Russ Garber
A teacher friend of mine shared a true story with me about a colleague who was new to her school and was recognized by her colleagues for the high performance of her students. Before the start of the term, her expectations for her students were generally low, but by the end of the term, her students had turned around dramatically.
At an end-of-term teachers’ dinner, she was asked to share a secret with her colleagues: Why were her students’ grade point averages so high? She was surprised by the realization, and admitted that she might have had a little help.
Before the semester started, she was in the administration office and noticed a list of students’ names on a desk. She saw their IQ scores written next to their names and was impressed by how high they were. There’s no secret to her method, she says. She just taught them with the conviction that they would do well, and she wasn’t surprised by the results.
After dinner, one of the school administrators approached her, quietly took the teacher aside, and told her something about the list she had seen: the numbers next to their names were not IQ scores, but newly assigned locker numbers.
This is the power of expectations, the subtitle of Chris Burdick’s book, Mind Over Mind. A veteran journalist with experience covering psychology and neuroscience, Burdick examines how our expectations change everything, forcing us to rethink our most cherished beliefs about education, sports, criminal justice and health.
Berdik takes the reader from centuries of history to contemporary research on imagination, hypnosis, animal magnetism, belief, willpower, placebos, and nocebos.
“They are not exactly the same thing,” he writes, “but they reflect the mental habit of jumping to conclusions and the surprising power of those conclusions.”
He said that this has a fundamental impact on our lives: health.
“The intersection of expectations and health was one of the most fascinating things I researched for this book.”
Health professionals, medical researchers, and the public are paying close attention to the relationship between expectations and health. if There is a relationship How close? Is that…?
A huge body of research on placebos and nocebos suggests that there is a direct correlation: Hope can improve health outcomes, while despair has the opposite effect. Fear of illness can harm the health of the fearful, while the expectation of health brings relief. In fact, Burdick points out, “our real world is in many ways the expected world.”
So what shapes our expectations? A lot of it comes from the everyday education we typically receive in our modern media environment about what is expected in our lives.
When a constant stream of information relentlessly worries and discourages, it is easy to become overwhelmed with fear and feelings of helplessness, leading to unhealthy mental states. “Ignorance of the control of the human mind over the body, or over bodily phenomena,” wrote psychotherapist Mary Baker Eddy, “may unwittingly add more fear to a mind already overloaded with emotions.”
Health and happiness thrive in a peaceful, confident mind, which may be why meditation and prayer are listed in prescriptions and national surveys as health-enhancing practices: Stress levels decrease, bodily functions improve, and human tissues return to normal — far more positive side effects than we’re used to seeing.
This suggests that we’re not as powerless to take control of our health as we might have thought. Admittedly, not everyone agrees on the crucial role of consciousness in health, or how prayer and meditation can benefit our mental state. But if it’s true that expectations can produce positive results, it’s in our best interest to raise our expectations.
Russ and his wife moved back to their hometown of Southern California after working as the media manager for the Christian Science Church in Boston. With a background in publishing, Russ spends most of his time writing, reading, volunteering, and being a grandparent.
