Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Self-Awareness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self-Awareness. Show all posts

Friday, November 5, 2021

Invisible gorillas in the mind: Internal inattentional blindness and the prospect of introspection training

Morris, A. (2021, September 26).

Abstract

Much of high-level cognition appears inaccessible to consciousness. Countless studies have revealed mental processes -- like those underlying our choices, beliefs, judgments, intuitions, etc. -- which people do not notice or report, and these findings have had a widespread influence on the theory and application of psychological science. However, the interpretation of these findings is uncertain. Making an analogy to perceptual consciousness research, I argue that much of the unconsciousness of high-level cognition is plausibly due to internal inattentional blindness: missing an otherwise consciously-accessible internal event because your attention was elsewhere. In other words, rather than being structurally unconscious, many higher mental processes might instead be "preconscious", and would become conscious if a person attended to them. I synthesize existing indirect evidence for this claim, argue that it is a foundational and largely untested assumption in many applied interventions (such as therapy and mindfulness practices), and suggest that, with careful experimentation, it could form the basis for a long-sought-after science of introspection training.

Conclusion

Just as people can miss perceptual events due to external inattention, so may they be blind to internal events – like those constituting high-level mental processes – due to internal inattention. The existence of internal inattentional blindness, and the possibility of overcoming it through training, are widely assumed in successful applied psychological practices and widely reported by practitioners; yet these possibilities have rarely been explored experimentally, or taken seriously by basic theorists. Rigorously demonstrating the existence of IIB could open a new chapter both in the development of psychological interventions, and in our understanding of the scope of conscious awareness.


Attention Therapists: Some very relevant information here.

Saturday, April 24, 2021

Bias Blind Spot: Structure, Measurement, and Consequences

Irene Scopelliti,  et al.
Management Science 61(10):
2468-2486.

Abstract

People exhibit a bias blind spot: they are less likely to detect bias in themselves than in others. We report the development and validation of an instrument to measure individual differences in the propensity to exhibit the bias blind spot that is unidimensional, internally consistent, has high test-retest reliability, and is discriminated from measures of intelligence, decision-making ability, and personality traits related to self-esteem, self-enhancement, and self-presentation. The scale is predictive of the extent to which people judge their abilities to be better than average for easy tasks and worse than average for difficult tasks, ignore the advice of others, and are responsive to an intervention designed to mitigate a different judgmental bias. These results suggest that the bias blind spot is a distinct metabias resulting from naïve realism rather than other forms of egocentric cognition, and has unique effects on judgment and behavior.

Conclusion

We find that bias blind spot is a latent factor in self-assessments of relative vulnerability to bias. This meta-bias affected the majority of participants in our samples, but exhibited considerable variance across
participants. We present a concise, reliable, and valid measure of individual differences in bias blind spot
that has the ability to predict related biases in self-assessment, advice taking, and responsiveness to bias
reduction training. Given the influence of bias blind spot on consequential judgments and decisions, as
well as receptivity to training, this measure may prove useful across a broad range of domains such as personnel assessment, information analysis, negotiation, consumer decision making, and education.

Friday, November 13, 2020

Cracking the Code of Sustained Collaboration

Francesca Gino
Harvard Business Review
Originally published Nov 2019

Ask any leader whether his or her organization values collaboration, and you’ll get a resounding yes. Ask whether the firm’s strategies to increase collaboration have been successful, and you’ll probably receive a different answer.

“No change seems to stick or to produce what we expected,” an executive at a large pharmaceutical company recently told me. Most of the dozens of leaders I’ve interviewed on the subject report similar feelings of frustration: So much hope and effort, so little to show for it.

One problem is that leaders think about collaboration too narrowly: as a value to cultivate but not a skill to teach. Businesses have tried increasing it through various methods, from open offices to naming it an official corporate goal. While many of these approaches yield progress—mainly by creating opportunities for collaboration or demonstrating institutional support for it—they all try to influence employees through superficial or heavy-handed means, and research has shown that none of them reliably delivers truly robust collaboration.

What’s needed is a psychological approach. When I analyzed sustained collaborations in a wide range of industries, I found that they were marked by common mental attitudes: widespread respect for colleagues’ contributions, openness to experimenting with others’ ideas, and sensitivity to how one’s actions may affect both colleagues’ work and the mission’s outcome. Yet these attitudes are rare. Instead, most people display the opposite mentality, distrusting others and obsessing about their own status. The task for leaders is to encourage an outward focus in everyone, challenging the tendency we all have to fixate on ourselves—what we’d like to say and achieve—instead of what we can learn from others.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

What if consciousness is just a product of our non-conscious brain?

Peter Halligan and David A Oakley
The Conversation
Originally published December 20, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

The non-conscious nature of being

Previously, we argued that while undeniably real, the “experience of consciousness” or subjective awareness is precisely that – awareness. No more, no less. We proposed that while consciousness is created by brain systems, it has no causal relationship with or control over mental processes. The fact that personal awareness accompanies the contents of the personal narrative is causally compelling. But it is not necessarily relevant to understanding and explaining the psychological processes underpinning them.

This quote from George Miller – one of the founders of cognitive psychology – helps explain this idea. When one recalls something from memory, “consciousness gives no clue as to where the answer comes from; the processes that produce it are unconscious. It is the result of thinking, not the process of thinking, that appears spontaneously in consciousness”.

Taking this further, we propose that subjective awareness – the intimate signature experience of what it is like to be conscious – is itself a product of non-conscious processing. This observation, was well captured by pioneering social psychologist Daniel Wegner when he wrote that, “unconscious mechanisms create both conscious thought about action and the action, and also produce the sense of will we experience by perceiving the thought as the cause of the action”.

The info is here.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

A Systematic Review and Meta‐Synthesis of Qualitative Research Into Mandatory Personal Psychotherapy During Training

David Murphy, Nisha Irfan, Harriet Barnett, Emma Castledine, & Lily Enescu
Counseling and Psychotherapy Research
First published February 23, 2018

Abstract

Background
This study addresses the thorny issue of mandatory personal psychotherapy within counselling and psychotherapy training. It is expensive, emotionally demanding and time‐consuming. Nevertheless, proponents argue that it is essential in protecting the public and keeping clients safe; to ensure psychotherapists develop high levels of self‐awareness and gain knowledge of interpersonal dynamics; and that it enhances therapist effectiveness. Existing evidence about these potential benefits is equivocal and is largely reliant on small‐scale qualitative studies.

Method
We carried out a systematic review of literature searched within five major databases. The search identified 16 published qualitative research studies on the topic of mandatory personal psychotherapy that matched the inclusion criteria. All studies were rated for quality. The findings from individual studies were thematically analysed through a process of meta‐synthesis.

Results
Meta‐synthesis showed studies on mandatory psychotherapy had reported both positive and hindering factors in almost equal number. Six main themes were identified: three positive and three negative. Positive findings were related to personal and professional development, experiential learning and therapeutic benefits. Negative findings related to ethical imperatives do no harm, justice and integrity.

Conclusion
When mandatory personal psychotherapy is used within a training programme, courses must consider carefully and put ethical issues at the forefront of decision‐making. Additionally, the requirement of mandatory psychotherapy should be positioned and identified as an experiential pedagogical device rather than fulfilling a curative function. Recommendations for further research are made.

The research is here.