The Science Behind Dive Deep Dialogues
DDD's apps draw on published research, from Emory University's family storytelling studies to neuroscience on self-talk. This page sets out what that research found, how strong it is, and where it stops.
Meaningful Storytelling
Psychologists Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush at Emory University found that children who knew more of their family history tended to have higher self-esteem, a stronger sense of control over their lives, lower anxiety and better-functioning families (Duke, Lazarus & Fivush, 2008). These are correlations from small samples of American families. Duke and Fivush believe the telling and retelling together matters more than the facts a child can recite. Duke calls the oscillating family story, with its ups and downs, the most healthful kind, though no study has compared the patterns.
Key researchers: Dr Marshall Duke, Dr Robyn Fivush, Dr Dan McAdams
Read the evidencePsychological Insight
In laboratory studies led by Ethan Kross (2014), people who talked to themselves using their own name or "you" felt less distress and performed better under social stress than people who used "I". People who are more self-compassionate tend to report less anxiety and depression, and in experiments by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen (2012) self-compassion made people more willing to work on a failure.
Key researchers: Dr Ethan Kross, Dr Kristin Neff, Dr Dan Siegel, Dr Carol Dweck
Read the evidenceDeeper Dialogue
In a 2010 study led by Matthias Mehl, the happiest of 79 students had about twice as many substantive conversations and one-third as much small talk as the unhappiest. A larger 2018 follow-up (486 people) again linked substantive conversation with higher life satisfaction, but found no reliable link with small talk. Both studies are correlational, so they cannot show which causes which.
Key researchers: Matthias Mehl, Dr Robyn Fivush, Dr Amy Edmondson
Read the evidenceMeaningful Storytelling
The best-known research on family stories comes from Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush at Emory University. It began in the mid-1990s with an observation by Duke's wife Sara, a psychologist who worked with children with learning disabilities: the ones who knew a lot about their families seemed to do better when things got hard.
The "Do You Know?" Scale
A 20-question scale asking children things like: Do you know how your parents met? Do you know where some of your grandparents grew up? Do you know some of the lessons that your parents learned from good or bad experiences?
Children who scored higher had higher self-esteem, a stronger sense of control over their own lives, lower anxiety, fewer behaviour problems and better-functioning families (Duke, Lazarus & Fivush, 2008). Bruce Feiler, reporting the work in The New York Times in 2013, called the score the best single predictor of children's emotional health and happiness. That phrase is his, not a statistic from the paper. What the paper reports are correlations in a small group of American families, not proven causes. Nobody randomly assigned families to tell stories.
The first data were collected in the summer of 2001, two months before September 11. Bruce Feiler reports that the researchers went back and reassessed the children, none of whose families had been directly affected, and that Duke told him the ones who knew more about their families again proved more resilient. We have not found that follow-up in a published paper, so we treat it as the researcher's own report, not as proof that the scale works.
The score is a marker
Duke and Fivush are careful about what a high score means, and this is the part that usually gets dropped. They do not think the facts do the work. A child scores highly because they belong to a family that talks: one that tells, retells, disagrees over the details and fills in the gaps out loud. The same families had their dinner conversations recorded, and the children who scored higher came from families that told more family stories at the table (Fivush, Duke & Bohanek, 2010).
"These are good things to know. But you cannot take this list, make sure the kids know all the answers, and you're done. Storytelling is a process. It comes out of time spent together, with certain people doing the telling and other people doing the listening."
Professor Marshall Duke, Emory University, in an interview with Laird Norton Wealth Management, 2017
The score is the marker. The dialogue, Duke and Fivush believe, is the mechanism. Duke wrote in 2013 that this is their opinion, and no study has yet tested it directly. It is the reading this company is built on. It is why we are called Dive Deep Dialogues, and why everything we build is a conversation tool, not a filing cabinet.
Three Family Story Shapes
Marshall Duke describes three shapes a family's story can take. He considers one of them the most healthful for children. That is his judgement: no study has compared the three.
ascending Narrative
From having nothing to doing well: we came with little and worked our way up.
descending Narrative
From having it all to losing it.
oscillating Narrative
Ups and downs, and we stuck together through them. The shape Duke calls the most healthful.
Duke's choiceDr Marshall Duke
Psychology, Emory University (emeritus)
Marshall Duke is a clinical psychologist who created the "Do You Know?" scale with Robyn Fivush: 20 yes-or-no questions about family history that a child could only have learnt by being told. In their Family Narratives Project at Emory, children who scored higher tended to have higher self-esteem, a stronger sense of control over their lives, lower anxiety and fewer behaviour problems (Duke, Lazarus & Fivush, 2008). Duke stresses that these are correlations: in his view the score reflects a family that talks.
The 2008 paper reports that knowledge of family history was correlated with internal locus of control, higher self-esteem, better family functioning, greater family cohesiveness, lower anxiety and fewer behaviour problems. Duke and Fivush use the term "intergenerational self" for a child's sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves (Fivush, Bohanek & Duke, 2008). Duke is explicit that the scale is not a checklist to drill. He wrote in 2013 that what counts, in his and Fivush's opinion, is the process of families sitting down and telling the stories.
"These are good things to know. But you cannot take this list, make sure the kids know all the answers, and you're done. Storytelling is a process. It comes out of time spent together, with certain people doing the telling and other people doing the listening."
Interview with Laird Norton Wealth Management, 2017
Dr Robyn Fivush
Psychology, Emory University (emeritus)
Robyn Fivush is a psychologist who studies autobiographical memory and how families talk about the past. She directed the Family Narratives Lab at Emory, built the "Do You Know?" scale with Marshall Duke, and was first author of the 2010 study that repeated the work with 66 teenagers. She has written that what matters is not knowing particular facts but the process of families sharing stories about their lives.
In the 2010 study, teenagers who knew more family history reported higher self-esteem and a firmer sense of identity, and the link with identity held after allowing for how well the family functioned. In the earlier sample, children with higher scores came from families that told more family stories at the dinner table. Fivush and her co-authors called the sample small and the results correlational. In 2020 she said that children in families who talked about hard events in coherent, emotionally open ways coped better over a two-year study.
"The definition of who they are is not just something independent and autonomous, spun from nowhere. It's embedded in a long, intergenerational family story."
Emory News Center, 29 April 2020
Bruce Feiler
Writer and journalist
Bruce Feiler is an American writer who brought the Duke and Fivush research to a wide audience with "The Stories That Bind Us" (The New York Times, 15 March 2013), an excerpt from his book "The Secrets of Happy Families" (2013). Feiler calls it his most popular piece. Several things often credited to the researchers come from this article: the phrase "best single predictor of children's emotional health and happiness" is Feiler's, and the September 11 follow-up and the three story shapes are known from his interview with Duke.
Feiler's article is journalism, not a study. It is the version most people quote, so it matters which words are his and which are the researchers'. The measured findings are in Duke, Lazarus and Fivush (2008) and Fivush, Duke and Bohanek (2010).
"The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative."
The New York Times, 15 March 2013
Dr Dan McAdams
Psychology, Northwestern University
Dan McAdams is Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, known for his life-story model of identity: the idea that adults give their lives unity and purpose by building an inner story of who they are. His studies of "redemption sequences", where a bad event leads to something good, found them associated with higher self-reported wellbeing, and with generativity in midlife adults (McAdams et al., 2001).
In McAdams and colleagues' 2001 study of midlife adults and university students, people whose life stories held more redemption sequences reported higher psychological wellbeing, and midlife adults high in generativity (concern for the next generation) told more of them. These are associations. His book on the subject is subtitled "Stories Americans Live By", and McAdams and McLean (2013) wrote that researchers still need to separate cause from effect and to look at other cultures.
Dr Paul Zak
Neuroeconomics, Claremont Graduate University
Paul Zak is an economist and founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University. In his lab's studies, people who watched a short film with a dramatic arc showed a rise in oxytocin measured in blood, and the rise went with how much empathy they reported (Barraza & Zak, 2009; Zak, 2015). The wider claim that oxytocin drives trust and bonding in people is disputed.
In one study a film of a father talking about his dying son was followed by a rise in viewers' oxytocin and cortisol, while a film of the same pair at the zoo was not, and viewers who felt more empathy offered more money to a stranger (Zak, 2015). These are laboratory studies of films, not of family storytelling, and they did not measure memory. A 2015 review by Nave, Camerer and McCullough concluded that the evidence tying oxytocin to human trust is not robust and that blood measures of oxytocin are flawed.
Dr Uri Hasson
Neuroscience, Princeton University
Uri Hasson is a professor in Princeton's Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Institute. His lab studies how brains respond during real-life communication. With Greg Stephens and Lauren Silbert he reported "speaker-listener neural coupling" in 2010: in an fMRI study, listeners' brain activity tracked the activity of a speaker telling an unrehearsed story.
One speaker told a 15-minute story from her own life, and 11 people listened to the recording in the scanner. In most brain areas the listeners' activity followed the speaker's by one to three seconds. The coupling disappeared when listeners heard a story in Russian, which they did not speak, and the listeners who understood the story best showed the most anticipatory coupling (Stephens, Silbert & Hasson, 2010). The study shows that coupling goes with understanding. It did not test family stories or compare stories with other kinds of talk.
Dr James Pennebaker
Psychology, University of Texas at Austin (emeritus)
James Pennebaker is the social psychologist who began the research on expressive writing. In the first study (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986), students who wrote about their most upsetting experiences for 15 minutes on four days made fewer visits to the health centre in the months that followed than students who wrote about everyday topics.
Later studies reported changes in immune measures and lower blood pressure after expressive writing, and Pennebaker and Seagal (1999) argued that forming a story out of an upsetting experience is part of why it helps. A meta-analysis of 146 randomised studies found that the benefit is real but small, with an average effect size of r = .075 (Frattaroli, 2006). The work is about private writing, not about telling stories to family.
Michael White
Narrative Therapy, Dulwich Centre, Adelaide (died 2008)
Michael White was an Australian social worker and family therapist who co-founded the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide and developed narrative therapy with David Epston of New Zealand. He died in 2008. Their approach uses "externalising" conversations, which separate a person's identity from the problem they face, and "re-authoring" conversations, which build on "unique outcomes": moments that do not fit the problem story.
Narrative therapy treats the stories people tell about their lives as the way they make sense of them. The therapist helps a person notice events that contradict a "problem-saturated" story and build an alternative story from them. It is a therapeutic approach, not a research finding. Art of Story borrows its ideas for everyday listening, not for therapy.
Psychological Insight
How you talk to yourself is linked with how you cope under stress. Most of the evidence comes from short laboratory studies and from correlations, and we say so where it matters.
Distanced Self-Talk
In seven studies with 585 people, Dr Ethan Kross and colleagues (2014) asked participants facing a stressful social task, such as giving a speech, to think it through using either "I" or their own name and "you".
Those who used their own name showed less distress, were rated as performing better by independent judges, and dwelt on it less afterwards. A later brain study (Moser and colleagues, 2017) found that third-person self-talk lowered markers of emotional reactivity without extra effortful control. These were laboratory tasks, so treat the technique as worth trying, not as proven for every situation.
Self-Compassion & Motivation
In four experiments by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen (2012), people prompted to meet a failure with self-compassion were more motivated to improve, and studied longer after failing a test. Dr Kristin Neff, who defined and first measured self-compassion, has found it goes with less anxiety and depression. Those links are correlations.
Growth Mindset & Mistakes
Dr Carol Dweck developed the idea of fixed and growth mindsets. In an EEG study of 25 students (Moser and colleagues, 2011), those with more of a growth mindset showed a stronger brain response to their own errors and were more accurate straight afterwards. Larger trials of mindset programmes find small effects on school results, mainly for lower-achieving students.
Neuroplasticity in Practice
London taxi drivers, who memorise the city's streets, have a larger back part of the hippocampus than men who do not drive taxis (Maguire and colleagues, 2000), and a follow-up found it grew in trainees who qualified (Woollett and Maguire, 2011). In a study from Dr Richie Davidson's lab, two weeks of daily compassion practice changed how the brain responded to other people's suffering (Weng and colleagues, 2013).
The Upward Spiral
Dr Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions widen our attention and, over time, help build lasting resources. In her laboratory studies, people recovered faster from a stress-induced rise in heart rate and blood pressure after a film that brought on contentment or amusement. She calls the way positive emotion and coping feed each other an "upward spiral". These studies tested positive emotions, not self-talk.
Dr Ethan Kross
Psychology, University of Michigan
Ethan Kross is professor of psychology and of management at the University of Michigan, where he founded the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory in 2008. He has studied self-distancing since 2005 and calls the negative self-talk that loops in our minds "chatter", the title of his 2021 book. He studies how the conversations people have with themselves affect their health, performance, decisions and relationships.
In seven studies with 585 people (Kross and colleagues, 2014), those asked to use their own name or "you" when thinking through a stressful social task, such as giving a speech, showed less distress, were rated as performing better by independent judges, and dwelt on it less afterwards than people who used "I". These were laboratory studies of specific stressful tasks.
Dr Kristin Neff
Psychology, University of Texas at Austin
Kristin Neff, an educational psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, defined self-compassion and published the first scale to measure it in 2003. People who score higher on that scale tend to report less anxiety and depression (a 2012 meta-analysis of 14 studies found a large correlation), and in a study of 104 couples their partners described them as more caring and supportive. These are correlations, not proof of cause.
The finding that self-compassion helps motivation comes from four experiments by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen at the University of California, Berkeley (2012). People prompted to treat a failure or weakness with self-compassion were more motivated to improve, and spent longer studying after failing a hard test, than people in comparison groups. The authors noted that the result runs against intuition.
Dr Dan Siegel
Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine
Dan Siegel is clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and founder of the Mindsight Institute. He trained at UCLA studying how attachment experiences influence emotion, memory and narrative. He writes about "earned security", a term from attachment researchers (Pearson and colleagues, 1994): adults who had difficult early relationships but can now give a coherent account of their childhood are classed as secure.
His phrase "name it to tame it" (The Whole-Brain Child, 2011, with Tina Payne Bryson) is a parenting strategy: helping a child put an upsetting experience into words. The brain-imaging evidence for naming feelings comes from Matthew Lieberman and colleagues at UCLA (2007): when people labelled a negative emotional image, the amygdala responded less and part of the right prefrontal cortex responded more. Siegel's "hand model of the brain", with its image of "flipping your lid" under stress, is a teaching metaphor, not a research finding.
Dr Carol Dweck
Psychology, Stanford University
Carol Dweck is Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. She developed the theory of fixed and growth mindsets: whether people believe their abilities are set or can be developed. Small EEG studies link a growth mindset with closer attention to mistakes. The effect of mindset programmes on school results is debated: a US national trial (Yeager and colleagues, 2019) found gains for lower-achieving students, while two meta-analyses (2018, 2023) found weak overall effects.
In an EEG study of 25 university students (Moser and colleagues, Michigan State University, 2011), those who held more of a growth mindset showed a larger brain response linked to noticing errors, and were more accurate straight after a mistake. The study was correlational and Dweck was not an author. An earlier EEG study she co-authored (Mangels and colleagues, 2006) found that students with a fixed mindset processed corrective feedback less deeply.
Deeper Dialogue
The evidence on dialogue and wellbeing is spread across research fields and still developing. Much of it is correlational: it shows that substantive conversation and wellbeing go together, not that one causes the other.
From Matthias Mehl's recordings of everyday conversation to Robyn Fivush's work on how parents and children talk about the past, the studies point the same way: richer, more substantive talk goes with better outcomes.
Conversation Quality & Happiness
Matthias Mehl and colleagues asked 79 university students to wear a small recorder for four days. It sampled 30 seconds of sound every 12.5 minutes, and each recorded conversation was classed as "small talk" or "substantive conversation", where real, meaningful information was exchanged.
The happiest participants had about twice as many substantive conversations and one-third as much small talk as the unhappiest. A follow-up study of 486 people found the link with substantive conversation again, but not the link with small talk. Neither study can show which comes first.
Elaborative Reminiscing
Robyn Fivush and colleagues study how parents talk with young children about the past. Children whose mothers reminisce in an elaborative way (asking open-ended questions, building on the child's answers, talking about feelings) tend to develop better narrative skills and emotional understanding. This research is on parents and children. Applying it to adult conversation is our own step.
Psychological Safety
Amy Edmondson's research links psychological safety, a shared belief that it is safe to speak up and admit mistakes, with how well teams learn. Google's internal Project Aristotle study of 180 of its own teams called it "by far the most important" of five team dynamics. Both are workplace studies. We think the same holds for honest conversation at home, but that is our view.
The Neuroscience of Being Heard
In a 2015 brain-imaging study by Kawamichi and colleagues in Japan, 22 people watched videos of someone assessing their personal stories. When the assessor showed active listening, activity rose in the ventral striatum, part of the brain's reward system, and participants rated their own stories more positively. It is one small study, and it looked at being listened to, not at listening.
Dr Robyn Fivush
Psychology, Emory University (emeritus)
Robyn Fivush is a psychologist who studies autobiographical memory and how families talk about the past. She directed the Family Narratives Lab at Emory, built the "Do You Know?" scale with Marshall Duke, and was first author of the 2010 study that repeated the work with 66 teenagers. She has written that what matters is not knowing particular facts but the process of families sharing stories about their lives.
In the 2010 study, teenagers who knew more family history reported higher self-esteem and a firmer sense of identity, and the link with identity held after allowing for how well the family functioned. In the earlier sample, children with higher scores came from families that told more family stories at the dinner table. Fivush and her co-authors called the sample small and the results correlational. In 2020 she said that children in families who talked about hard events in coherent, emotionally open ways coped better over a two-year study.
"The definition of who they are is not just something independent and autonomous, spun from nowhere. It's embedded in a long, intergenerational family story."
Emory News Center, 29 April 2020
Matthias Mehl
Psychology, University of Arizona
Matthias Mehl uses the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a small device that records short snippets of sound through the day. In a 2010 study, 79 university students wore it for four days while it recorded 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes. Coders classed each recorded conversation as "small talk" or "substantive", meaning real, meaningful information was exchanged.
The happiest participants had roughly twice as many substantive conversations and one-third as much small talk as the unhappiest (Mehl, Vazire, Holleran and Clark, 2010). A 2018 follow-up pooling four samples (486 people) again linked substantive conversation with higher life satisfaction, but found no reliable link with small talk. The findings are correlational: they do not show that deeper conversation makes people happier.
Dr Amy Edmondson
Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, Harvard Business School
Amy Edmondson is Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. In the 1990s she introduced the term "team psychological safety": a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Studying medication errors in two hospitals, she expected well-led teams to make fewer mistakes. They reported more, and she concluded they were more willing to report and discuss them. The wider idea of psychological safety dates from the 1960s.
Edmondson's 1999 study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company found that teams with more psychological safety showed more learning behaviour, which in turn went with better performance. Google's Project Aristotle, an internal study of 180 of its own teams, reported that psychological safety was "by far the most important" of the five dynamics it found in effective teams. Google published that study itself, not in a journal.
"You no longer have the option of leading through fear or managing through fear."
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 14 June 2023
Dr Arthur Aron
Social Psychology, Stony Brook University
Arthur Aron led the 1997 study behind the "36 Questions": a 45-minute procedure in which pairs of strangers take turns answering questions that become steadily more personal. Pairs who did this reported feeling closer afterwards than pairs who were given small-talk questions.
In the 1997 paper by Aron and four colleagues, the 36 questions come in three sets of increasing intensity, with 15 minutes for each. The authors wrote that the aim was a temporary feeling of closeness, not an ongoing relationship, and the questions were not designed to make people fall in love. One pair from an earlier trial of the procedure did later marry. Many later studies have reused the procedure.
Dr John Gottman
Relationship Psychology, University of Washington (emeritus); The Gottman Institute
John Gottman named the Four Horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling): patterns that went with later divorce in his long-term studies of married couples. He began observing couples in the 1970s and did much of the work at the University of Washington, where he set up the "Love Lab" in 1986.
Gottman reported that stable couples had about five times as much positive as negative interaction during conflict discussions, and that about 69% of couples' problems are "perpetual" ones that never fully resolve. His research is on couples. Where DDD apps apply his ideas to friendship, family or work, that is our own adaptation, not something his studies tested.
Robin Dunbar
Evolutionary Psychology, University of Oxford (emeritus)
Robin Dunbar proposed in the early 1990s that the size of the neocortex limits how large a social group a primate can hold together, and put the human figure at about 150, now known as Dunbar's number. He and colleagues later described layers within it of roughly 5, 15, 50 and 150 people, each about three times the size of the one inside it.
Similar layers have been reported in Christmas-card lists, mobile phone records and hunter-gatherer societies, with wide variation between people. The number itself is disputed. A 2021 re-analysis by Lindenfors and colleagues found the statistical range so wide (4 to 520 in one analysis) that no single figure can be named. Dunbar has replied that their method was flawed. Using the layers to explain why friend groups split into smaller ones is DDD's own reading.
Dr Murray Bowen
Family Systems Theory, Georgetown University (died 1990)
Murray Bowen was the psychiatrist who originated Bowen family systems theory, which views the family as an emotional unit in which each member's behaviour affects the others. Its central idea is differentiation of self: how far a person can keep thinking clearly and hold their own position while staying connected to family.
Bowen set out eight interlocking concepts, including triangles (tension between two people drawing in a third), the multigenerational transmission process and emotional cutoff. It is a clinical theory. A 2022 review of 295 studies found good support for differentiation of self as a predictor of psychological health and marital quality, but few long-term or causal studies. A 2004 review found little support for his ideas on triangles and sibling position.
Virginia Satir
Family Therapy, Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto (died 1988)
Virginia Satir was a family therapy pioneer who worked at the Mental Research Institute in its early years. She described four stances people take under stress: placating (appeasing), blaming (criticising), being super-reasonable (all logic, which she also called computing) and being irrelevant (distracting). She called the healthy alternative levelling, or congruence.
Satir's stances come from her clinical practice, not from controlled experiments. Her work remains influential in family therapy and communication skills training. The percentages sometimes quoted for how common each stance is are her own estimates, not research findings.
Dr Sue Johnson
Clinical Psychology, University of Ottawa (died 2024)
Sue Johnson was a clinical psychologist and the primary developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), one of the best-researched approaches to couple therapy. EFT is based on attachment theory and helps partners recognise and change the negative cycles that leave them feeling disconnected.
EFT treats relationship distress as a problem in the attachment bond between partners, and helps couples move from pursue-withdraw or attack-defend cycles towards secure emotional bonding. A 1999 meta-analysis of the four most rigorous early trials reported that 70 to 73% of couples were no longer distressed after therapy. A 2022 review rated EFT as one of four well-established couple therapies.
Australian & Indigenous Research
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have passed on knowledge through story and connection to Country for a very long time. Archaeologists date human occupation of northern Australia to about 65,000 years ago (Clarkson et al., 2017), though some argue for closer to 50,000. The Western research on this page is a few decades old.
DDD acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples held knowledge about story, place and belonging long before Western researchers began to study it. One of our apps, MyStories FOREVER Vault, adds 12 questions about place to its "Do You Know?" page, informed by this research. Every study in this section is Australian. We do not assume the findings speak for Indigenous peoples in New Zealand, Canada, the United States or anywhere else.
"The ability to have a connection and belonging to one's land, family and culture: therefore an identity. Resilience allows the pain and suffering caused from adversities to heal. It is having a dreaming, where the past is brought to the present and the present and the past are taken to the future. Resilience is a strong spirit that confronts and conquers racism and oppression strengthening the spirit. It is the ability not just to survive but to thrive in today's dominant culture."
Dr Marion Kickett, Noongar scholar and educatorKickett, M. (2011). Examination of how a culturally-appropriate definition of resilience affects the physical and mental health of Aboriginal people. PhD thesis, University of Western Australia.
Footprints in Time
Early Childhood Report (Rogers and colleagues, 2025)
The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, run by the Australian Government Department of Social Services, has followed about 1,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children since 2008.
Children who identified with their Mob before starting school were more likely to have stronger social and emotional wellbeing in middle childhood and adolescence (Rogers and colleagues, 2025). The Department sums up the report as showing that connections to Country, language and Mob are just as critical as preschool and playgroups. The report sets those findings side by side. It does not test whether they are equal.
Indigenous Resilience Scoping Review
Frontiers in Public Health (2021)
A scoping review of eight Australian publications, carried out with local Aboriginal Research Cultural Advisory Groups, who approved the analysis and helped write the paper.
Most of the studies it reviewed stressed strengthening connection to culture, community, ancestry and land as the way to support resilience, for individuals and for communities. One of them, a pilot programme for Aboriginal girls (Dobia and colleagues, 2013, as described in the review), measured cultural identity with nine factors, among them Cultural Pride, Cultural Elders, Cultural Family and Connection to Country.
Our reading: in this research, place is not a backdrop to a family's story. Kickett's definition puts connection and belonging to land beside family and culture as the ground of identity. The original "Do You Know?" questions ask only where things happened, which is why we added questions about what places mean to a family.
The Science We Curate
Each DDD app draws on particular research. The cards show the main sources for each one, and what kind of check the app's own research claims have had.
"Sources checked" means a full audit: every research claim in the app was compared with its source, and the record was kept. "Earlier review" means a review on the date shown that did not cover everything in the app today, or one of the first-pass audits of February 2026, which later audits found unreliable. Those apps are due a full audit. "Not yet audited" means the app's current content has had no review. The research summaries on the cards themselves were checked against their sources in October 2026.
Story Threads
Sources checked, September 2026On the "Do You Know?" scale, children who knew more about their family's history tended to have a stronger sense of control over their lives, higher self-esteem, lower anxiety, fewer behaviour problems and better family functioning (Duke, Lazarus & Fivush, 2008). The findings are correlational. Duke describes the "oscillating" family story, with its ups and downs, as the healthiest kind (as reported by Bruce Feiler in The New York Times, 2013).
Dr Marshall Duke & Dr Robyn Fivush, Emory University
In narrative identity research, "redemption sequences" in people's life stories (moving from difficulty to something good) are associated with higher psychological wellbeing, and with generativity in midlife adults (McAdams et al., 2001; mostly American samples).
Dr Dan McAdams, Northwestern University
In lab studies, character-driven stories with a dramatic arc were associated with oxytocin release and empathy (Zak, 2015; oxytocin research has faced replication criticism), and a listener's brain activity became coupled with the speaker's when a story was understood (Stephens, Silbert & Hasson, 2010).
Dr Paul Zak & Dr Uri Hasson, Claremont Graduate University / Princeton University
MindEase
Sources checked, September 2026Working mainly with rats, LeDoux traced two routes by which a threat signal reaches the amygdala: a fast, rough one from the thalamus and a slower, more detailed one through the sensory cortex. He now describes this as a threat-detection circuit that works without awareness, separate from the conscious feeling of fear (LeDoux, 2014).
Dr Joseph LeDoux, New York University (emeritus)
Craske and colleagues applied the "inhibitory learning" account of extinction to exposure therapy (2008, 2014): exposure does not erase a fear memory but builds a new, competing "safe" memory beside it, a finding that comes from learning research by Mark Bouton and others. Her 2014 paper gives clinicians eight strategies for putting it into practice.
Dr Michelle Craske, UCLA
Beck developed cognitive therapy in the 1960s from his work on the distorted, automatic thoughts of depressed patients. CBT is arguably the most widely studied form of psychotherapy, and a review of 106 meta-analyses found that anxiety disorders are among the conditions where its support is strongest (Hofmann and colleagues, 2012).
Dr Aaron Beck, University of Pennsylvania (died 2021)
Deeper Dialogues
Sources checked, September 2026In Matthias Mehl's 2010 study of 79 students, the happiest had about twice as many substantive conversations and one-third as much small talk as the unhappiest. A 2018 follow-up of 486 people found the link with substantive conversation again, but not the link with small talk. This research sits behind the app's premise. The app's modules do not cite it.
Matthias Mehl, University of Arizona
Amy Edmondson introduced "team psychological safety": a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Her 1999 study of 51 work teams linked it with team learning and performance, and Google's internal Project Aristotle study called it "by far the most important" of five dynamics in its effective teams.
Dr Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School
Elaborative reminiscing, studied by Robyn Fivush and colleagues, is a way parents talk with young children about the past: asking open-ended questions and building on the child's answers. Children of more elaborative mothers tend to have better narrative skills and emotional understanding. The research is on parents and children, and the app's modules do not cite it.
Dr Robyn Fivush, Emory University
Finding Your Voice
Sources checked, October 2026In Naomi Eisenberger's 2003 brain-scanning study with Matthew Lieberman and Kipling Williams, people who were left out of an on-screen ball-tossing game showed more activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region that is also active during physical pain, and most of all in those who said they felt worst. A 2014 study led by Choong-Wan Woo found that rejection and physical pain are represented differently in that region, so the two are not the same thing.
Dr Naomi Eisenberger, UCLA
In a 2003 study by Kenneth Savitsky and Thomas Gilovich, people gave unprepared speeches in pairs, then rated how nervous they and their partner had looked. Speakers thought their nerves showed more than their partners saw. A 2010 study of speeches given to an audience found the same thing.
Kenneth Savitsky & Thomas Gilovich, Williams College & Cornell University
Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes described the impostor phenomenon in 1978, from their work with more than 150 highly successful women who privately believed they were not really bright and had fooled everyone who thought otherwise. Later studies find the same feelings in men and women alike. How common it is depends on the measure: a 2020 review of 62 studies, led by Dena Bravata, found estimates from 9 to 82 per cent.
Dr Pauline Rose Clance & Dr Suzanne Imes, Georgia State University
Relationship Compass
Sources checked, September 2026From Gottman's long-term studies of married couples: the Four Horsemen, bids for connection (turning towards, away or against) and his estimate that about 69% of couples' conflicts are perpetual problems to be managed, not solved. Reported divorce-prediction accuracy comes from models fitted to couples whose outcomes were already known.
Dr John Gottman, University of Washington (emeritus); The Gottman Institute
Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is one of four couple therapies rated "well-established" in a 2022 review. It is based on attachment theory and helps partners recognise pursue-withdraw cycles and build a more secure bond. A 1999 meta-analysis of early trials found 70 to 73% of couples were no longer distressed after therapy.
Dr Sue Johnson, University of Ottawa (died 2024)
Adult attachment research describes secure and insecure (anxious and avoidant) patterns in how people relate to partners. Hazan and Shaver proposed in 1987 that romantic love is an attachment process, based on two questionnaire studies. In the app, attachment appears mainly through Emotionally Focused Therapy.
Attachment Theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth, Hazan & Shaver), Multi-institutional
Art of Story
Sources checked, September 2026Narrative identity research: "redemption sequences" in people's life stories (moving from difficulty to something good) are associated with higher psychological wellbeing, and with generativity in midlife adults (McAdams et al., 2001). The findings are correlations.
Dr Dan McAdams, Northwestern University
Neural coupling: in an fMRI study of one speaker and 11 listeners, the listeners' brain activity tracked the speaker's when they understood her story, and the coupling disappeared for a story in a language they did not speak (Stephens, Silbert & Hasson, 2010).
Dr Uri Hasson, Princeton University
In lab studies, a short film with a dramatic arc was followed by a rise in oxytocin measured in blood, and the rise went with how much empathy viewers reported (Barraza & Zak, 2009; Zak, 2015). The oxytocin explanation is contested (Nave, Camerer & McCullough, 2015), and the app says so.
Dr Paul Zak, Claremont Graduate University
Art of Conversation
Sources checked, September 2026George Miller's "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" (1956) suggested that people can hold about seven items in immediate memory. Miller himself treated the number loosely, and Nelson Cowan's later work puts the limit closer to three to five chunks. The app uses this to explain why points grouped in threes are easy to follow.
George Miller, Harvard University (1956); later Princeton University
Albert Mehrabian's 55-38-7 figures come from two small 1967 experiments in which listeners judged liking from a single word, its tone of voice and a photographed face: 55% facial expression, 38% tone, 7% the word. Mehrabian says the formula applies only when someone is communicating feelings or attitudes. The app presents it with that limit.
Albert Mehrabian, UCLA
In three studies of live conversations, including speed dates, Karen Huang and colleagues (2017) found that people who asked more questions, especially follow-up questions, were liked more by the person they were talking to.
Karen Huang and colleagues, Harvard University
Story Threads Vibe
Sources checked, September 2026On the "Do You Know?" scale, children who knew more about their family's history tended to have a stronger sense of control over their lives, higher self-esteem, lower anxiety, fewer behaviour problems and better family functioning (Duke, Lazarus & Fivush, 2008). The findings are correlational. Duke describes the "oscillating" family story, with its ups and downs, as the healthiest kind (as reported by Bruce Feiler in The New York Times, 2013).
Dr Marshall Duke & Dr Robyn Fivush, Emory University
In narrative identity research, "redemption sequences" in people's life stories (moving from difficulty to something good) are associated with higher psychological wellbeing, and with generativity in midlife adults (McAdams et al., 2001; mostly American samples).
Dr Dan McAdams, Northwestern University
MyStories FOREVER Vault
Earlier review, February 2026The "Do You Know?" scale: children who knew more about their family's history tended to have a stronger sense of control over their lives, higher self-esteem, lower anxiety, fewer behaviour problems and better family functioning (Duke, Lazarus & Fivush, 2008). The findings are correlational. Duke and Fivush believe a high score reflects a family that tells and retells its stories together, which has not been tested directly.
Dr Marshall Duke & Dr Robyn Fivush, Emory University
Marshall Duke describes the "oscillating" family story, with its ups and downs, as the healthiest of three kinds (as reported by Bruce Feiler in The New York Times, 2013). This is his judgement: no study has compared the three.
Dr Marshall Duke, Emory University
The "intergenerational self": Duke and Fivush's term for a child's sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves (Fivush, Bohanek & Duke, 2008). Duke told Bruce Feiler that the children with the most self-confidence have a strong one. It is a concept, not a measured result.
Dr Marshall Duke & Dr Robyn Fivush, Emory University
Inner Voice Mastery
Earlier review, February 2026Distanced self-talk: in laboratory studies (Kross and colleagues, 2014), people who used their own name instead of "I" before a stressful social task showed less distress and were rated as performing better.
Dr Ethan Kross, University of Michigan
Growth mindset: in an EEG study of 25 students (Moser and colleagues, 2011), those with more of a growth mindset showed a stronger brain response to their own errors and were more accurate straight afterwards. Large trials of mindset programmes find small effects on school results, mainly for lower-achieving students.
Dr Carol Dweck (mindset theory); Moser and colleagues (EEG study), Stanford University; Michigan State University
Self-compassion, which Neff defined and first measured in 2003, goes with lower anxiety and depression (a correlation). In four experiments by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen (2012), people who responded to a failure with self-compassion were more motivated to improve.
Dr Kristin Neff; Breines and Chen, University of Texas at Austin; University of California, Berkeley
Dive Deep Dating
Earlier review, February 2026In Aron and colleagues' 1997 "36 Questions" study, pairs of strangers who spent 45 minutes on questions that became steadily more personal felt closer afterwards than pairs who made small talk. Later studies have reused the procedure. It was designed to create closeness, not romance.
Dr Arthur Aron, Stony Brook University
Collins and Miller's 1994 meta-analysis found three links between self-disclosure and liking: people who make more intimate disclosures tend to be liked more, people disclose more to those they already like, and people come to like others as a result of having disclosed to them.
Collins & Miller, SUNY Buffalo and University of Southern California (1994)
Bowlby and Ainsworth described attachment between infants and caregivers. In 1987 Hazan and Shaver proposed that adult romantic love works in a similar way, with three styles: secure, anxious and avoidant. The app teaches these styles in its learning modules as a way to think about your own patterns.
Attachment Theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth, Hazan & Shaver), Multi-institutional
Friendships Vibe
Earlier review, October 2026In Naomi Eisenberger's 2003 brain-scanning study with Matthew Lieberman and Kipling Williams, 13 students left out of an on-screen ball-tossing game (Cyberball) showed more activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region that is also active during physical pain, and most of all in those who said they felt worst. Later studies found the overlap is smaller than it first looked: a 2014 study led by Choong-Wan Woo found that rejection and physical pain are represented differently in that region.
Dr Naomi Eisenberger, UCLA
Robin Dunbar proposed that brain size limits how many relationships a person can keep up, at about 150, with inner layers of roughly 5, 15 and 50. Similar layers have been reported in phone records and Christmas-card lists, though they vary widely between people. A 2021 re-analysis found the figure cannot be pinned down from brain size, which Dunbar disputes. Reading friend groups through these layers is the app's own step.
Robin Dunbar, University of Oxford (emeritus)
John Gottman named four patterns in married couples' arguments (criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling) that he linked to later separation. The high prediction rates reported in that research were not cross-checked on new couples, and a 2001 paper showed, with other data, how sharply such accuracy falls when that is done. No study has tested the four patterns in friendships. Using them to spot when an argument between friends has turned personal is the app's own step.
Dr John Gottman, University of Washington (emeritus); The Gottman Institute
Dive Deep Intimacy
Earlier review, February 2026Attachment theory began with Bowlby and Ainsworth's work on infants and caregivers. Hazan and Shaver (1987) applied it to adult romantic love with three styles, and Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) proposed the four-category model used here: secure, preoccupied (anxious), dismissing (avoidant) and fearful.
Attachment Theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth, Bartholomew & Horowitz), Multi-institutional
Helen Fisher proposed that three brain systems shape mating and pair bonding: lust, romantic attraction and attachment. Her fMRI study of 17 people who were intensely in love linked romantic attraction with dopamine-rich reward regions. She described the systems as distinct but interrelated, not as a fixed sequence of phases.
Dr Helen Fisher, Rutgers University (died 2024)
In Claus Wedekind's 1995 "sweaty T-shirt" study, women rated the smell of T-shirts worn by men whose immune-system (MHC) genes differed from their own as more pleasant, and the preference was reversed in women taking the contraceptive pill. Later results are mixed: a 2020 meta-analysis found no significant overall link between MHC difference and odour preference.
Claus Wedekind, University of Bern (1995); now University of Lausanne
Dive Deep Workplace
Earlier review, February 2026Amy Edmondson introduced "team psychological safety": a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In her 1996 study of two hospitals, better-led teams reported more medication errors, which she put down to their being more willing to report and discuss them. Google's internal Project Aristotle study called psychological safety "by far the most important" of five dynamics in its effective teams.
Dr Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School
Joseph LeDoux mapped two routes by which a sound linked to danger reaches the amygdala: a fast one straight from the thalamus and a slower one through the cortex. In rats, he reports, a sound arrives by the fast route in about 10 to 12 milliseconds, far sooner than conscious awareness. Using this to explain why people avoid conflict at work is the app's own step.
Dr Joseph LeDoux, New York University (emeritus)
James Gross's process model (1998) separates changing how you see a situation (reappraisal) from hiding what you feel (suppression). In his experiments suppression did not reduce the feeling, made the heart and blood vessels work harder and left people remembering less. In surveys reported by Gross and John in 2003, people who habitually reappraise reported better wellbeing than people who habitually suppress, which is a correlation.
Dr James Gross, Stanford University
Family Dynamics
Earlier review, February 2026Bowen family systems theory views the family as an emotional unit in which each member's behaviour affects the others. Key concepts include differentiation of self, triangles and the multigenerational transmission process. It is a clinical theory: reviews find good support for differentiation of self, and little for triangles.
Dr Murray Bowen, Georgetown University (died 1990)
Virginia Satir described four stances people take under stress (placating, blaming, being super-reasonable and being irrelevant, which the app calls Placating, Blaming, Computing and Distracting) and congruent communication as the healthy alternative. These are clinical observations, not experimental findings.
Virginia Satir, Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto (died 1988)
Adler argued that a child's position in the family shapes personality, and Sulloway's "Born to Rebel" (1996) offered an evolutionary account of sibling differences. Large later studies do not support this for personality: a 2015 study of more than 20,000 people in three countries found no lasting effect of birth order on broad personality traits, only a small effect on intelligence.
Alfred Adler & Frank Sulloway, Individual Psychology (Adler) / UC Berkeley (Sulloway)
Inner Voice Vibe
Earlier review, February 2026Distanced self-talk: in laboratory studies (Kross and colleagues, 2014), using your own name instead of "I" before a stressful social task reduced distress. The app adapts the technique for young people facing social pressure and exam stress.
Dr Ethan Kross, University of Michigan
Self-compassion goes with lower anxiety and depression, which is a correlation (Neff, 2003; MacBeth and Gumley, 2012). In experiments by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen (2012), people who met a failure with self-compassion were more motivated to improve. The app applies this to academic and social comparison.
Dr Kristin Neff; Breines and Chen, University of Texas at Austin; University of California, Berkeley
Growth mindset: the belief that abilities can be developed. In an EEG study of 25 university students (Moser and colleagues, 2011), a growth mindset went with a stronger brain response to one's own errors. In a US national trial with secondary students (Yeager and colleagues, 2019), a short online mindset lesson improved grades among lower-achieving students.
Dr Carol Dweck, Stanford University
Profound Living
Earlier review, August 2026Viktor Frankl's logotherapy holds that the search for meaning is the central human motivation and that meaning can be found even in suffering. Frankl named its absence the "existential vacuum". This is a clinical framework, not a tested prediction; a 2016 meta-analysis of cancer patients (Winger and colleagues) did link a weaker sense of meaning with higher distress.
Viktor Frankl, University of Vienna Medical School
Terror Management Theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski and Solomon, 1986) builds on Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death (1973). A 2010 meta-analysis of 277 experiments found that reminders of death ("mortality salience") had a moderate effect (r = .35) on how strongly people defend their worldview and self-esteem. The finding is contested: a 2022 multi-lab replication with 1,550 participants (Many Labs 4) could not reproduce one of the classic results.
Greenberg, Solomon & Pyszczynski, University of Arizona, Skidmore College and University of Colorado Colorado Springs
The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which Robert Waldinger directs, is one of the longest studies of adult life. It began in 1938 with 268 Harvard students and later took in 456 men from inner-city Boston. It reports that close relationships predicted long and happy lives better than social class, IQ or genes. This is an association found in one group of white American men, not proof of cause.
Dr Robert Waldinger, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
Profound Thinking
Earlier review, August 2026Kahneman and Tversky's heuristics-and-biases programme showed that human judgement under uncertainty goes wrong in systematic, predictable ways, and Prospect Theory (1979) describes how people actually weigh risk. Kahneman shared the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Vernon Smith for this work; Tversky had died in 1996 and the prize is not awarded posthumously. A 2020 replication across 19 countries reproduced 94 per cent of the original Prospect Theory items. This work is the foundation of the app's bias-recognition modules.
Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; later Princeton University (Kahneman, died 2024) and Stanford University (Tversky, died 1996)
Stanovich's research finds that rational thinking is only weakly related to intelligence: myside bias, for example, shows very little relation to it. His tripartite model separates the autonomous, algorithmic and reflective minds. He argues that the missing thinking tools must be taught. That thinking skills can be learned is the curriculum's working assumption, drawn from his argument, not a proven training effect.
Dr Keith Stanovich, University of Toronto (emeritus)
Ioannidis's 2005 essay "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" argued from statistical modelling that small, flexible studies with interests at stake are often wrong. In 2015 the Open Science Collaboration repeated 100 psychology studies: 97 per cent of the originals had statistically significant results, against 36 per cent of the replications. The evidence-evaluation modules teach readers to weigh sample size, replication and incentives in the same way.
Dr John Ioannidis & the Open Science Collaboration, Stanford University (Ioannidis); Center for Open Science
Profound Philosophy
Earlier review, August 2026Aristotle's formal logic (valid inference, the syllogism, and the thirteen fallacies he catalogued in Sophistical Refutations) plus virtue ethics: character built through practised habit. These are the starting points of the app's reasoning and ethics modules, taught from the original arguments.
Aristotle, The Lyceum, Athens
Kant's duty-based ethics and Mill's utilitarianism, the two best-known modern ethical frameworks, set against each other and against Aristotle's virtue ethics, so readers can test real dilemmas from all three angles.
Immanuel Kant & John Stuart Mill, University of Königsberg (Kant); Mill held no university post and worked for the East India Company
What knowledge is: rationalism against empiricism, radical doubt, and Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", whose cases argue that justified true belief is not enough. This is the spine of the epistemology module.
René Descartes, David Hume & Edmund Gettier, France (Descartes), Scotland (Hume) and Wayne State University (Gettier, 1963)
Profound Questions
Earlier review, August 2026The Socratic elenchus: structured questioning that surfaces hidden assumptions and tests them against their own consequences. Twenty-four centuries on, questioning of this kind survives in the case method that Christopher Langdell brought to Harvard Law School from 1870, still the main way American law schools teach, and it shapes this app's core modules.
Socrates, Classical Athens
Edgar Schein's Humble Inquiry (2013), subtitled "The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling", sets out the stance the app teaches before any questioning technique. It is a book of practice, not an experimental study.
Dr Edgar Schein, MIT Sloan School of Management (died 2023)
Chris Argyris's ladder of inference is a model of how untested assumptions harden into conclusions, and how deliberate questions walk you back down. It is a conceptual model, not an experimental finding, and is taught in the dialogue module.
Chris Argyris, Harvard University (died 2013)
MindEase Vibe
Not yet auditedWorking with rats, LeDoux traced a fast, rough route to the amygdala and a slower, more detailed one through the cortex. The app tells the study as it happened and keeps his own caveat: the circuit is a threat detector, and the feeling of fear is assembled afterwards.
Dr Joseph LeDoux, New York University (emeritus)
Beck's 1960s observation that his patients' automatic thoughts ran ahead of the evidence, and the thinking-error labels David Burns later popularised (Feeling Good, 1980). CBT built on this model is well tested for anxiety in young people: a 2020 Cochrane review of 87 trials found it probably increases remission compared with a waiting list.
Dr Aaron Beck, University of Pennsylvania (died 2021)
Exposure as new learning: facing a feared situation does not erase the old fear memory but builds a competing "safe" one beside it (Craske and colleagues, 2014, building on Mark Bouton's extinction research). The app's module on avoidance uses this, with a stop rule and an adult written into every step.
Dr Michelle Craske, UCLA
Our Approach to Evidence
Where Evidence Is Strong
- Cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety: a review of 106 meta-analyses found the support for CBT strongest for anxiety disorders, among other conditions (Hofmann and colleagues, 2012)
- Judgement under uncertainty goes wrong in predictable ways: a 2020 replication in 19 countries reproduced 94 per cent of the original Prospect Theory items (Ruggeri and colleagues, 2020)
- The adult brain can change with learning: shown by scanning London taxi trainees before and after years of study (Woollett and Maguire, 2011)
- Attachment security is fairly stable and can change with experience: shown in studies that followed people for 20 years or more (Waters and colleagues, 2000; Roisman and colleagues, 2002)
- Psychological safety and team learning at work: a 2017 meta-analysis pooled 136 samples and more than 22,000 people (Frazier and colleagues, 2017)
Where Evidence Is Early, Small or Mixed
- Family stories and children's wellbeing: knowing more family history goes with higher self-esteem and lower anxiety in several studies, most of them small and American. The link is correlational, and research on why it holds is only beginning (Elias and Brown, 2022)
- Distanced self-talk and emotion regulation: seven laboratory studies with 585 people (Kross and colleagues, 2014) and one brain study (Moser and colleagues, 2017)
- Growth mindset: small EEG studies link it with closer attention to mistakes; large trials of school programmes find small effects, mainly for lower-achieving students (Yeager and colleagues, 2019; Macnamara and Burgoyne, 2023)
- Substantive conversation and wellbeing: two studies link them, both correlational and both from the United States, and the link with small talk did not hold in the larger one (Mehl and colleagues, 2010; Milek and colleagues, 2018)
- Cultural connection and the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia: a government longitudinal study of about 1,700 children, running since 2008, finds that the two go together (Rogers and colleagues, 2025; Dockery, 2020)
- Storytelling through an app: the studies cited on this page looked at families talking face to face, private writing and laboratory recordings. None tested an app, so whether app-based storytelling carries the same links to wellbeing is not known
- Conversation research across cultures: the two studies linking substantive conversation with wellbeing used samples recruited in the United States, so how far the finding holds elsewhere is not yet known
- App-based support: a meta-analysis of 66 trials found smartphone apps bring small benefits for anxiety, depression and stress (Linardon and colleagues, 2019). Our own apps have not been tested in a trial
- Psychological safety through digital tools: the link between psychological safety and team learning is well supported in workplace studies, but whether an app can build it has not been tested
We build on the best evidence we can find and update the apps as research develops. Where a finding is early, small or disputed, we aim to say so. We would sooner be plain about what is known and what is not than claim more than the research supports.
References
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Self-Talk & Inner Voice
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Neuroscience & Neuroplasticity
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Australian & Indigenous Research
- Usher, K., Jackson, D., Walker, R., et al. (2021). Indigenous Resilience in Australia: A Scoping Review Using a Reflective Decolonizing Collective Dialogue. Frontiers in Public Health, 9, 630601.
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Anxiety & CBT Research
- LeDoux, J.E. (2015). Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. Viking.
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- Craske, M.G., Treanor, M., Conway, C.C., Zbozinek, T., & Vervliet, B. (2014). Maximizing Exposure Therapy: An Inhibitory Learning Approach. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10-23.
- Beck, A.T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. International Universities Press.
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- LeDoux, J.E. (2014). Coming to terms with fear. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(8), 2871-2878.
- LeDoux, J.E., & Pine, D.S. (2016). Using Neuroscience to Help Understand Fear and Anxiety: A Two-System Framework. American Journal of Psychiatry, 173(11), 1083-1093.
- Linardon, J., Cuijpers, P., Carlbring, P., Messer, M., & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M. (2019). The efficacy of app-supported smartphone interventions for mental health problems: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. World Psychiatry, 18(3), 325-336.
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Dialogue & Conversation Quality
- Mehl, M.R., Vazire, S., Holleran, S.E., & Clark, C.S. (2010). Eavesdropping on Happiness: Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations. Psychological Science, 21(4), 539-541.
- Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
- Baskin, K. (2023, June 14). Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
- Edmondson, A.C. (1996). Learning from Mistakes is Easier Said Than Done: Group and Organizational Influences on the Detection and Correction of Human Error. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 32(1), 5-28.
- Fivush, R., Haden, C.A., & Reese, E. (2006). Elaborating on Elaborations: Role of Maternal Reminiscing Style in Cognitive and Socioemotional Development. Child Development, 77(6), 1568-1588.
- Frazier, M.L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R.L., Pezeshkan, A., & Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological Safety: A Meta-Analytic Review and Extension. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 113-165.
- Google re:Work (2015, November 17). The five keys to a successful Google team.
- Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A.W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430-452.
- Kardas, M., Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367-398.
- Kawamichi, H., Yoshihara, K., Sasaki, A.T., et al. (2015). Perceiving active listening activates the reward system and improves the impression of relevant experiences. Social Neuroscience, 10(1), 16-26.
- Milek, A., Butler, E.A., Tackman, A.M., et al. (2018). "Eavesdropping on Happiness" Revisited: A Pooled, Multisample Replication of the Association Between Life Satisfaction and Observed Daily Conversation Quantity and Quality. Psychological Science, 29(9), 1451-1462.
Self-Disclosure & Relationship Formation
- Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E.N., Vallone, R.D., & Bator, R.J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363-377.
- Collins, N.L., & Miller, L.C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457-475.
- Reis, H.T., & Shaver, P. (1988). Intimacy as an interpersonal process. In S. Duck (Ed.), Handbook of Personal Relationships (pp. 367-389). Wiley.
- Sprecher, S., Treger, S., Wondra, J.D., Hilaire, N., & Wallpe, K. (2013). Taking turns: Reciprocal self-disclosure promotes liking in initial interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 860-866.
- Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D.J., Strong, G., Li, H., & Brown, L.L. (2005). Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated With Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94(1), 327-337.
- Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L.M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 226-244.
- Havlíček, J., Winternitz, J., & Roberts, S.C. (2020). Major histocompatibility complex-associated odour preferences and human mate choice: near and far horizons. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1800), 20190260.
- Wedekind, C., Seebeck, T., Bettens, F., & Paepke, A.J. (1995). MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 260(1359), 245-249.
Conversation Science & Communication
- Rosenberg, M.B. (2003). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (2nd ed.). PuddleDancer Press.
- Gottman, J.M., & Silver, N. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Crown.
- Gottman, J.M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Rogers, C.R. (1961). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
- Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Bantam.
- Adriani, P.A., Hino, P., Taminato, M., Okuno, M.F.P., Santos, O.V., & Fernandes, H. (2024). Non-violent communication as a technology in interpersonal relationships in health work: a scoping review. BMC Health Services Research, 24(1), 289.
- Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87-114.
- Mehrabian, A., & Ferris, S.R. (1967). Inference of attitudes from nonverbal communication in two channels. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 31(3), 248-252.
- Mehrabian, A., & Wiener, M. (1967). Decoding of inconsistent communications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6(1), 109-114.
Social Pain & Friendship Research
- Eisenberger, N.I., Lieberman, M.D., & Williams, K.D. (2003). Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.
- Gilovich, T., Medvec, V.H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 211-222.
- Dunbar, R.I.M. (2010). How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks. Faber & Faber.
- Mollenhorst, G. (2009). Networks in Contexts: How Meeting Opportunities Affect Personal Relationships. Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University.
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- Clance, P.R., & Imes, S.A. (1978). The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241-247.
- Gross, J.J. (1998). The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299.
- Bravata, D.M., Watts, S.A., Keefer, A.L., et al. (2020). Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: a Systematic Review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(4), 1252-1275.
- Butler, E.A., Egloff, B., Wilhelm, F.H., Smith, N.C., Erickson, E.A., & Gross, J.J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression. Emotion, 3(1), 48-67.
- Carney, D.R., Cuddy, A.J., & Yap, A.J. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363-1368.
- DeWall, C.N., MacDonald, G., Webster, G.D., et al. (2010). Acetaminophen reduces social pain: Behavioral and neural evidence. Psychological Science, 21(7), 931-937.
- Dunbar, R.I.M. (1992). Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution, 22(6), 469-493.
- Gross, J.J., & John, O.P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348-362.
- Gross, J.J., & Levenson, R.W. (1997). Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(1), 95-103.
- Körner, R., Röseler, L., Schütz, A., & Bushman, B.J. (2022). Dominance and prestige: Meta-analytic review of experimentally induced body position effects on behavioral, self-report, and physiological dependent variables. Psychological Bulletin, 148(1-2), 67-85.
- Lindenfors, P., Wartel, A., & Lind, J. (2021). 'Dunbar's number' deconstructed. Biology Letters, 17(5), 20210158.
- Mollenhorst, G., Völker, B., & Flap, H. (2014). Changes in personal relationships: How social contexts affect the emergence and discontinuation of relationships. Social Networks, 37, 65-80.
- Mwilambwe-Tshilobo, L., & Spreng, R.N. (2021). Social exclusion reliably engages the default network: A meta-analysis of Cyberball. NeuroImage, 227, 117666.
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- Richards, J.M., & Gross, J.J. (2000). Emotion regulation and memory: The cognitive costs of keeping one's cool. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(3), 410-424.
- Savitsky, K., & Gilovich, T. (2003). The illusion of transparency and the alleviation of speech anxiety. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39(6), 618-625.
- Tajfel, H., Billig, M.G., Bundy, R.P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1(2), 149-178.
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Workplace & Decision-Making Research
- Amabile, T.M., & Kramer, S.J. (2011). The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Harvard Business Review Press.
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D.M. (1998). Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252-1265.
- Danziger, S., Levav, J., & Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(17), 6889-6892.
- Iyengar, S.S., & Lepper, M.R. (2000). When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995-1006.
- Amabile, T.M., & Kramer, S.J. (2011, May). The Power of Small Wins. Harvard Business Review.
- Glöckner, A. (2016). The irrational hungry judge effect revisited: Simulations reveal that the magnitude of the effect is overestimated. Judgment and Decision Making, 11(6), 601-610.
- Hagger, M.S., Chatzisarantis, N.L.D., Alberts, H., et al. (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546-573.
- Kahneman, D. (2002). Maps of Bounded Rationality: A Perspective on Intuitive Judgment and Choice. Nobel Prize Lecture, 8 December 2002.
- Vohs, K.D., Baumeister, R.F., Schmeichel, B.J., Twenge, J.M., Nelson, N.M., & Tice, D.M. (2008). Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited-resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(5), 883-898.
- Vohs, K.D., Schmeichel, B.J., Lohmann, S., et al. (2021). A multisite preregistered paradigmatic test of the ego-depletion effect. Psychological Science, 32(10), 1566-1581.
- Weinshall-Margel, K., & Shapard, J. (2011). Overlooked factors in the analysis of parole decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(42), E833.
Critical Thinking & Reasoning
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.
- Stanovich, K.E., & West, R.F. (2000). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(5), 645-665.
- Stanovich, K.E. (2011). Rationality and the Reflective Mind. Oxford University Press.
- Ioannidis, J.P.A. (2005). Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLOS Medicine, 2(8), e124.
- Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251), aac4716.
- Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151.
- Pennycook, G., & Rand, D.G. (2022). Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation. Nature Communications, 13, 2333.
- Gigerenzer, G. (2007). Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. Viking Press.
- Flavell, J.H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906-911.
- Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D.G. (1996). Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality. Psychological Review, 103(4), 650-669.
- Gigerenzer, G., Gaissmaier, W., Kurz-Milcke, E., Schwartz, L.M., & Woloshin, S. (2007). Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 8(2), 53-96.
- Juul, J.L., & Ugander, J. (2021). Comparing information diffusion mechanisms by matching on cascade size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(46), e2100786118.
- Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291.
- Ruggeri, K., Alí, S., Berge, M.L., et al. (2020). Replicating patterns of prospect theory for decision under risk. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(6), 622-633.
- Stanovich, K.E., West, R.F., & Toplak, M.E. (2013). Myside Bias, Rational Thinking, and Intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(4), 259-264.
Family Systems & Dynamics
- Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. Jason Aronson.
- Satir, V. (1972). Peoplemaking. Science and Behavior Books.
- Carter, B., & McGoldrick, M. (1999). The Expanded Family Life Cycle: Individual, Family, and Social Perspectives (3rd ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
- Sulloway, F.J. (1996). Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. Pantheon.
- Black, C. (2002). It Will Never Happen to Me: Growing Up with Addiction as Youngsters, Adolescents, Adults (2nd ed.). Hazelden.
- Calatrava, M., Martins, M.V., Schweer-Collins, M., Duch-Ceballos, C., & Rodríguez-González, M. (2022). Differentiation of self: A scoping review of Bowen Family Systems Theory's core construct. Clinical Psychology Review, 91, 102101.
- Miller, R.B., Anderson, S., & Keala, D.K. (2004). Is Bowen theory valid? A review of basic research. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 30(4), 453-466.
- Rohrer, J.M., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S.C. (2015). Examining the effects of birth order on personality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(46), 14224-14229.
Relationship Research
- Johnson, S.M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown.
- Rusbult, C.E. (1983). A Longitudinal Test of the Investment Model: The Development (and Deterioration) of Satisfaction and Commitment in Heterosexual Involvements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(1), 101-117.
- Basson, R. (2000). The Female Sexual Response: A Different Model. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(1), 51-65.
- Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511-524.
- Doss, B.D., Roddy, M.K., Wiebe, S.A., & Johnson, S.M. (2022). A review of the research during 2010–2019 on evidence-based treatments for couple relationship distress. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 48(1), 283-306.
- Heyman, R.E., & Slep, A.M.S. (2001). The Hazards of Predicting Divorce Without Crossvalidation. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63(2), 473-479.
- Johnson, S.M., Hunsley, J., Greenberg, L., & Schindler, D. (1999). Emotionally focused couples therapy: Status and challenges. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 6(1), 67-79.
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- Sand, M., & Fisher, W.A. (2007). Women's Endorsement of Models of Female Sexual Response: The Nurses' Sexuality Study. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 4(3), 708-719.
Narrative Therapy & Story Craft
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- Bohm, D. (1996). On Dialogue. Routledge.
- Miller, G.A. (1956). The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81-97.
- Tedeschi, R.G., & Calhoun, L.G. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1-18.
Meaning, Mortality & Grief
- Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death. Free Press.
- Burke, B.L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E.H. (2010). Two Decades of Terror Management Theory: A Meta-Analysis of Mortality Salience Research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155-195.
- Erikson, E.H. (1950). Childhood and Society. W.W. Norton.
- Gawande, A. (2014). Being Mortal. Metropolitan Books.
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- Gruenewald, T.L., Liao, D.H., & Seeman, T.E. (2012). Contributing to Others, Contributing to Oneself: Perceptions of Generativity and Health in Later Life. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 67(6), 660-665.
- Klass, D., Silverman, P.R., & Nickman, S.L. (Eds.) (1996). Continuing Bonds. Taylor & Francis.
- Klein, R.A., Cook, C.L., Ebersole, C.R., et al. (2022). Many Labs 4: Failure to Replicate Mortality Salience Effect With and Without Original Author Involvement. Collabra: Psychology, 8(1), 35271.
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- O'Connor, M.F., & Seeley, S.H. (2022). Grieving as a form of learning: Insights from neuroscience applied to grief and loss. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 317-322.
- O'Connor, M.F., Wellisch, D.K., Stanton, A.L., Eisenberger, N.I., Irwin, M.R., & Lieberman, M.D. (2008). Craving love? Enduring grief activates brain's reward center. NeuroImage, 42(2), 969-972.
- Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (2005). To Continue or Relinquish Bonds: A Review of Consequences for the Bereaved. Death Studies, 29(6), 477-494.
- Winger, J.G., Adams, R.N., & Mosher, C.E. (2016). Relations of meaning in life and sense of coherence to distress in cancer patients: a meta-analysis. Psycho-Oncology, 25(1), 2-10.
Philosophy & Inquiry
- Frankish, K. (2016). Illusionism as a theory of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 11-39.
- Gettier, E.L. (1963). Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis, 23(6), 121-123.
- Klein, G. (2007, September). Performing a Project Premortem. Harvard Business Review.
- Mitchell, D.J., Russo, J.E., & Pennington, N. (1989). Back to the future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2(1), 25-38.
- Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press.
- Schein, E.H. (2013). Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. Berrett-Koehler.
- Whitmore, J. (1992). Coaching for Performance. Nicholas Brealey.
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