Shared Mind Research Articles

Good therapeutic connections and patient psychological safety: A qualitative survey study.

Therapeutic connections (TCs) between patients and care providers are important for achieving desired patient outcomes. For patients, TC is associated with greater health self-efficacy, better health status, mental health status, and higher satisfaction with providers. The aim of the study was to examine patients' descriptions of what signals to them they have a TC with their care provider. We conducted an online survey of patients with a recent health care visit ( n = 1,766). This study analyzed the results of an open-ended question that asked how patients know they have a good TC with their care provider. Data were analyzed using framework analysis to determine the extent to which patient responses indicated TC dimensions. A thematic content analysis identified emergent themes. Of the TC dimensions, words associated with Shared Deliberation were mentioned by 60% of respondents. Other dimension mentions ranged between 14% (Shared Mind) and 2% (Bond). Thematic content analysis revealed that patient psychological safety seems to be required for many patients to feel connected. A majority of patients indicated that good TCs happen when they feel seen and heard by providers. However, it appears that prior to feeling a strong TC, patients need to feel safe to be fully welcome into the encounter. Health care organizations need to give care providers the uninterrupted time and space they need to fully connect with patients. Training about how to create a psychologically safe environment for patients should be tailored for practicing providers, leaders, and students in health care fields.

Framing a Cosmopolitan Common Mind Approach for Global Challenges

This paper posits and defends a cosmopolitan common mind approach that could be useful for resolving global challenges which cannot be resolved by individuals working independently from one another, such as achieving global peace, cleaning the environment, and improving public health. A ‘cosmopolitan common mind’ refers to intersubjective recognition of some claims across cultures or continents. This account of the cosmopolitan common mind is based on Philip Pettit’s theory of common mind and the standard account of cosmopolitanism. Pettit holds that a common mind is a shared mind. The standard account of cosmopolitanism envisages all human beings as members of the human community. This account is based on three ideals: individualism, egalitarianism, and universalism. A cosmopolitan common mind can direct collective action across cultures or continents to resolve global problems. Terrorism and climate change are global problems that are not the products of individual actions but collective actions. For instance, pollution is created by collective actions. If people all together create pollution, they all together can stop it. The problems of establishing global peace and clean ecology are similar to preventing pollution in that they are beyond the ability of any lone individual to solve. If it is not impossible, we can develop a cosmopolitan common mind to promote the good and stop the bad. In qualitative research methodology, I use the empirically informed philosophical analysis method to documentary resources, including journal papers, academic books, and proceedings of conferences and congresses.

Shared Minds, Shared Feedback: tracing the influence of parental feedback on shared neural patterns.

Parental feedback affects children in multiple ways. However, little is known about how children, family, and feedback types affect parental feedback neural mechanisms. The current study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy-based hyperscanning to observe 47 mother-daughter pairs's (mean age of mothers: 35.95 ± 3.99yr old; mean age of daughters: 6.97 ± 0.75yr old) brain synchronization in a jigsaw game under various conditions. Between parental negative feedback and praise conditions, mother-daughter brain in supramarginal gyrus, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right inferior frontal gyrus, and right primary somatic (S1) differed. When criticized, conformity family-communication-patterned families had much worse brain synchronization in S1, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and right Wernicke's region than conversational families. Resilient children had better mother-child supramarginal gyrus synchronicity under negative feedback. This study supports the importance of studying children's neurological development in nurturing environments to assess their psychological development.

The Impact of Interactive Memory Systems on Team Creativity: The Mediating Role of Shared Mind Models and the Moderating Role of Team Reflection

The Impact of Interactive Memory Systems on Team Creativity: The Mediating Role of Shared Mind Models and the Moderating Role of Team Reflection

We Have Always Lived in the Mind: The Freudian Topographic Model of the Mind as Depicted in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

The literary setting of Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle is eerie, symbolic, and inextricably interconnected with the main characters of the book. The Blackwood family, haunted by its macabre past, is confined to its mansion, which is a manifestation of its dwellers’ troubled minds. The Blackwoods abide in a reciprocal influence with their house, the titular castle. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discourse on Jackson’s work and to illustrate a symbolic rather than mimetic reading of the novel. The theory of psychoanalysis, and more specifically the concept of the Freudian topographic model of the mind, is used to characterize the novel’s setting and its foreground characters. The paper identifies the three focal characters with Freudian archetypes of id, ego, and superego, and uses the theory to further analyze the relationships between the characters to prove they are each ruled by one of the archetypes. Then, it places the characters within the plane of the Blackwood mansion to demonstrate the house’s psychological agency over its dwellers. This is achieved by comparing the mansion’s floors to the Freudian levels of consciousness. Such an interpretation not only compares the Blackwood family to a single entity, a shared mind, but also includes the house as an integral part of its manifestation.

Facing epistemic and complex uncertainty in serious illness: The role of mindfulness and shared mind

BackgroundEpistemic uncertainty refers to situations in which available evidence is insufficient or unreliable, often accompanied by complexity due to novel contexts, multifactorial causation, and emerging options (the “unknowable unknown”). It stands in contrast to aleatory uncertainty where probabilities are known, and potential benefits and harms can be calculated and presented graphically (the “knowable unknown”). DiscussionEpistemic uncertainty is common, and encompasses uncertainty about the nature of the illness, whom to entrust with one’s care, and one’s ability to adapt and cope. Communication about the “unknowable unknown” occurs infrequently and ineffectively, and there is little research on improving communication in the face of epistemic and complex uncertainty. Terror Management Theory (TMT) predicts that in encountering serious illness, people engage in “worldview defense” – suppressing death-related thoughts, affiliating with like-minded others, and developing cognitive rigidity and intolerance of information that challenges their worldview. Mindfulness is associated with diminished defensive worldview reactions and cognitive rigidity, and greater tolerance of ambiguity. Shared mind encompasses shared understanding and affective attunement. ConclusionFor clinicians and seriously ill patients facing epistemic uncertainty, psychologically-informed interventions that promote mindfulness and shared mind offer promise in promoting open discussions regarding prognostic uncertainty, advance care planning, and treatment decision-making.

Broadening our Sight: Considering Patient-Provider Therapeutic Alliances to Improve Health Care

Two decades of research on patient experiences and patient-centered care has assumed that positive outcomes result from therapeutic alliances between patients and their professional care providers, yet therapeutic alliance has rarely been defined or measured. As more research reveals problems with patient experiences and reduced well-being among professional care providers, a closer examination of patient-provider relationships is warranted. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the attributes of a therapeutic alliance in health care from the patient’s perspective, then to identify quantitative measures that capture the full construct. We conducted conceptual analysis studies: (1) survey of therapeutic alliance dimensions by academic content experts (n=24); (2) two patient focus groups (n= 9; n=13); (3) a systematic review of measures of therapeutic alliance and its essential dimensions across three databases using the PRISMA guidelines. Of 2449 articles initially identified, 52 articles were retained for review after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. Constructs measured were mapped onto the therapeutic alliance dimensions derived from this study’s preceding qualitative work. Analysis found no measures that captured all of the therapeutic alliance dimensions. “Shared Mind” was the most frequently measured construct (n=27 unique measures). “Full Presence/Authenticity” was identified by patients and content experts as being key for strong alliances, yet there was little published research on this construct. Broadening our sight for better health care necessitates considering the core patient-provider relationship and how it impacts both patient and care provider outcomes.

Flocking Together: Collective Animal Minds in Contemporary Fiction

The remarkable coordination displayed by animal groups—such as an ant colony or a flock of birds in flight—is not just a behavioral feat; it reflects a fullfledged form of collective cognition. Building on work in philosophy, cognitive approaches to literature, and animal studies, I explore how contemporary fiction captures animal collectivity. I focus on three novels that probe different aspects of animal assemblages: animals as a collective agent (in Richard Powers'sThe Echo Maker), animals that communicate a shared mind through dance- like movements (in Lydia Davis'sThe Cows), and animals that embrace a collective “we” to critique the individualism of contemporary society (in Peter Verhelst'sThe Man I Became). When individuality drops out of the picture of human‐animal encounters in fiction, empathy becomes abstract: a matter of quasi‐geometric patterns that are experienced by readers through an embodied mechanism of kinesthetic resonance. (MC)

Shared Plates, Shared Minds: Consuming From a Shared Plate Promotes Cooperation

A meal naturally brings people together, but does the way a meal is served and consumed further matter for cooperation between people? This research (N = 1,476) yielded evidence that it does. People eating from shared plates (i.e., a Chinese-style meal) cooperated more in social dilemmas and negotiations than those eating from separate plates. Specifically, sharing food from a single plate increased perceived coordination among diners, which in turn led them to behave more cooperatively and less competitively toward each other, compared with individuals eating the same food from separate plates. The effect of sharing a plate on cooperation occurred among strangers, which suggests that sharing plates can bring together more than just allies.

Shared Minds: How Patients Use Collaborative Information Sharing via Social Media Platforms

Despite our understanding that social media and online healthcare communities can help to eliminate health information asymmetry and improve patients’ self‐care engagement, we have yet to understand what happens when patients have access to others’ health data and how patients’ access to these shared experiences and opinions influence their health knowledge and perceived treatment outcome. In this study, we apply social information processing theory and incorporate (1) uncertainty of a treatment, (2) information exposure, and (3) credibility of the information source into patients’ information evaluation function to assess how patients utilize shared health information and experiences. An empirical model, which combines various aspects of patients’ firsthand experiences about treatments into a single construct, yields empirical evidence that patients’ perceived treatment outcome is prone to social influence from other patients’ shared experiences. By disaggregating the sources of social influence, we find that social influence created by generalized others in the community outweighs that by familiar others of one's intimate social group. In addition, we find that other factors, such as positive sentiment in comments and patients’ prior experiences, also affect patients’ perceived treatment outcome. Based on our findings, implications for health promotion and health behaviors are presented.

Shared Mind

Shared Mind

The influence of the Cartwright Report on gynaecological examinations and nurses' communication.

The Cartwright Report of the Cervical Cancer Inquiry of 1987/8 made detailed recommendations about the primacy of communication with respect to informed consent, specifically for women undergoing gynaecological examinations. This paper reports findings from a wider study into women's experiences of what makes examinations go well. The data are specific to nurses and a subset of women participants. Data are from semi-structured interviews with six nurses, and seven women who had attended a sexual health clinic and had a speculum examination. These data are a portion of a larger study about women and gynaecological examinations, in which a total of 16 women patients and 16 clinicians (including 10 doctors) were interviewed. Clinicians were recruited through self-selection in response to a request for participants who believed that for the most part, women were satisfied with the clinical care they received, and re-attended. Subsequently, women who had been examined by these nurses and doctors were recruited. The recently developed concept of 'shared mind' was employed to analyse the data, using an iterative content analysis to identify which clinical communication strategies were used, and the way in which women responded. The findings demonstrate that nurses, through a shared mind process, can provide an environment to meet both the physical and emotional needs of women and enhance the likelihood of their re-attendance. This paper highlights Cartwright's legacy as it is enacted by a group of nurses in New Zealand.

Shared Mind

Shared Mind

Thoughts on the Idea of a World Humanities

The humanities create communities of meaning and the means to unify knowledge. Poets and novelists offer new insights into our shared mind. History provides our continuity. Philosophy struggles to unite our scientific knowledge with our understanding of values. Each discipline creates its own perspective and they often turn inward, creating new divisions. Yet a global view of the humanities is our hope of finding the means to live together in peace. But the argument in this article suggests that a philosophical understanding of the basic concepts with which we order our claims about the world can provide a successful response.

Thoughts on the Idea of a World Humanities

The humanities create communities of meaning and the means to unify knowledge. Poets and novelists offer new insights into our shared mind. History provides our continuity. Philosophy struggles to unite our scientific knowledge with our understanding of values. Each discipline creates its own perspective and they often turn inward, creating new divisions. Yet a global view of the humanities is our hope of finding the means to live together in peace. But the argument in this article suggests that a philosophical understanding of the basic concepts with which we order our claims about the world can provide a successful response.

Shared mind: communication, decision making, and autonomy in serious illness.

In the context of serious illness, individuals usually rely on others to help them think and feel their way through difficult decisions. To help us to understand why, when, and how individuals involve trusted others in sharing information, deliberation, and decision making, we offer the concept of shared mind-ways in which new ideas and perspectives can emerge through the sharing of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, meanings, and intentions among 2 or more people. We consider how shared mind manifests in relationships and organizations in general, building on studies of collaborative cognition, attunement, and sensemaking. Then, we explore how shared mind might be promoted through communication, when appropriate, and the implications of shared mind for decision making and patient autonomy. Next, we consider a continuum of patient-centered approaches to patient-clinician interactions. At one end of the continuum, an interactional approach promotes knowing the patient as a person, tailoring information, constructing preferences, achieving consensus, and promoting relational autonomy. At the other end, a transactional approach focuses on knowledge about the patient, information-as-commodity, negotiation, consent, and individual autonomy. Finally, we propose that autonomy and decision making should consider not only the individual perspectives of patients, their families, and members of the health care team, but also the perspectives that emerge from the interactions among them. By drawing attention to shared mind, clinicians can observe in what ways they can promote it through bidirectional sharing of information and engaging in shared deliberation.

The importance of communication in collaborative decision making: facilitating shared mind and the management of uncertainty

Quality medical decision making requires that clinicians and patients incorporate the best available clinical evidence with the patients' values and preferences to develop a mutually agreed upon treatment plan. The interactive process involved in medical decision making is complex and requires patients and clinicians to use both cognitive and communicative skills to reach a shared understanding of the decision. The purpose of this paper is to present a communication model to help better understand quality medical decision making, and how patient-centered, collaborative communication enhances the decision-making process. We present research on shared mind and cognitive and communicative skills to highlight how they can facilitate the management of uncertainty during the interactive process involved in medical decision making. We provide simple examples about how to frame messages to achieve shared mind and foster uncertainty tolerance. Strategies such as providing clear explanations, checking for understanding, eliciting the patient's values, concerns, needs, finding common ground, reaching consensus on a treatment plan, and establishing a mutually acceptable follow-up plan can facilitate collaborative decision making. Future research should explore ways to implement collaborative decision-making processes in existing health care systems.

Shared minds: Effects of a mother's imitation of her child on the mother-child interaction.

Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have impaired social interaction right from early development. Previous studies (Dawson & Adams, 1984; Tiegerman & Primavera, 1981, 1984) have suggested that imitating children with ASD is effective in facilitating their social behaviors. The present case report, through a 6-month intervention, investigated how a home-based intervention of helping a mother imitate her 21-month-old child with ASD impacted the child's development of social communication outside the experimental settings. Our results show that the mother's imitation of her child might be associated with the development of nonverbal joint attention skills. Positive changes in the mother's emotion towards her child and the mother-child interaction also were noted and represent other important effects of parental involvement in therapeutic interventions for children with ASD.

Shared minds: How mothers and infants co-construct early patterns of choice within intentional communication partnerships

The qualitative research method of case study inquiry is employed to investigate different patterns observed in early communicative interactions between two infants and their mothers. These mothers and babies were similar in significant ways: Both mothers were observed to be competent, well-functioning adults and reported no communicative or parenting dysfunction: both infants were evaluated as developing normally in terms of their cognitive level and acquisition of communication behaviors. However, a difference was observed between the dyads in their effectiveness in contributing to the infants' development as intentional communicators. The extent to which an infant and mother “share minds” is proposed as accounting for the observed difference. This phenomenon of “shared minds” is examined by observing the process of choice co-construction engaged in by mothers and infants during communication. It is concluded that characteristics of these early co-constructions influence the way in which the young child begins to act with intention and to interpret him- or herself and others as intentional communicative beings. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health

The Culture(s) of PROTOTYPING

Design Management Journal (Former Series)Volume 4, Issue 1 p. 55-65 The Culture(s) of PROTOTYPING Michael Schrage, Michael Schrage As a research associate with the MIT Sloan School Center for Coordination Science and the MIT Media Lab, Michael Schrage explores the role of technology in mediating productive relationships. His ongoing research focuses on the design and development of prototypes, collaborative tools, and organizational media to support innovation. He is author of Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration.Search for more papers by this author Michael Schrage, Michael Schrage As a research associate with the MIT Sloan School Center for Coordination Science and the MIT Media Lab, Michael Schrage explores the role of technology in mediating productive relationships. His ongoing research focuses on the design and development of prototypes, collaborative tools, and organizational media to support innovation. He is author of Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration.Search for more papers by this author First published: Winter 1993 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1948-7169.1993.tb00128.xCitations: 22 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume4, Issue1Winter 1993Pages 55-65 RelatedInformation