Mind over Mind: The Surprising Power of Expectations
by Chris Berdik .
Current/Penguin, 2012 ($26.95)

Wearing all black can make you a more aggressive competitor, and striking a pose can make you act authoritative. According to journalist Berdik, fulfilling expectations—such as perceiving a commanding, “I am the law” persona—is what our brain does best. In Mind over Mind, Berdik explains how anticipation can inform, even dictate, our future experiences.

Building on theories from medicine, neuroscience and psychology, Berdik reveals how our “forward-thinking brain” shapes our actions, personality and health. He describes hoodwinked wine tasters (who may reject and later reward an identical vintage based entirely on price tag) and subjects of virtual-reality studies (whose behavior after unplugging may echo their earlier ogre or beauty queen avatar).

Our expectations need not dictate our future experiences, however. For example, when primed to think of ourselves as part of a certain group, we may act according to a stereotype, but studies have found that just discussing this tendency can actually prevent us from falling victim to it. Berdik also uncovers the perils of expecting too much, such as when star athletes crumble at a crucial moment. In a study in which participants watched an uplifting movie, subjects who had earlier read about the benefits of joy came away less happy after watching the film than those who had not.

Berdik's ideas about our future-focused brain coalesce most convincingly on the topic of placebos. The mechanism behind the placebo effect remains unclear (Berdik discusses how it may involve the brain's anticipation circuitry), but just believing that a treatment will work can cause a patient's body to mimic the effects of medication or even surgery. Pharmaceutical companies have found that a placebo effect even increases with time as our confidence in the treatment grows. Although the use of placebos remains problematic for ethical reasons, he asserts that medical professionals should further explore its potential to hijack our brain's natural self-healing mechanisms.

Berdik successfully packs his book with rich examples detailing the science of expectation, but he does not offer his readers a unifying explanation about why and how our brain behaves this way. Instead he suggests that we can harness the brain's tendencies to our advantage and that mindfulness and self-reflection may push us to change our lives for the better.

This article was originally published with the title Head Games.

1 Comments

1. 1. WRQ9 03:14 PM 11/16/12

   Who we are is often a difficult topic to broach, even with the closest friends and loved ones. A persona is often a mercurial thing, especially in the case of professional or a sociopath, so credibility in these areas can be hard to muster alone. Sometimes we literally have no choice other than to muddle through in a hackneyed bigoted avatar capable of little worth actually doing.
   I have found, as I suppose most blacks have, that discussing these issues can be complicated in the most important moments. This truth has led me to forgo many possible achievements of temporally sensitive circumstance, as I seem to be incapable of escaping the cocoon of prejudice I have been sewn into alone.
   Most adult single people are at least subtly aware of the challenge of confronting existing stereotypes. I say subtly because many have long since lost the will to attempt the process.
   I'm not saying the tendencies of these persona don't exist, they're often all too real. Even in the most extreme cases though, the truth can be hidden or obscured to a frustrating degree. What is a moment of frank intimacy for one person can be just another angle to another, or become one in hindsight. The human ego is often mercurial.
   So many things have been tried to limit the harmful effect of such delusion and the problem simply gets worse, like poison ivy or invasive species.
   This is an area where we need scientific/educational artisans of extreme conscience, and at the same time it is the highest achievement many true sociopaths could dream of. In fact, they might argue properly that they can't be judged competently by anyone who is not a sociopath. This is the human fluff zone. At the very most we can hold a persons assertions to what historical data we have on them, and hope it isn't the result of some previous manipulation.

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