individuals to develop a narrative about the setting that explains their frustrations while projecting positive engagement and success in the setting.

Conclusion

The tone of the book is informal, friendly, and personal, and the content is profound. The topic is highly relevant both to the development of social psychology and to the development of our educational systems and societies at large. Of course it also can inspire positive psychology research: how have certain individuals managed to overcome stereotype threat, how do certain organizations manage to bridge performance gaps, how do societies manage to do the same?

References

• Steele, C.M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Issues of Our Time). New York, W.W. Norton & Company.
• Steele, C.M. & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, 797-811

* I am especially in awe of the work Steele has done in collaboration with Joshua Aronson, who is now an eminent professor at New York University.

Self-Determination Theory Meets Solution-Focused Change: Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness Support in Action

By Coert Visser

This article looks at the Solution-Focused approach (SF) through a Self-Determination Theory (SDT) lens. SDT is an influential macro theory of human motivation which has been applied to many life domains, including sports, education, psychotherapy and work. The theory focuses mainly on the benefits of self-determined behaviour and the conditions that promote it. Its relevance for helping professionals such as psychotherapists and counsellors has been recognized by previous authors. A counselling approach which has been associated with SDT is motivational interviewing (MI). This approach has some important similarities to SF but there are also some key differences. This article focuses on the relevance of SDT for SF and vice versa. Although the literature on SF makes only a few mentions of SDT, SF fits well with its main propositions and findings. The strategies, principles and interventions of SF have the effect of supporting the perception of autonomy, competence and relatedness of clients which, according to SDT, are keys to enhance self-determination. It is argued that the SDT framework and body of research are relevant for SF. They help to understand better how SF works and may be used to further refine and develop the approach. In the same way, SDT theorists and practitioners may benefit from learning about the specific and often subtle ways in which SF supports clients’ autonomy.

Full reference to the article: Visser, C.F. (2010). Self-Determination Theory Meets Solution-Focused Change: Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness Support In Action, InterAction - The Journal of Solution Focus in Organisations, Volume 2, Number 1, May 2010 , pp. 7-26(20)

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How Equality Drives Thriving

Coert Visser, 2010


The Relationship between Equality and Thriving

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, two English epidemiologists, have written The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, a provocative book on how high levels of inequality in societies is harmful for everyone within them. Their research shows that while economic policies in developed countries stress the importance of economic growth, economic growth is mainly an important determinant of the degree to which societies thrive. After a certain point the contribution of further economic growth begins to create only diminishing marginal returns: the relationship between economic growth and certain objectively measurable outcomes, like life expectancy, level off (see figure 1).

Source: Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level (2009)

In developed countries, national income per person and economic growth are not the most important predictors of societal thriving but the level of equality. Wilkinson and Pickett’s research shows that many health-related and social problems are associated with the level of inequality of society. Here is how they did their research. They gathered data from 23 of the richest countries in the world from the World Bank and gathered internationally comparable data on the following health and social problems: level of trust, mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction), life expectancy and infant mortality, obesity, children’s educational performance, teenage births, homicides, imprisonment rates, and social mobility. Here is an example of a graph, showing how an index of these measures is related to income inequality.

Source: Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level (2009)

To test and cross-validate their findings, the researchers tested these findings in a new data sample which consisted of the 50 American states. This research confirmed their findings across nations which adds to the credibility of the claims. Below is a graph showing how the index of health and social problems is related to income inequality in US States.

Source: Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level (2009)

The book contains many more graphs showing specific relationships between income inequality and separate measures of societal functioning (see these slides).

Why is this relevant for positive psychology?

Positive psychologists have done much research into how money is associated with happiness and some of their findings, at first glance, seem to be at odds with Wilkinson and Pickett’s findings. Berg and Veenhoven (2010), for instance, found little relationship between income inequality and average happiness in nations. It seems paradoxical that income equality would be related to many objectively measurable problems but hardly at all with happiness. How can one be equally happy when objectively things are worse? What is going on here?

This question takes us back to the original formulation of positive psychology’s mission. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) wrote: “We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise that achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in individuals, families, and communities.” This wonderful definition allows for research to identify any type of determinant of thriving to be found, like personal, motivational, habitual, or situational.

In practice, however, positive psychology is usually more narrowly operationalized. For instance, on the Wikipedia page of February 15, 2010, it is defined as follows: “Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology that studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive”. This definition mentions only strengths and virtues as candidates for causal factors of thriving and it makes no mention at all of contextual, situational or structural factors affecting thriving.

A broader perspective on thriving and its determinants

As psychologists, we have known for a long time how important situational factors are in influencing our perceptions, beliefs, behaviors, feelings, and performance. Wilkinson and Pickett’s research is another example of this and it fits splendidly within the original definition of positive psychology in the sense that it contributes to the scientific understanding of how communities and its members thrive.

Also, it is an illustration of the limitations of using subjective criterion measures in research. Apparently, we can report well-being while objectively things are not going too well, both on an individual level and on a society level. We should not equate thriving or flourishing with subjective well-being. On this Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity, writes: “Flourishing goes beyond happiness, or satisfaction with life. True, people who flourish are happy. But that's not the half of it. Beyond feeling good, they're also doing good -adding value to the world. People who flourish are highly engaged with their families, work, and communities. They're driven by a sense of purpose: they know why they get up in the morning.’

For positive psychology to thrive, it needs to move beyond a somewhat narrow focus on happiness and strengths and take into account a broader perspective on thriving and its determinants.

References

• Berg, M. & Veenhoven, R. (2010). Income inequality and happiness in 119 nations. In search for an optimum that does not appear to exist. In: BentGreve (Ed.) ‘Social Policy and Happiness in Europe’, Edgar Elgar (in press)
• Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity. Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. New York: Crown Publishers.
• Pickett, K. (2010). Why Inequality is bad for your health. http://bigthink.com/ideas/18463
• Seligman, M.E.P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive Psychology. An Introduction. American Psychologist. Vol 55. No. 1. 5 14
• Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2009). The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. New York, Bloomsbury Press.

Supporting Clients’ Solution Building Process by Subtly Eliciting Positive Behaviour Descriptions and Expectations of Beneficial Change

Visser, C.F. & Schlundt Bodien, G. (2009). Supporting Clients’ Solution Building Process by Subtly Eliciting Positive Behaviour Descriptions and Expectations of Beneficial Change. InterAction I (2), 9-25

SF co-developer Steve de Shazer wrote, in his classic publications Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy (1985) and Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy (1988), that SF practitioners should help their clients create an expectation of beneficial change by getting a description of what they would do differently once the problem was solved. Also, he claimed subtle and implicit interventions by the SF practitioner would work best. At the time, de Shazer did not support these claims with empirical evidence. This article provides evidence for each of the assertions made by de Shazer. Only part of the evidence presented here was already available at the time of de Shazer’s writing. Evidence is discussed from diverse lines of research like Rosenthal’s Pygmalion studies, Dweck’s research on self-theories, Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory, research on Winograd’s prospective memory, Jeannerod’s research on the perception-action link, Wilson’s research on brief attributional interventions, research on Brehm’s reactance theory, and Bargh’s research on priming. The article closes with some reflections on what these research findings imply for SF theory and practice.

Full article: Supporting Clients’ Solution Building Process by Subtly Eliciting Positive Behaviour Descriptions and Expectations of Beneficial Change

Interview with Keith Stanovich

By Coert Visser

Dr. Keith Stanovich, Professor of Human Development and Applied Psychology of the University of Toronto, is a leading expert on the psychology of reading and on rationality. His latest book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought, shows that IQ tests are very incomplete measures of cognitive functioning. These tests fail to assess rational thinking styles and skills which are nevertheless crucial to real-world behavior. In this interview with Keith Stanovich he explains the difference between IQ and rationality and why rationality is so important. Also he shares his views on how rationality can be enhanced.

In your book, you say that IQ tests are incomplete measures of cognitive functioning. Could you explain that?

I start out my book by noting the irony that in 2002, cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University won the Nobel Prize in Economics for work on how humans make choices and assess probabilities—in short, for work on human rationality.  Being rational means adopting appropriate goals, taking the appropriate action given one’s goals and beliefs, and holding beliefs that are commensurate with available evidence—it means achieving one’s life goals using the best means possible.  To violate the thinking rules examined by Kahneman and Tversky thus has the practical consequence that we are less satisfied with our lives than we might be.  Research conducted in my own laboratory has indicated that there are systematic individual differences in the judgment and decision making skills studied by Kahneman and Tversky.

It is a profound historical irony of the behavioral sciences that the Nobel Prize was awarded for studies of cognitive characteristics that are entirely missing from the most well-known mental assessment device in the behavioral sciences—the intelligence test, and its many proxies, such as the SAT.  It is ironic because most laypeople are prone to think that IQ tests are tests of, to put it colloquially, good thinking.  Scientists and laypeople alike would tend to agree that “good thinking” encompasses good judgment and decision making—the type of thinking that helps us achieve our goals.  In fact, the type of “good thinking” that Kahneman and Tversky studied was deemed so important that research on it was awarded the Nobel Prize.  Yet assessments of such good thinking—rational thinking—are nowhere to be found on IQ tests.  Intelligence tests measure important things, but not these—they do not assess the extent of rational thought.  This might not be such an omission if it were the case that intelligence was a strong predictor of rational thinking.  However, my research group has found just the opposite—that it is a mild predictor at best and that some rational thinking skills are totally dissociated from intelligence.

You write about three types of thinking processes, the autonomous, the algorithmic and the reflective mind. Could you briefly explain these and explain how they are related to intelligence and rationality?

In 1996, philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote a book about how aspects of the human mind were like the minds of other animals and how other aspects were not. He titled the book Kinds of Minds to suggest that within the brain of humans are control systems of very different types—different kinds of minds. In the spirit of Dennett’s book, I termed the part of the mind that carries out Type 1 processing the autonomous mind.  The difference between the algorithmic mind and the reflective mind is captured in another well established distinction in the measurement of individual differences—the distinction between cognitive ability and thinking dispositions.  The algorithmic mind is indexed by measures of computational power like fluid g in psychometric theory.  The reflective mind is indexed by individual differences in thinking disposition measures.

The term mindware was coined by psychologist David Perkins to refer to the rules, knowledge, procedures, and strategies that a person can retrieve from memory in order to aid decision making and problem solving. Perkins uses the term to stress the analogy to software in the brain/computer analogy.  Each of the levels in the tripartite model of mind has to access knowledge to carry out its operations.  The reflective mind not only accesses general knowledge structures but, importantly, accesses the person’s opinions, beliefs, and reflectively acquired goal structure.  The algorithmic mind accesses micro-strategies for cognitive operations and production system rules for sequencing behaviors and thoughts. Finally, the autonomous mind accesses not only evolutionarily-compiled encapsulated knowledge bases, but also retrieves information that has become tightly compiled and available to the autonomous mind due to overlearning and practice.

Rationality requires three different classes of mental characteristic. First, algorithmic-level cognitive capacity is needed in order that autonomous-system override and simulation activities can be sustained.  Second, the reflective mind must be characterized by the tendency to initiate the override of suboptimal responses generated by the autonomous mind and to initiate simulation activities that will result in a better response.  Finally, the mindware that allows the computation of rational responses needs to be available and accessible during simulation activities. Intelligence tests assess only the first of these three characteristics that determine rational thought and action.  As measures of rational thinking, they are radically incomplete.

That society, educators, psychologists, and personnel managers put so much emphasis on intelligence seems strange and unjustified given that intelligence tests cover only one of these three important mental processes. Could you say something about how individuals, organizations and, perhaps, society as a whole, might benefit from focusing more on raising rational thinking skills?

The lavish attention devoted to intelligence, raising it, praising it, worrying when it is low, etc., seems wasteful in light of the fact that we choose to virtually ignore another set of mental skills with just as much social consequence—rational thinking mindware and procedures.  Popular books tell parents how to raise more intelligent children, educational psychology textbooks discuss the raising of students’ intelligence, and we feel reassured when hearing that a particular disability does not impair intelligence.  There is no corresponding concern on the part of parents that their children grow into rational beings, no corresponding concern on the part of schools that their students reason judiciously, and no corresponding recognition that intelligence is useless to a child unable to adapt to the world.

I simply do not think that society has weighed the consequences of its failure to focus on irrationality as a real social problem.  These skills and dispositions profoundly affect the world in which we live.  Because of inadequately developed rational thinking abilities—because of the processing biases and mindware problems discussed in my book—physicians choose less effective medical treatments; people fail to accurately assess risks in their environment; information is misused in legal proceedings; millions of dollars are spent on unneeded projects by government and private industry; parents fail to vaccinate their children; unnecessary surgery is performed; animals are hunted to extinction; billions of dollars are wasted on quack medical remedies; and costly financial misjudgments are made.  Distorted processes of belief formation are also implicated in various forms of ethnocentric, racist, sexist, and homophobic hatred.

It is thus clear that widespread societal effects result from inadequately developed rational thinking dispositions and knowledge.  In the modern world, the impact of localized irrational thoughts and decisions can be propagated and magnified through globalized information technologies, thus affecting large numbers of people. That is, you may be affected by the irrational thinking of others even if you do not take irrational actions yourself.  This is why, for example, the spread of pseudoscientific beliefs is everyone’s concern.  For example, police departments hire psychics to help with investigations even though research has shown that their use is not efficacious.  Jurors have been caught making their decisions based on astrology.  Major banks and several Fortune 500 companies employ graphologists for personnel decisions even though voluminous evidence indicates that graphology is useless for this purpose.

Unfortunately, these examples are not rare. We are all affected in numerous ways when such contaminated mindware permeates society—even if we avoid this contaminated mindware ourselves.   Pseudosciences such as astrology are now large industries, involving newspaper columns, radio shows, book publishing, the Internet, magazine articles, and other means of dissemination.  The House of Representatives Select Committee on Aging has estimated that the amount wasted on medical quackery nationally reaches into the billions.  Physicians are increasingly concerned about the spread of medical quackery on the Internet and its real health costs.

It seems that sometimes high rationality can irritate some people. For instance, you can sometimes here people saying things like: "don't be so rational!" Do you think there can be such a thing as being too rational?

Under a proper definition of rationality, one consistent with modern cognitive science, no.  It certainly is possible for a person to be “too logical” but being logical is not synonymous with being rational.  Psychologists study rationality because it is one of the most important human values.  It is important for a person’s happiness and well-being that they think and act rationally.  The high status accorded rationality in my writings may seem at odds with other characterizations that deem rationality either trivial -little more than the ability to solve textbook-type logic problems- or in fact antithetical to human fulfillment -as an impairment to an enjoyable emotional life, for instance. These ideas about rationality derive from a restricted and mistaken view of rational thought—one not in accord with the study of rationality in modern cognitive science.

Dictionary definitions of rationality tend to be rather lame and unspecific (“the state or quality of being in accord with reason”), and some critics who wish to downplay the importance of rationality have promulgated a caricature of rationality that involves restricting its definition to the ability to do the syllogistic reasoning problems that are encountered in Philosophy 101.  The meaning of rationality in modern cognitive science is, in contrast, much more robust and important.  Cognitive scientists recognize two types of rationality:  instrumental and epistemic.  The simplest definition of instrumental rationality, the one that emphasizes most that it is grounded in the practical world, is: Behaving in the world so that you get exactly what you most want, given the resources (physical and mental) available to you.  The other aspect of rationality studied by cognitive scientists is epistemic rationality. This aspect of rationality concerns how well beliefs map onto the actual structure of the world.  The two types of rationality are related. In order to take actions that fulfill our goals, we need to base those actions on beliefs that are properly calibrated to the world.

Although many people feel (mistakenly or not) that they could do without the ability to solve textbook logic problems (which is why the caricatured view of rationality works to undercut its status), virtually no person wishes to eschew epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, properly defined. Virtually all people want their beliefs to be in some correspondence with reality, and they also want to act to maximize the achievement of their goals.  Psychologist Ken Manktelow, in his book Psychology of Reasoning, has emphasized the practicality of both types of rationality by noting that they concern two critical things: What is true and what to do. Epistemic rationality is about what is true and instrumental rationality is about what to do.

Nothing could be more practical or useful for a person’s life than the thinking processes that help them find out what is true and what is best to do. This stands in marked contrast to some restricted views of what rationality is (for example, the rationality=logic view that I mentioned above).  Being rational (in the sense studied by cognitive scientists) is NOT just being logical.  Instead, logic (and all other cognitive tools) must prove its worth.  It must show that it helps us get at what is true or helps us to figure out what it is best to do.  My philosophy echoes that of Jonathan Baron, in his book Thinking and Deciding (4th Edition), when he argues that “the best kind of thinking, which we shall call rational thinking, is whatever kind of thinking best helps people achieve their goals.  If it should turn out that following the rules of formal logic leads to eternal happiness, then it is rational thinking to follow the laws of logic, assuming that we all want eternal happiness.  If it should turn out, on the other hand, that carefully violating the laws of logic at every turn leads to eternal happiness, then it is these violations that we shall call rational” (p. 61).

A similar admonition applies when we think about the relation between emotion and rationality.  In folk psychology, emotion is seen as antithetical to rationality.  The absence of emotion is seen as purifying thinking into purely rational form.  This idea is not consistent with definition of rationality that I (and most other cognitive scientists) adopt.  Instrumental rationality is behavior consistent with maximizing goal satisfaction, not a particular psychological process.  It is perfectly possible for the emotions to facilitate instrumental rationality as well as to impede it.  In fact, conceptions of emotions in cognitive science stress the adaptive regulatory powers of the emotions.  Emotions often get us “in the right ballpark” of the correct response.  If more accuracy than that is required, then a more precise type of analytic cognition will be required.  Of course, we can rely too much on the emotions.  We can base responses on a “ballpark” solution in situations that really require a more precise type of analytic thought.  More often than not, however, processes of emotional regulation facilitate rational thought and action.

Writer Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book Blink, adopts the folk psychological view of the relation between emotion and rationality that is at odds with the way those concepts are discussed in cognitive science.  Gladwell discusses the famous cases of cognitive neuroscientist Antonio Damasio where damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex caused nonfunctional behavior without impairing intelligence.  Gladwell argues that “people with damage to their ventromedial area are perfectly rational.  They can be highly intelligent and functional, but they lack judgment” (2005, p. 59).  But this is not the right way to describe these cases.  In my view, someone who lacks judgment cannot be rational.

In the book, you explain the lack of rationality is associated with three things: 1) an overreliance on the autonomous mind, relying on unconscious heuristics where deliberate thinking would have been asked for, 2) a mindware gap, lack of rational tools, procedures, knowledge, strategies, and 3) being infected with contaminated mindware, which refers to beliefs, rules, strategies, etc that are not grounded in evidence but which are potentially harmful and yet hard to get rid of, like a computer virus. Now, I can imagine that bridging the mindware gap can be accomplished largely by education. The other two seem a bit harder to me. Could you share some ideas about what might help to prevent an overreliance on the autonomous mind and about how to fight contaminated mindware?

You are correct that irrationality caused by mindware gaps is most easily remediable, as it is entirely due to missing strategies and declarative knowledge that can be taught (your category #2 above).  But keep in mind that often category #1 (overriding the tendencies of the autonomous mind) is closely linked because override is most often done with learned mindware, and sometimes override fails because of inadequately instantiated mindware.  In such a case, inadequately learned mindware should really be considered the source of the problem (the line between the two is continuous—As the rule is less and less well instantiated, at some point it is so poorly compiled that it is not a candidate to override the Type 1 response and thus the processing error becomes a mindware gap).

Other categories of cognitive failure are harder to classify in terms of whether they are more dispositional (category #1) or knowledge-like (category #2).  For example, disjunctive reasoning is the tendency to consider all possible states of the world when deciding among options or when choosing a problem solution in a reasoning task.  It is a rational thinking strategy with a high degree of generality.  People make many suboptimal decisions because of the failure to flesh out all the possible options in a situation, yet the disjunctive mental tendency is not computationally expensive.  This is consistent with the finding that there are not strong intelligence-related limitations on the ability to think disjunctively and with evidence indicating that disjunctive reasoning is a rational thinking strategy that can be taught.

The tendency to consider alternative hypotheses is, like disjunctive reasoning, strategic mindware of great generality.  Also, it can be implemented in very simple ways. Many studies have attempted to teach the technical issue of thinking of P(D/~H) [the probability of the observed data given the alternative hypothesis] or thinking of the alternative hypothesis by instructing people in a simple habit.  People are given extensive practice at saying to themselves the phrase “think of the opposite” in relevant situations.  This strategic mindware does not stress computational capacity and thus is probably easily learnable by many individuals. Several studies have shown that practice at the simple strategy of triggering the thought “think of the opposite” can help to prevent a host of the thinking errors studied in the heuristics and biases literature, including but not limited to: anchoring biases, overconfidence effects, hindsight bias, confirmation bias, and self serving biases.

Various aspects of probabilistic thinking represent mindware of great generality and potency.  However, as any person who has ever taught a statistics course can attest (your present author included), some of these insights are counterintuitive and unnatural for people—particularly in their application.  There is nevertheless still some evidence that they are indeed teachable—albeit with somewhat more effort and difficulty than strategies such as disjunctive reasoning or considering alternative hypotheses.  Aspects of scientific thinking necessary to infer a causal relationship are also definitely teachable.  Other strategies of great generality may be easier to learn—particularly by those of lower intelligence.  For example, psychologist Peter Gollwitzer has discussed an action strategy of extremely wide generality—the use of implementation intentions.  An implementation intention is formed when the individual marks the cue-action sequence with the conscious, verbal declaration: “when X occurs, I will do Y”.  Finally, research has shown that an even more minimalist cognitive strategy of forming mental goals (whether or not they have implementation intentions) can be efficacious.  For example, people perform better in a task when they are told to form a mental goal (“set a specific, challenging goal for yourself”) for their performance as opposed to being given the generic motivational instructions (“do your best”).

We are often making choices that reduce our happiness because we find it hard to predict what will make us happy.  For example, people often underestimate how quickly they will adapt to both fortunate and unfortunate events.  Our imaginations fail at projecting the future. Psychologist Dan Gilbert cites evidence indicating that a remediating strategy in such situations might be to use a surrogate—someone who is presently undergoing the event whose happiness (or unhappiness) you are trying to simulate.  For example, if you are wondering how you will react to “empty nest” syndrome, ask someone who has just had their last child leave for college rather than trying to imagine yourself in that situation.  If you want to know how you will feel if your team is knocked out in the first round of the tournament, ask someone whose team has just been knocked out rather than trying to imagine it yourself. People tend not to want to use this mechanism because they think that their own uniqueness makes their guesses from introspection more accurate than the actual experiences of the people undergoing the event.  People are simply skeptical about whether other people’s experiences apply to them.  This is a form of egocentrism akin to the myside processing.  Gilbert captures the irony of people’s reluctance to adopt the surrogate strategy by telling his readers: “If you are like most people, then like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people” (p. 229, 2006)

Much of the strategic mindware discussed so far represents learnable strategies in the domain of instrumental rationality (achieving one’s goals). Epistemic rationality (having beliefs well calibrated to the world) is often disrupted by contaminated mindware. However, even here, there are teachable macro-strategies that can reduce the probability of acquiring mindware harmful that is to its host.  For example, the principle of falsifiability provides a wonderful inoculation against many kinds of nonfunctional beliefs.  It is a tool of immense generality.  It is taught in low-level methodology and philosophy of science courses, but could be taught much more broadly than this.

Many pseudoscientific beliefs represent the presence of contaminated mindware.  The critical thinking skills that help individuals to recognize pseudoscientific belief systems can be taught in high-school courses.  Finally, I think that the language of memetic science itself is therapeutic—a learnable mental tool that can help us become more conscious of the possibility that we are hosting contaminated mindware.  One way that the meme concept will aid in cognitive self-improvement is that by emphasizing the epidemiology of belief it will indirectly suggest to many (for whom it will be a new insight) the contingency of belief.  By providing a common term for all cultural units, memetic science provides a neutral context for evaluating whether any belief serves our interests as humans.  The very concept of the meme will suggest to more and more people that they need to engage in mindware examination.

I recently heard someone say: "I'm just a simple man doing a simple job. What's the harm in me being not so rational?" This made me wonder, is there anything known about what characteristics of a task, role or context determine the criticality of rationality? How can we know when rationality is critical and when it is a bit less important or even completely unimportant?

Your question relates to an issue I have written about in my book The Robot’s Rebellion.  The simple man with the simple job might be protected from his irrationality by living in a rational cultural, in which he is, in effect, a cultural freeloader. Cultural diffusion that allows knowledge to be shared short-circuits the need for separate individual discovery. In fact, most of us are cultural freeloaders--adding nothing to the collective knowledge or rationality of humanity.  Instead, we benefit every day from the knowledge and rational strategies invented by others.

The development of probability theory, concepts of empiricism, mathematics, scientific inference, and logic throughout the centuries have provided humans with conceptual tools to aid in the formation and revision of belief and in their reasoning about action.  A college sophomore with introductory statistics under his or her belt could, if time-transported to the Europe of a couple of centuries ago, become rich "beyond the dreams of avarice" by frequenting the gaming tables or by becoming involved in insurance or lotteries.  The cultural evolution of rational standards is apt to occur markedly faster than human evolution.  In part this cultural evolution creates the conditions whereby instrumental rationality separates from genetic optimization.  As we add to the tools of rational thought, we add to the software that the analytic system can run to achieve long-leash goals that optimize actions for the individual.  Learning a tool of rational thinking can quickly change behavior and reasoning in useful ways--as when a university student reads the editorial page with new reflectiveness after having just learned the rules of logic.  Evolutionary change is glacial by comparison.

Thus, in an astonishingly short time by evolutionary standards, humans can learn and disseminate--through education and other forms of cultural transmission--modes of thinking that can trump genetically optimized modules in our brains that have been driving our behavior for eons.  Because new discoveries by innovators can be conveyed linguistically, the general populace needs only the capability to understand the new cognitive tools--not to independently discover the new tools themselves.

Cultural increases in rationality itself might likewise be sustained through analogous mechanisms of cumulative ratcheting.  That is, cultural institutions might well arise that take advantage of the tools of rational thought, and these cultural institutions might enforce rules whereby people accrue the benefits of the tools of rationality without actually internalizing the rational tools.  In short, people just learn to imitate others in certain situations or “follow the rules” of rationality in order to accrue some societal benefits, while not actually becoming more rational themselves.

Cultural institutions themselves may achieve rationality at an organizational level without this entailing that the individual people within the organization are themselves actually running the tools of rational thought on their serial mental simulators.

Could you tell me about some of the questions that currently fascinate you? What are some of the research questions you would like to explore in the near future?

I am constantly asked about the possibility of a standardized rational thinking test.  I respond that there is no conceptual or empirical impediment to such an endeavor—just the will, money, and time.  I have begun, in ongoing writings, to sketch out a framework for the assessment of rational thought.

***

Further reading

• What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought
• Stanovich, K. E. (2009, Nov/Dec).  The thinking that IQ tests miss. Scientific American Mind, 20(6), 34-39. Stanovich_IQ-Tests-Miss_SAM09.pdf
• Stanovich, K. E. (2009). Distinguishing the reflective, algorithmic, and autonomous minds: Is it time for a tri-process theory? In J. Evans & K. Frankish (Eds.), In two minds: Dual processes and beyond (pp. 55-88). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stanovich_Two_Minds.pdf
• Stanovich, K. E. (2009).  Rationality versus intelligence. Project Syndicate.  link
• Stanovich, K. E, & West. R. F. (2008). On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 672-695.  JPSP08.pdf

The Thinktank That Created The Solution-Focused Approach - Interview with Eve Lipchik

By Coert Visser

Eve Lipchik was one of the original core members of the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, which created solution-focused therapy in the beginning of the l980's. She worked at the BFTC until l988, when she cofounded ICF Consultants. She is the author of the book Beyond Techniques in Solution-Focused Therapy: Working with Emotions and the Therapeutic Relationship and numerous chapters and articles. In this interview she looks back on the time the solution-focused approach was developed and she shares her memories of the process of developing the approach and of the people involved. She tells about the essential shift the team made from gathering information about the problem to focusing on constructing solutions with clients. Also, she reflects on recent developments and she explains the importance of describing the approach as encompassing both philosophy and techniques. Finally, she tells about some of her current interests and activities.


Coert: Could you tell me about some of your memories of the early times of the Brief Family Therapy Center? How did you get involved with that and how did you experience that starting period?

Eve: In l978, I decided to sign on to a two year, 40 hour a week training in Marriage and Family Therapy at Family Service of Milwaukee. That is where I met Insoo Berg, who was my supervisor. As a result, I learned about some experimental work she, Steve de Shazer, and some other people at Family Service were doing after hours. They were experimenting with ideas they had learned at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, and from the literature of Jay Haley, the Milan Group, and other therapists on the cutting edge at the time. Before the Brief Family Therapy Center (BFTC) was founded in l979, some therapists from Family Service would meet at Insoo and Steve's house after work, video-taping therapy sessions of friends of friends who volunteered as clients. They would then analyze and discuss these sessions until late at night. I soon became part of that group and eventually joined BFTC in l980, after finishing my training. Interestingly, only people who were not the sole breadwinner of their family had the freedom to join, because we started out without a client base and knew it would take a year or two to build up enough business to provide salaries for everyone.

The BFTC group always saw cases as a team, with on therapist conducting the interview and the others behind a one-way mirror. The lack of business in the early days was a huge bonus. We would spend our whole day at the office and had the luxury of discussing a case for hours, because often there wasn't another one for a long time, if at all. It seems like yesterday that we would gather excitedly after a client family left, while Steve positioned himself at a blackboard to make notes about what we were saying. The purpose, after all, was to notice and understand why we did what we did,  and what worked, so that we could do more of it.

That certainly was an exciting time, and I am most grateful to have had the opportunity to experience it. I could never have imagined that a collaborative process could feel so individually creative!  Everyone's ideas were of equal value, even those of visitors who might drop by to sit behind the one-way mirror. When a message for clients was finally developed, or a new idea about what had just happened in a session was born, one could feel satisfaction as an individual, as well as a member of a group.

Coert: That sounds like an exciting and fulfilling work environment. A lot has been said and written about the important contributions of Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg to the development of the solution-focused approach. But I think many people relatively new to the field, are less aware of how much the development of the solution-focused approach has been a collective effort and of how different individual members with their own specific interests and qualities have all contributed importantly. Could you tell a bit more about some of those people and how they contributed?

Eve: When I think back upon the collaborative process we were all engaged in, it is really hard to separate out individual contributions. We did, however, have very different personalities and backgrounds. The five people who were the original core group at BFTC in l980, were Jim Derks, Elam Nunnally, Marilyn LaCourt, Insoo Berg, Steve de Shazer and I.

Jim Derks was a Master Degreed Social worker who had been trained in  behavioral therapy. He, like Insoo, also studied at the Chicago Family Institute, which had a psychodynamic bent, but also introduced its students to the new developments in Family Therapy. Jim had a most unusual way of thinking. First, he tended to explain his ideas by using a lot of metaphor, which added another dimension to the discussion. Secondly, his thinking was “outside the nine dots.” One could say his contribution to discussions was like a pattern interruption. We would be going over and over a point and he would come left field with a totally different perspective, or a metaphor, that would allow for a new direction of thinking.

Elam Nunnally was a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at the School of Social Work. His PhD was in Family Studies, so he contributed a lot about stages of family development, family relationships, and, in particular, family communication. His thoughtful, quiet manner often grounded the group when imaginations would run wild.

Marilyn LaCourt had a Masters Degree in Communications and a background in education. She had not had any therapy experience before training at the Family Therapy Training Institute at Family Service. That was an advantage for the group because she was not prone to get involved in speculations like some of us did, but evaluated situations at face value. In this respect she and Steve were of one mind and could understand each other before some of us understood them. Her thinking contributed a lot to the minimalist aspect of Solution-Focused Therapy.

I had a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature and spent some time after college working in television production. After I married and had my children, I worked in a research project at the University of Rochester, N.Y.  There I did play therapy and studied for a Masters Degree in Human Services before moving to Milwaukee and getting a Masters Degree in Social Work.

One of our first students at BFTC was Alex Molnar, a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Education. He was adding a Masters Degree in Social Work to his PhD in Education, and came to us for his Practicum. He was instrumental in analyzing our therapeutic process and in helping to construct decision trees to illustrate it.

Later, Wallace Gingerich, also a Professor Social Work at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin, spent time at BFTC. His expertise in research and interest in computers contributed greatly toward articulating the process of solution construction in academic terms.

Michele Weiner-Davis, who was a trainee at BFTC originally, later joined the research team and is credited with having introduced the notion of pre-session change to the Solution-Focused approach.

Last, but far from least, we all learned from, and with, our many visitors. BFTC had not been established very long before we began to attract the attention of therapists interested in innovative ideas through a home publication called the “Underground Railroad.” We all contributed articles to it about what we did at BFTC. Soon we had a parade of visitors like Lyman Wynn, Brad Keeney, Bill O'Hanlon, Carl Tomm, Michael White, Yvonne Dolan, Brian Cade, John Weakland, and many others. They sat behind the mirror with us and shared their thoughts and ideas during lengthy discussions and even longer dinners at Insoo and Steve's house, or mine. Steve cooked great Chinese food and made his own beer. I liked to cook, too, so we shared feeding and putting up our guests at our respective homes.

Coert: Thank you. I'd like to hear a bit more about your own role if that is okay. One of the people who got involved with BFTC, in l984, was Gale Miller. In a recent interview, he said: “I cannot stress enough how important Eve Lipchik was – she was willing to go the extra mile to make sure I understood what she was doing.” Could you tell  a bit about your own role and specific style, interests and views?

Eve: Well, for one, the group called me “the psychodynamic one” when we first got together. That changed very quickly though, as we worked together and increasingly began to look for the same things and think along similar lines. However, I do think that I continued to be the one in the group most inclined to bring emotions into the case discussions, particularly at times when we seemed uncertain or stuck.

As I mentioned before, we started out without any client base. It was, therefore, decided that one of us had to go out into the community and find referral sources. I was unanimously elected to do this job even though I had never sold anything before in my life. I think I succeeded in this role only because my genuine enthusiasm for our group, and our work, must have come across to people , and they figured it may be worthwhile to give us a try.

As for Gale Miller's nice comment about me – by the time he came to BFTC I was aware that our core group had become so close, and the communication so idiosyncratic, that it must be difficult for an outsider to understand what is going on. So I tried to help him bridge that gap.

I also developed an interest in spouse abuse in l981, while consulting with a womens' shelter. What I observed there made me question the dominant theory that women should always leave the men who abuse them. I noticed that the level of abuse occurred on a continuum, and that the majority of situations did not fit the stereotypical domestic violence case in which the man could be categorized as severely character disordered and power hungry. The majority of situations ranged from mutual pushing and name-calling to physical fighting, which many woman said they started. In other words, many of these cases looked a lot like the relationship problem cases we treated at BFTC. I began to wonder whether a client centered, future oriented approach like the Solution-Focused one might not help improve these relationships and save families, as long as we knew how to assess the safety of the women. Once again, I went out into the community. This time I talked with District Attorneys and Probation and Parole officers about my ideas. To my surprise they all agreed with me that couple treatment, rather than separation, is the better way to go in many of the situations. They began to refer cases to us and we were very successful in assessing and treating them. I then began to publish this work and to present our ideas nationally and internationally. One thing that really surprised me in the course of these presentations was the violent language often used against me when therapists, who treat violence, disagreed with my ideas.

In terms of my role in the development of Solution-Focused Therapy, I think that my specific contribution was in terms of the interviewing process. From the very beginning of my association with the group I questioned the belief that change occurred primarily as the result of the intervention message at the end of the session. The general understanding was that the interviewing therapist's job was to “gather information for the team behind the mirror so it can compose the intervention message!” This really confused me. I could not understand how to connect with clients in front of the mirror while I had my head behind the mirror with the team. I kept insisting that the interview is an intervention, as well, and began to explore this idea on my own. This difference of opinion became a mute point when we shifted from gathering information about the problem (Brief Family Therapy) to focusing on constructing solutions with clients (Solution-Focused Therapy). Solution construction undeniably occurred during the interview and the message at the end of the session served mainly to reinforce what had been constructed so far.

Coert: That's very interesting. I consider that insight and shift in focus essential because it made the approach more client-centric and effective. Now, could you tell a bit about your last few years at BFTC and the time and the reasons you founded your own practice, ICF Consultants?

Eve: During the last few years I spent at BFTC, our goal of developing a model, and teaching it nationally and internationally had been achieved. The close collaboration that produced such creative energy was no longer necessary. The core group had shrunk down to Steve, Insoo and me, with Elam Nunnally part time, and the research team meeting separately. Jim Derks and Marilyn LaCourt had left. My practice was very busy and I began to run the training program because Insoo and Steve started traveling more and more. The development of the approach had been incredibly exciting, but we also had expended a lot of time and energy on it. I began to feel that I want to cut back and spend more time with my family. It was very difficult for me to leave, particularly because Insoo and Steve asked me to stay and offered me various options. However, in l988, I decided to look for an office to rent somewhere where I could have a small private practice. Coincidentally, Marilyn Bonjean, who had a small private practice at BFTC, and had become a friend, decided to leave her full time job because of a change in management. When I mentioned that I was looking for office space she shared that she had decided to try building a full time private practice rather than looking for another job. She asked whether I would like to share office space. That seemed like a fine idea, and that is how ICF Consultants was born.

My intention to cut back my work schedule did not exactly work out as planned. My practice began to flourish rapidly and I received many invitations to talk about Solution-Focused Therapy, especially in the area of spouse abuse. It was very gratifying to be affirmed on my own, not only as part of an established group.

Coert: I can certainly imagine that. And just like you and the other core members have evolved, so did the approach, I guess. I am curious about your thoughts and feelings on how the solution-focused approach has evolved in, say, the last decade. Do you see any interesting new trends, insights or innovations? And what are your thoughts about the fact that SF is so well-known and broadly applied nowadays, also in many fields outside therapy?

Eve:  Originally, the Solution-Focused approach was considered to be process oriented and therefore, applicable to any type of case. I believe that is still true. However, as time went on, people began to apply it to specific problems, as I did with spouse abuse. Over the past ten years I have noticed increasingly varied applications of the approach, such as for group work, for children, for addictions, for child welfare, etc. My impression is that at this time people's thinking has evolved in two directions: either, that Solution-Focused Therapy is foremost a philosophy that guides thinking about how to help people achieve their goals, or, that it is a model that has specific techniques that, when applied correctly, achieves that goal. The majority of books I have seen seem to fall into the second category. However, I am pleased that the Treatment Manual that the Research Committee of the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association issued in 2008 clearly described the approach as encompassing both philosophy and techniques.

As for your comment that the Solution-Focused approach has been well accepted and propagated, my sense is that that may be more the case in Europe and other parts of the world than in the United States. The term "strength based" is used generically in many applications that obviously originated from Solution-Focused thinking but I do not see BFTC or Solution-Focused Therapy credited too often. I was recently asked to endorse a book written by a psychiatrist about his manner of Life coaching, which he said is rooted in Solution-Focused Therapy. He devoted two sentences to it, and I had to ask him to revise those two sentences because they did not describe the approach correctly. Also, if you look at the programs of therapy conferences lately, there are very few presentations listed about Solution-Focused Therapy and its applications, and Narrative Therapy, too, for that matter. Motivation interviewing, which is so similar to Solution-Focused interviewing, is currently gaining more and more attention, as is Mindfulness, and, of course, Neuroscience and its application to therapy. I think therapies tend to go "out of style" more in the US than they do in Europe and other countries. But it is quite possible that I am missing a lot of information about the legacy of BFTC in the US and elsewhere. I sincerely hope so!

Coert: Could you tell me about your current interests, activities and plans?

Eve: One of my current interests is Neuroscience. I was trained and certified in EDMR about twelve years ago and that opened up my mind to very different thinking than I was used to. I didn't seek this training, it was offered to me free of charge, and I thought it might be fun to experience. To my surprise, I was fascinated by it and wanted to know more and more about how the brain works. My subsequent studies of Neuroscience made me want to examine whether, and how, it can fit with Solution-Focused thinking. [See article in the reference list-CV]. I believe a valid connection is possible in some respects, particularly with regard to the regulation of emotions, a core concept in neuroscientific work. Another example would be in the area of the plasticity of the brain. Neuroscientific findings suggest repetition creates new neuronal pathways, e.g. new thoughts and behaviors. Therefore, Solution-Focused therapists could suggest to clients that they repeat exceptional behaviors or thoughts, or “miraculous” behaviors or thoughts that are already happening, on a daily basis, perhaps even several times a day.

Aside from my clinical practice, I supervise Masters Degree practitioners, as well as people who are working toward AAMFT Approved Supervisor certification. For the past decade, I have also worked for an organization that has a number of community based programs for emotionally disturbed children, such as treatment foster care, school based programs, a day treatment program and a residential program. My mission there is to give all the therapists a good grounding in Solution-Focused thinking and then to act as a consultant. The cases we work on are systemically so complex, and the therapists are often so green, that I have found that it is most effective to instill the Solution-Focused philosophy first, using basic assumptions, and then to start demonstrating the value of the techniques. The assumptions help them develop the relationship with clients that is such an essential underpinning for the success of Solution-Focused Therapy, as all therapy, for that matter. 

My future? I would like to keep doing what I am doing as long as I can keep doing it.
Thank you for choosing to interview me.

References:

•  List of publications by Eve Lipchik
•  ICF Consultants
• Lipchik, E., Becker, M., Brasher, B. Derks, J., & Volkmann, J. (2005). Neuroscience: A New Direction for Solution-Focused Thinkers? Journal of Systemic Therapies (8) 49-70.

Also read:

• A Brief History of The Solution-Focused Approach