Hidden Brain

Reframing the Battle of Wills

October 27, 2025

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  • The conventional approach to changing behavior, relying on pushing harder with rules and consequences (Plan A), is often strikingly ineffective because challenging behavior frequently stems from a lack of skill rather than a lack of will. 
  • Challenging behaviors, including aggression and defiance, are often poor, impulsive responses to frustration, highlighting the critical role of impulse control, which is the ability to pause and consider consequences. 
  • Effective change is achieved through Collaborative Problem Solving (Plan B), a three-step process requiring genuine empathy (understanding the other's concern), sharing one's own concern, and then inviting mutual collaboration on a solution. 
  • Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) not only reduces challenging behaviors but also builds crucial self-regulation and cognitive flexibility skills in the individuals receiving the intervention. 
  • The process of using CPS benefits the intervener (parent, manager, etc.) as well, fostering their own development of perspective-taking, empathy, and cognitive flexibility. 
  • Holding people truly accountable means ensuring they solve the problem so it doesn't recur, which is a more powerful form of responsibility than simply enduring external consequences or punishments derived from outdated reward/consequence models. 

Segments

Introduction to Behavioral Frustration
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(00:00:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Frustration with unyielding behavior often leads to ineffective escalation via more rules and consequences.
  • Summary: People frequently become frustrated when others, like partners or children, fail to change unwanted behaviors despite repeated reminders. This frustration tempts individuals to push harder with increased rules and consequences. The episode promises to explain why these common techniques often fail to produce lasting change.
Early Career Revelation with Jason
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(00:03:39)
  • Key Takeaway: A patient’s immediate apology after an aggressive outburst revealed deep regret, suggesting behavior is not always willful defiance.
  • Summary: Stuart Ablon recounted an early experience working on a psychiatric unit where a young man named Jason attacked him, spitting and kicking him. The next day, Jason apologized profusely, stating he loses control and does not mean the awful things he says. This incident suggested that deeply regretted behavior might stem from a lack of control rather than malice.
Aggression and Lack of Thinking
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(00:07:42)
  • Key Takeaway: Most violent acts are reactive responses to frustration, not premeditated, underscoring the importance of impulse control.
  • Summary: Ablon shared an interview with an attempted murder convict who dismissed the question of what he was thinking, stating that if he were thinking, he wouldn’t have acted. Research confirms that the vast majority of aggressive acts are poor responses to frustration where individuals fail to think through consequences. Impulse control, the ability to pause and consider consequences, is vital for preventing destructive actions.
Skill Deficit vs. Will Deficit
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(00:13:40)
  • Key Takeaway: Challenging behavior often indicates a lack of neurocognitive skill rather than a lack of motivation or will.
  • Summary: Psychologist Ross Green’s work suggests that children with explosive behavior struggle due to deficits in thinking skills, framing the issue as a lack of skill rather than will. The common assumption that misbehavior is purely a lack of will is often triggered by the frustration felt by the observer. Assuming a will problem leads to blame and relinquishes one’s capacity to help by focusing solely on the other person’s fault.
Language and Processing Skills
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(00:18:18)
  • Key Takeaway: Defensive phrases like ‘I don’t care’ can mask an underlying skill deficit in processing information and articulating thoughts.
  • Summary: A teenage patient repeatedly responded with ‘I don’t care’ before the question was finished, indicating he was preemptively shutting down communication. This behavior was a strategy to avoid the time needed to process the question and articulate a response, suggesting a lag in language and communication skills relative to his age. Poor behavior in young children is often linked to inflexibility and poor problem-solving skills due to underdeveloped verbal communication.
Working Memory and Executive Function
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(00:24:23)
  • Key Takeaway: Working memory, the cognitive shelf holding multiple pieces of information simultaneously, is closely linked to attention, organization, and overall executive functioning.
  • Summary: Working memory is the cognitive shelf where information is held temporarily so it can be manipulated, such as holding what someone is saying while formulating a response. Deficits in this area affect attention and organization, falling under the umbrella of executive functioning skills. When people struggle with complex tasks, like studying, it may be due to insufficient underlying executive skills, not just lack of effort.
Emotion Regulation and Social Skills
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(00:30:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Emotion regulation is the skill of managing feelings to allow clear thinking, while social thinking skills involve complex interactions like perspective-taking and empathy.
  • Summary: As emotional flooding increases, clear thinking decreases; emotion regulation skills manage responses to frustration or excitement so thinking can remain functional. Social thinking skills encompass everything from starting conversations to perspective-taking, which is considered the most complicated social skill. Assuming these social abilities are innate rather than learned skills limits opportunities for intervention.
People Do Well If They Can
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(00:32:44)
  • Key Takeaway: The foundational principle is that people do well if they can, contrasting sharply with the assumption that behavior is dictated solely by desire or will.
  • Summary: The philosophy ‘people do well if they can’ suggests that if someone is not succeeding, it is because they lack the capability, not the desire to succeed. This contrasts with the belief that people do well if they want to, which leads to blaming the individual for a lack of motivation. Adopting the ‘skill, not will’ mindset fosters empathy and opens avenues for helpful intervention.
Plan A, B, and C Framework
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(00:37:57)
  • Key Takeaway: Plan A (imposing will) and Plan C (dropping expectations) are less effective than Plan B (Collaborative Problem Solving), which builds skills and rapport.
  • Summary: Plan A involves imposing one’s will to achieve expectations, which often escalates poor behavior and fails to build skills. Plan C is a strategic decision to drop an expectation to maintain calm, but it does not solve the underlying problem. Plan B, Collaborative Problem Solving, works toward mutually satisfactory solutions, unlike the average of A and C.
Guideposts for Collaborative Problem Solving
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(00:41:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Plan B requires three sequential ingredients: understanding the other’s concern (empathy), sharing one’s own concern, and then inviting collaboration on a solution.
  • Summary: The first ingredient, empathy, requires genuine understanding, which is achieved through asking clarifying questions, making educated guesses, reflective listening, and offering reassurance. Empathy means understanding, not necessarily agreeing, and requires suspending judgment. Only after both parties’ concerns are clearly on the table should the third step—inviting collaboration—commence.
Executing Collaborative Solutions
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(00:48:19)
  • Key Takeaway: Inviting the other person to propose the first solution fosters ownership and provides necessary practice for developing problem-solving skills.
  • Summary: It is crucial to invite the other person to suggest the first solution to give them ownership and autonomy over the outcome. Watching someone else solve a problem does not help an individual practice or develop their own problem-solving skills. True collaborative problem solving requires that the final solution addresses both parties’ concerns, distinguishing it from a ’tricky Plan A’ where the outcome is predetermined.
Hospital Case Study: Tinfoil Solution
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(00:54:51)
  • Key Takeaway: Collaborative problem solving successfully resolved a long-standing refusal to attend therapy for a patient with paranoid schizophrenia by addressing his delusion directly.
  • Summary: Staff at a maximum-security psychiatric hospital were being assaulted due to patient aggression, prompting the introduction of Plan B. A nurse used Plan B proactively with a patient who refused therapy because he believed others could hear his thoughts via brain waves. The resulting solution involved the patient wearing tinfoil under a beanie to block the perceived thought-hearing, allowing him to attend treatment and solving the problem mutually.
Benefits of Skill Building
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(01:04:31)
  • Key Takeaway: Utilizing collaborative problem solving not only decreases challenging behaviors but also actively builds the underlying cognitive and self-regulation skills in both the recipient and the intervener.
  • Summary: Research shows that children whose caregivers use collaborative problem solving experience greater reductions in challenging behaviors compared to other treatment approaches. Furthermore, these children develop crucial self-regulation skills like impulse control and cognitive flexibility. Adults who implement this process also develop these same skills, improving their own perspective-taking and problem-solving abilities.
Skill Building Benefits of CPS
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(01:04:55)
  • Key Takeaway: Collaborative Problem Solving leads to the development of essential self-regulation and cognitive flexibility skills in children, beyond just behavior reduction.
  • Summary: Children receiving collaborative problem solving showed substantial decreases in challenging behaviors compared to peers treated with other approaches. Crucially, these children began developing skills like impulse control and cognitive flexibility. This demonstrates that CPS is effective for building underlying skills, not just solving immediate problems.
Intervener Skill Development
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(01:05:37)
  • Key Takeaway: Adults applying collaborative problem solving also develop better problem-solving, perspective-taking, and cognitive flexibility skills, proving adults can still learn new tricks.
  • Summary: The process benefits the intervening adults, such as parents or managers, by enhancing their own skills like empathy and cognitive flexibility. This finding suggests that even in middle age, the brain remains capable of skill acquisition through practice. The interaction is dyadic, requiring the intervener to also be curious and empathetic toward themselves.
Addressing Bad Actors and Exploitation
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(01:08:21)
  • Key Takeaway: The belief that some individuals are inherently ‘bad actors’ resistant to empathetic approaches is often refuted by implementation, as chronic stress and trauma impact the very skills CPS addresses.
  • Summary: Initial skepticism about applying CPS to ‘hardened criminals’ in a juvenile facility shifted dramatically over several years, with staff eventually believing it applied to 95% of the population. The speaker posits that chronic toxic stress and trauma explain much of this behavior by impacting brain development in areas related to self-regulation. This is an explanation for the behavior, not an excuse for it.
Misconceptions on Accountability
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(01:10:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Collaborative Problem Solving is not about being soft or ignoring limits; true accountability is achieved when the person is responsible for solving the problem to prevent recurrence.
  • Summary: CPS still involves setting expectations and boundaries; it simply offers more powerful options than imposing will or ignoring issues when problems arise. The traditional notion that enduring consequences equals taking responsibility is misguided. The ultimate form of accountability is having the individual solve the problem so it does not happen again.
Limits of Rewards and Consequences
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(01:12:31)
  • Key Takeaway: External rewards and consequences are effective for motivation and defining expectations but actively undermine the development of intrinsic drive and neurocognitive skills.
  • Summary: The reliance on rewards and consequences stems from operant psychology and contingency management systems. While useful for reminding people of expectations, these methods are poor at building neurocognitive skills or fostering helping relationships. Research shows a strong negative correlation between tangible external reinforcement and the development of intrinsic motivation.
The Moral and Financial Argument
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(01:14:26)
  • Key Takeaway: Rethinking behavior management to focus on skill deficits rather than punitive interventions carries enormous implications for saving billions of dollars and improving human lives.
  • Summary: The argument for CPS is both moral and scientifically based on understanding the brain. Moving away from punitive interventions when people struggle with skill, rather than will, could yield dramatic cost savings. This shift has significant implications for human welfare beyond individual case studies.
Episode Wrap-up and Credits
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(01:15:29)
  • Key Takeaway: Stuart Ablon, a Harvard Medical School psychologist, authored ‘Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work.’
  • Summary: The episode concludes by identifying Stuart Ablon as a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and the author of the book ‘Changeable.’ The production team and ways to support the Hidden Brain podcast via Hidden Brain Plus are then detailed.