Bailenson is the founder of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, a research center studying the psychological and behavioral impacts of virtual and augmented reality, the latter of which overlays digital images onto the real world. He's worked on experiments aimed at increasing people's focus on climate change for more than a decade, having found some success. His team discovered that when people put on a VR headset and cut down a tree, feeling the vibration of the chainsaw, they use less paper afterward.
For many people, Thanksgiving week kicks off the most psychologically intense stretch of the year. Those in therapy or actively working to improve family relationships often feel the pressure most acutely. As a therapist, this is a week filled with conversations about anxiety, dread, and longing. Many clients share some version of the basic sentiment: "I've built an independent, responsible life, but the moment I walk through the Thanksgiving door, I'm suddenly a miserable teenager all over again." This is the week when many clients prepare to approach the holiday differently, hoping that by changing themselves, they can influence the family system.
Why are bad habits so hard to break? Neuroscientist Carl Hart, PhD, journalist Charles Duhigg, and psychologist Adam Alter, PhD explain how your brain wires habits as cue-routine-reward loops that control nearly half of your daily life. They show why willpower alone rarely works, why technology fuels new forms of addiction, and why habits can only be replaced, not erased.
We tend to think that we experience the world as it is. We see and hear things, store them away as knowledge, and then take new facts into account. But that's not how our brains actually work. In reality, we filter out most of what we experience, so that we can focus on particular points of interest. In effect, we forget most things so we can zero in on what seems to be most important.