MindCraft Challenges

In Self-Determination Theory, there are three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. What should people do when their basic psychological needs are not met? One thing that people can do is to seek out supportive people and groups that would better meet their basic psychological needs. However, we can also choose to intentionally engage in activities that meet those basic psychological needs.

Challenge: take the challenge described in Behzadnia and FatahModares (2023) where you choose an activity that meets one of the basic needs each day for a week (see the instructions in Table 2 on page 70). This challenge will work best if you are in a situation where your basic psychological needs are not being met. Track whether your well-being, motivation, and need satisfaction improve by intentionally engaging in those activities.

Read More
A brief introduction to basic psychological needs
https://doi.org/10.1037/0708-5591.49.1.14
The Behzadnia and FatahModares task
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-022-09968-9
Basic psychological needs are motives
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00589.x

Hope training has been used with people facing big obstacles (like the cancer patients linked in the ‘Read More’ section). Hope training involves learning to set goals, to imagine pathways, and to talk to yourself about how to accomplish those goals.

Challenge: Hope training can also help people overcome everyday obstacles. On mindcraftchallenge.com, you will find a set of diary prompts for a week-long home hope training challenge. You can track your hopeful progress using the hope scale we discussed in class: https://cognopod.com/sketch/HOPE.

Hope Training Prompts:
https://mindcraftchallenge.com/RESOURCES/HOPE-TRAINING-WORKSHEET.docx

Read More
Hope training diary prompts
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110383
Hope training helps cancer patients
https://doi.org/10.1177/2377960819844381

Today we learned that intrusive thoughts are a component of psychological distress, but that those intrusive thoughts can be disrupted by competing tasks that involve high levels of imagery and attention (like Tetris or other visually demanding, spatial games).

Challenge: Use a visually demanding game on your cell phone to disrupt intrusive thoughts. Limit yourself to three minutes of play when you encounter intrusive thoughts. Does this seem to block intrusive thoughts from returning? Does your mental health improve?

Read More
A version of the Tetris experiment that we discussed in class
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615583071
The emergency room study
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-020-01124-6

Psychological distress can be amplified when bridging symptoms expand the network of distress symptoms that are activated by intrusive thoughts. One way to intervene and disrupt those networks is with simple well-being interventions. One of these is thinking about new ways to utilize a character strength you already have. 

Challenge: The original study that used the signature strengths intervention involved people completing an inventory with 200 items to identify the strongest of 24 strengths. We will use a much shorter version available at: https://cognopod.com/sketch/STRONG
That inventory will identify your top strength out of three broad areas of strength. For this challenge, spend a week trying to use that strength in a new way every day. Pay attention to your mental health and see if focusing on using your strength can block some of the possible symptoms of psychological distress.

Read More
Using signature strengths in new ways decreases depressive symptoms in the long term.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.60.5.410
The brief strengths scale
http://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000164
Learning that people can change prevents the symptoms of depression
https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702614548317

Metacognition is the term used in psychological science to describe thinking about one's own thinking. Metacognition encourages people to think about their thoughts from new perspectives, which opens up the possibility of introducing new and different responses. You have already seen this example in Challenge #4, where it was used in distant self-talk. We can apply a similar kind of distancing to dealing with cravings (remember that for uncontrollable cravings, you should talk to a professional).

Challenge: When you feel a craving for something you are trying to avoid or a habit you are trying to break, imagine distancing or looking at your thoughts from far away and remind yourself that the craving is “just a thought”. If you are a Christian, you may find it helpful to consider the craving as “just a thought,” subject to Romans 7:25—you can be delivered from it through Jesus Christ.

Read More
Distancing is the key skill to developing control over cravings
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.01.072
Metacognition involves distancing
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615594577

Michael Scullin is a psychology professor and sleep researcher. He decided to help his students sleep during finals week by offering extra credit for averaging more than 8 hours of sleep each night during the final exam week. His challenge worked! The students reported getting more sleep each night and scored higher on their exams than students who opted out or tried the challenge but didn't succeed (even after controlling for their performance in the class before the challenge).

Challenge: Try the eight-hour sleep challenge for a week. Because the offer of a reward was an important part of the challenge, I will provide 25 XP for any student who successfully completes the 8-hour sleep challenge and reports it in a MindCraft report. Your report will need to document the amount of time you slept each night for a week, and you must average 8 hours or more per night. This will require some time management!

Read More
Scullin’s 8-hour sleep challenge
https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628318816142
Consistent sleep predicts academic performance, not sleep the night before a test
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-019-0055-z

Social media improves well-being when it involves interpersonal capitalization. Positive responses to capitalization attempts online also increase social bonding.

Of course, it is also possible to use social media to harm others and engage in destructive capitalization responses.

Challenge: Intentionally support other people’s basic psychological needs in your social media spaces by engaging in intentional active-constructive interpersonal capitalization. Choose two or three people that you want to strengthen your social bonds with and engage their social media posts by celebrating positive events and continuing conversations with them about their positive experiences. How do intentional constructive responses to capitalization on social media influence your relationships?

Read More
An overview of interpersonal capitalization
https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12407
Online sharing strengthens social bonds
https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001182

One of the challenges of hunger motivation is that people can’t completely cut eating out of their lives—so complete avoidance is not an option. Genetic set points and environmental influences also make it difficult to change eating patterns. The most recent research by Traci Mann suggests that adopting new healthy habits is easier than getting rid of old bad habits—especially by modifying the environment (making good choices more easily available, pre-packaging food in intended portions).

Challenge: Make one structural change to your environment to make a healthy choice easier. What change did you make? Did it make that healthy choice easier?

Read More
A review of eating and self-control
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-012424-035404
The stigma of weight controllability in the workplace
https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2023.78

There are three categories of actions that Folkman and Moskowitz report people using to self-regulate their emotions during periods of severe stress. These are positive reappraisal (focusing on the good and what is happening and finding ways to grow), problem-focused coping (solving attainable goals to reduce distress), and creating positive events in their lives.

Challenge: If you are experiencing severe end-of-semester stress (or high levels of continuing stress in your life for any reason), try these three categories of coping. Were you able to experience more positive emotions? Did that help you handle your stress?

Read More
Three Ways to Cope with High Stress
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00073
Stress triggers intentional use of positive emotions
https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001362
Self-compassion—an additional coping strategy
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031047

In many everyday settings, the default choice is to simply experience negative emotions as they arise, rather than attempting to reappraise them. Gaurav Suri and his colleagues noted that when the default is ‘do nothing’, people only try to reappraise in a lab task only 16% of the time.

Challenge: Try a day of reappraisal. You will try to change your default by leaving yourself “reappraise!” messages (notes in your room and car, a sticky note or home screen on your phone, etc.). Any time you experience a negative event throughout the day, you will try to follow the reappraisal instruction. Because Suri and his colleagues found that there was the possibility that reappraisal instructions might also have a small effect on the likelihood of reappraisal, you should read this handout with descriptions of how to do two kinds of reappraisal.

Read More
Defaults predict whether reappraisal will happen
https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000011
Instructions for two kinds of reappraisal
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01173-x

Actors involve their bodies and emotions in learning, with remarkable results. These results are part of a broader pattern in the study of memory known as the enactment effect: when people act out an instruction or a pattern, their memory is more effective than when they simply hear it.

Challenge: How can you use the enactment effect? If what you are learning has associated spatial information (a diagram, a process, or a sequence) or can be converted to that information, you can act out the layout or sequence of the information by talking while you move your hand or body through the space. For example, rather than just looking at a Krebs Cycle diagram, you might walk the cycle while gesturing to describe what is happening at each step. Think about how your movement can point to the next step or idea: goal-directed movement is the key, not just movement without any purpose!

Read More
Subject-performed tasks improve memory
https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.3.524
https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194399
Goal-directed movement is key for actors’ memory
https://doi.org/10.1080/01638530701498911

Acting as an agent can make a big difference. However, people don’t always think about whether they can be agents. College classrooms are one place where this often happens—students don’t always realize that they can actively improve their classes. Erika Patall and her colleagues demonstrated that student motivation improves when they learn to act as agents.

Challenge: Read the short version of Patall’s training course (linked below). Make sure that you complete the letter-writing activity at the end. Try to apply what you learn about agency and motivation in one of your classes. Did your classroom experience change?

Training: https://mindcraftchallenge.com/RESOURCES/make-any-class-better.pdf

Read More
Student agency to change motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000614
Student engagement improves motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034934
Student actions create supportive classrooms
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032690

People can change their personality traits by choosing and completing actions that stretch them toward desired personality change. Nathan Hudson and his colleagues demonstrated this in a study where people could choose actions that shifted them toward extraversion (E), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C), emotional stability (S), or openness to experience (O).

Challenge: I've created a web app where you can randomly generate your next challenge. Try these challenges for a week and see if your personality starts to move in the direction of the tasks. Hudson’s original study took place over 15 weeks. We don't have 15 weeks, so you might have to engage in actions more frequently than the one Hudson asked of his students per week. (You can find a copy of the list of 250 tasks on LearningHub under today's class.)

https://www.cognopod.com/sketch/COFC/ 

Read More
250 tasks to change personality
https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000221
Personality changes according to desired change
https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000021
Therapy changes personality
https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000088

Today, we discussed how intentional activities contribute to happiness. The fit of those intentional activities with your identity is also important. Sonja Lyubomirsky has developed an instrument to help people identify which activities might be a good choice for a person based on their motivations for doing the activity.

Challenge: Take the Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic at https://pathtohappier.com/. The score for each type of activity will appear after you rate each of the five motivations for that activity. The activity or activities with the highest score are good fits for your current motivational profile. Try one of these activities for a week and monitor your happiness and sense of well-being. You can take a broad well-being inventory at https://psytests.org/life/ohien.html to track your well-being if you answer based on the last day or so each time.

Read More
Changing goals and activities promotes happiness
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00002.x
Simple activities increase well-being.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412469809

One way that we think about and explain our identity is by telling our life story. When the most important events in our lives and the turning points (where the story of a life could have changed completely) are linked to meaning-making (understanding some aspect of one’s self), identity formation moves toward identity achievement.

One way to engage in meaning-making is through counterfactual thinking-imagining other paths that your life could have taken. Choose some aspect of your life right now (where you go to school, your major, the church you attend, your hobbies). Think about how you ended up at this point in your life.  Looking back, list (write about) the broad sequence of things that led to you being where you are. 

Next, write about all the ways things could have turned out differently. Did counterfactual thinking increase the feeling that your life is meaningful?

Read More
The Psychology of Life Stories
https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
Life Stories and Meaning-Making
https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.4.714
Counterfactual Thinking and Meaning-Making
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017905
A Group Process for Reducing Identity Distress
https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2014.944696

Synchronization is a reflection of attachment and close relationships. Synchronization can also help build relationships by strengthening social attachments.

Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath conducted several experiments to demonstrate the effects of intentional synchronization on group cooperation. In one study, people walked together and synchronized their steps. In another, people moved plastic cups from side to side in time with a song while they sang along (the song was “O Canada”, the people were Americans, and the point was that the song could be an out-group song). People cooperated more in a group game after synchronizing their actions (compared to unsynchronized pairs).

Challenge: Find a friend. Go for a synchronized walk. (Sing “O Canada” together?) Try working on a project together. Did synchrony make a difference?

Read More
Intentional Synchrony Experiments
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02253.x
Synchrony Across Brains
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-080123-101149

Paul Paulus and his colleagues have studied individuals and groups as they try to come up with new, creative ideas (often known as brainstorming or ideation). They have found that going back and forth between individual idea generation and group idea generation is more effective than individuals working alone—particularly when the individual thinking session is first.

If you have a group project, think about how you might implement this with your group. If you need to work with an AI to generate ideas (a kind of group project!), think about how to interleave individual thinking with group thinking and how to make sure that individual contributions always precede group thinking. Does alternating thinking practices make a difference in the quality and quantity of your ideas?

Read More
Best practices for brainstorming:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.11.002
More about the science of teamwork:
http://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000334

Kristin Laurin and her colleagues conducted one of many studies demonstrating that thinking about God can change people's behavior. In their study, they activated people's thoughts about God. People were more likely to be resistant to temptation—however, they were also less likely to actively pursue goals when they thought about a controlling God. Laurin and her colleagues interpreted this as people feeling less like agents while thinking about an omnipotent God (the participant’s religious beliefs didn’t change the pattern). When people thought about God as a guide, they were both resistant to temptation and willing to pursue their goals.

Challenge: Spend a day regularly reading, memorizing, and reciting Psalm 121. Did your motivation or susceptibility to temptation change from what it usually is as you thought about God’s constant guidance?

Read More
The Laurin “thinking about God” study:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025971
More about religion and self-control:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014213

What should a person do if they realize that they have hostile habits online or in real life (or, likely, both)? Sheri Johnson and her colleagues used a WOOP intervention (a kind of implementation intention) to help people develop a plan for hostile habits.

Challenge: If you have a hostile online habit that you want to reduce, form and implement a WOOP plan:

Wish: (What do you want to stop doing?)
Outcome: (What is your goal?)
Obstacle: (What is the trigger of your habit?)
Plan: (How will you stop the trigger from activating the habit? What will you do instead?)

Implement your WOOP plan for a week. Were you able to reduce the hostile habit as you wished?

Read More
The WOOP intervention
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2020.103708
Another intervention to reduce hostile attributions and aggression
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-020-10147-8

John Gottman reports that improving friendship between romantic partners reduces negative interactions during conflict. Gottman teaches improving friendship as part of his marriage education program with multiple exercises, but there are simple everyday actions that people can take to build their friendships.

Challenge: Brenda O’Connell and her colleagues demonstrated that intentional gratitude and kindness towards friends can improve relationship quality. They asked people to either “Write and deliver a positive message (email, text, face-to-face) to someone in your social network (friend, family, colleague), thanking or praising them for something you are grateful for” or to engage in acts of kindness for someone in their social network at least 3 or 4 times in a week. Try this for yourself and see if those relationships improve.

Read More
Gottman’s assessment of interventions
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327698jfc0503_1
O’Connell’s friendship-building study
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1037860

McGregor and Holmes (1999) found that the stories we tell about conflict events in our relationships can bias our later memory of the event—taking on the story-telling role of a lawyer explaining why the other person was at fault led to more hurt and anger 8 weeks later than did taking on the role of an unbiased reporter. Many people also refused to take the perspective that the other person was innocent and they might be to blame—that is, they refused to do the task when assigned to take on the role of the other person’s lawyer.

On the other hand, satisfied romantic couples tell stories about each other that turn flaws into virtues—over time, those stories become true as people take on the qualities and roles of the stories they hear.

Reshaping our memories isn’t always a bad thing. For example, our memories of embarrassing situations or painful events shift over time so that we no longer feel the negative emotions in the same way.

Telling stories that shape our romantic partners and friends into better versions of themselves is a way to shape the imagined future function of memory systems. Try purposely telling stories about your friends (in their presence) for a week that emphasize their virtues and admirable qualities. Ask them to do the same for you (you can tell them that it is a psychology experiment, which is the truth). Does this type of positive storytelling change your perception of your relationship?

Read More

Emotional memory is malleable
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00312-1
The study of storytelling bias from the participation sheet:
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.403
How satisfied couples tell stories:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167294206004
Idealization becomes reality for romantic partners:
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.6.1155

How do we remember to do something in the future? Planning a future action and then remembering to actually do it is known as prospective memory. Peter Gollwitzer’s solution to the problem of prospective memory failure is implementation intentions: choosing a future cue and linking it to an intended action.

Challenge: Think of a common prospective memory failure you face (where you intended to do something but failed to do it when the moment arrived). Create an implementation intention for that prospective memory:

If I ________________, I will ________________.

Write down the implementation intention and place it somewhere you will see it every morning. Say it out loud to yourself when you see it. Did you avoid prospective memory failure?

Read More
The Psychology of Planning
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-021524-110536
Cues and implementation intentions
https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2014.975816
An early description of implementation intentions
https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493

Bob and Elizabeth Bjork refer to the types of effective learning techniques that challenge students as desirable difficulties. These techniques make studying more difficult in helpful ways so that performance on tests is less difficult.

Challenge: Choose one or more of the study techniques in green or yellow from the charts in class today to implement (I recommend practice testing if you have a class that requires learning facts or patterns). Use your change in study techniques to study for a relatively low-stakes test (for example, a quiz instead of a mid-term test). Pay attention to what study feels like and your performance on the test—our intuitions about study often lead to the incorrect belief that difficult study means that learning isn’t happening.

Read More
Learning in College
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616645770
Intuitions about spaced practice are reversed
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02127.x

Challenge: Follow Rachel Baumsteiger’s prosocial intervention steps:

• Learn about prosociality (we did this in class)>
• Elevation—Watch a prosocial story from ESPN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXVk5GBx-s
• Spend at least a minute each writing about:
• People you admire
• How you would change the world if you could
• 3-5 values (examples: courage, independence, discipline) that are meaningful to you
• Your imagined self in five years in your best possible future—describe what your life would be like
• A plan for how you could help others more over the next week
• Implement your plan. Take notes at the end of each day about how your prosocial actions impacted others. Were you more prosocial?

Read More
A Prosocial Elevation Intervention
https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2019.1639507
Elevation increases tedious helping
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609359882
Elevation makes violence less enjoyable
https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000214

An earlier challenge was about making a habit, but this challenge is about breaking a habit. Wendy Wood and her colleagues discovered that when students transferred to a new university, their habits (exercising, TV watching, and reading) were disrupted because the cue that started the cycle of cue-habit-reinforcer was missing. This suggests avoiding cues to habits you want to change might be an important first step.

Challenge: Identify a habit that you want to block. Try to identify the context or situation that is the cue for your cue-habit-reinforcer cycle. It might be something in the environment or an internal state. Now, try to disrupt the cue so it can’t start the cycle (avoid certain places at certain times, plan actions that disrupt internal states). Did the disruption help you block an unwanted habit?

Read More:
Disrupting habits
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.918
Habits and behavior change
https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214241246480

Can people use evaluative conditioning to help them like new habits? There is some preliminary evidence that this might be possible. Conroy and Kim set up people’s cellphones with rotating wallpaper on the lock screen that paired positive images with images of an activity that they wanted people to engage in more often (physical exercise). People did report liking and engaging in physical exercise more often during the experiment.

Challenge:
Set a goal: increasing the frequency of a desired behavior or forming a new habit. Create a set of 4 or 5 wallpapers to set as a rotating gallery for your phone lock screen (see the first ‘Read More’ link for an example—the picture of the behavior to increase should be one-half of the screen, and a paired positive image should be the other half). Track the target behavior or habit during the week. Did the evaluative conditioning seem to help you change behaviors?

Read More:

Evaluative conditioning via lock screen:
https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000886
More about evaluative conditioning:
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031815

Today, we learned that attention is limited and that those limitations affect conscious awareness. As we work on difficult tasks or face stressful situations, it is possible for the effective capacity of our attention to be depleted even further. However, there is good evidence that activities in nature, like birdwatching or nature walks, can restore depleted attention and increase well-being.

Challenge: Take a walk in nature (the Andrews University main campus is an arboretum with hiking paths accessible behind the wellness center and by the Pathfinder building) for more than 30 minutes every day for a week. Do you feel less depleted? Does your well-being or ability to focus improve?

Read More:
Cognitive benefits of natural environments
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02225.x

Birdwatching and nature walks improve college student well-being
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102306

The average effect size of natural environment influence is very large
https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294119884063

Wendy Wood suggests that we can move tasks from System 2 to System 1 by practicing the task regularly in the same context (the context will become a cue).

Challenge:
1. Choose a behavior that you want to make into a habit (read more books, go to gym, eat veggies).
2. Choose a context. When and where do you plan to do this new behavior? Specify a context (location, time).
3. Reward yourself for the behavior and track the development of your habit over several days using this scale and set of questions:

Disagree ①②③④⑤ Agree
Sometimes I start _____ before I realize I’m doing it.
______ is something I do without thinking.
______ is something I do automatically.
______ is something I do without having to consciously remember.

Read More:
Wendy Wood on habits: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721424124648

Listening is a multi-modal activity involving multiple senses and experiences with your own motor systems, allowing you to accurately simulate speech production. Imitating an unfamiliar accent improves those unconscious, real-time simulations and thus improves comprehension when listening to the practiced accent.

Challenge::
Practice imitating an unfamiliar accent. You might choose a teacher you are having trouble understanding, a friend, or even a podcast or video channel speaker. Practice the accent (not in front of them—be polite). Does your ability to understand improve?

Read More::
Imitation and comprehension::
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610389192:
Skilled mimics have better comprehension:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9562-y

Perception can be trained: People who practice certain video games, who receive intense training in Buddhist meditation, or who engage in immersive visualization during Christian prayer show improved performance on basic visual perception tasks. Notably for this challenge, the Christians who intentionally immersed themselves in a Biblical scene during prayer reported feeling God’s presence more in their daily lives.

Challenge:
In Steps to Christ, Ellen White describes prayer this way: “Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him.” While praying this week, first read and visualize a passage (such as Ps. 23 or Is. 61:1-3) that provides a scene depicting God’s presence, then pray while visualizing talking to God as to a friend. Does this change your experience?

Read More:
Christian prayer and perception:
https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342090
Buddhist meditation and perception:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610371339
Video games and perception:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014345

Hindsight bias (“I knew it all along”, “I saw it coming all along”) can lead to problems with learning and decision-making. Because of hindsight bias, people fail to search long enough for explanations for mistakes or unwanted outcomes (cognitive myopia). People also believe they have the best understanding of situations (overconfidence). Thus, people avoid learning from mistakes.

Challenge:
One of the best ways to counteract hindsight bias is with the consider-the-opposite strategy. When faced with the results of a decision, you can use consider-the-opposite to think about what other outcomes could have occurred and what steps might have led to those other outcomes. You might also think about how other steps could lead to the same outcome. Try using consider-the-opposite to better understand educational or social outcomes for a week. Did you learn anything about alternative actions or possibilities?

Read More:
About hindsight bias:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612454303

Our perception of patterns isn’t the result of just one neuron firing—it’s made up of many neurons participating in pattern recognition. This is likely a reason that drawing is a powerful tool to shift our minds away from negative thoughts—drawing requires pattern-matching networks to create and check patterns as the artist is drawing.

Challenge:
Can taking time to draw help improve your mood? Carry some drawing paper or a sketchbook with you for a week. When you feel stressed or stuck with negative thoughts, spend 10 minutes drawing whatever you want. Rate your mood before and after on a scale like this:

😨 😦 ☹️ 😐 🙂 😀 😁

Read More:
Mood repair through art:
https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2011.557032
On using creativity to find meaning in life:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618771981
(see Table 1 for many ideas!)

Even though the firing rate of a single neuron limits its information-carrying capacity, the neurons in our brains work together to allow us to store and process massive amounts of information. One mystery of neuroscience is why human behavior and thought are as slow as if we were running our thoughts on neurons in serial (one after another) rather than in parallel. One possible reason is that human thinking requires comparing and updating many models of the world.

Challenge:
How would your life be different if you respected the slow and limited processing speed of the human mind? Plan a ‘slow moment’ (actually five minutes) to reflect on a memory, count your blessings, or otherwise savor your world. Try your ‘slow moment’ twice every day for a week. See the “Read More” section for the actual intervention with older adults.

Read More:
The paradox of slow human behavior:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2024.11.008
Many scholars debating a model of a multi-level, multi-timescale, iteratively refining model of the mind:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12000477
A savoring task (see the Intervention section):
https://doi.org/10.1177/0733464817693375

Ethan Kross and his colleagues have recommended using distanced talk to shift thinking from negative emotions and a cycle of rumination to positive actions to achieve goals (hope).

Challenge:
Use distanced self-talk five times daily for several days to coach yourself at points of stress, during negative thoughts, or when you feel you made a mistake. Note whether your control over your emotions, thoughts, and ability to take positive actions improves.

Read More:
How to change your self-talk:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419861411

About a decade ago, a music professor and a social work professor asked Jewish and Arab women in Israel to join in a music-listening experiment. The women listened to songs about either the Holocaust or fallen Israeli soldiers, sung by either a Jewish or Arab singer. Hearing a national song that did not reference the Israeli-Arab conflict (the Holocaust songs) sung by an Arab singer (an out-group member) reduced prejudice and humanized people from the other group.

Challenge:
You will need to involve another person—specifically someone from a different cultural, generational, racial, or religious background than you. Share songs (not linked to intergroup conflict) that represent your background with them and either teach them to sing or play them, or listen to the songs together. If they would like to share songs with you, accept the offer. Does your perception of a person from a different background change?

Read More:
The Israeli-Arab song study
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735616640599
Playing music together builds empathy in children
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735612440609
Music can be a tool to lower cultural prejudice
https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864918802331

One way to break the influence of stereotypes on a situation is to make stereotypes less likely to be activated and used as explanations for an individual’s actions. Perspective-taking is a way to break the automatic use of stereotypes as a default explanation.

To take someone else’s perspective, psychological scientists ask people to:

• visualize, read about, or listen to the person whose perspective they are going to take
• either imagine what the other person is currently thinking or
• imagine what they would be thinking if they were that person

Challenge:
Try taking the perspective of somebody from a group who is very different from you. Does this help you think about them as a person rather than a category?

Read More:
A review of perspective taking, including limits on who benefits from perspective taking:
https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12116
Perspective-taking to block racially-biased responses:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022308

Principle:
Believing incorrect information is a psychological problem. However, there are some easy actions that you can take when searching for information on the internet that can protect you from being misinformed.

Challenge:
Add lateral reading and click restraint into your habits for internet searching.

Read more:
On the psychology of misinformation:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-021-00006-y
On sharing misinformation:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007

MindCrafting is intentionally choosing actions from your psychological toolbox to shape your experiences and build skills for thriving. MindCrafting involves adapting credible evidence into actions, testing those actions, and recording results.

MindCrafting is turning on sandbox mode for the self.

MindCraft Challenges are part of the Introduction to Psychology course taught by Karl Bailey.