The Power of Postive Expectation for your success and health

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You are more powerful than you know. Your mind works to achieve your most dominant thought. So when you expect success and health you tend to move in that direction.

Robert Rosenthal of Harvard Medical School is most widely known for his early work in psychology, namely the effect of expectancy. In his most famous study, he labeled one cage of rats as “bright” and another as “dull”. Although all the rats were completely common, he told his students that the bright rats were tested as highly intelligent, while the dull ones suffered a mental deficit. Over the course of a week, the students were to time their rats as they made several runs through a maze. While there was no difference in intelligence between the rats, the ones the students perceived as smarter and expected to navigate the maze easily were twice as fast as the rats they thought of as dumb and expected to fail. Further studies have shown that a teacher’s expectation affects how students perform on tests, and the expectations military trainers hold about their soldiers can actually make them run faster.

In healthcare, positive expectations are essential for recovery. It begins with the patient, but also extends to the physician and the rest of the care staff.