Do The Law Of Attraction And Positive Thinking Really Work?
Is there the power of positive thinking? In principle, there is no proof of this, even though some self-help books and advice magazines encourage us to raise our best “good vibes” to the cosmos.
A person who believes they can achieve this or that goal is more likely to achieve it compared to a person who does not trust their own resources. That is absolutely true, but “good vibes” have nothing to do with it
The key mechanism of action is perseverance Someone with a moderate or high degree of confidence in their own abilities and management capacity will not be so easily discouraged by problems that arise along the way, and will be well disposed to redouble their efforts in the face of adversity.
On the contrary, those who do not have a good concept of themselves will easily become discouraged and abandon the crusade at the slightest failure.
The role of expectations
The same goes for the expectations we place on a product.
Numerous investigations have shown that when people take a supposed painkiller that they have been informed is one of the most expensive on the market, they feel much greater relief from an ailment compared to when they are told that the painkiller It is generic or it is just another cheap medication, one of the many that can be bought at a pharmacy.
The trick, in both cases, is to give people a neutral pill with no real pain-fighting properties: a placebo. The problem with these experiments is that they lack a certain scientific rigor, since measuring pain objectively is not easy and entails some operational drawbacks.
Let’s see, the participants are asked, after they take the tablet, to give a score to the pain they are feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 equals unbearable pain, and 1 equals no pain.
The inherent failure of such a procedure is the impossibility of measuring perception with reliable parameters of the different levels of pain that the person is experiencing.
In other words, it is not possible to verify whether the score that someone gives to pain is real. We must not forget that what the person “believes” they are feeling depends on a few factors closely linked to their subjectivity.
However, another series of experiments revealed the power that expectations exert on some intellectual abilities.
The drink and suggestion experiment
A group of people were recruited to solve a mental game. From a series of disordered letters, they had to deduce the correct word at a certain time
This served to establish a baseline, that is, to know the average number of words that could be reached in a neutral condition. For example, when presented with the letters “rcberoe” they had to construct the word “brain.” The final result was established in 9 real words out of a total of 15 words with the letters jumbled.
In the second condition of the experiment, the participants were previously given a caffeine-based energy drink to drink.
They were also conveniently informed that this type of drink had the property of improving mental activity, and after a few minutes of waiting for the concoction to supposedly take effect, they were given the task of rearranging words.
What was it that happened?
On average, The participants who drank the energy drink also solved 9 words that is, the same amount that the experimental subjects in the neutral condition had previously solved.
It seemed that the generic expectation of an improvement in mental activity did not have enough power to generate a real impact on the intellectual abilities of the participants. But the surprising thing happened later.
In a third condition of the experiment, written information was added extolling the supposed beneficial properties of the drink. Specifically, a series of brochures were distributed to the participants explaining that it had been scientifically proven that the energy drink they were about to consume significantly increased the speed of brain processing of information.
This finding, which translated into greater speed when solving mental games, had been confirmed by scientists after carrying out more than a dozen studies. Which it was the result? This time, the participants actually became “smarter” and solved on average about 12 words that is, about 3 more words than the control group.
All the false scientific information that they had previously read, and which claimed that the energy drink had incredible intellectual capacity-enhancing properties, had generated an accumulation of expectations of such magnitude that it favorably predisposed people to give greater cognitive effort, with real and tangible results. They had been suggested.
Another example of suggestion based on expectations
In another interesting experiment, a group of people were individually shown a photograph of an individual with a neutral expression on their face, and asked what impression this person made on them.
The responses obtained were consistent with the participants’ previous beliefs Half of the group had previously been told that the man in the photograph was a Nazi doctor who had presided over atrocious experiments in a concentration camp during the Second World War.
The other half of the group was told that, on the contrary, he was a resistance leader who had fought fiercely against fascism, and that his bravery had saved dozens of Jews from certain death.
Thus, when faced with the same image, the people in the first group thought that this man looked ruthless, that cruelty was visible on his face and that he could hardly suppress a grimace of disdain and irony.
The people in the second group, on the other hand, said they found themselves in front of a friendly, warm and trustworthy face In line with the above, the power that expectations exert to color or modify perceptual experience has also been demonstrated in a series of ingenious experiments.
Image-based wine tasting
In another investigation, expert tasters praised the benefits of a seven-dollar wine when they were previously informed that the bottle cost seventy dollars, and the drink was served in delicate crystal glasses.
You should know that if you own a restaurant, you should take careful care of the presentation of your meals, since they are as important or more important than the preparation of the dish itself.
Everything seems to indicate that when we anticipate that something will be good, it is quite likely that it will turn out to be so.
For example, we are capable of drinking a full glass of beer mixed with vinegar and savoring it without any prejudice if the person who invites us simply omits the detail of adulteration. On the other hand, if you tell us exactly what we’re about to drink, as soon as we take a sip, we’ll wrinkle our nose and look disgusted.
That is to say, If we are told that something will taste bad, we actually perceive the bad taste thanks to the previous expectations that we have generated.
Similarly, if we have to rate how much we like the coffee served in a certain cafeteria, it will seem much tastier and we will be more inclined to give it a high rating if everything that surrounds the cafe, including the tableware and tablecloths of the place, , seems to be top quality.
If we later have the opportunity to try the same coffee, but they tell us that it is a different brand, and they serve it to us in a plastic cup, this time it will seem mediocre or downright bad. Once again, our expectations will have a powerful influence on flavor perception.
It is not enough for the brain that a product is really the best on the market, or that a person is an excellent professional in his or her discipline… it also has to appear that way. The prior knowledge we have about something, our beliefs, prejudices and stereotypes derived from culture, are all factors that affect the way we see the world.
