Myth #24 - Neuro Linguistic Programming

What is NLP?

This is difficult to pin down because nobody is really sure.

Having a Definition for NLP is important because it is the first stage of building a valid construct

The next stage is Scope. This helps us understand under what conditions NLP is meant to work. If NLP is not clear on the criteria it uses to build its knowledge base, and anything that 'works' goes , and NLP works under any conditions then it becomes everything and so is nothing. It becomes a 'mash-up of myths'. If there are clear criteria we can critically assess what is 'in' NLP and what is 'out' then it could be a framework for the integration of change interventions because we understand under what conditions it is mean to be effective.

NLP also needs to be clear on its Relationship with other schools of thought. For example, practitioners argue that NLP is based on a constructivist perspective (people have their own take on the world based on their experiences). However, NLP literature doesn't seem to reference the constructivist body of knowledge and also bases its theoretical framework that internal hidden states are objective and stable enough to reveal themselves to the trained NLP practioner based on say eye movements or learning styles.

If NLP is clear on its Definition, Scope & Relationship with other constructs then we potentially have a Coherent & Valid Construct (or Framework). If it is not then as?James Ladyman (Philosper of Science at Bristol University) ?it becomes a pseudoscience born from a

'social organisation of enquirers that doesn't have the characteristics to be scientific'.

The Claims & Evidence

So where do we start with NLP if there is no clear definition, scope and relationship with other concepts are unclear?

Maybe one way to understand what NLP is and the claims it makes is to break it down into its underlying assumptions (axioms/principles), its theoretical framework & the skills tools & techniques it uses.

This study suggests that while NLP practitioners seem to largely agree on the:

• axioms of NLP e.g. ‘The map is not the territory’, ‘Structure is more important than content’ ‘Life and mind are systemic processes’ ‘Experience can be reduced to sensory elements (VAK)’ ‘The meaning of communication is the response elicited’ ‘There is no failure only feedback’ ‘Resistance is a signal of insufficient rapport’ ‘All behaviour has a positive intention’
• skills tools & techniques e.g. Eye accessing cues?are reliable indicators of thinking patterns – looking up to the right is a lie and to the left is the truth and calibrating internal states and processes which allows practitioners to know someone’s state of mind without directly asking them using non-verbal queues

They agree less on the theoretical framework e.g. only 44% agree NLP requires a ‘coaching state’ or ‘mindset’ but there is 100% agreement that people have preferred sensory systems for receiving information so if you match that style practitioners can get more positive results.

Axioms - The evidence

These NLP axioms are highly intuitive. But maybe this is because they are mental models that have been held for years in philosophy & psychology.?

For example, the axiom?‘the Map is not the territory’ dates back to Plato’s analogy of the Cave and the idea that fundamentally people have positive intentions dates back psychologists such as Allport, Maslow & Karl Rogers.

But axioms are generally unfalsifiable.?We either accept them as self evidently true (e.g. neuroscience assumes we have mental maps upon which we ‘playback’ our beliefs called active inference ) or useful because, like the ‘free-energy’ principle in neuroscience they help to unify testable hypothesis (e.g. how we stay alive through allostasis ) that help explain why we are alive and conscious.

So is say 'Resistance is a signal of insufficient rapport' evidently true ? Probably not as research suggest that there are over 40 factors that might create resistance . Is it helpful? Probably no more that saying resistance is a signal of anything.

Certainly NLP's axioms are nothing new, some feel a bit meaningless e.g. 'Life and mind are systemic processes' - what does that mean? What do we mean by 'life' and 'mind'. Others are not necessarily true or helpful.

Theoretical Framework - the evidence

For a coaching discipline doesn't it seem odd that only 44% of practitioners agree that practitioners need a coaching mindset? Potentially even more strange is that 100% agreement people have preferred sensory systems for receiving information when there is overwhelming evidence that this is highly likely to be untrue - it is the ultimate zombie idea.

Another element of the theoretical framework is the claim (search these phrases and various NLP websites will come up) that NLP “can detect and modify unconscious biases through conscious behavior” it provides a window into how “individuals organize their thoughts and feelings”. This leads to increasing self awareness allowing people to consciously modify their thoughts which many have beneficial outcomes such as reducing stress and improving self-esteem. The seem like the promise of unconscious bias training based on the assumption that beliefs drive behaviours .

These claims assume (as Freud, Jung and MBTI do) that there is some hidden ‘true-self’ that we can discover. A questionable assumption .

“The notion that there are especially authentic parts of the self, and that these parts can remain cloaked from view indefinitely, borders on the superstitious” (Strohminger et al 2017)

In this debate Nick Chater (author of the Flat Mind) suggests that the "idea of?uncovering?mental depths is misleading".?When we are trying to understand others, we are just interpreting them in the moment (a subjective process) not discovering some fixed id (objective).?Just like people will have multiple interpretations of a painting or poem, different psychotherapists will have different interpretations of what a patient is going through which may or may not help the patient.?Who we are is a generatively (socially) constructed – a moving target.?Bayesian updating helps us here because as Chater states

“our past interpretations matter not because they correctly or incorrectly reflect a hidden psychological reality, but because they guide the present and the future”

Critiquing Chater's Flat Mind, Dr Gareth Drake states:

“Attempting to dig down with therapeutic tools – in order to unearth a hidden wish that, even before they came into the therapy room, existed in the mind of the patient in linguistic or pictorial form, somewhere just out of reach – would indeed be a waste of time. An intellectual exercise at best. At worst, harmful to the patient. This is different, however, from creating a therapeutic environment in which actual changes in states of mind and accompanying physiological responses, ideas, memories and predictions about others’ intentions are facilitated in the present moment and then commented upon.”

What confuses me is that NLP claims ‘the map is not the territory’ i.e. that individual perception is a subjective account of reality, and yet an NLP practitioner somehow has an objective view of what is really going on in someone's mind.?NLP doesn’t see the relationship between the practitioner and ‘patient’ as being socially constructed (even though it claims it does as discussed above) but rather a process of extracting some ‘true-self’. Like MBTI it becomes a ducking stool catch 22 - if you don't recognise the 'true-self' a NLP practitioners describes then you don't know yourself, if you do recognise the 'true-self' then NLP has worked in uncovering some hidden subconscious self.

In addition to learning styles and hidden selves, NLP seems to be build on outdated neuromyths such as or left v right brain dominance i.e. that people need to get the balance right (through various exercise) between their left and right brains to improve their mental function.

Skills, Tools & Techniques - The Evidence

The point about the shaky foundations of NLP were made back in 1988 . More recently reviews in the following areas have been conducted:

• Health – this study conducted by Oxford, Warwick & Kings College on the use of NLP in the NHS states “There is little evidence that NLP interventions improve health-related outcomes”
• Psychological – this critical review of 315 articles by Witkowski 2010 suggests that his results "contradict the claim of an empirical basis of NLP" and states "All of this leaves me with an overwhelming impression that the analyzed base of scientific articles is treated just as theater decoration, being the background for the pseudoscientific farce, which NLP appears to be"
• Educational – A study by Carey et al 2010 found that "The majority of published work was found to be supportive of the use of NLP in schools and education although, as the authors point out, this should only be considered as an interim finding because of the wide range of methods used and variations in the quality of some of the research". However, as Passmore, J. & Rowson, T. (2019) point out most of the papers used in the review were not peer reviewed and includes single sampled studies. It is worth noting that Jonathan Passmore is a proponent of MBTI and I would have expected him to support NLP since it built on the same principle that we have some fixed true self we can discover.
• Counselling – This meta-analysis by Zaharia et al (2015) finds 12 studies?on NLP but most of the studies have close to zero effect .?Four studies stand out as giving positive results: Pourmansour, J. (1997) which is a PhD thesis which I couldn't find a copy of, Ojanen 2004 ?who state?“We are not familiar about studies that fulfill even minimal conditions” includes “strong points of NLP system are very similar to those of other therapies”, Liberman 1984 which is also a PhD thesis which uses visualisation and anchoring techniques common in counselling and Huflejt 2005 which is a conference/internal paper which I couldn't find a copy of either.
• Coaching - In this study Jonathan Passmore et al (2019) concludes that "we have no hesitation in coming to the view that coaching psychologists and those interested in evidenced based coaching would be wise to ignore the NLP brand in favour of models, approaches and techniques where a clear evidence base exists"
• Organisational Change & Development - Kotera et al 2019 ?conducted a review finding 7 (6 quantitative and 1 qualitative) studies relevant to NLP improving wellbeing or performance in organisations. But again the 'NLP interventions' used were anchoring, and using learning styles but also included other techniques such as motivational interviewing (Tsimtsiou 2017 - a quality study of 14 dermatologists who chose the interventions they wanted to work with so difficult to know if they were using NLP techniques or not). The most robust study in Kotera's study (the others scored less 4 or less out of 9) was HemmatiMaslakpak (2016) which involved 'NLP' interventions such as goal setting (using SMART objectives with no reference to Lock & Latham's work), time management (not unique to NLP), assertiveness skills (not unique to NLP), Disney strategy and representation systems. Only the last two of these are potentially uniquely NLP interventions which I will discuss below. Organisations that adopt NLP might become victims of solutioneering where a 'scatter-gun' of interventions are used to solve poorly defined problems.

Because NLP is such a moshpit of skills tools and techniques it is difficult to determine what works and what doesn't. Also if NLP is using techniques such as anchoring (a technique developed in behavioural psychology and integrated into the NLP toolkit) or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) (which are also used by non-NLP therapists & coaches) then how can we can distinguish between the benefits of people trained in NLP v those just using anchoring or CBT techniques? Again it comes down to NLP lacking a clear Definition & Scope hence lacking Construct Validity.

Maybe a way around this is just to look for specific NLP interventions that are not used in other practices. Here we go ;)

Specific NLP Interventions - the evidence

Clare`s fast phobia cure - I could only find this study (uses the fast phobia cure to help claustrophobic patients overcome fear of having a MRI scans) which states "Indeed, the “Clare's fast phobia cure” alone was probably not sufficient in many instances" and that because there was no control it was likely that "additional time spent with the patient and the presence of a radiographer in the scan room contributed to the success of completing the MR examination" rather than any specific NLP intervention.

Disney strategy - This is a technique uses three (realist, dreamer & spoiler) perceptual & physical positions to help people think more holistically about an issue. This study again by Kotera is based on 7 students who were not randomly selected they were seeking help on their career opportunities. This study also had no control so we don't know whether the intervention performed any better than standard career counselling. This study is also unclear on whether just thinking differently about a problem helps higher order thinking (critical/innovative thinking?) rather than the Disney Strategy specifically.

Meta programmes, Belief change cycle, Chain of faith, Modelling & Representation systems This study amongst 180 nurses shows positive results on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) of using these techniques above just giving people leaflets on what OCB is. However, because it is such a potpourri of interventions it is not specific on which ones work. These interventions e.g. meta programmes are based on preferred sensory systems (learning styles) which we know is unlikely to be true. So whatever benefits this study is measuring is unlikely to be due to the NLP intervention and could be down to 3 days listening to 'relaxing harmony music' and being exposed to more indepth learning on OCB.

Eye movements as mentioned above NLP claims that eye-movements are reliable indicators of thinking patterns but three systematic study by Wiseman (2012) suggests that claim is unlikely to be true stating "The results provide considerable grounds to be skeptical of the notion that the proposed patterns of eye-movements provide a reliable indicator of lying".

Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories (RTM) - Randomised Controlled Trials have been used to test this 'NLP' intervention which gives them a high level of validity. The RTM uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help male veterans with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The authors claim the intervention is derived from NLP techniques and is "closely related to the Visual Kinesthetic Dissociation" also called the Rewind Technique. But as they also state that their techniques (e.g. creating black and white imagery of the trauma to help disassociation) "are all standard elements of cognitive/perceptual psychology". So what is the difference between these NLP interventions and standard CBT practices? The authors claim this technique is different from other CBT treatments because "the structure of the trauma memory is destabilized and during which new information can be incorporated into the structure of the target memory" (p3) and the critical element that distinguishes from other CBT practices is "the use of the cognitive elements of the intervention during the labilization (destabilising) window" (p4). But CBT also includes cognitive restructuring (correcting or replacing thoughts with more adaptive and rational cognitions). So it is difficult to know what is unique about the NLP practice that distinguishes it from standard CBT practices. All this study shows is that CBT style interventions are effective which we already know. What would be good to know is the incremental effect of standard CBT v the NLP CBT intervention but this is not what the study was designed to show.

Verdict

When the underlying principles of NLP's theoretical framework such as preferred learning styles and detecting thinking patterns through eye movements have been called into question it is difficult to see where it can go.

There is very little evidence that NLP works in most contexts (Health, Education, Counselling, Coaching and Organisational Development). The evidence that does exist is either poor quality or uses techniques that are standard among non-NLP practitioners e.g. goal setting in OD, anchoring in coaching and CBT in counselling.

The frustration I found researching this area comes back to understanding exactly what NLP is. For example I deep dived into Visual Kinesthetic Dissociation (VKD) to understand its theoretical grounding and how it differs from standard CBT techniques. VKD is just a visualisation technique. However, I suspect NLP practitioners think it has some deeper impact based on their beliefs of using verbal patterning and learning styles to disassociate the visual and kinesthetic experiences of a trauma. But why hold onto these unproven/disproven beliefs and theoretical frameworks if the interventions stand up by themselves particularly when they potentially bring your practice into disrepute (a?panel of 101 leading psychologists put NLP 18th on the list of most discredited practices). In fact VKD might be a more efficient treatment than standard CBT practices but we won't know until we understand the difference.

This is an interesting lesson for Organisational Change - if we can't disassociate ourselves from disproven beliefs then our practice might go the same way as NLP. Maybe we need some VKD to help leave the memory of these beliefs behind:)