The Concept of Mindset and Intervenors

A case study for the “Territory of Concepts” project

The above diagram uses the “Universal Reference” diagram, the “Kinds of Actors” framework, and a sub-framework of “Ecological Formism” to explore a thematic network around “Mindset” and build a Configurational Theory of “Mindset”.

This diagram goes beyond the original “Universal Reference” diagram and offers us a new creative space for discussing the Concept — Theory Transformation which is part of the “Territory of Concepts” project.

In The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration (48 min read), I focused on Theoretical Psychologists and made a demo of theoretical integration by curating Carol S. Dweck’s version of Mindset theory and Peter Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset theory together.

A by-product of the article is the Mental Tuning framework. See the diagram below.

In The Concept of Mindset and Empirical Psychologists (27 min read), I focused on Empirical Psychologists and used Job Crafting as an example to test the Mental Tuning framework.

This article will continue the journey and focus on Intervenors and their mindset-related creations.

Contents

1. Intervenors and Behavior Change

2. How Do Intervenors Think

2.1 Intervenors’ Points of Observation
2.2 Kinds of Intervenors

3. How Do Intervenors Work

3.1 A Typology of Methods for Social Study
3.1 Kinds of Methods for Applied Psychological Sciences
3.3 Types of Heuristics

• 3.3.1 Theoretical Knowledge as Heuristics
• 3.3.2 Practical Knowledge as Heuristics
• 3.3.3 Situational Heuristics

4. Intervenors and their Mindset-related Creations

4.1 Psychotherapy and Mental Tuning
4.2 ACT: A New Approach to Cognitive-behavioral Therapy
4.3 ACT: Verbal Behavior and Human Suffering
4.4 ACT: Cognitive Fusion and Experiential Avoidance
4.5 ACT: Inflexibility Mindset and Flexibility Mindset
4.6 ACT as Mental Tuning

1. Intervenors and Behavior Change

In The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration (48 min read), I introduced the Kinds of Actors and defined four types of actors for psychological knowledge engagement.

The above diagram is based on a diagram called Universal Reference. The Vertical group refers to the Degrees of Abstraction of “Knowledge”.

Originally, I used it to discuss sociological knowledge creators. Now we can apply the same logic to discuss psychological knowledge creators.

• Theoretical Psychologists
• Empirical Psychologists
• Intervenors
• Actors

While Theoretical Psychologists and Empirical Psychologists are working on producing public knowledge, Intervenors and Actors are working on solving mental problems or optimizing subjective experience by using psychological knowledge.

These four types of knowledge creators have different perspectives and behavioral patterns because they have different construal levels, practical interests, points of observation, methodological preferences, and expressive conventions (or language habits).

In general, Theoretical Psychologists tend to think and work with the following perspective.

• Construal Levels: Meta-theory or the most abstract level
• Practical Interests: The progress of the discipline as a meaningful whole
• Points of Observation: The “Concept — Theory” Move
• Methodological Preferences: Concept Analysis and Formal Representation
• Expressive Conventions: Mathematical formulas or Conceptual frameworks

Empirical Psychologists move to a different position and they have a different perspective:

• Construal Levels: Specific-theory or abstract models/frameworks
• Practical Interests: Develop a particular innovation concept or framework for the discipline
• Points of Observation: The “Perspective — Framework” Move
• Methodological Preferences: methods for Empirical Research, such as laboratory experiments
• Expressive Conventions: Conceptual frameworks and data charts

Intervenors also have their specific needs for psychological knowledge engagement:

• Construal Levels: concrete models/frameworks and related test tools
• Practical Interests: Develop a particular intervention program for behavior change or related education
• Points of Observation: The “Methods — Heuristics” Move
• Methodological Preferences: methods for design, communication, test, report, etc.
• Expressive Conventions: face-to-face communication and questionnaire test

While Intervenors come from various domains, they share a primary theme: Behavior Change.

According to Wikipedia, “A behavioral change can be a temporary or permanent effect that is considered a change in an individual’s behavior when compared to previous behavior… This change is generally characterized by changes in thinking, interpretations, emotions, or relationships. These changes can be either good or bad, depending on which behavior is being affected.”

It’s clear that behavior change belongs to the field of applied psychological science or applied behavioral science. The “Behavior Change” theme refers to a field of using theoretical knowledge to solve practical problems. Some people use “Behavior Science” as an umbrella term that refers to a variety of disciplines, including fields like psychology, sociology, and anthropology, etc.

We can roughly use the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to visualize a knowledge value chain around the “Behavior Change” theme. See the diagram below.

• Theoretical Knowledge: Psychology > “Behavior Science”
• Practical Knowledge: “Behavior Science” > “Applied Behavior Science”
• Private Knowledge: Consultants > Clients

Since the present discussion is about Psychological Knowledge Engagement, I will only use “Applied Psychological Science” and “Applied Psychological Knowledge” for this article.

2. How Do Intervenors Think

In The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to discuss Theoretical Psychologists’ Points of Observation. I will continue to use the canvas for the present discussion.

The Knowledge Discovery Canvas is designed with four areas: the THEORY area, the PRACTICE area, the END area, and the MEANS area.

Let’s use the “Home — Away” terms as metaphors to describe Points of Observation.

We can assign these areas as Home for four types of creators.

• The THEORY Area: The Home of Theoretical Psychologists
• The PRACTICE Area: The Home of Actors
• The END Area: The Home of Empirical Psychologists
• The MEAN Area: The Home of Intervenors

For each type of creator, the other three types of creators’ Home means Away.

Each type of creator can do their homework in their Home, they can also visit other types of creators’ Home to run the thematic conversation for collaborative knowledge creation.

The MEANS area is connected to the PRACTICE area. We can see a connection between the Methods — Guides mapping and the Domains — Works mapping.

Usually, a particular method is a shared knowledge of a particular domain. The work of a domain always requires a particular guide for workers. If a person can’t find existing methods for guiding his work, he might develop some methods as a means for himself.

2.1 Intervenors’ Points of Observation

What do Intervenors’ Home look like? See the diagram below.

At the Construal Level, Empirical Psychologists work on specific theories or abstract models/frameworks, while Theoretical Psychologists work at the most abstract level of psychological science. While Empirical Psychologists are busy with the Hypothesis — Data Gap, Theoretical Psychologists think and work as Philosophers in the field of Psychological Science. Intervenors think on a different level because their primary objects are concrete models/frameworks and related test tools.

The primary Practical Interest of Intervenors is to develop a particular intervention program for behavior change or related education. They don’t consider Innovation as the primary goal of their program. In fact, they tend to use established psychological knowledge to guide their work.

Intervenors’ mental focus is on the Methods — Heuristics Move. They have to connect theoretical psychological knowledge with particular situational challenges. Experienced intervenors tend to develop specific methods and heuristics tools for their work.

In general, Intervenors prefer to use design, communication, testing, and reporting for their work. They also like to use face-to-face communication and questionnaire tests to work with clients.

2.2 Kinds of Intervenors

I use the term “Intervenors” to refer to professional practitioners who are using psychological knowledge to help others.

In HERO U — A New Framework for Knowledge Heroes, I distinguished three kinds of knowing from the perspective of outcome and motivation:

• Knowing-for-all
• Knowing-for-us
• Knowing-for-me

Intervenors’ psychological knowledge engagement belongs to Knowing-for-us.

The Knowing-for-us activity is located in the Echozone container. The outcome and motivation are about spreading and applying public knowledge to professional domain practice, curating and reflecting on personal practical experience, and connecting different domains in order to make new shared knowledge for participants.

As an umbrella term, Intervenors could refer to clinical psychologists, therapists, educators, trainers, curriculum designers, service designers, product designers, policymakers, mission-builders, civic, cultural, and institutional leaders, etc. This list is mentioned by Robert Kegan in his 1994 book In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (p.11).

I roughly used three groups for the present discussion. See the above diagram. These three groups are distinguished by their relevance in psychological knowledge engagement.

• Clinical Psychologists: high relevance in psychological knowledge engagement
• Educators and Coaches: medium relevance in psychological knowledge engagement
• Designers and Policymakers: low relevance in psychological knowledge engagement

How do we know these different types of relevance? It depends on their main professional activities. Clinical Psychologists see theoretical psychological knowledge and applied psychological knowledge as their professional experts because they rely on this knowledge to directly service clients.

Educators and coaches may directly or indirectly service clients, they also consider psychological knowledge as the primary object of their activities.

However, Designers and Policymakers use psychological knowledge as supportive resources while the primary objects of their activities are other professional knowledge such as design, management, etc.

3. How Do Intervenors Work

In this section, I will talk about methods from the perspectives of sociology and psychology. Since Intervenors rely on heuristics, I will introduce a typology of heuristics.

3.1 A Typology of Methods for Social Study

The American sociologist and social theorist Andrew Abbott wrote a great book titled Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences in 2004. In Chapter 1, he developed a typology of methods with the following essential- questions(pp.13–26):

• How to propose a question?
• How to design a study?
• How to draw inferences?
• How to acquire and analyze data?

Each question could lead to a typology of methods. For example, if we pay attention to the type of data gathering, then we can find four basic social science methods:

• Ethnography: gathering data by personal interaction
• Survey: gathering data by submitting questionnaires to respondents or formally interviewing them
• Record-based analysis: gathering data from formal organizational records (censuses, accounts, publications, and so on)
• History: using old records, surveys, and even ethnographies

If we start with how one analyzes data, we have three choices:

• Direct Interpretation: analysis by an individual’s reflection and synthesis (for example, narration)
• Quantitative Analysis: analysis using one of the standard methods of statistics to reason about causes
• Formal Modeling: analysis by creating a formal system mimicking the world and then using it to simulate reality.

Andrew Abbott also pointed out that we can begin with how one poses a question, we might note the important issue of how many cases we consider. This leads to the following three methods:

• Case-study analysis: studying a unique example in great detail
• Small-N analysis: seeking similarities and contrasts in a small number of cases
• Large-N analysis: emphasizing generalizability by studying large numbers of cases, usually randomly selected

Moreover, if we put these together, we can get 4*3*3=36 subtypes. This is an amazing typology of methods! Finally, he selected five successful methodological traditions and offered more details about them to his readers.

What are these Big Five?

• Ethnography
• Historical narration
• Standard causal analysis
• Small-N comparison
• Formalization

You can find more details in his book.

The above typology of methods is about social study. What about psychological knowledge engagement?

3.2 Kinds of Methods for Applied Psychological Sciences

Following the above typology of Intervenors, I selected three methods as examples for the present discussion.

I use the term “Psychotherapy” to refer to various kinds of methods for psychotherapy. According to James O. Prochaska and John C. Norcross, who are the co-authors of Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis (2007, 7th edition), there were over 400 systems in the field of psychotherapy in 2007.

The field of psychotherapy has been fragmented by future shock and staggered by over-choice. We have witnessed the hyperinflation of brand-name therapies during the past 50 years. In 1959, Harper identified 36 distinct systems of psychotherapy; in 1976, Parloff discovered more than 130 therapies in the therapeutic marketplace or, perhaps more appropriately, the “jungle place.” In 1979, Time magazine was reporting more than 200 therapies. Recent estimates put the number at over 400 and growing. (2007, P.1)

The authors also mentioned a hierarchy of knowledge in the field of psychotherapy, “In one of our early studies, we identified more than 50 formal treatments employed by health professionals and 130 different techniques used by successful self-changers to stop smoking…There are literally hundreds of global theories of psychotherapy, and we will probably never reach common ground in the theoretical or philosophical realm. There are thousands of specific techniques in psychotherapy, and we will rarely agree on the specific, moment-to-moment methods to use.” (2007, p.11)

Source: Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis (2007, 7th edition, p.11)

They also claimed that expert psychotherapists typically formulate their treatment plans at the intermediate level of Change Processes, not in terms of global theories or specific techniques.

Educators and Coaches often use psychological assessment in their services. For example, the big five personality traits are the best accepted and most commonly used model of personality in academic psychology. The IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers is a popular tool for measuring the Big-Five personality traits. There are several versions of IPIP Measures, below is a part of the 50-item IPIP version of the Big Five Markers.

Source: https://ipip.ori.org/new_ipip-50-item-scale.htm

The test was developed by Goldberg in 1992. According to the author, “The numbers in parentheses after each item indicate the scale on which that item is scored (i.e., of the five factors: (1) Extraversion, (2) Agreeableness, (3) Conscientiousness, (4) Emotional Stability, or (5) Intellect/Imagination) and its direction of scoring (+ or -).”

Below are the Characteristics of the Preliminary IPIP Scales Measuring the Big-Five Domains.

If you are interested in Psychological Assessment, you can find more information in a journal about it.

Designers and Policymakers don’t often use psychological assessment in their activities of designing services and products. They prefer to use observation, interviews, and surveys to understand users. They also use some heuristic tools for their activities.

For example, NN/g Nielsen Norman Group suggested using Empathy Mapping as the first step in design thinking, “ Visualizing user attitudes and behaviors in an empathy map helps UX teams align on a deep understanding of end users. The mapping process also reveals any holes in existing user data.”

Some design researchers also study the relationship between Personas and Empathy Map. The screenshot below is part of their 2015 paper.

Now we see a major difference between heuristic tools for design and psychological assessment.

3.3 Types of Heuristics

Heuristics are used in various fields such as scientific discovery, professional work, and the tasks of everyday life. Originally, the concept of heuristics was introduced by the Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon for problem-solving and design science in general.

In 2022, I developed a typology of Heuristics for discussing Knowledge Discovery Activity:

• Theoretical Knowledge as Heuristics
• Practical Knowledge as Heuristics
• Situational Heuristics

This typology is based on the source of heuristics. While Theoretical Knowledge as Heuristics and Practical Knowledge as Heuristics are from Others, Situational Heuristics are self-made.

Now let’s apply it to applied psychological knowledge engagement.

3.3.1 Theoretical Knowledge as Heuristics

For example, the three-level hierarchy of Activity was developed by Activity Theorist A. N. Leontiev. See the diagram below:

Source: Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie A. Nardi (Acting with Technology, 2006, p.64)

The hierarchical structure of activity was originally conceptualized by A. N. Leontiev (1978). We have to notice that Leontiev was developing a psychological theory at the individual level with the concept of Activity. Thus, we will see three levels of activity correspond to three levels of psychological notions.

The three levels of activity are activity, actions, and operations. The three levels of psychological notions are motive, goals, and conditions.

According to Leontiev, “Separate concrete types of activity may differ among themselves according to various characteristics: according to their form, according to the methods of carrying them out, according to their emotional intensity, according to their time and space requirements, according to their physiological mechanisms, etc. The main thing that distinguishes one activity from another, however, is the difference of their objects. It is exactly the object of an activity that gives it a determined direction.” (1978, p.98)

So, what’s the object of activity?

The answer from Leontiev is the motive of activity. Leontiev claimed, “According to the terminology I have proposed, the object of an activity is its true motive. It is understood that the motive may be either material or ideal, either present in perception or exclusively in the imagination or in thought. The main thing is that behind activity there should always be a need, that it should always answer one need or another.” He also added a note about the term motive, “Such restricted understanding of motive as that object (material or ideal) that evokes and directs activity toward itself differs from the generally accepted understanding”.(1978, p.98)

After defining the “activity — motive” level, Leontiev moved to its sub-level: the “action — purpose” level. He said, “We call a process an action if it is subordinated to the representation of the result that must be attained, that is, if it is subordinated to a conscious purpose. Similarly, just as the concept of motive is related to the concept of activity, the concept of purpose is related to the concept of action.” (1978, p.99)

Leontiev also used “goal-directed processes” and “actions” interchangeably. For example, he said, “We call a process an action if it is subordinated to the representation of the result that must be attained, that is, if it is subordinated to a conscious purpose. Similarly, just as the concept of motive is related to the concept of activity, the concept of purpose is related to the concept of action.”(1978, p.99)

This is a popular theoretical knowledge in the field of Activity Theory. If we use it for discussing some issues, then we use it as a heuristic tool.

3.3.2 Practical Knowledge as Heuristics

Now let’s look at a similar practical knowledge called Golden Circle. See the diagram below.

In September 2009, Simon Sinek was invited to talk about leadership at TEDxPugetsound which is an independently organized local event. His talk is titled Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action.

Later, TED selected the talk and published it on the official TED website.

Simon Sinek used a simple diagram to make a business knowledge heuristic tool. After ten years, the Golden Circle diagram is a popular meme and a popular heuristic tool because it is really simple.

If you offer a simple solution to a complex problem, people will intuitively embrace your solution. Simplicity is the essential idea of heuristics. If a thinking tool is too complex, we don’t think about it as a heuristic tool.

How do people use the Gold Circle diagram? Let’s see an example, a UX Designer mentioned it in a 2020 article titled The Gold Circle for Designers.

The Golden Circle is an innovative tool created by Simon Sinek and shared at a TED Talk. This instrument is one of the most effective strategies that I have used in my career as a UX Designer. It has helped me to understand complex tasks, it has led my design decisions, has helped me read behind my own actions and people’s actions, and also has given me support to discover insights about users, and it even has helped me to collaborate more harmoniously with my teams.

Golden Circle Explained

What’s it about? Easy. Identify the Why, How & What about everything you want to understand or learn about.

✦ All of us know WHAT we do, the type of activities we perform.

This is the OUTCOME of things.

✦ Some others know HOW they perform their tasks and what truly differentiate them from the rest.

This is the PROCESS of things.

✦ Not everyone knows WHY do we do what we do. What’s the purpose of our actions? What’s the intention behind everything we do?

This is the PURPOSE of things.

All that we do must start understanding the intention.

Originally, Simon Sinek used the Gold Circle to discuss the issue of leadership. Now the UX designer claims that we can use it for understanding everything.

What’s the point here? It means we can use three words such as Why, How & What as a Heuristic tool.

We can claim that this three-keyword tool is a piece of practical knowledge. It’s not wrong, but too simple. If you only use these three keywords for your whole life, you will ignore the rich knowledge resources from the field of psychological motivation research.

3.3.3 Situational Heuristics

While Theoretical Knowledge as Heuristics and Practical Knowledge as Heuristics are from Others, Situational Heuristics are self-made.

Why do we make Situational Heuristics for ourselves? Because there is a gap between others’ knowledge and our situations. Sometimes, we don’t have enough time to search for a thinking tool for a particular situation. Also, it’s easy to make simple heuristics. Moreover, we don’t have to turn every Situational Heuristic into a final product for others.

On Dec 31, 2021, I wrote an article titled The Dynamics of Tacit Knowledge. I developed the following diagram as a heuristic tool for the article.

In order to discuss the dynamics of tacit knowledge, I suggested the following typology of tacit knowledge:

• Actual Knowledge: A present thing known.
• Potential Knowledge: A future thing unknown based on a present thing known.

The diagram below offers a model of the transformation between Potential Knowledge and Actual Knowledge.

The above typology and the diagram are Situational Heuristics for the article.

You can find more details in Knowledge Discovery: The “Heuristics — Skills” Mapping.

4. Intervenors and their Mindset-related Creations

Now we are going to invite Theoretical Psychologists to visit the Empirical Psychologists’ Home, and return to the theme of “Mindset”.

In The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration, our Theoretical Psychologists made the Mental Tuning framework which was born from the process of curating Carol S. Dweck’s version of Mindset theory and Peter Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset theory together.

In The Concept of Mindset and Empirical Psychologists, our Theoretical Psychologists used the Mental Tuning framework to curate the “Job Crafting” theory.

In this section, our Theoretical Psychologists will talk with different intervenors and use the Mental Tuning framework to curate their Mindset-related creations.

4.1 Psychotherapy and Mental Tuning

What’s Psychotherapy?

According to James O. Prochaska and John C. Norcross, who are the co-authors of Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis (2007, 7th edition), there is no single definition of psychotherapy has won universal acceptance, “Depending on one’s theoretical orientation, psychotherapy can be conceptualized as interpersonal persuasion, healthcare, psychosocial education, professionally coached self-change, behavioral technology, a form of parenting, the purchase of friendship, or a contemporary variant of shamanism, among others. It may be easier to practice psychotherapy than to explain or define it (London, 1986)”.

They also gave a working definition of psychotherapy for the book:

Psychotherapy is the informed and intentional application of clinical methods and interpersonal stances derived from established psychological principles for the purpose of assisting people to modify their behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and/or other personal characteristics in directions that the participants deem desirable.(2007, p.4)

The goal of psychotherapy is to “modify their behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and/or other personal characteristics…”. It is very close to the Mental Tuning framework.

The above diagram has three parts. The blue part refers to the Mindsets and Mental System. The green part refers to the Behavioral System. The pink part refers to the connection between the Mental System and the Behavioral System.

The difference between Dweck’s version of Mindset and Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset indicates a fundamental psychological view.

• Carol S. Dweck: Mindset = Belief = Content of Thoughts
• Peter Gollwitzer: Mindset = Cognitive procedures = Processes of Thoughts

Our framework will put these two views of Mindset together. In other words, these two views are the two aspects of the Mindsets which mean the Predictive Model of the Mental System.

On the other side, I use “Life Domains” and “Life Experiences” to represent the Behavioral System. Both Dweck’s version of Mindset and Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset emphasize the connection between Mindset and particular life domains. However, they didn’t use “Life Domains” as a theoretical concept.

I’d like to use the concept of “Life Domains” to emphasize the Objective aspect of the Behavioral System. For example, Gollwitzer’s four phases of action can be understood as a specific type of objective structure of life domains.

According to Peter Gollwitzer, “the course of action is understood to be a temporal, horizontal path starting with a person’s desires and ending with the evaluation of the achieved action outcome… It raises questions concerning how people choose action goals, plan and enact their execution, and evaluate their efforts.” (1990)

It’s clear that we can find other types of Objective Structures of life domains. Moreover, some specific life domains have their own Unique Structures.

The diversity of Life Domains requires a general theory of Mindset.

The concept of “Life Experiences” is used to emphasize the subjective aspect of the Behavioral System. This aspect is very important to understanding the Formation of Mindsets, especially the “content of thoughts” which refers to the “Belief” part of Mindsets. We have to notice that “Life Experiences” is also related to the Activation of Mindsets.

The middle part of the new framework is defined by a new term called “Mental Tuning” which is inspired by Gollwitzer’s term “Cognitive Tuning”.

In order to cover the connection between emotions and mindsets, I used “Mental Tuning” to define an abstract concept which is the parent category of “Cognitive Tuning”.

In a general sense, “Mental Tuning” refers to active self-regulation strategic techniques that aim to improve particular psychological functions that are related to Life Domains. For example, MCII (Mental Contrasting and Implementation Intentions) is a particular technique.

I also list some psychological functions as examples:

• Attention
• Information Processing
• Thought Production
• Emotional Feeling
• Behavioral Performance

The above discussion describes a rough abstract general theoretical framework that can capture Dweck’s version of Mindset and Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset as its two concrete cases.

If we use the Mental Tuning framework to understand psychotherapy, then we can claim that all methods of psychotherapy are about doing the work of Mental Tuning.

4.2 ACT: A New Approach to Cognitive-behavioral Therapy

Let’s choose Cognitive-behavioral Therapy as an example to test our assumption. According to James O. Prochaska and John C. Norcross, “Cognitive-behavioral therapy has steadily evolved from its early stirrings in behavior therapy (the first wave) to its contemporary manifestation in cognitive therapy (the second wave). Many believe it is now poised for its third wave, which incorporates mindfulness and acceptance into standard cognitive-behavioral therapies (Hayes et al., 2004; Segal et al., 2002). The third wave adds an Eastern or Buddhist twist to Western psychotherapy.” (p.319)

As an umbrella term, Cognitive-behavioral Therapy refers to various approaches to psychotherapy. For example, Albert Ellis’ Rational-emotive Therapy (RET) or Rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT), Aaron T. Beck’s Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and Steven C. Hayes’ Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

I will use ACT as an example for the present discussion because it’s a well-developed systemic knowledge enterprise. The origin of ACT started with a basic analysis of verbal behavior. Later, the knowledge project grew into a new knowledge enterprise called Contextual Behavior Science which includes a meta-theory called Relational Frame Theory (RFT) and a theoretical approach to psychotherapy: Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT, typically pronounced as the word “act”).

Though ACT is part of the cognitive behavior therapy tradition, it has a unique theoretical resource called Relational Frame Theory (RFT) which is a new behavior-analytic account of human language and cognition. In the beginning, Steven C. Hayes and his co-workers worked on the basic behavioral research on rule governance, “but the lack of a clear understanding of verbal rules soon led to an even more basic focus on the nature of human language and cognition itself. RFT was the eventual result.” (Source 1, 2013)

According to Hayes and his co-workers, “RFT argues that language, rule-following, and stimulus equivalence are all instances of a type of operant behavior known as Arbitrarily Applicable Relational Responding (AARR). According to this perspective, ‘relating’ is a type of behavior and involves responding to one event in terms of another. While nonhumans and humans can both respond relationally to stimuli and events, the latter rapidly develop a more complex type of behavior (AARR) that fundamentally alters how they interact with the world around them.” (Source 2, 2015)

In RFT laboratory, researchers modeled and researched various complex cognitive phenomena, such as metaphorical reasoning, sense of self, lexical recognition, and implicit cognition. (Source 1, 2013)

How did they apply it to clinical psychotherapy?

Hayes and his co-workers pointed out that a key RFT insight of clinical importance is that relational framing is regulated by two distinguishable features: the relational context and the functional context. (Source 1, 2013)

The relational context determines how and when events are related; the functional context determines what functions will be transformed in terms of a relational network. Stated more clinically, the relational context determines what you think; the functional context determines the psychological impact of what you think. Because relational frames are learned and arbitrarily applicable it is impossible to control the relational context so thoroughly so as to entirely keep unhelpful relations from being derived. For example, myriad arbitrary cues can lead children to derive that they are not as attractive, lovable, intelligent, or worthwhile as they should be. As with all learning, once relating occurs, it can be inhibited but will never be fully unlearned. Once a child derives “I am unlovable,” that behavior will always be at some strength. This is part of why it is hard to restructure cognitive networks and schemas fully, efficiently, and permanently.

Moreover, it is the functional context that determines the impact of relational responding.

However, RFT is about discovering behavioral principles. In order to apply these behavioral principles to clinical practices, they developed a middle-level framework called ACT.

4.3 ACT: Verbal Behavior and Human Suffering

In the following sections, I will use the Mental Tuning framework to introduce the ACT framework.

Let’s start with the “Behavior System (Life)” part. ACT describes a unique domain of life.

• Life Domains: Verbal Behavior (Negative Events)
• Life Experiences: Difficult Feelings + Human Suffering

A major difference between ACT and other systems of psychotherapy is the perspective on the relationship between human suffering and verbal language.

From an ACT perspective, human suffering predominantly emerges from normal psychological processes, particularly those involving human language. Even when physiological dysfunction is present (as in diabetes or epilepsy, for example), the dictum that “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease” is sound doctrine.

… … Even with such severe mental illnesses, however, the model underlying ACT holds that the ordinary processes embodied in self-reflective language and thought may actually amplify the core difficulties associated with such conditions.

… No matter how many voices a person hears or panic attacks he or she experiences, that individual is a thinking, feeling, remembering human being. How a person responds to, say, a hallucination may be more critical to healthy functioning than the hallucination itself, and from an ACT perspective that response is dominantly determined by normal psychological processes.

(Source 3, p.11)

The dark side of human language is the primary concern of the ACT approach because it brings the challenge of psychological pain for creatures with language.

In the developed world, people are seldom faced with immediate threats to survival. They have the time and encouragement to think about practically anything: their history, their physical appearance, their place in life as compared to where they thought they would be, what other people think about them, and so on.

The human culture of the civilized world has evolved in ways that takes advantage of our symbolic abilities. Language has evolved into include more and more terms that describe and evaluate various states of mind or emotion. As these terms evolve, experiences are able to be categorized and evaluated. As human beings increasingly look inward, life begins to seem more like a problem to be solved than a process to be fully experienced.

(Source 3, p.18)

4.4 ACT: Cognitive Fusion and Experiential Avoidance

How does the “Behavior System (Life)” part connect to the “Mental System” part? How do the ACT-related mindsets format and activate?

The answers are “Cognitive Fusion” and “Experiential Avoidance”.

From an ACT/RFT approach, psychopathology is caused in large part by the tendency to become entangled in cognition, taking thoughts literally and remaining in a problem-solving mode even when that is not helpful. The domination of verbal/cognitive processes over other sources of stimulus control is termed “cognitive fusion.”

In part as a result, there is a tendency to avoid and escape from aversive private events, such as emotions, thoughts, memories, and bodily sensations, even when this creates behavioral harm. This is termed “experiential avoidance,” which is thought to enormously restrict behavioral flexibility and effectiveness.

People lose contact with present-moment contingencies due to entanglement with a conceptualized past and future and resulting attentional inflexibility. They fail to stay in contact with a more transcendent sense of self, allowing behavioral patterns to be dominated by a conceptualized sense of self instead.

All of these contribute to narrow and rigid behavioral patterns characterized by inaction, impulsivity, and avoidant persistence in specific domains, dominated by excessive social compliance and avoidance rather than chosen values. The coming together of all of these processes is termed “psychological inflexibility,” which is argued to be at the core of most human suffering.

(Source 1, p.9)

4.5 ACT: Inflexibility Mindset and Flexibility Mindset

Now we can put the Behavior System part and the Mental System part together. See the diagram below.

ACT researchers don’t use the term “Mindset” for their approach. However, we can claim that the term “Psychological Inflexibility” refers to a specific type of mindset: the Inflexibility Mindset. In contrast, we see the Flexibility Mindset.

Psychological inflexibility and flexibility refer to patterns of behavior that are regulated by the six repertoire-narrowing or six repertoire-expanding processes specified in the ACT model. The goal of ACT is psychological flexibility: being able to contact the moment as a conscious human being more fully as it is, not as what it says it is, and based on what the situation affords, persisting or changing in behavior in the service of chosen values.

In order to develop a set of techniques for clinical practices, they developed a model of pathology, intervention, and health tied to behavioral principles. ACT researchers identified six key middle-level processes that transform the inflexibility mindset into the flexibility mindset.

The diagram below represents a model of psychological inflexibility. The ACT researchers used different words to describe the following two processes in different articles and books:

• Inflexible Attention = Loss of Flexible Contact with the Present = Dominance of the Conceptualized Past and Feared Future; Weak Self-Knowledge
• Value Problems = Disruption of Values; Dominance of Pliant, Fused, or Avoidant “Values” = Lack of Values Clarity; Dominance of Pliance and Avoidant Tracking

The corresponding six core processes that produce psychological flexibility were also developed. See the diagram below. The four on the left are taken to be mindfulness and acceptance processes and the four on the right are commitment and behavior change or behavioral activation processes.

Now we can put these six processes into the Mental Tuning framework. See the diagram below.

As mentioned above, two processes are critical in the model: Cognitive Fusion and Experiential Avoidance.

The psychological flexibility model holds that pain is a natural consequence of living but that people suffer unnecessarily when their overall level of psychological rigidity prevents them from adapting to internal or external contexts. Unnecessary suffering occurs when verbal/cognitive processes tend to narrow human repertoires in keys areas through cognitive entanglement and experiential avoidance. (Source 3, p.64)

4.6 ACT as Mental Tuning

If we put the above discussions together, we get the landscape of ACT from the perspective of the Mental Tuning framework. See the diagram below.

The above diagram highlights the core ideas of the ACT approach in the frame of the “Mental System (Behavior System)” model.

• Life = Behavioral System
• Self = Mental System
• Life(Self) = Behavior System (Mental System)
• Mindset = Predictive Model

We can claim that the ACT approach can be curated within the model.

From this case study, we can learn a significant insight from the ACT approach, the context of verbal and cognitive activity and mind.

The psychological flexibility model seems on the surface to be extremely conventional: most human suffering is attributable to the mind, most psychopathology is indeed a “mental” disorder, and health requires learning to adopt a different mode of mind.

What is unconventional is that ACT theorists approach mind with a technical appreciation of the nature of verbal and cognitive activity and a contextual behavioral approach to language. It is the context of verbal activity that is the key element in producing suffering — more so than the content of private experiences per se.

It is not so much that people are thinking the wrong thing; rather, the problem is thought itself and how the wider community supports the excessive literal use of words and symbols as a mode of behavioral regulation.

Source 3, P.65

As mentioned above, ACT and RFT are core members of a knowledge enterprise called “Contextual Behavioral Science”. ACT and RFT researchers didn’t follow the traditional Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) approaches.

The similarities and differences between ACT and the CBT mainstream needs to be seen in the context of respective views about how to create scientific progress. ACT researchers are skeptical of the idea that CBT needs to apply “the cognitive model of a particular disorder with the use of a variety of techniques designed to modify the dysfunctional beliefs and faulty information processing characteristic of each disorder” (Beck, 1993, p. 194) or that its core is to “identify distorted cognitions” and then to subject these distortions “to logical analysis and empirical hypothesis-testing which leads individuals to realign their thinking with reality” (Clark, 1995, p. 155), but that skepticism is a reflection of its process-focused development program. In the 1980s we conducted more than a dozen studies on the theories behind common CBT procedures, and found little or no support for these models (see Rosenfarb & Hayes, 1984, on cognitive reappraisal/self-statements for an example of these). We made early theoretical attempts to analyze cognitive therapy using behavioral principles (e.g., Zettle & Hayes, 1980, 1982) but our long-term interest was in extending a process-based behavioral approach and its underlying development strategy (see Zettle, 2005, for a history of ACT).

(Source 1, p.2)

In Knowledge Engagement: The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration, I developed a general model of mindset. See the diagram below.

• Objective aspect: Life Domain Orientation
• Subjective aspect: Life Experience Principle
• Strategic aspect: Mental Tuning Techniques

Life Domains could differ by Categories, Structures, and other aspects. These differences require different Mindsets. We can use Life Domain Orientation to name this objective aspect of Mindsets. For example, Dweck’s version of Mindset is oriented by the domain of Intelligence (a category of Life Domain). Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset is oriented by action phases (a specific type of Structure of Life Domains). ACT is oriented by Verbal Behavior and Human Suffering.

For a particular Life Domain, a particular person could form his/her “principles” of mindset. These “principles” come from beliefs, knowledge, and experience. For example, Dweck’s version of Mindset — the Growth mindset and the Fixed mindset — can be seen as two types of Principles of mindset.

Though ACT researchers don’t use the term “Mindset” for their approach. However, we can claim that the term “Psychological Inflexibility/Psychological Flexibility” refers to two specific types of mindsets: the Inflexibility Mindset and the Flexibility Mindset.

How does a person format the Inflexibility Mindset? It’s due to Cognitive Fusion and Experiential Avoidance.

For a particular Life Experience Principle, a person could develop relevant strategic techniques in order to execute the “Mental Tuning” process. For example, Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset uses the MCII method as a strategic technique to improve a Mental Tuning process about the Implementation Mindset.

The ACT approach uses the six processes model and related tools to help clients build a flexible mindset.

Source 1

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Contextual Behavioral Science: Examining the Progress of a Distinctive Model of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy, 2013

Source 2

Relational Frame Theory: The Basic Account, 2015

Source 3

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change, 2016