Blog on mind and brain research and advice

What Will You Do Next?

February 21, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

YOUR BRAIN is always trying to solve the same problem: what will you do next? It really, really wants to solve that problem because taking action is what it’s all about. It doesn’t want to take just any action, although the actions it takes might seem arbitrary or mysterious or at least contrary to the actions YOU would like it to take.

System 1 (the unconscious part of the brain that runs you) is what I refer to as YOUR BRAIN. System 2 (the conscious part of the brain you identify with) is what I refer to as YOU. YOUR BRAIN is not intellectually inclined; nor is it a long-term, goal-oriented, analytical, or reflective thinker. But it can definitely think on its feet, which is what it evolved to do. It’s fast and efficient.

The brain appears to be designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. —John Medina, Brain Rules

Since YOUR BRAIN is focused on survival, when it’s trying to solve the problem of what to do next, it looks to your past experience: what have you done in the same—or a similar—situation. Obviously, you survived taking the action you took then, and that’s a good enough endorsement for YOUR BRAIN.

Little hits of dopamine supplied within YOUR BRAIN’s reward system spur your brain on to keep solving this same problem of what to do next over and over and over again. So speed is also a factor. The quicker YOUR BRAIN can come up with an answer, the quicker it gets its reward.

Remember that in the moment, YOU have less than two-tenths of a second to veto YOUR BRAIN’s impulse. Given that YOUR BRAIN finds solving the problem of what to do next rewarding in and of itself, if it already has an answer based on what you have done before, it has absolutely no investment in considering alternatives. That would only delay delivery of the reward!

This is what you’re up against if you want to change your behavior: a fast and efficient system operating outside of your awareness that assesses situations before you’re even know you’re in them, determines the action you’re going to take now based on the action you took in the past, and gets rewarded not for astuteness or for pleasing YOU but for economy of mental/neural processing.

What’s Normal for You

Whatever you have done before is what you are extremely likely to do again. The best way to surmount the situation is to work with it, not against it. This three-step method for doing so falls into the category of simple but not easy:

A. Identify what you want to change.
B. Determine your desired outcome.
C. Employ the appropriate contrivance (tool) to get you from A to B.

Since YOUR BRAIN is already getting rewarded each time it does what you don’t want it to do, you need to reward it each time it does what you do want it to do. Rewarding yourself for good behavior may seem contrived—meaning unnatural, awkward, or forced—to YOU. But it’s the language YOUR BRAIN understands.

To Diverge or Not to Diverge:
That Is the Question

February 7, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Divergent thinking is a way of addressing problems by looking for multiple answers or solutions rather than trying to find the one right answer. Looking for the one right answer is an example of convergent thinking. The assumption underlying convergent thinking is that the number of options and possibilities is limited. The assumption underlying divergent thinking is that there are always more options to consider.

According to Mark A. Smith, Ph.D., divergent thinking occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing ‘non-linear’ manner, while the process of convergent thinking is systematic and linear.

You probably have a preference for one type of thinking or another, but we’re all capable of thinking both ways—and neither way is better than the other. The important thing is to understand how they work and know when to apply them. Sometimes that means thinking outside your comfort zone.

Creative Creativity Testing

Divergent thinking is essential in both the arts and the sciences. In fact, it’s such an important element of any form of creativity that many creativity tests are often really divergent thinking tests.

One example you’ve probably heard of, the Alternative Uses Test, asks you to come up with as many uncommon or unusual uses as you can for a common object, such as a brick, a paperclip, a toothpick, a knife, or a ping pong ball.

However, another test, the Remote Associates Test (or RAT), which was originally deemed a measure of divergent thinking, turns out to measure convergent thinking instead. It asks you to identify the fourth word that goes with all three provided words. For example, the word that goes with paint, doll, and cat is house: house paint, dollhouse, and house cat (or…you know). If you’d like to take the Remote Associates Test online, click here.

These two tests do a good job of clarifying the difference between divergent and convergent thinking. The first asks you to generate multiple responses (quantity over quality). The second asks you to generate the one right answer (quality over quantity). If you are habitually a convergent thinker, you may struggle with the task of finding multiple uncommon uses for a brick or a paperclip. If you are habitually a divergent thinker, you may have difficulty focusing your efforts on finding one word (in the RAT test), rather than several.

This or/and That?

Your habitual thinking style, whatever it is, feels natural and normal to you. Your brain is inclined toward habits of thinking just as much as it is inclined toward habits of behavior.

A limitation of convergent thinking is that it lends itself to seeing all issues in terms of either/or, black/white, yes/no, or pro/con. So instead of looking for the best answer or solution to a problem, you end up trying to choose between the two alternatives you happen to have identified. And because of the way your brain works, the alternatives you identified are likely to be part of the gang of usual suspects.

A limitation of divergent thinking is that it lends itself to the belief that there are multiple possible solutions for all problems. So instead of looking for the best answer or solution to a problem, you keep looking for more solutions—investing more time and energy than may be warranted, and because of the way your brain works, perhaps failing to take any action at all.

The title of this post poses a question. What’s the answer?

Habits: The Dirty Lowdown

January 31, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

In order to create or change a habit, you have to retrain your brain. Your brain, however, actively resists your attempts to retrain it, viewing your interference as not only unwelcome but also potentially dangerous. Fortunately, as far as your brain is concerned, history indicates you’re not very adept at this retraining stuff. Plus you usually give up way too easily and quickly. So your brain doesn’t consider you much of an actual threat.

There’s something to be said for your brain’s point of view. But it’s not good news for you. Your habits can either provide the scaffolding that supports your endeavors or they can completely derail you. They affect every aspect of your life. If you want your life to be a consistently satisfying and meaningful one, you need to be able to reliably manage your habits.

Here are five facts to help you understand habits from your brain’s perspective.

1. Your Brain Has the “Habit” Habit.

It is primed to turn behaviors into habits, with or without your participation, in order to save energy. Habits make up the bulk of your behavior.
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Your brain does not share your opinions or judgments about whether your habits are good or bad. As far as your brain is concerned, any habit is a good habit.
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To succeed: Use your brain’s “habit” habit to your advantage instead of letting it run unfettered.

2. Habitual Behavior Is Unconscious.

Once a behavior becomes a habit, you no longer have conscious control over it.
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The fact that you understand the benefit of doing (or not doing) something has absolutely no impact on the part of your brain that runs your habits.
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To succeed: Communicate with your brain by your actions, not by your thoughts and good intentions. Your brain responds to repetition and persistence.

3. Your Brain Is Predictive Rather than Reactive.

Your brain is constantly trying to figure out what’s going on, what it means, and what you should do about it.
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By the time you’re aware you’re about to do something, you have less than two-tenths of a second to veto your brain’s directive.
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To succeed: Since your brain is always planning ahead, you have to plan ahead, too.

4. Habits are More than Behaviors.

Habits consist of three parts: a cue or trigger, a routine (the actual behavior), and a reward. This is known as the habit loop.
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Your brain is motivated to move you toward anything it finds rewarding.
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To succeed: Accept, understand, and use your brain’s reward system.

5. Your Brain Is Profoundly Averse to Change.

Your brain uses its considerable processing power and speed to maintain the status quo.
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To change the status quo, you must have a very compelling why (10 on a scale of 1-10).
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To succeed: Identify your desired outcome, not just your objective! (How is your status quo going to change once you successfully create or modify a particular habit?)

The good news is that once you’ve created a positive new habit or changed an existing negative one, your brain will dedicate itself to maintaining your new status quo just as zealously as it did the old one.

Your Brain Can Change Your Mind

January 17, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

And Your Mind Can Change Your Brain.

More than 125 years ago, William James wrote in The Principles of Psychology that organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity. In regard to that insight—and too many others to recount—he was far ahead of his time. Thus he was more or less ignored. Until relatively recently, the accepted belief was that at a certain point the brain is finished developing (“cooked,” if you will). Thus the saying you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Now we know that isn’t true. The subject of plasticity has been getting more and more attention ever since it was discovered that the brain can change at any age—for better or for worse. In the normal course of events, changes in your brain are reflected in your behavior (mediated by your mental processes), and changes in your mental processes are reflected in your brain (mediated by your behavior).

There are two types of neuroplasticity, functional and structural. Functional plasticity is the brain’s ability to turn over a task from one area (that has been damaged) to another. Structural plasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt (change its physical structure) as a result of learning and experience.

Most of the changes that take place in your brain are outside your awareness and control, but in some cases you can encourage the process, resist it, or give it a good nudge. And your personality may play a role in the actions you take—or don’t take. Use it or lose it is a case in point.

Plasticity vs. Stability

Plasticity happens to be one of the two so-called meta-traits that subsume the five factors of the Five-Factor (OCEAN) personality model. The other meta-trait is stability. Plasticity and stability seem to be at opposite ends of a continuum, but when it comes to the capacity for sustained behavior change, the situation isn’t that black or white.

Plasticity

The functions of plasticity are exploration and the creation of new goals, interpretations, and strategies. The negative pole of plasticity is rigidity. Plasticity encompasses the factors of Openness to Experience (cognitive exploration and engagement with information) and Extraversion (behavioral exploration and engagement with specific rewards).

Each of the five factors has two aspects. You might have stronger tendencies for one aspect than for the other. In the case of Openness to Experience, the two aspects are:

Intellect: detection of logical or causal patterns in abstract and semantic information.
Openness: detection of spatial and temporal correlational patterns in sensory and perceptual information.

For Extraversion, the aspects are:

Assertiveness: incentive reward sensitivity and the drive toward goals.
Enthusiasm: consummatory reward sensitivity, and the enjoyment of actual or imagined goal attainment.

Stability

The functions of stability are protection of goals, interpretations, and strategies from disruption by impulses. The negative pole of stability is instability. Stability encompasses the factors of Conscientiousness (protection of non-immediate or abstract goals and strategies from disruption), Agreeableness (altruism and cooperation and coordination of goals, interpretations, and strategies with those of others), and Neuroticism (defensive responses to uncertainty, threat, and punishment).

The two aspects for Conscientiousness are:

Industriousness: prioritization of non-immediate goals.
Orderliness: avoidance of entropy by following rules set by self or others.

The two aspects for Agreeableness are:

Compassion: emotional attachment to and concern for others
Politeness: suppression and avoidance of aggressive or norm-violating impulses and strategies.

And the two aspects for Neuroticism are:

Volatility: active defense to avoid or eliminate threats.
Withdrawal: passive avoidance (inhibition of goals, interpretations, and strategies in response to uncertainty or error).

Preferences for Novelty or Conformity

Researchers suggest that the meta-trait plasticity reflects a tendency “to explore and engage flexibly with novelty, in both behavior and cognition,” while stability reflects a tendency “to maintain stability and avoid disruption in emotional, social, and motivational domains.”

People who are high in plasticity tend to be:

Higher in “externalizing behaviors”
Lower in conformity
Lower in morningness
Higher in divergent thinking

People who are high in stability also tend to be:

Lower in “externalizing behaviors”
Higher in conformity
Higher in morningness
Lower in divergent thinking

Although we all possess some degree of all five factors, considerable variation exists from one person to the next. The five factors, their aspects, and the numerous traits that go along with them all exist on a continuum. So even if two people had identical scores for, say, Conscientiousness, their scores for the aspects and traits could be different enough to lead to very dissimilar attitudes and behaviors.

If you haven’t taken the Five-Factor test yet, you can take it here.

And you can find lists of some of the traits associated with each of the five factors here.

Diving into the OCEAN
of Personality Traits

January 3, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

While creating and sustaining positive behavior change isn’t easy for anyone, it seems to be harder for some people than for others. Identifying their Enneagram type helps my clients hone in on their strengths and weaknesses and develop an awareness of the kinds of roadblocks they’re likely to face in the work we do together. But it would be even more helpful to be able to determine at the outset how open someone really is to change. Simply asking the question, which seems like an obvious solution, isn’t the answer since the basis of many personality traits resides in the unconscious (therefore outside conscious awareness).

Well, it appears there actually is an instrument that offers some clues about a person’s receptivity to behavior change.

In the fledgling field of the neuroscience of personality, the system that has been given the most scrutiny is what is referred to as The Big Five or The Five-Factor model of personality—aka OCEAN. OCEAN is an acronym for the five factors the test measures, which are:

The Five-Factor model doesn’t account for all aspects of temperament or personality, but it’s quite comprehensive, and numerous longitudinal studies have confirmed its validity as well as its predictive ability. As a result of being the personality model most used by psychologists, it has been the target of research in areas such as creativity, leadership skills, and the use of technology and even social media. Researches are also working on correlating variation in the volume of different brain regions to the five factors.

[You can take the test here.]

Each of the five factors is divided into two aspects, which are further divided into facets (individual personality traits) that correlate to one or, in some cases, both aspects.

Openness to Experience

If you score high in Openness to Experience, you probably have a vivid imagination, like to try new things, love learning, enjoy the arts, and prefer variety over routine. Openness includes the aspects of intellect and openness. Some traits related to intellect and openness are:

Imagination
Insight
Originality
Creativity
Curiosity
Perception
Wide variety of interests
Quickness
Ingenuity
Excitement-seeking
Fantasy
Reflection

Conscientiousness

If you score high in conscientiousness, you’re probably able to delay gratification. It’s also likely you can plan and organize effectively, work within the rules, and tend not to procrastinate or be impulsive. Conscientiousness includes the aspects of industriousness and orderliness. Some traits related to industriousness and orderliness are:

Persistence
Puposefulness
Self-discipline
Perfectionism
Consistency
Predictability
Resourcefulness
Dutifulness
Deliberation
Efficiency
Competence
Planning

Extraversion

If you score high in extraversion, you are likely to seek opportunities for social interaction, are comfortable with others, enjoy being the center of attention, and prefer action to contemplation. However, what separates extraverts from introverts, brain-wise, is their responsiveness to rewards. Extraversion includes the aspects of enthusiasm and assertiveness. Some traits related to enthusiasm and assertiveness are:

Gregariousness
Confidence
Cheerfulness
Warmth
Sociability
Positive emotions
Leadership
Provocativeness
Friendliness
Talkativeness
Excitement-seeking
Poise

Agreeableness

If you score high in agreeableness, you’re probably respected and well-liked, are cooperative and sensitive to the needs of others, and generally get along with people. Agreeableness includes the aspects of compassion and politeness. Some traits related to compassion and politeness are:

Trust
Modesty
Humility
Patience
Empathy
Pleasantness
Moderation
Kindness
Loyalty
Cheerfulness
Cooperation
Consideration

Neuroticism

If you score high in neuroticism, you may lack self-confidence, cope poorly with stress, focus more on negative emotions than positive ones, and have a tendency to worry or ruminate about your experiences. Neuroticism includes the aspects of volatility and withdrawal. Some traits related to volatility and withdrawal are:

Pessimism
Moodiness
Immoderation
Anxiety
Anger
Depression
Timidity
Wariness
Insecurity
Self-consciousness
Instability
Over-sensitivity

How do you think high and low scores in the five-factor test might either support or impede behavior change? Within the five factor aspects (OCEAN), which individual traits do you think would exert the greatest effect on attempts at behavior change?

Next time, I’ll fill in another piece of the puzzle, one that is less widely known than the Big Five. It’s referred to as the Big (sometimes Huge) Two because its two factors are meta-factors that include the Big Five factors and provide us with that shortcut to determining an individual’s inherent capacity for succeeding with behavior change strategies.