Timothy D. Wilson

This is definitely one of my favorites; it is not, however, a self-help book (if you peruse Amazon reviews, many readers’ expectations were defied and disappointed by that fact – most likely due to a misinterpretation of the sub-title). Rather, Redirect presents the practice of story-editing to effect successful interventions in personal and social issues. The first chapter describes story-editing and how it can help turn negative thinking patterns into healthier ones (there are clear show more parallels to cognitive-behavioral therapy). This act of redirecting or, in some cases, making sense of a situation, can be accomplished through three different methods: “the writing exercise, in which people reinterpret a problem by writing about it; story prompting, in which people are directed down a particular narrative path with the hope that it will bump them out of a self-defeating thinking pattern”; and the “do good, be good approach, which involves changing people’s behavior first… In other words, people’s behavior shapes the personal narratives they develop” (17). Don’t be fooled, though; this book is not positive thinking, touchy-feely fluff; it investigates numerous scientific studies and also points out the lack of a scientific framework and analysis for many popular interventions (for example, the D.A.R.E. program).



Quite notable to me in the first chapter was the author’s look at CISD (Critical Incident Stress Debriefing), commonly used for a time with first-responders. The author points out that controlled studies have repeatedly found that CISD worsens the stress and outcomes in an individual who was peripherally or directly involved in a traumatic event. “In short, one reason CISD fails is that it makes it harder for people to take that step back and gain some perspective on what happened. Forcing people to talk about the traumatic event right after it happened can even solidify memories of it, which makes it harder for people to reinterpret the event as time goes by” (13-14; emphasis mine).



Each successive chapter focuses on one specific issue – parenting, teen violence, academic improvement, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. – and investigates current, popular interventions and their non- or even ill-effect, contrasting them with simple story-editing interventions. The author repeatedly points out the importance of scientific, validly constructed intervention strategies that incorporate control populations to produce accurate evaluations of efficacy. The story-editing interventions are designed and implemented along such guidelines, producing results that are extremely valuable and encouraging. One of my favorites was an extremely simple intervention with struggling college freshman who sat through a one-time, thirty-minute “session in which students learned that lots of people struggle academically at first but then improve their grades. [There was] no attempt to delve into participants’ academic history, inquire about their study habits, or counsel them on how to manage stress. In fact, participants didn’t even know that the purpose of the study was to help them improve their academic performance” (16). The results -- compared not only to the no-intervention control group, but also a control group enrolled in the standard, intensive study-skills program that many colleges employ for such students -- were astounding: very small measurable difference between the control group and the study skills group, but the story-editing-intervention students experienced huge academic improvement over the course of their college careers. “…These results are particularly dramatic considering how small and seemingly inconsequential the intervention was – the students took part in a thirty-minute psychology experiment in which they were shown some statistics and saw brief videotapes about other people’s grades” (17).



Other passages I found particularly interesting:

“…If I were to give one piece of advice for how to be happier, it would be to carve out more time to spend with friends and loved ones, because, as we’ve seen, the best predictor of happiness is the quality of our social relationships” (51).

“The next time you think about an upsetting event from your past, remember to take a step back and analyze it from a distance, and to think dispassionately about why it occurred. In short, don’t recount the event, take a step back and reconstrue and explain it” (59).

“If you want at-risk teens to act out and become even more deviant, it turns out that one of the best things you can do is to arrange for them to hang out together on a regular basis” (142; see also Dishion, T.J., McCord, J., & Poulin, F. (1999). When interventions harm: Peer groups and problem behavior. American Psychologist, 54, 755-764).

“…when teens hang out with other teens who are engaged in risky behaviors, they tend to imitate those risky behaviors” (165; see also Sussman, S., Dent, C., & Stacy, A. (2002). Project Towards No Drug Abuse: A review of the findings and future directions. American Journal of Health Behavior, 26, 354-364; see also Valente, T., Ritt-Olson, A., Stacy, A., Unger, J., Okamoto, J., & Sussman, S. (2007). Peer acceleration: Effects of a social network tailored substance abuse prevention program among high-risk adolescents. Addiction, 102, 1804-1815). http://0-search.ebscohost.com.www.infosoup.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph...

“But there is another set of issues associated with poverty and social class that is more controversial, namely, differences in child-rearing practices between lower-class and middle-class parents…” (210; see also Nisbett, T.E. (2009). Intelligence and how to get it. New York: W.W. Norton). http://www.infosoup.org:2082/record=b1709520~S77

I’ll leave it to you to read the book if you want to know the author’s stated findings on that last bullet point. show less

"Redirect" by Timothy D. Wilson is built around the concept of Story Editing, which he describes as
using changes, or edits, in the stories we use to understand ourselves and the social world around
us, to make lasting changes in our lives and the lives of others.

He shows why Self-Help authors, Scared Straight programs and D.A.R.E. initiatives don't work,
have never been scientifically tested and why efforts such as these deserve what he calls,
"Bloodletting" awards - solutions that seem to make show more sense, much like bloodletting once did to
physicians, but do more harm than good.

Wilson discusses shaping our personal narratives and expands from there to the topics of raising kids,
preventing teen pregnancy, teenage violence, alcohol and drug abuse, prejudice and the achievement
gap. His chapter on raising kids seemed the weakest, especially the minimal sufficiency
principal, which I took as too fine a line when trying to be neither too harsh or too lenient
when disciplining children. However, his other chapters provide interesting ideas on how story
editing can be used to counter what would seem to be intractable personal and social problems.

My three main take-aways were:

1. Wilson's clear-eyed examination of the problems with policy makers, self-help authors and
non-psychologists who rely on common sense to solve problems and fall into the trap of
equaling correlation with causation.

2. His chapter on prejudice was very stimulating, including the insight that when it comes to
race we overestimate our differences and underestimate what we have in common.

3. The Stereotype Threat discussed in chapter 9 was a profound discovery and his use of studies
and possible solutions (emphasizing positive aspects of the race and positive role models)
was one of the stronger chapters.

In sum, Mr. Wilson has written a book on change supported by scientifically-validated studies
that counter so much of the accepted wisdom and programs that exist today. While much of the
book is dedicated to fighting large-scale, social issues, there is enough material on personal
change to make this book a recommended choice for every reader. show less

Wilson gives us a highly readable account of what we do and don't know about psychological and social psychological interventions--what works, what doesn't, why, and how we tell the difference.

A major concern of Wilson's is many popular, widely accepted approaches to solving, reducing, or preventing problems, such as Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) counseling for police and firefighters after a traumatic on-the-job incident, or popular and widely-respected anti-drug programs for show more the schools, have been implemented on a large scale without being scientifically tested first. In some cases, once broadly accepted, these approaches remain unchanged even after scientific testing demonstrates that they are ineffective or even counter-productive.


A recurring theme is that good intentions and common sense don't always produce the expected results, while controlled scientific experimentation can often identify more effective methods--and that often these better methods are also simpler, easier, and less expensive. One example is the CISD mentioned above. It seems quite sensible to encourage someone who's had a traumatic experience to talk about, get the feelings out, and avoid having lasting post-traumatic stress disorder effects from it. Unfortunately, experiments with survivors of traumatic incidents randomly assigned to either undergo CISD or not show that it actually increases the likelihood of PTSD symptoms. What does work? Having the trauma survivor wait a few weeks, and then spend fifteen minutes writing about the incident, for three or four days running. Why does CISD make things worse, while the writing exercise makes things better? Because CISD forces the trauma survivor to focus on the events before he or she is prepared to make sense of them, and gets them trapped in the initial emotional response to what happened. The writing exercise allows the mind time to process the event, and then write about it, in private, when ready to do so and without having to deal with another person's expectations.

Another recurring theme is "story editing." We all have narratives we tell ourselves that explain our lives and who we are. Some of those stories are not helpful to us, to say the least. A student who gets a bad grade on a test and concludes that he's not smart enough for the class is likely to keep doing badly in it. A student who gets the same bad grade and concludes that he needs to spend more time studying likely to do better on the next test, and be reinforced in his belief that working harder will bring success. It's clear which one of these reactions is more useful. What's really valuable to know is that with a fairly simple intervention of having students listen to stories of upperclassmen who did badly at first and then improved in the class work, you can change the first reaction to the second one.

Wilson gives an excellent overview of the current state of social psychology, explaining what works and what doesn't, and why. Examples range from students having academic problems to major social problems such as teen pregnancy, delinquency, and drug use, showing why some popular "common sense" programs have failed while seemingly simple interventions succeed. He also gives pointers to the effective use of these principles in our personal lives, while making clear that there are mental and emotional health problems that do require professional help and more complex intervention.

Highly recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. show less

Interesting look at the ways we can misperceive ourselves—our beliefs, our traits, our dependence on external conditions. Though there’s nothing particularly new here if you read a lot of behavioral psych, Wilson looks at behavioral issues from the perspective of a theoretician interested in whether there really is an unconscious mind and what’s in it. He covers unconscious racial prejudice, mistakes about our own competence, mistakes about how we actually feel about someone else, and show more so on. In the end, he suggests, coherent narratives are good for us (though they do need some connection to reality), and we can often improve our own lives by acting like the people we want to be—faking friendliness, or dutifulness, or other positive behaviors until we make it, in part by changing our own unconscious self-images. show less