hesian - the psychology of solution focused practice - ian c smith
DESCRIPTION
A presentation from the Orienting Solutions event.TRANSCRIPT
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“Psychology is the science of thinking of names for things
that do not exist”
- Brian Herbert
The 3 types of SF question:
Resource questions
Exception questions
Preferred future questions
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Resources
Resource questions - definition
...ask people to identify their skills and other positive attributes. It may also involving asking how these can be used.
Resource questions
Does it work?
Seligman et al (2005) measured depression and happiness while asking people to do different tasks, including:
placebo condition identifying their ‘signature strengths’
Seligman et al Findings
Comparing the ‘placebo’ group and the ‘Identify a signature strength’ group found..
Immediately after task - significant improvement in depression and happiness for the ‘strength’ group. BUT...
After 1 week, 1 month, 3 months & 6 months - no significant difference!
Seligman et al Findings
However, there was another condition – “identifying strengths and using them in a new way”. For this group.... There was a significant improvement in
depression immediately after task but no difference later, BUT
HAPPINESS significantly improved at ALL time points to six months.
What is the implication?
It would seem that simply asking people about their resources isn’t helpful in the long run unless there is also a focus on applying them in new ways.
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Exceptions
Exception seeking - definition
...is asking people to draw distinctions between two occurrences of a similar event which happened to them in the past.
Autobiographical Memory (ABM)
There are different styles of retrieving ABMs – extended, specific & categoric.
Specific ABMs are the key to good social problem solving (e.g. Beaman et al, 2007)
People who are depressed tend to be less specific in ABMs (Williams, 1995)
Requests that are highly concrete or prompt visualising prompt the most specific memories.
Implication:
Asking people about past times in a highly concrete way or a way that helps them visualise the situation can help them locate specific exceptions.
Selecting a comparison event
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_262395&feature=iv&src_vid=voAntzB7EwE&v=v3iPrBrGSJM
It’s really hard to identify times when something you don’t expect changes:
Implications:
Don’t ask about the ABSENCE of a problem, instead get people to look for other unusual positive experiences
Asking people about past times in a highly concrete way or a way that helps them visualise...
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Preferred Futures
Preferred future questions - definition
Asking people about what they would like to have happen in the future
Preferred future questions
In other words asking people to:
1. Predict what things will make them happy in the future (affective forecasting)
2. Choose goals from these possible futures
1. Affective Forecasting
Food shopping is future prediction!
(Gilbert et al, 2002)
1. Affective Forecasting
CORRECTION
What can help?
Wilson et al (2000) asked football fans how much of an effect their team winning a game would have on their happiness
At the same time they asked half of them to think through the following week in detail
The ‘thinkers’ were more realistic’ The ‘non-thinkers’ significantly over-
estimated how happy they would feelWHY?
How we think about distant and near future events (Trope & Lieberman, 2003)
High-level construals
Abstract Simple Coherent Decontextualized Goal relevant
Low-Level construals
Concrete Complex incoherent Contextualized Goal irrelevant
Implication:
Preferred future questions are likely to result in more accurate answers if you talk through all the details (as in the Miracle Question)
3. Choosing
Choosing doesn’t happen in a vacuum
Most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context
Preferred Future TimesPick the type of subscription you want:
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Implication
People NEED and LIKE comparisons. Offering comparisons for every possibility may help.
Choose a holiday... (Shafir, 1993)
You can go to Moderacia
Average weather Average hotels Average beaches Average nightlife
You can go to Extremia
Brilliant Weather Awful hotels Fantastic beaches Terrible nightlife
Most people choose Extremia
So choosing doesn’t work the
same way as rejecting!
Most people reject Extremia
Reject
Implication:
Balance conversations about choosing and rejecting
Be aware of the difference!
So in summary...
The message from research tells us that the way we ask about the future and memories and how we present choices can have a huge impact on the response we get.
Certain thought exercises seem to help people find better goals and solutions for reaching them
Social sciences research has a lot to offer solution focused practice
References
Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably Irrational. New York: Harper Collins Beaman, A., Pushkar, D., Etezadi, S., Bye, D., Conway, M. (2007) Autobiographical memory
specificity predicts social problem-solving ability in old and young adults. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60:9, 1275-1288, DOI: 10.1080/17470210600943450
Gilbert, D. T., Gill, M. J., Wilson, T. D. (2002) The Future is Now: Temporal Correction After Affective Forecasting. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 88 (1), 430-444.
MacLeod, A., Byrne, A. (1996) . Anxiety, Depression, and the Anticipation of Future Positive and Negative Experiences. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 105 (2), 286-289.
Msetfi, R., Murphy, R. A., Simpson, J., Kornbrot, D. E. (2005). Depressive Realism and Outcome Density Bias in Contingency Judgments: The Effect of the Context and Intertrial Interval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 134 (1), 10-22.
Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., Peterson, C. (2005) Positive Psychology Progress – Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist 60 (5), 410-421.
Shafir, E. (1993). Choosing versus rejecting: Why some options are better and worse than others. Memory & Cognition 21 (4), 546-556.
Trop, Y., Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal Construal. Psychological Review 110 (3), 403-421. Williams, J. M. G. (1995) Depression and Specificity of Autobiographical Memory. In D. Rubin (Ed.)
Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, T. D., Wheatley, T., Meyers, J. M., Gilbert, D. T., Axsom, D. (2000). Focalism: A Source of Durability Bias in Affective Forecasting. Attitudes and Social Cognition 78 (5), 821-836.
