Is systemic thinking really extraneous to common sense? Valeria Ugazio a , Lisa Fellin b , Roberto Pennacchio c , Atta`Negri d and Francesca Colciago e Systemic therapists assume, but have not yet proved that ordinary people: (i) normally do not use triadic thinking and (ii) are able, thanks to therapists’ interviewing techniques, to construct triadic explanations. To test these assumptions this study analyses the explanations provided by 400 undergraduates of an unexpected piece of behaviour framed in four stimulus situations where the breadth of the observation field was manipulated. The results show that triadic explanations are unusual and increase with the widening of the field of observation from the monad to the triad. It is the ‘enigmatic’ triadic situation – adding a puzzling discrepancy between the actors’ forms of behaviour – that elicits more triadic explanations. This suggests that therapists should explore with clients the contradictions disclosed by the widening of the field of observation and support reframings actively co-constructed with them instead of ‘pre-packaged’ ones. Keywords: systemic thinking; triadic attribution; narrative therapy; social con- structionism; triadic reframing. From circular interviewing to systemic thinking We cannot change our past experience. What can be changed is how we recall the story of our past. In the last 30 years narrative therapists – whether systemic or cognitive – have confirmed this truism, in keeping with their assumption that clients transform themselves by changing the stories they tell about their lives (see also Angus and McLeod, 2004; Hermans and Dimaggio, 2004; Neimeyer and Raskin, Journal of Family Therapy (2011) ]]]: 1–19 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6427.2011.00538.x a Valeria Ugazio, Director of the European Institute of Systemic-Relational Therapies, Milan, Italy, and Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Bergamo, Italy. Diparti- mento di Scienze della Persona, Universita` degli Studi di Bergamo, Piazza S. Agostino 2, 24129, Bergamo, Italy. E-mail: valeria.ugazio@unibg.it. b Lisa Fellin, Lecturer, University of Bergamo, Italy. c Roberto Pennacchio, PhD, Research Associate, University of Bergamo, Italy. d Atta` Negri, Lecturer, University of Bergamo, Italy. e Francesca Colciago, PhD, University of Bergamo, Italy. r 2011 The Author(s) Journal of Family Therapy r 2011 The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. (2012) 34: 53–71