What was it that Mel Gibson says in Braveheart? “They can take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”

I quite like my freedom and I am sure you appreciate yours. We dislike it when we don’t have some level of control over our lives. In fact, depression can result from a reduced sense of control in ones life. But having too much control, or power, also has a bad name. We certainly don’t like the idea of politicians (or our managers!) having too much power. I often read about ‘power’ in a negative context. People abusing positions of power and the way that power corrupts. So we might think that power is a bad thing – something we shouldn’t seek! And in some ways that is probably true.

But there’s a different perspective on power and that’s what Mel (playing William Wallace the 13th Century Scottish warrior rebelling against the English) was getting at in the quote above. It is about our individual sense of power, both in terms of being free from influence of others, as well as ourselves having some influence on others.

Two recent studies looked at an individuals sense of ‘power’ and how this related to other aspects of their ilves. The first (Kifer et al., 2013) simply asked whether powerful people were happier. They did this by finding out about the level of perceived power an individual felt they had in different aspects of their lives. On the one hand ‘role’ power – how much control do you have in your job, in your relationships and friendships. On the other hand ‘dispositional’ power – how much control do you generally feel you have over your life. Participants were also asked questions about their life satisfaction, their happiness in their job and relationships, and also how ‘authentic’ they felt they led their lives.

The researchers found that the greater sense of power, the greater sense of life satisfaction. And the more power overall, the more authentic was the life lived. This is rather comforting, but also questions our stereotype of the powerful manager cruelly controlling his workers and then beating his wife (okay, maybe i’m exaggerating there!). What it suggests is that across the spectrum, the greater ones sense of power (freedom?) then the more satisfied one is. This makes sense – we don’t like being controlled, we like autonomy and freedom. We want to direct our own destiny. Power is as much about being free to choose for ourself, than it is about controlling others.

Perhaps a future question for the researchers is whether there’s a difference in the happiness levels of those that seek personal freedom versus those who like to control others (I have a prediction about that…).

The second study (Joshi and Fast 2013) is a little more surprising and a little more thought-provoking. It was also about power, but this time it was about how our sense of power influences the way we think about the future. Do we look forward to the future and make grand plans? Or do we live in the moment and throw caution to the wind? Make your prediction now…

In this study, participants had their sense of power manipulated up and then down to see what effect it would have. How does that work? Well, whilst we have a basic sense of our own ‘power’, this fluctuates depending on our mood (and other factors). If I asked you to write a story about a time when you were really powerful – then your sense of power NOW would also increase. A low power story does the opposite. Participants were asked to write a story (one way or the other) and then given a task, which assesses whether they value the future or not. For example, one way of doing this would be to offer you a choice between being given £10 now, or £30 next week. Which would you take? If you live for the moment, you’d take the tenner. If you can project your goals into the future then you would probably opt to wait for the £30.

High power leads individuals to live for the future. Low power for the moment. This is brilliant and fits with other things we know. Depressed individuals withdraw from the world and only think about the here and now, consistent with low sense of power. It also suggests that as our sense of power grows, it also expands our horizons – we start to look into the future and consider broader possibilities.

So what? Well, taking both studies into account, if you run a company, or manage a group, then if you have a low sense of control you will probably not be looking at future development. You may also not be acting in an authentic manner (I.e. not true to your values or not honestly). And if you manage managers – well, you better work at ensuring they have a sense of autonomy and control over what they are doing. If you micro-manage them too much you might find it backfire!

Having just made another deadline in writing this newsletter I am feeling full of control, authenticity, satisfaction and have a sense of hope for the future. Or maybe that was just the cafe latte and croissant I’ve just snaffled…

Dr John

References

Yona Kifer, Daniel Heller, Wei Qi Elaine Perunovic, and Adam Galinsky (2013) The Good Life of the Powerful: The Experience of Power and Authenticity Enhances Subjective Well-Being. Psychological Science. Doi:10.1177/0956797612450891

Priyanka D. Joshi and Nathanael J. Fast (2013) Power and Reduced Temporal Discounting. Psychological Science. Doi:10.1177/0956797612457950

We are often described as ‘social animals.’ I think that means that we like to chat to each other. And when we chat with each other we do so for a variety of reasons. It might be to provide information, or we might be gossiping, or giving instructions or feedback. Within business there are many reasons to communicate – with staff, clients and customers, managers, the rest of the team. Communication is critical, and as with everything else, psychologists have characterized the different types and purposes for communication and there are some interesting insights for how a business copes with challenges, and innovates.

Allen and Henn (2007) describe three forms of communication that exist within an organization:

1.  Communication for coordination

2.  Communication for information

3.  Communication for inspiration

The first two are straightforward and simply capture the conversations we have in the office when we are arranging the next meeting or describing the properties of a certain product. We do this sort of stuff every day and the communication may be in the form of a telephone call, an email or a face-to-face conversation. Coordination and information are critical to keep the wheels of business well oiled. The third form of communication – that of inspiration – is less well understood or appreciated. New ideas, new ways of doing things, and new solutions often arise from conversations or brainstorming sessions i.e. from communication between people. In fact, one recognised way of managing the innovation process is to bring specialists from different fields together to look at old problems in new ways. Actually, one definition of innovation is exactly that: applying a known solution from one field into a novel field.

I recently instituted a ‘review’ of the Parkinson lab communication process. It was mainly because I was getting increasingly frustrated by e-mail as a means of communication. Rather than liberating us, it seems to shackle us. There’s a well-known approach to time-management called Inbox Zero. I thought it might be even better to try Email Zero. In other words to stop using email altogether. Some organisations have done this internally and instead use other forms of social media to achieve successful organisational communication (for example by using Google+ or Twitter). I analysed one day’s worth of emails and categorized them as communication for coordination, information or inspiration. I realised that some of the email I sent should more easily have been a quick phone call or face-to-face chat. Some simple ones (mainly information or coordination) were indeed best served through email. None of my emails could have been defined as communication for inspiration. I concluded that Email Zero wouldn’t work – it is actually useful for certain simple communicative tasks – but more importantly, I realised that I needed to increase my opportunities for inspiring communication.

Essentially, we spend the least amount of time having interesting, thought-provoking conversations, but they are the ones with the greatest potential. And it has to be face-to-face (not email, not phone). Creativity and inspiration occur best under certain circumstances (which includes the right mood, environment and people). It is often a social phenomenon. In many ways, an informal unplanned chat can provide an excellent opportunity for new ideas. Unfortunately, many organisations are getting rid of their kitchens, canteens or social areas. Space is a resource that can be managed financially and so these ‘green’ spaces can be swallowed up in aggressive efficiency drives. But that would be a mistake.

Here’s an example of how to promote inspiring conversations: Nesta (http://www.nesta.org.uk/), is an organisation that (in its own words) “…is an independent charity with a mission to help people and organisations bring great ideas to life.” They recently tried an innovative approach to innovation (!) One of their jobs is to organise randomised controlled trials – a process to gather evidence in a controlled and objective manner. Instead, within their own organisation they ran Randomised Coffee Trials (RCTs). Employees signed up and had their names thrown into a hat. Pairs were drawn and their task was to meet and have a coffee. That was it. This RCT ran for several weeks and Nesta were simply interested if any serendipitous ideas or projects grew out of the informal meetings. And, of course, they did. Here’s a link to a blog from Nesta about the RCT:

http://www.nesta.org.uk/blogs/institutionalising_serendipity_randomised_coffee_trials/heres_how_michael_and_i_got_rct_going_at_nesta/

And here’s a further link to a discussion of the positive outcomes:

http://www.nesta.org.uk/blogs/institutionalising_serendipity_randomised_coffee_trials/to_happy_coincidences_and_unexpected_synergies/

We’re going to try it here in Bangor University – we have a lot of specialists (academics) hidden away in their ivory towers (Schools). We’re going to try and tempt them out to talk to specialists from other Schools to see what exciting new ideas can be born. Watch this space.

What conclusions can we draw? Well, communication is a good thing. And face-to-face conversations can be really important for creativity and innovation. So, try and promote it within your organisation. It’s also important to get people talking who wouldn’t normally meet, so there’s an element of promoting new links rather than supporting old. Either way, if you have a commercial challenge, look inwards and release your own creative powers to find solutions. Enjoy!

Dr John

Reference:

Allen TJ & Henn G (2007) The Organization and Architecture of Innovation: Managing the Flow of Technology. Butterworth-Heinemann.

Nesta (http://www.nesta.org.uk/)

A recent paper in Psychological Science adds to this portrait of a resilient individual. The authors of the study (Folan-Ross et al., 2013) were interested in our thoughts – all that ‘fluff’ that is constantly swirling around our conscious minds – the ideas and worries that pop into our heads and won’t go away. Psychologists call this our Working Memory (WM). So when we try and remember a phone number, or the name of someone we’ve just been introduced to, it is our WM that keeps this stuff active (or not!).

The authors were interested in whether there was a difference between the WM and active thoughts of healthy individuals compared to those suffering from depression. They also scanned the brains of the participants in order to see if they could identify the brain basis of any differences between the groups.

It turns out that individuals with depression find it hard to get rid of negative information from their WM. In fact, this might be an important maintenance factor in depression – a sufferer constantly ruminates on negative memories and feelings and so is unable to escape the cycle and recover. So there may be an issue of being unable to ‘disengage’ from negative stuff in order to focus on more positive aspects, such as solutions, goals, and strategies for success.

In the recent study, the experimenters got people to remember lists of words that were either positive or negative in emotion (or neutral – as a control). They were then informed to retain or expel the information and this was tested a short time later. Participants were scanned whilst being tested. One group of participants suffered from depression, the other group were matched healthy controls.

This design enabled the experimenters to assess how well participants could retain or disengage information of different emotional valences (positive vs negative). The main finding was that depressed individuals found it hard to remove negative information from their WM when it became irrelevant to the task. They got stuck on the negative and performed poorly on the task. This ‘behavioural’ finding gives further insight into the mechanisms of depression (and of its converse – resilience). Further, in the brains of the depressed participants, compared to the control participants, there was ‘abnormal’ activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (at the front, in the middle) – an area that has been shown to be important for cognitive control. There were also differences in activity in the insula cortex and parietal lobule – part of a network that contributes to active controlled thinking and behaviour (For our purposes, let’s consider it to be a network for self-control).  Activity was higher in these areas in depressed individuals, which suggests that their brains were trying harder (and failing) to remove the unwanted negative information.

So what can we take from this? Well, it suggests that as depression develops, sufferers progressively focus on negative information. This creates a negative processing bias – they get set in their ways and find it hard to break free to think more positively. Because it has set in over a period of time, when they try to break free and expel the unwanted negative thoughts they find it hard, and correspondingly, their brain’s control network has to work harder.

The broader message here is that we develop ‘habits of the mind’ which tick away in the background as we get on with our day to day lives. In depression, these cognitive habits can be bad for us and actively maintain our illness. This is something that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy deals with effectively. In resilience, the cognitive habits help us to frame the future in a positive way – the challenges are surmountable; the goals are worth the effort; the pain and adversity now is worth the glorious fruits of our labour later.

As with any habit, resilience needs to be worked at. Initially, it may be hard work (an overactive brain network!) to expel the negative and focus on the positive. So we need to put effort and commitment into developing our self-control specifically emphasising positive solutions and benefits. Over time this will get easier and more fluid. Eventually, a resilient habit will become established (a cognitive mind-set encompassing a solution-focused, safe-to-fail, challenge-approaching attitude) and then the future will look much brighter!

Dr John

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References:

Foland-Ross LC, Hamilton JP, Joormann J, Berman MG, Jonides J, Gotlib IH (2013) The Neural Basis of Difficulties Disengaging From Negative Irrelevant Material in Major Depression. Psychological Science. 2013

A recent set of experiments shed light on how we might increase the uptake. The experiment showed that after watching 16 public service adverts the participants who received oxytocin, compared to those who received a placebo, donated to 57% more causes, donated 56% more money and reported 17% greater concern for those in the adverts. So the question becomes…could you find a way to raise a group’s levels of oxytocin before asking them to participate in CSR?

Certainly there are lots of ways that could work:

1) Get the group physically together first, encourage them to connect – give them cupcakes or doughnuts during a mid-morning break

2) Ask them after a team building activity, paint balling, dinner etc.

3) Facilitate a brief session where they share their ideas, connect these to the bigger vision and purpose of the organisation of which they are a part

Unconventional option: Give people a hug before asking them! (Depends on your organisation of course!)

The experiments above are covered in depth in this scientific paper:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0056934

Today and next time, I talk about future-proofing ourselves. But am I just peddling more snake-oil or is there truth (or *evidence*) that we can indeed develop resilience and be better able to deal with the slings and arrows that the world throws at us?

Well, it is clearly the case that some people bounce back from adversity whilst others do not. This is often documented in extreme cases (such as post-traumatic growth) but we are all resilient to one degree or another. But what does it mean to be resilient? In essence, we think of it as the ability to bounce back after behind knocked back. To pick yourself up off the floor and to try again. So there’s a sense of perseverance but also of not being put off by failure or the fear of failure. It is a lot about attitude and also about how we deal with our own emotions.

Studies have shown that resilient children are those that have strong emotional attachments, optimism, altruism and engage active coping responses. In fact, these are the same factors that come out in adults (for example when studying adults in challenging careers such as in the armed forces, police, or other high-stress challenging environments). Resilience is not about having a ‘stiff upper lip’ but being able to roll with and accept emotions. When we fail, we are upset, angry and drained. To be resilient is to accept these emotions and then channel them into the energy that can enable a second attempt, perseverance and success. It is also about learning how to do things better, learning from mistakes, and learning how to cope with challenges and stress.

Much recent cognitive and neuroscience research has focused on resilience. Let’s look at some examples of research and then later some lessons in how to go about future-proofing ourselves…

An example of understanding resilience can be seen in work by Elliott et al., (1998) in which they got participants to play a computer game. They received feedback to let them how know how well they were doing in the game – much like we get feedback from family, friends and colleagues every day. However, the feedback was carefully manipulated so that some individuals always got positive feedback, others always negative and a final group received no feedback at all. People performed best when they were given positive feedback to help them along and worst when given negative feedback. That isn’t surprising, but it does emphasise that we should provide positive direction when we are supporting them in their work.

Interestingly, in the condition where no feedback was given, healthy individuals performed ‘as if’ they had been given positive feedback. In contrast, a group of depressed individuals behaved as if they had been given negative feedback. In other words, in the absence of someone telling us how we are doing, a healthy response is to believe we are doing the right thing, whereas the response of a depressed individual is to assume they are performing badly unless told otherwise. Here we see a cognitive basis for resilience – the way we interpret our own performance. If I think I am doing the right thing I will persevere. If not, I won’t.

An extension of this can be seen with cognitive re-appraisal (Ochsner and Gross, 2005). If I show you a gruesome picture of a battlefield you may experience shock and disgust (amongst other emotions). However, if I tell you it is a film set and no-one was actually hurt, that the blood was actually ketchup, then your emotions settle. Cognitive re-appraisal is the ability to actively change the perspective of a scene (or even a memory). So thinking about resilience (and depression), some people may actively lighten the scenes of their lives whilst others darken them.

So, taking the above two examples together, a potentially adverse or negative event may firstly be seen as a necessary step in the right direction and secondly be perceived and remembered more positively than it may have felt at the time.

A network of structures including the medial prefrontal cortex (including the ventral anterior cingulate) and the amygdala may play an important role in resilience by controlling the way we react to challenges.  Activity in the amygdala tracks the emotional arousal of an event and appears to show differences across individuals – the more anxious a person is, the more reactive the amygdala (or perhaps the other way around!). On top of this, the medial PFC appears to regulate this activity being produced in the amygdala. Differences between healthy individuals and those with depression have been observed in the way that the medial PFC responds to emotional stimuli (Elliott et al., 2002) and this same region appears to contribute to cognitive appraisal described above. So the PFC may provide the cognitive self-regulation that then determines how the amygdala reacts to emotional situations.

One aspect of resilience then, the way in which we interpret and challenge, can be seen as the result of cognitive-emotion interactions in prefrontal and amygdala brain regions. This helps us to understand why people differ in their resilience and also how changes in the cognitive or emotion system can result in either depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or at the other extreme resilience and healthy coping.

Dr John.

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References:

Elliott, R., Sahakian, B.J., Michael,  A., Paykel, E.S. and Dolan, R.J. 1998.  Abnormal neural response to feedback on planning and guessing tasks in patients with unipolar depression. Psychological Medicine, 28:559-571

Elliott, R., Rubinsztein, J.S., Dolan, R.J. and Sahakian B.J. 2002.  The neural basis of mood congruent processing biases in depression.  Archives of General Psychiatry, 59:597-604

Ochsner, K.N. Gross, J. 2005 The cognitive control of emotion. Trends Cogn. Sci. 9, 242–249

A recurrent theme here is Behaviour Change. Not just a focus on what determines our behaviour, but the processes that help us change. Why is that?

For some reason, we appear to develop habits and attitudes that, later on, we decide we want to change. “I must be more organized with my e-mails”; “I should spend more time chatting to colleagues about the organisation”; “I would like to spend my lunchtime reading, but never seem to be able to.”

This failure to ‘do what we would like to do’ can be explained in part with the dual-process model of behaviour (see table below and Evans, 2008). I’ve mentioned this in previous newsletters. We have a fast, automatic system that controls our everyday behaviour and simply gets on with things. It creates habits and gives in to temptations like snacking and procrastination. The second system is our control centre, which tries to get us to do the right things (self-regulation). It is slow and effortful and represents our conscious mind. One system says ‘be organized’, the other says ‘no, be lazy’ and it’s often the lazy system that wins.

But why is it so hard for the cognitive system? Why does the lazy system tend to win. Well a recent paper in the journal PLoS One may help explain the mystery, and tell us a bit about our school days too!

The study focuses on mathematics. Something that you either love or hate (and most of us hate!) In the research, participants thought about doing maths problems and the researchers were interested in how the brain responded in different people with different attitudes towards maths (Lyons et al., 2012). Those who didn’t like doing maths showed increased activity in the pain centres of their brain! Several regions of the brain, the insula, cingulate and thalamus, are thought to be part of our pain system and if you stimulate these regions you actually produce a sensation of pain (Lenz et al, 1993). Interestingly, it has also been shown that social rejection causes activity in the insula and so there may be a variety of situations where we feel real pain even though we’re not actually being bitten or poked with a stick (Eisenberger et al., 2003).

So thinking about maths hurts! Not only this, but those who hurt the most also perform the worst when they actually do maths. And, it puts them off doing maths in future. So there’s a simple cascade of effects here: We think about doing a task that we perceive to be difficult and perhaps even anxiety provoking; this gives us a feeling of pain; we are put off from doing the task and take an easier option instead. And hence, we maintain our bad habits and continue to take the easy, lazy, option.

Is there anything we can do to help? Can we fight back? Do we want to fight back?

On the one hand, pain is adaptive as it tells us to stop doing what we’re doing. Pain says: “You are being damaged, you must stop right now. If you continue you might suffer further injuries or even death!” However, as with maths sometimes the signal is metaphorical – you are not actually at risk of injury, but instead your brain is finding it hard and would rather you took an easy option. In this latter case, there is no real reason why you can’t push through the pain – it isn’t real in any physical sense. It is merely a reflection of you trying to do something that is difficult. Most of the time I would recommend you listen to what your brain is telling you. At other times though, like with visual illusions, it is trying to fool you!

If you do persevere in your challenging task, then it will be easier next time. If you do push, you’ll begin to establish new habits and routines that become more fluent and less painful. Ultimately, persevering, little by little, we can all become mentally stronger and better regulated individuals.

If it feels painful, then it really does hurt. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop!

Dr John.

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References:

Eisenberger NI, Lieberman MD, Williams KD (2003) Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302: 290–292.

Evans J (2008) Dual-Processing Accounts Of Reasoning, Judgment, And Social Cognition Annual Review Of Psychology 59 , 255–278

Lyons IM, Beilock SL (2012) When Math Hurts: Math Anxiety Predicts Pain Network Activation in Anticipation of Doing Math. PLoS ONE 7(10): e48076. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048076

Lenz FA, Seike M, Richardson RT, Lin YC, Baker FH, et al. (1993b) Thermal and pain sensations evoked by microstimulation in the area of human ventrocaudal nucleus. J Neurophysiol, 70: 200–212.

What do you do when you want to change someone’s behaviour? You can simply ask them to change. You could put up a poster. Perhaps you can try and explain why they should change. These are the traditional approaches – an attempt to change attitudes or beliefs with the assumption that behaviour will then also change as a result. There’s a general belief that this is the best way to effect change. Perhaps that’s why we’re always arguing with each other!

You will recall from last month that the brain appears to control behaviour through a dual-process system (Parkinson et al., 2000): a fast and efficient automatic pilot that controls much of our everyday comings and goings, and a slower more effortful cognitive system that does the hard thinking and evaluating when it needs to (Evans, 2008). When you have an argument with someone and try and get them to change, you are talking to the effortful, cognitive system. In fact, evidence suggests that this approach does not really work. We listen to the arguments, but then we just carry on what we were doing before!

An alternative approach to behaviour change is to make subtle changes to the environment to influence the automatic behaviour of the individual to do what you want them to do. This latter approach is called ‘nudging’ and is an integration of several separate fields of research including behavioural economics, behaviour analysis, design architecture and neuroscience. It sounds a little ‘under hand’ – influencing people’s behaviour without them realising it, though in many ways it is what advertising and marketing have been trying to do for years. I’ll return to the ethics of nudging at the end, but for the time being, I’ll share some developments from the Danish Nudge Network http://www.inudgeyou.com/ and from the conference I attended at the Kolding School of Design, Denmark http://designcamp2012.dskd.dk/conference-days/talks/

A classic example is based on urinals in men’s toilets. Apparently men are poor shots and so splash and spill when they go to the toilet, leading to a messy and unpleasant experience for others. Posters and messages are not effective. However, if you put a little picture of a fly in the base of the urinal next to the drain hole then suddenly men become much better at targeting and cause less of a mess. This results in a very effective solution to a less than pleasant problem. And it doesn’t involve any attempt to convince men to take more care. It was successfully piloted at Schiphol airport and apparently reduces splashes and spills by 80%. Here’s a more recent description: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121310977

That’s a nudge.

In a self-service cafeteria, if you reduce the default plate size, then you reduce calorie intake of the customers by about 20% (Wansink, 1996). Essentially, when we wander about a buffet table we are on auto-pilot – we blindly pile our plate with food. How do we decide when we’ve got enough? Do we do a mental calculation of potential calorie contents? No, we stop piling the plate when things start toppling off the top! So, if you reduce the plate size, then you reduce the amount you take to the table and subsequently eat.

That’s a nudge.

The trick is to focus on situations when a person would normally be functioning automatically and then consider ways to signpost the desired behaviour for them. And if you want to prevent a behaviour, then help the individual snap out of their automatic day-dreaming. Flash a light at them. Put a physical or psychological barrier in the way. Whatever it takes to engage the conscious, thoughtful, cognitive system.

The DesignCamp conference specifically focused on an integration between design excellence and nudge psychology. A fascinating combination. How can we design beautiful, innovative and creative solutions to tricky real world problems such as healthy eating, energy conservation, exercise and reducing littering (amongst others)? Of course companies can use nudge techniques to create better and more productive working environments for their staff as well. And they can also nudge their customers and clients…

We’re looking to set up the British Nudge Network and we’ll keep you updated on progress. It would provide a forum to share ideas about how to help nudge people in the right direction – whether it be productivity, corporate responsibility or simply trying to be a little more healthy.

Ultimately, nudging is just a tool, it works by communicating with the fast, automatic, implicit system of the brain. It can be used for good or evil ends – that is the power and responsibility of the nudge architect.  Next time you are walking along a street , supermarket aisle or corridor, look around you and see if you can identify the ways in which the environment, and stimuli within it, are driving your behaviour without you realizing it!

Now where’s that cream bun that I just bought without thinking about it…

Dr John.

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References:

Evans J (2008) Dual-Processing Accounts Of Reasoning, Judgment, And Social Cognition Annual Review Of Psychology 59 , 255–278

Parkinson JA, Cardinal RN, & Everitt BJ (2000). Limbic cortico-ventral striatal systems underlying appetitive conditioning. Progress in Brain Research. 126, 263-285.

Parkinson JA (2008). Positive emotions and reward: appetitive systems: amygdala and striatum. New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (4th Edition). Elsevier.

Can Package Size Accelerate Usage Volume? (1996) Journal of Marketing, Brian Wansink, Vol. 60:3 (July), 1–14.

Next week I travel to Denmark for a conference on Behaviour Change. In fact it is run by the Danish Nudge Network! What on earth is that, I hear you ask. Well, it’s a long story and it involves competing brain systems trying to control our behaviour. Let me explain…

Think for a moment about ‘change.’ If you could change something about yourself – particularly your behaviour or habits? What would it be? We may want to eat more healthily, or work more productively, or manage more effectively. We want to change, but realise that making lasting changes to our life is actually quite difficult. That’s where the science of Behaviour Change and Nudging comes in – to help us understand how it works and to help us be more effective in bringing about lasting change.

The principles of behaviour change (BC) are based on many years of both behavioural and neuroscientific research. Essentially, research has identified two brain networks that help (or hinder) our attempts to change. Specifically, separate parts of the prefrontal cortex and different segments of the striatum form two circuits that compete to control behaviour (Parkinson et al. 2000; Parkinson 2008). Sometimes they work together and all is well. At other times, we might desperately want to resist that cigarette, but fail to stop ourselves.

A fundamental aspect is that just because an individual has the intention to change, this may not actually result in adaptations to their behaviour. This Value-Action gap (the difference between what I say and what I do) is a result of several factors inherent in human behaviour. For example, consider attitudes towards energy awareness and sustainability – most people claim to hold ‘sustainable intentions’ such as switching off lights, recycling bottles etc. But far fewer actually develop and maintain these new behaviours. One reason for this is that even though individuals maintain an explicit intention to behave in a new or different way, they experience a difficulty in suppressing old habits and so find themselves leaving lights on and throwing bottles in the waste bin.  Neuroscience research has demonstrated the existence of separable neural systems that control habitual versus intentional behaviour, thus giving a clear reason why we have this behavioural conflict: I am trying to recycle, but my habits keep stopping me!

Squire et al., (1990) famously proposed the distinction between Declarative and Procedural memory. The declarative system represents explicit memories of events and meanings that could be consciously recalled and manipulated (for example, What is the capital of France? you know it, and you retrieve it into your conscious mind). In contrast, the procedural system represents skills and habits that are implicit in nature (the representations are not accessible to conscious awareness). You know how to ride a bike, but it’s not so easy to try and explain the process to others. Since this initial distinction, the idea that two separate systems control behaviour has developed. Broadly speaking, one system is intentional, effortful and propositional whilst the other is implicit, routine and uses affective signals as its currency (Evans, 2008 – see table).

From an adaptive perspective it has been argued that the implicit system gradually acquires an enormous data-set of routine operations allowing the explicit cognitive system to be free, flexible and accessible. I can walk, drink coffee and maintain a conversation all at the same time – my implicit system controls the movement whilst my explicit system thinks about what I am saying!

Research into human motivation agrees with this framework: it has been shown that an implicit motivation system controls our spontaneous everyday drives, whilst an explicit motivation system regulates this by incorporating social norms and conscious expectations on our goal choices. I really want to eat that cream cake and it’s making me dribble (implicit motives and desires), but I am in an important formal meeting and it would be frowned upon (explicit motives and social rules). It turns out that implicit motives are better predictors of future performance (McClelland et al., 1989). Likewise, implicit processes such as habits and routines control much of our daily behaviour without a great deal of conscious or explicit input. This is fine when habits are adaptive, but challenging when they produce inappropriate behaviour.

In terms of our everyday lives, much of what we do at work is likely to be automatic and implicit. So if we have identified areas for change, it pays to analyse them in terms of what is controlled by the explicit system and what by the implicit system. This is why we have to effortfully work on creating new healthy habits, but can then sit back and relax when they become automatic.

Talking to the automatic (implicit) system is called ‘nudging.’ We’re not trying to convince someone to change, we are simply nudging the habit system in the right direction. Doors that you need to push will often *not* have a handle on one side. This gives your automatic system a clue as to how to interact with it. If you design a building and put the lift a long way away, more people will use the stairs – not because you’ve convinced them to exercise more, but simply because the stairs are nearer and therefore become the default. If you want to eat less, then buy smaller plates – it has been shown that we implicitly stop eating when our plate is empty. Smaller plates, less consumption. It works. And that is what nudging is all about. I wonder what the Danes are nudging? I’ll let you know next time!

Dr John.

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References:

Evans J (2008) Dual-Processing Accounts Of Reasoning, Judgment, And Social Cognition Annual Review Of Psychology 59 , 255–278

McClelland DC, Koestner R, Weinberger J (1989) How do self-attributed and implicit motives differ? Psychological Review, Vol 96(4), 690-702

Parkinson JA, Cardinal RN, & Everitt BJ (2000). Limbic cortico-ventral striatal systems underlying appetitive conditioning. Progress in Brain Research. 126, 263-285.

Parkinson JA (2008). Positive emotions and reward: appetitive systems: amygdala and striatum. New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (4th Edition). Elsevier.

Squire, L. R., M. Mishkin, and A. P. Shimamura (1990) (eds.) Learning and memory. In Discussions in Neuroscience, Elsevier, Amsterdam.

So how do you go about developing better control? Well, as I mentioned, you can do so through ‘brain training’ (the aim here is to improve executive function- the ability of your brain to take top-down control over other brain functions and behaviour). But evidence, real evidence, only supports a few techniques to do this along with many many hours of practice (Jaeggi et al., 2011).

You can think of self-control as a balance between your default tendency and your executive control (your temptations or desires and your ability to ‘do the right thing’). “I really want to eat that chocolate biscuit but I am trying to reduce my fat intake.”  So to gain control, you can either work on your default tendencies or your executive control. What this means in practice is that you can either keep telling yourself to try harder (we all know that will-power is a fickle beast) or you can work with your habits and tendencies as we have discussed in the past.

A word of warning about your will-power. In a recent run of papers (ending in a book – see references),  Baumeister and colleagues have explored the way in which our ability to control ourselves waxes and wanes across the day. He argues that will-power is like a muscle: it needs developing through practice, and it requires energy to function. It also gets tired and fails. His experiments are intriguing and have far-reaching implications. There are many ways to test the strength of self-control. One task involves the participant responding as fast as possible to stimuli that appear on the screen (this response becomes the default tendency). Now-and-again a stimulus appears that the participant has been told to inhibit themselves to – they have to resist the temptation to make the default response and instead do nothing. You can do this task with food pictures and show that as people get more hungry they find it harder to inhibit their responses to the images! What Baumeister has shown is that you can tire the self-control system and hence induce errors. One example: If you have to be vigilant (perhaps paying careful attention to words on a screen) for a while and then carry out the inhibitory control task, your performance deteriorates. Basically, the self-control system has become fatigued and fails. That’s why after a long day in the office it is easy to lose your temper, or to fail to maintain your diet, or to decide not to go to the gym after all.

The main lesson here is to avoid self-control ‘situations’ when you are tired or have been concentrating for a long time. You can also use ‘pre-commitment’ strategies. If you know when you are most vulnerable then don’t put temptation in the way at those times. For example, schedule the difficult work and decisions when you know you will be fresh; don’t buy biscuits if you know that you’ll eat them if they are in the house; after checking your email first thing, turn it off so you are not tempted to keep flicking back to it. Pre-commitment allows the executive system to make the decisions ahead of time, so that the lazy temptation system can’t hijack your good intentions later.

In terms of working with the default system (lazy, desires, habits), you can use Implementation Intentions to create new ‘healthy’ habits (see the March Newsletter for several habit building techniques). These simple techniques help you to develop new defaults – they take some effort at first, but soon become automatic. Then you can worry less about keeping an eye on your default tendencies.

You can also focus on how you specify your goals. There are various ways people have focused on this – such as SMART goal setting (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound). Essentially, the more focused and developed your goal is, the more likely you are to achieve it. This is not rocket science, but people rarely do it! So for example, the second of these two statements is more likely to result in goal achievement:

1.  I am always being distracted when I am trying to work. I think that I spend too much time doing non-essential stuff. I am going to cut down on my email and Facebook checking during the day;

2.  I will check my email once in the morning at 9am and once in the afternoon at 2pm. Each time I will act on any emails that require less then 2 minutes attention. I will put the others into a ‘to do’ folder which I will then attend to on Tuesdays and Fridays between 9-10am. Otherwise, my email will be off.

In fact good goal-setting and Implementation Intentions work really well together.

Be more aware of when you get self-control system failure. Analyse why it happened. Take steps to prevent it recurring by supporting your executive system and working with, not against, your habits and defaults.

Dr John.

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References:

Baumeister RF, Tierney J (2012) Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.

Jaeggi SM, Buschkuehl M, Jonides J, and Shah P (2011) Short- and long-term benefits of cognitive training. PNAS vol. 108 no. 25 10081-10086.

Implementation Intentions:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/201001/implementation-intentions-facilitate-action-control

SMART goals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

Self-Control is Quite Useful

I was proof reading a document recently and part way through I had a “stuff this!” moment and gave up. I then sent the document back saying it was proofed. I was tired and every time I read a sentence I lost track and had to go back to the beginning. Instead of persevering, I gave up. Bad Dr P! This is an example of a lack of self-control. The right thing to do would have been to focus (via a coffee?) and to force myself to complete the job properly. But the easier and more tempting solution was to just give up and do something easier instead.

There are many terms that are used to describe self-control (Will-power, inhibitory control, self-regulation, self-discipline, ego strength, executive control) and they probably have subtly different definitions or uses. But what they all try to capture is a fundamental control process of the brain: you have a predisposed or default tendency to carry out a certain behaviour, but you are able to prevent that behaviour from happening and instead do something else in a more controlled manner. Essentially you are preventing an automatic response with a controlled one – often the automatic response might have good short term consequences, but bad long term consequences. Smoking is an obvious example – feels good now, but will kill you later. Another example would be shouting at your colleagues (might make you feel better in the moment, but probably won’t help long-term team cohesion, or your job prospects). In my example at the start, the default tendency was to give up (easier to give up, harder to persevere), whilst the controlled response should have been to keep trying – in the knowledge of a job well done and for the later benefits of having done it well.

The concept of control and conflict has been around for as long as psychology has been studied. Famously, Sigmund Freud talked about the “Id” (full of desires and impulses) being reigned in by the “Ego” (the management system). In his scheme, the “Superego” provided a moral compass to guide the ‘right’ behaviour. He got it pretty much right. We all have a sense of how we should make decisions and behave but sometimes we find ourselves losing control and then regretting it later.

And here’s an astounding fact about self-control: childhood self-control predicts adult success (Shoda et al., 1990). In a now famous study, pre-schoolers were left in a room with a single marshmallow and told that if they didn’t eat it for 15 mins they would be given a second one (see the links, including a video, below). Those children that were able to delay gratification (high self-control) at the age of 4, showed greater achievements and abilities in later adulthood. In fact, self-control is better than IQ at predicting future success (Duckworth and Seligman, 2005). Interestingly, certain areas of the brain distinguish good vs poor self-control individuals. The prefrontal cortex is more active for high self-control whilst the ventral striatum is more active for low self-control (Casey et al., 2011). As I mentioned above, we often think of self-control as being a conflict between instant temptations and healthier long-term goals. The prefrontal cortex appears to play a major role in cognitive reasoning and planning – highly active in people with good self-control. In contrast, the ventral striatum is part of the brain’s reward system and its over-activity is implicated in addiction. High striatal activity was seen in those with low self-control. Two brain systems competing to control your behaviour!

In an exciting twist to this story, John Jonnides has shown that you can train self-control – you can become better at it through practice (Jaeggi et al., 2011). By using a working memory ‘game’ you can improve the cognitive control abilities of your prefrontal cortex and in so doing enhance your ability to suppress or dampen-down your temptations. In fact, a version of the task they used in their research is available as an App! (For example, search “n-back suite” on the iTunes app store.) This is real brain training – unlike the untested and unproven commercial rubbish that is often pedalled.

So what have we learnt? That we are often tempted to take the easy route and that it can be difficult, effortful and trying to persevere and take the longer-term route. This is natural and probably reflects a conflict between the reward system in the brain and the cognitive control system. Importantly, the ability to self-control predicts future success (including long term well-being). And it can be learnt. But you have to keep working at it. Aim for small wins over time.

What is the most important message here? For me, it is the fact that self-control can be learnt and developed. Every time you are successful at controlling an impulse then you become stronger for the next time. And as you become better at self-control, then you are developing a better future for yourself and those around you.

Dr John.

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References:

Casey, B. J.; L. H. Somerville, I. H. Gotlib, O. Ayduk, N. T. Franklin, M. K. Askren, J. Jonides, M. G. Berman, N. L. Wilson, T. Teslovich, G. Glover, V. Zayas, W. Mischel, Y. Shoda (2011). Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (36): 14998–15003 (and reported in the press: “Marshmallow Test Points to Biological Basis for Delayed Gratification”. Science Daily. September 1, 2011)

Duckworth AL, and Seligman MEP (2005) Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents. Psychological Science December 2005 vol. 16 no. 12 939-944.

Jaeggi SM, Buschkuehl M, Jonides J, and Shah P (2011) Short- and long-term benefits of cognitive training. PNAS vol. 108 no. 25 10081-10086.

Shoda, Yuichi; Mischel, Walter; Peake, Philip K. (1990). Predicting Adolescent Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Competencies from Preschool Delay of Gratification: Identifying Diagnostic Conditions. Developmental Psychology 26 (6) 978–986.

The Famous Marshmallow Experiment:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g75lwNUpUQg&feature=related

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment