Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

Unlike the previous reviewer, I found this book fascinating.

Yes the "story editing" approach has much in common with REBT and CBT, but the point is that those techniques have failed to take hold in the world outside the psychologist's consulting rooms. Instead, too often, individuals and organisations rely, and spend thousands of pounds, on "common sense" approaches to social and psychological problems without ever ascertaining their effectiveness. In the cases where it turns out that these interventions have no effect at all, then at least the damage is only financial, but the author also highlights instances where "common sense" approaches may have done more harm than good. The irony, as the author points out, is that the techniques that do work are often quicker and much cheaper.

The argument for randomised control trials seems to me to be worth making. Many of the people tasked with spending what is often public money on these programmes won't have had any training in how to spot snake oil. If this book prompts a few of them to ask whether and how an intervention has been evaluated before they sign the cheque, then it will have done something very worthwhile.

Unless you are a practising psychologist or a very recent psychology graduate, I guarantee that you will learn something new and interesting from this book and that the process will be quite painless!

I enjoyed this book and I think it has two important ideas in it:

1. Common sense often does not always work: only by doing proper randomized trials can you find out whether an intervention is effective. Many of the interventions we take for granted today such as diversity programs or 'prison works' (my example) are largely unproven and may or may not be true. Is there hard evidence? is what we all must ask.

2. Story editing can be a very effective and fast way of helping people - changing people's approach and attitude by giving examples of what others in the same situation have done. I think this has strong parallels to Seligman's 'learned helplessness' where he found that people can very quickly become stuck and not see their way out of a situation. As I see it Wilson is describing the positive version of this - what I'd see as 'learned resourcefulness'. I disagree slightly with Wilson in that I don't think it's as alike to CBT (or REBT) as he thinks - CBT teaches people explicitly to recognize the issue and act consciously; Wilson's story-editing approach is often implicit and not explained. But that's a minor quibble.

An easy to read, interesting book.

'Redirect' promises to reveal the 'surprising new science of psychological change', a technique that Timothy Wilson calls 'story editing': redirecting the 'narratives' we tell ourselves about our personal and societal problems. One example of this is in academic underachievement. First-year university students often find the new academic landscape to be a difficult transition from previous experiences, and commonly grades suffer, leading to underachievement or attrition. Wilson contrasts two 'narratives' when faced with disappointing results: student A tells himself that he's not cut out for university, whereas student B tells herself that early setbacks are common and she'll need more effort and a different approach. The first student drops out and the second turns things around. The key concept here is the self-fulfilling prophecy: if you believe you can, you're right; if you believe you can't, you're right. All that's needed is for people to edit their narratives to look more like student B.

Although that's the essence of the story editing approach - changing your beliefs into more rational and helpful ones - very little of the technique is anything new. Rational emotive behavioural therapy (REBT) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) have been outlining this technique since the 1950s. Further to this, the writer takes liberties with his story editing technique, folding in various psychological findings that only have a glancing similarity to his concept. He includes James Pennebaker's writing technique and borrows from behavioural activation therapy, ideas that don't even seem superficially related to Wilson's own definition of story editing.

Not only is the story editing argument rather weak, the main focus of the book is actually more to do with experimental design that psychological change. Wilson spends most of the book arguing for the use of randomised controlled studies, and the need for them in assessing social policies such as sexual health interventions and drug abuse education. Fair enough - high quality research is the reason why doctors don't prescribe leeches - however, the excessive focus on research methodology gets tedious, with the words 'random assignment to conditions' appearing on every other page. In all, there's little new here!