The Psychological Power Of Expectations - David Robson

... so the scientists have just, kind of, done these experiments where they gave these people foods that didn't contain any gluten or wheat, but they told them it did, and they still experienced all of the symptoms. That shows us that their symptoms aren't imagined. They really were experiencing them. But it's, like, the kind of opposite of the placebo effect. The expectation that they will become ill makes them feel the symptoms. (wind blowing)

David Robson, welcome to the show.

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

How did you get interested in the way that expectations can impact our lives?

Like, (clears throat) I guess, like, as a medical writer, I've kind of known about the placebo effect for ages. Um, but then I just, like, over the last five years, I'd just seen, like, such an abundance of research that had kind of moved beyond, like, you know, the effects in hospitals, but to, like, all other areas of our lives. So, you know, like, um, there is s- you know, some great research on these kind of weird psychogenic illnesses that pass between people just through expectations. But then also, like, research looking at the way our expectations shape our performance at the gym, like how we respond to sleep loss, even, like, how quickly we age. Um, and it was actually that finding, I just thought, like, "I have to write this book now." Because it's, like, it's actually cutting people's lives by, like, seven and a half years, like, if you have this negative view of aging, if you see it as this kind of period of inevitable decline. And that just seems so profound. It felt like, actually, you know, you could do a lot of good by telling this story, basically.

What's the difference between the expectation effect and the placebo effect?

So, the placebo effect is, like, one type of expectation effect, and so that is, like, um ... I guess most people are familiar with it, but that's very much like if you have high expectations that a treatment is going to be effective, even if it's a dummy treatment, um, then you will see some kind of, um, alleviation of your symptoms. Um, so that's been researched for, like, five decades, you know. Like, there's no longer any controversy over that. Um, but the expectation effect is kind of much more general, so this is looking at how we create self-fulfilling prophecies, um, uh, from our beliefs through, like, uh, various mechanisms, so changes to our behavior, changes to our, um, perception, and changes to our physiology.

And that happens both positively and negatively, right? This isn't us just making things better. We can also make things worse.

Yeah, and I think that's how it often manifests in our lives, like day to day, is that when we have these kind of negative expectations, we're, like, needlessly hampering our performance. We're, like, kind of limiting our potential, essentially. So, um ... So yeah, a lot of what I write in the book is actually just, like, asking people to reassess those negative expectations and just kind of bring it up to something that's a bit more objective or open-minded, and even that can have a huge effect on your life.