Dr. Rankin is an inspirational educator on the subjects of mind-body medicine, spirituality, neuropsychology and cognitive function, personal change and transformation. He has given hundreds of seminars and he is a frequent radio and television guest, appearing on “The View,” CNN and affiliates of all of the major networks. His pioneering work on self-control was featured on ABC’s “20/20” news show. Now, his new book, I Think Therefore I am Wrong, looks at the many ways we can sabotage our thinking through cognitive biases, binary thinking, false assumptions and numerous other strategies. You can also checkout his popular podcast, The How Not To think which examines how this false reasoning manifests itself in many areas of society through myths, and ‘conventional wisdom.’ Howard speaks with leaders in their fields to examine the impact of faulty thinking that occurs in every sphere of life.
FMM: You are an influential person in the areas of mind-body medicine, spirituality, neuropsychology, and cognitive function. Share your background.
I did all my professional training in the UK, getting my Masters and Doctoral degrees in clinical psychology at the prestigious Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London. It was a special place where many of the leading figures in the field either worked (e.g. Hans Eysenck) or visited (e.g. Martin Seligman, learned helplessness expert and George Valliant known for his organization of defense mechanisms). At this time there was a very behavioral approach to treatment and my PhD researched behavioral approaches to the treatment and assessment of addiction. I stayed in the addiction field for almost 10 years and then took a position in a private hospital in Northampton, England as a consultant working in addictions and eating disorders. While there I met Princess Diana who was from Northampton, and opened a new unit named after her family.
At this time behavioral psychologists were relatively new to the addictions field and at a NATO conference on addiction in Norway along the way I met Peter Miller who was in the field at the University of Mississippi. Shortly afterwards he moved to set up a behavioral wellness center on Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina and before long he invited me to become the program director. I had always been a huge Americophile (I had been a High School exchange student in California) and jumped at the chance.
Over the years my career developed into clinical practice, consulting, speaking and writing. More than twenty years ago I realized that despite the fact that communication was an essential part of my profession no one had ever addressed this with me in my training! So I learned all I could and wrote the first edition of Power Talk: the Art of Effective Communication. It hasn’t lost its relevance at all, so I recently upgraded it and brought out a second edition. I also got into neurofeedback and saw the enormous potential in looking at the brain. If you went to have your car fixed would you want the mechanic to spend all his time talking to you about your driving experience, or look under the hood? The developments in neuroscience enable us to look meaningfully under the hood. I actually conducted one of the first projects in the US public school system using QEEG brain-mapping on troubled elementary students. This led me into the world of cognitive neuroscience. I am currently working with LA-based neurologists Dean and Ayesha Sherzai on their global Healthy Minds Initiative and Alzheimer’s prevention programs. Along the way I also became involved with a group that have adapted the latest cognitive neuroscience into a predictive analytics program called IntualityAI. The program has had excellent success over the years in predicting everything from financial trends to NFL scores. I am the Director of Science for Intuality and am cowriting a book with the founder Grant Renier called Intuitive Rationality: Simulating Sherlock with Intuitive General Intelligence. https://intualityai.com/about/
More recently, I have focused on how current applications of cognitive neuroscience impact society. I am helping a military physical therapist write an amazing book called Mission Change Pain about how out of need when working with horribly injured combat personnel he developed a program that will change how pain is perceived and treated. It runs counter to the usual medical care and shows how binary thinking can actually make matters worse. I was so moved by that book that I am writing one on the application into everyday life. Originally called The Tyranny of Victimization I have changed the title to The Boundaries of Compassion.
My writing has led me to many great stories. I have just finished co-writing a book called The Journey of The All-American Redheads, the true story of an all women’s basketball team formed in 1936 who traveled the country playing by men’s rules against men’s teams and winning most of the time. They played for 50 years and help transform the landscape of women in sports. I have just created a sizzle reel for a docu-drama that I hope to get to produce. I also have the podcast How Not To Think which covers how cognitive biases and thinking influence many different sectors of society.
FMM: What trends have you seen as a result of the pandemic?
I think that the pandemic has been transformational in that has got many people thinking about key aspects of their lives: how to work, where to live, how to interact and so on. But for me, the pandemic has highlighted the problems endemic in the media, social, TV and print. It shows how easily we can be divided. It shows how easily we resort to our own biases to believe what we want. It shows how seeing a complex world in simple binary terms, is unproductive and completely misleading. It shows how for the most part, people don’t understand probabilities and see things as facts. For example, “masks don’t work, if they did, the pandemic would be over.” No, masks reduce the probability of infection. In fact, while the US has some of most numerate people in the world it also has the least numerate, too. (There’s that non-binary thinking again).
FMM: Tell us about your book, “I Think Therefore I am Wrong.”
The earlier books on cognitive neuroscience, like Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow showed how our thinking was a combination of logical, critical thinking and faster, heuristic (past experiences, beliefs, etc.,) processes but it all works out in the end. I agree that these are the critical processes but the results are often very misguided decisions and thinking. The book looks at core processes like memory and attention, and the research showing the influences that affect these processes. Then I consider all the types of cognitive biases that we use, consciously or otherwise, to justify our positions. I consider how this process manifests not just in individuals but in different sectors of society and institutions. I think it is very important that we can identify the key ideas that underpin much of our society so we can better understand them and ultimately improve them. For example, medical diagnoses and prognoses are probabilities not certainties. If a doctor tells you have a disease and that you are likely to die in six months and you believe him/her, chances are you will indeed die. But that is almost certainly a probability, e.g. 90% of people with the condition at the stage you’re at, die within six months. But that means there are 10% who don’t die within that time-frame. Why? What are they doing that is keeping them alive? I have a neighbor who went to her doctor with some troubling symptoms that could have indicated some form of cancer. After running the tests the doctor told her that the tests show that there was a 90% chance nothing was wrong. That wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted the most advanced testing which involved a surgical procedure. When she woke from the procedure the supervising doctor said, “You’re one lucky women, we have just found the beginnings of pancreatic cancer.” That was 7 years ago and my neighbor is in remission.
FMM: Can you give examples of what happens when our cognitive bias and defense mechanisms collide?
Our defenses and cognitive biases often complement each other. Our typical defenses are to deny responsibility and look to blame others (sound familiar?). So, for example, we use confirmation bias to only see the evidence that supports our position and ignores everything that doesn’t. We turn it a binary problem where we are the victim of Hitleresque evil. The aforementioned George Valiant created four divisions of defense mechanisms: Psychotic, neurotic, immature and mature. The Mature ones are things like humor and acceptance which are essential for owning up and taking responsibility. In my book, I make the point thatm wisdom therefore comes from virtue and name 20 such virtues that are the keys to acceptance and wisdom. And this is where spirituality and thinking intersect.
I co-wrote a book with a woman called Barbara Morello-O’Donnell about her extraordinary experiences in a coma. She actually had the SARS virus in 2009 and was very ill and in desperate need of a heart transplant. When she emerged from her coma she was able to recount her “dreams” which seemed to reflect what was actually happening to her in the hospital. For example, when she was being cardioverted she dreamt of driving down the highway looking for electricity. After a series of dreams that seemed to reflect her real life issues, she dies but encountering an angel she is told it is not her time and that she will see through different eyes and her heart will be healed. When she emerges from the coma, her vision is different because she has had a stroke and when they check on her heart the doctor announces that she now has the heart of a 20-year-old and is one that would normally be given as a transplant. In God’s Waiting Room to date has won one award in the spiritual category of a general e-book contest.
FMM: “Human beings aren’t logical, they are psychological, with the emphasis on the psycho. Expound on this idea.
I coined this phrase about 25 years ago, before the rising research and interest in cognitive biases that show we’re not logical, but psychological. We now have a much better understanding of how we use Fast and Frugal or System 1 thinking a lot of the time and don’t use critical thinking hardly at all. (And even when we are trying to be logical we’re still influenced by heuristics, like our biases). Even where we have some data, we have to reflect on the quality and quantity of them information. It’s key to accept the limitations in our thinking but we haven’t got there yet. It’s an ego thing.
FMM: How will your book help to improve their critical thinking and see the flaws in their own and others’ thinking and decision-making?
Hopefully, they will understand the process and that it applies to all of us, except perhaps the mythical Sherlock Holmes. The goal is not to be entirely logical because that is not possible most of the time, but to understand the interaction between logic and our biases and manage them as effectively as possible.
FMM: You are a frequent guest, appearing on “The View” CNN and affiliates of major networks. Will we be seeing you soon discussing your book?
I hope so and if not this book then the book on the Boundaries of Compassion, or Intuitive Rationality, or the amazing story of the All-American Redheads!
coronavirus and thinking
poetic tribute to Amanda Gorman
Healthy Minds initiative
How balancing your brain balances you TedX
poetic tribute to Dean and Ayesha
Interview with the Sherzais on their 30 day Alzheimer solution program
You tube channel
DrHRankin@gmail.com
How Not To Think podcast
