Posted on April 17, 2009 by Stephan Wiedner

Research into meta-awareness, led by Dr. Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara, may produce interesting solutions for overcoming destructive habits such as smoking or over-eating. Learn more by reading the following interview between Dr. Schooler and Noomii’s COO and Head Coach Stephan Wiedner.

What is your primary research focus?

The nature of consciousness. In particular I’m interested in how people take stock of their own experience. How they notice what’s going on in their minds all day long. Only sometimes do we check in and take stock of our feelings including when we are on task, or achieving our goals. Understanding how people take stock can help people become meta-aware of how we understand consciousness.

Meta-awareness is a consistent theme in your research. Is meta-awareness the same as mindfulness?

They are close cousins. Mindfulness is about being present and in the moment; not mind wandering. Meta-awareness is more about taking stock of what one is experiencing at a particular moment. It’s not necessarily about being in the present. It’s about the labeling of one’s experience even when one is mind wandering.

Is it fair to say that with mindfulness the goal is to just observe the now. With meta-awareness, the goal is to create a narrative about the now.

That’s exactly correct.

What is the broader application of your research?

People’s minds wander 20 to 25% of the time when they are engaging in something. Our capacity for mental time travel, engaging creative thoughts, future thinking is great and useful. However, in certain situations, while operating heavy machinery, etc…, then it’s detrimental.

Meta awareness is good for emotional management. If we’re irritable and haven’t noticed that, we may act out and adversely affect others. Meta awareness helps us understand and manage cravings. Often people experience cravings and react to them without even thinking about what they are doing. Meta awareness helps people notice when they experience cravings and be able to choose to not engage in the craving.

What is the most compelling case for pair coaching? What research suggests that pair coaching is beneficial?

One of the most important aspects of pair coaching is the sense of accountability that it provides. It’s very easy to make a promise or resolution to oneself and then come up with a rationalization of why one doesn’t want to do it or to all together forget about it. It’s human nature for people to give themselves a lot of slack.

With pair coaching one has to own up to their coaching partner and in so doing it encourages people to stick to their goals. It’s just not possible to stay accountable to the same level without that other person keeping an eye on you.

How my research may relate is that in some ways pair coaching is about helping creating one’s narrative about one’s goals and how they are going about achieving their goals. What one can become meta-aware of is one’s behaviors that are not consistent with the goals they have made. Pair coaching may lead to people creating more meta-awareness about what they are experiencing and engage in self-regulation.

What techniques help people strengthen their meta-awareness muscle?

We are still researching that. One technique that has been evaluated is meditation. There is preliminary evidence that meditation helps people notice when their minds wander.

One other simple technique is to have some sort of beeper that asks people to take stock of their experience at that time. After getting into the habit of doing it, people can use something more innocuous like a wrist band.

What’s your interest in Noomii?

I think that coaching is a wonderful opportunity for people to get the benefit of interacting with another individual. But hiring a professional coach is typically expensive and this service [Noomii.com] has tremendous potential for opening up the benefits to a larger audience.

Also, learning is enhanced through self-explanation. This is a well researched topic. It makes a lot of sense that in the process of engaging as a coach, individuals would engage in an explanation of various dynamics and in so doing would gain insight into those dynamics themselves.

What is the problem with the self-help industry?

One important problem is that people really do need the benefit of the perspective of another individual to enhance their own personal growth. The reflection of interacting with another person is not typically offered in the industry. You pick up a book and there are lots of suggestions and people have good intentions but they don’t follow through. They end up simply picking up another book.

What were you cited for in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking?

The premise of blink is that there are intuitive ways in which one makes judgments; going with gut instinct rather than to use extensive deliberation. I have done research in several areas that show that going with ones emotional intuition is an effective way to make decisions.

I do worry that Blink oversimplified that. While there is a place for intuition and hunches, there is a lot that can be said for extensive deliberation and working through the reasons for one’s attitudes and beliefs. One of the additional directions that my research is going to be moving is to better understand the situations in which intuitive judgments are more effective and when more thoughtful deliberation is more effective.

Is there a broad grouping of situations that best employ intuition versus extensive deliberation?

We still don’t have the formula but in a general sense, things of a purely aesthetic sense, in which the ultimate satisfaction is how you intuitively response to the object, in those situations, going with the gut makes a lot of sense.

It’s important to recognize that one’s gut reaction is an important thing to take into account. If you’re feeling misgivings, that should be taken into account and people often dismiss it. And if you engage in excessive deliberation, you lose touch of the gut feeling.

However, with some decisions, like buying an apartment, appealing to only intuition lends itself to overlooking certain details that are best considered using deliberation. For example, upon first inspection, an apartment may appear to be perfect and later you find out that you can hear footsteps of the neighbors above you. You may not have considered that by relying on intuition only.

Wow, we’ve just become meta-aware of the time and would like to wrap this up. Thank you.

About Dr. Jonathan Schooler

Professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jonathan W. Schooler pursues research on consciousness, memory, the relationship between language and thought, problem-solving, and decision-making. Currently he is particularly interested in exploring phenomena that intersect between the empirical and the philosophical such as how fluctuations in people’s awareness of their experience mediate mind-wandering and how exposing individuals to philosophical positions alters their behavior. A cum laude graduate of Hamilton College where he was elected to Sigma Xi, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Washington in 1987. Dr. Schooler joined the psychology faculty of the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor that same year and became a research scientist at Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center. Named a full professor in 2001, he moved on to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2004 as professor of psychology, holder of a Canada Research Chair in Social Cognitive Science, and senior investigator at UBC’s Brain Research Centre. He accepted his present position last year. Dr. Schooler has been a visiting professor at University of Virginia and a visiting scholar at the University of Washington. A fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, he has been the recipient of three Akumal Scholar Awards from the Positive Psychology Network, an Osher Fellowship given by the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco, and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellowship. His work has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the University of Pittsburgh, the Unilever Corporation, the Center for Consciousness Studies, the Office of Educational Research, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Research, the Bial Foundation, and the Bower Foundation. He currently is on the editorial boards of Consciousness and Cognition and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Dr. Schooler is the author or co-author of more than one hundred papers published in scientific journals and the editor (with J.C. Cohen) of Scientific Approaches to Consciousness, which was published in 1997 by Lawrence Erlbaum. Jonathan is a member of the board of advisors of Noomii.com.