I’m taking a break from posting book excerpts to talk about a great book I read this month: The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World by David Robson. You’ve probably heard about the placebo effect, but have you heard about the nocebo effect? Can your expectations heal you? Could they kill you? Can they make you happier? You will find the answer to all of these questions in this book!
We See What We Predict
The Expectation Effect is an approachable tour through the science of our mind manifesting outcomes in our lives. Robson takes the reader through several important sections: illness, negative effects, exercise, stress, food, mass hysteria, learning, and finally aging. He shares the science behind how our minds shape our reality. Then, he tells us how to harness the power of our minds to make positive change in our lives. It turns out that oftentimes what we predict really is what we see. Our brains fill in the blanks for us and can manifest outcomes in a very real way. A couple of these areas really stood out to me. Let’s dive into the main takeaways I had from the book, which will give you a good idea of what you can find in this book.
Placebos & Nocebos
The placebo effect is when our positive expectations create positive outcomes. There have been multiple documented studies suggesting that patients who assume they’re getting a treatment get better, even if that treatment doesn’t contain any active ingredients. The opposite of the placebo effect is documented too. It’s called the nocebo effect. This occurs when your negative expectations manifest negative results.
In his book, Robson tells a story about a man diagnosed with liver cancer. The doctor told him that he would be lucky to survive past Christmas. Sure enough, the man lived until just after Christmas and then passed away. During his autopsy, a very small number of cancer cells were found in his liver, but nothing large enough to have killed the man. There was no other sign of illness. This man should have been alive, but he wasn’t. This is an extreme case of the nocebo effect. When a doctor tells you “now, this is going to hurt” it focuses your mind on the pain and, sure enough, it hurts more than it should. Your brain is conditioned to look for ways to meet your own expectations and this can work in your favor, or against it.
Fitness & Food
In the introduction there’s a story about a group of hotel housekeepers. When told that they do enough physical labor every week to meet the American Heart Association’s exercise guidelines for healthy adults, they started losing weight and feeling better — just a few weeks later. They didn’t change anything they did, just their expectations of how fit they should be. Your expectations for your overall health can help you actually become healthier. In these sections, Robson gives us all a few specific suggestions for setting our own expectations about fitness. Here are a few:
- Don’t compare yourself or watch fitter people before working out. This will reduce the effectiveness of your workouts.
- Question your own assumptions about your fitness level. If you feel like you are not fit enough, ask yourself if that’s really the case and where you’re getting those assumptions from.
- Think of your pain as you’re exercising as your muscles getting stronger.
- Avoid liquid or processed calories as your mind doesn’t really know what foods are in them. Your mind assumes they are less filling than whole foods, making you hungry sooner.
- Visualizing the food you just ate when you’re starting to think about your next snack or meal can keep you feeling full, longer.
Learning
One of the more fascinating areas in this book was about expectations and learning. Teachers, parents, managers, and mentors, for example, can have an outsized effect of how we actually perform. Teachers can form an opinion about students and subconsciously give clues about their expectations to each one. If they expect the student to do well, the students tend to live up to those expectations. If not, they live down to them.
How do students know? Teachers give off subconscious clues every day. They might quickly move on after a wrong answer instead of giving a student a second chance to correctly answer the question. Whereas other students are gently encouraged to keep trying. Some students simply aren’t picked for special activities or to answer certain questions. Over time, those students lower their own expectations of themselves. Robson calls on all of us to think about whether we are transmitting negative expectations to those around us and how we can better give them the benefit of the doubt.
Aging
This is an area I’ve been thinking about a lot lately as I turn 40 this month. Science points to the fact that illness and weakness as we get older is within our ability to control. Just a few fascinating facts on the subject:
- People with positive views about aging tend to recover faster from surgery and illness.
- Those that feel younger than they really are escaped or postponed various signs of aging that tend to crop up for others their age.
- Societal stereotypes of old people being weak really might make all of us age less gracefully. In countries where elders are respected like Japan and China, people tend to age with more dignity. They know they have a place and a purpose in the family.
We’ll all get old eventually. Working to shape our mindset about old age can pay dividends and may just end up adding years to your life!
The Expectation Effect
There’s a lot to unpack from this book and this review is only scratching the surface. I really appreciate all of Robson’s anecdotes and his explanations of the related science. Best of all, it has very clear takeaways for how to apply the science of mindset to your own life. It’s definitely worth reading. Who knows, it may just help you live a longer, happier life.