The Secret

You’ve probably heard about, and perhaps read, a book phenomenon called The Secret. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve seen lots of negative reviews about its new age mumbo jumbo.

As I understand it, the central concept is something the book calls the Law of Attraction. Essentially, you focus on positive things and the universe will attract those things to you.

One skeptical reviewer picked the most outrageous sounding example in the book to point out how ridiculous it is. Apparently the book claims, without science to support it, that if you want to be thin, you should avoid overweight people, even to the extent of avoiding looking at them.

Clearly, that’s mumbo jumbo.

Today I read in the news that researchers have discovered weight to be “socially contagious.” Your chances of becoming obese are 57% higher if you have ONE friend who is obese.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/25/health/webmd/main3097001.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_3097001

It’s probably premature to declare this a fact. The media isn’t good at getting this sort of thing right. But I’d be surprised if it’s wrong. After all, humans conform to their friends’ habits in every other realm, from clothing, to music, to choice of words. It can’t be too surprising to learn that they start eating the same.

Friends influence friends. That’s obvious. But can you also become overweight just by looking at overweight people? My guess is that you can. Humans are natural copiers. Your choice of clothing, for example, is influenced just as much by what you see on strangers as on friends. And your notion of what is acceptable and normal is probably more determined by strangers than by your one or two close friends.

How about success? Can the universe provide success just by focusing on it and avoiding thinking about failure? I’ve seen no research on that topic, but wouldn’t you be surprised if success isn’t socially contagious too?

Stanford University creates an enormous number of entrepreneurs and other successful people. I’ve often hypothesized that half of Stanford’s success is because the students are brilliant, well taught, and screened for high potential, and half is because the environment breeds success contagion. I imagine it would be difficult to graduate from Stanford and settle for an ordinary life. The impulse to copy the other go-getters would be mighty strong.

I’ve often written about my own experiences with affirmations, the practice of writing your goals 15 times a day. It seems to work much of the time, at least in my experience, but presumably not because of any magic. At least one probable explanation for its perceived effectiveness is that focusing on goals changes the person who is doing the focusing.

In a book called The Luck Factor, the author and researcher, Richard Wiseman (Google it), discovered that people who expect luck will notice opportunities in their environment more readily than those who don’t. And he learned that you can train people to expect luck, and cause an improvement in their ability to spot opportunities, that look like luck, when they pop up. I can imagine affirmations tuning a person in the same way, until it seems that extra luck is being provided by the universe, but all that’s happening is that it’s more easily recognized.

Affirmations probably also increases a person’s natural level of optimism, especially if you believe it works. I can imagine optimism working to harden people against the inevitable setbacks and obstacles along the way to success. To the extent that affirmations might increase a person’s stick-to-itiveness, his perception might be that the universe is removing barriers.

To be fair, there’s also some selective memory at play. I’m sure people who use affirmations, or The Secret, tend to remember the successes and forget the failures. I recall about six ridiculously unlikely successes of my own with affirmations, and one quasi-failure that I still think will pan out. (There’s the optimism thing.) Realistically, I might be forgetting some failures. And I have no way of knowing whether I would have had the successes without affirmation.

As I said, I haven’t read The Secret. I don’t endorse it. But if you think the concept has no value because it’s not backed by science, don’t be surprised if that changes.

Comments

[RPK]

If I have one skinny friend, does that mean I have a 57% chance of being skinny?

If I have one skinny friend and one fat friend, do they cancel each other out?

We've all been told there is an obesity epidemic in this country. Someone needs to do the math and come up with the right skinny-to-fat-friends ratio to get us all in shape. That certainly sounds easier than eating right and exercising.

[Diana W]

I haven't read the book, but friends have sent me excerpts. I certainly believe that positive thinking is better off in the long run than negative thinking, but I have 2 problems with The Secret. First, it sounds like a direct rip-off of The Power of Positive Thinking, which came out a couple decades ago. Second, what I read indicated it ALWAYS works. I hate absolutes. The email I received claimed to include 100 quotes, including this one - " EVERYTHING in your life you have attracted .. accept that fact .. it's true." Wouldn't that imply that children in Africa born with HIV into a life where they're starving and soon orphaned were just negative thinking fetuses? And that the thousands who died on 9/11 all attracted those planes? I think positive thinking is good for you, but I also firmly believe that shit happens...

[jakesdad]

sorry I'm late w/this but...

my wife's best friend sent her "The Secret" DVD several months ago which of course meant I got stuck watching it.

when it was over she was all "wow! what do you think about that?" so I walked over to the bookcase, pulled out my copy of "The Dilbert Principle" and showed her your chapter on affirmations. I explained that there actually was some legitimate psychology behind it but that "The Secret" was just that wrapped in new-age packaging.

oddly, she actually seemed disappointed that there was some legitimate science behind it as if that somehow made it LESS valid than supernatural knowledge passed down from the pharos through the knights templar to the freemasons through skull & bones to you for the incredibly low price of $29.95!!!

[Anna Lowe]

WRT the Richard wiseman thing, my Dad's personal motto is "Don't be good, be lucky" because as he put it "the more I practice, the luckier I get." This man was involved in cardiac surgery for 15 years.

[Jason]

How is this for law of attraction, just the other day I was wondering if you had read The Secret, and what you thought about it. Go figure.

[VermontGal]

Here's my fundamental problem:

Ignoring a reality or a possibility does NOT make it go away.

And...how may thin friends do you need to "counteract" a fat friend?

Finally...it makes a good reason not to help those who have "negative vibes". As an educator of children who need help, I should AVOID them? That's not right!

[Stu]

The Junkfood Science blog does a great job of dissecting the actual "fat is contagious" study. In short, it's pseudoscience garbage, manipulating their data to fit their conclusion.

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/07/oh-what-tangled-web-we-weave-sir-walter.html

[Paul C]

Hmmm....

....since about age fourteen I've been VERY focused on the idea of doing positive life-enhancing things with very attractive women, but not much has come back to me... by rights I should be fighting them off with a stick...

[Leonel]

Do you mean we're all like Woody Allan's "Zelig"?!

[Jameson]

I'm always curious - genuinely curious, not being snarky - how this experience with affirmations aligns with a determinist world view. Without free will, weren't you going to have the successes anyway? Weren't you going to write the affirmations anyway?

[Peter G.]

Regarding the Social Contagion theory, I have another example.

If you spend time with Scott Adams' wife, the odds are much higher that you are Scott Adams.

We can test this here. Out of the thousands of people who will read these comments, perhaps only two or three actually know Mrs. Adams. That means that if you know Mrs. Adams, the odds are possibly as high as 50-50 that you are Scott Adams.

Whereas among the readers here who don't know Mrs. Adams, none of them are Scott Adams.

Clearly, knowing Mrs. Adams greatly increases your odds of being Scott Adams.

I think this argument is especially compelling given the low proportion of Scott Adams in the general population.

Social contagion explains this situation quite nicely, I think.

. png

[CK]

I know a woman that gained a lot of weight, she moved away and I didn't see her for about 5 years. When I saw her again, at a party with her new friends, they were all big too. My thought at the time was that it made her feel better if her friends looked similar.

But then, weight is such a problem for so many people, maybe it's statisticlly improbable that a person could NOT have an overweight friend.

I'm practicing the positive thinking "The Secret" promotes. I found it in another book - "Ask and you shall Receive". If nothing else, I hope to attain a more optimistic outlook. I'll let you know if it pans out.

[pbrooks100]

It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkies....

[Tutu]

My name is TUTU and I am a fat bastard... (I say that at all the meetings, no matter what thy are for!)

I'm fat because I eat too much, drink too much beer, and don't do enought excercise. I am not fat because my friends are fat or because I see other fat people. Many of my friends and people I meet are average size and play sports etc.

This is talking about things like peer pressure and fitting in I think... a bit like a Halmark 'made for tv' posting... rubbish I say, now where did I put my beer and fries?

[Sam Thornton]

Without reading "The Secret" I already know the Secret, but it's only the Secret to Achieving Wealth effortlessly.

I'll share it with you, Scott, but please don't tell anyone else.

The Program:
1) Take out a small ad in all the Success oriented magazines you can find with Classified Ad sections. The ad, in its entirety will read: "AMAZING SECRET TO LIFETIME WEALTH, Send $5 to plus Stamped, Self-Addressed Envelope."

2) When the responses roll in, put a note in the return envelope that says: "The Secret To Lifetime Wealth: Stop wasting money on stupid ads and stupid magazines."

[Grainchomper]

Obviously it's true because people who are big fatsos usually have big fatso cats and big fatso dogs. Fatsos suck. By the way, I'm skinny and am better than fatsos.

[Marco]

How do you explain that the U. S. is most obsessed with thinness, i. e. bombards you with skinny attractive people on every billboard and magazine, and yet is also the nation with the most overweight people? Those people have to stop looking at fat people, I guess.

[Tortuga]

You need to think more about cause and effect. Is that 57% increase in probablilty that you'll be obese caused by you having a obese a friend? Or is it because you poses certain traits which make you more likely to be obese and people with these traits are more likely to be friends? It's almost certainly a bit of both, depending on who you are.

With the Stanford University case isn't it more likely that its better teaching leads to better results which attract better stundents resulting in higher results, ect played a bigger role in its success than the influence of better student upon others? I do agree that peoples influence on others (which can't be denied) plays an important role but we must look at other causes as well which may have more of an effect.

This influence can often go against what you'd expect and can be hard to model. For instance if you chose to avoid seeing fat people, poor people, ect. then the threat of being in there situation may unconciously seem reduced. In many people this would increase there chance of being fat, poor, ect. as may would be less cautious of the dangers which lead to that situation.

I do agree that believing you can achieve something can and does help often in certain circumstances but only by boosting your confidence and willpower. It is belief that leads to determination and get you to act upon what you wish. Obviously it won't improve your chances of winning the lottery. I agree with the optimism vrs. pessimism thing, if your optimistic in life you won't be as bothered and distracted by the negative things so you of course you are more likely to spot an opportunity. Of course it doesn't work all the time and if you are less wary of the negative possiblities you are probably less able to avoid them.

[Tuzo]

It's one thing to make common sense "observations" or even guestimates about human behavior and success which could be valid. It's quite another to attempt to ascribe some cause or explanation.

Maybe if we think about stuff the universe will atract it to us or maybe it's all determined by the relative position of some stars in the sky or perhaps our Martian overlords are running the show behind the scenes and determining our fate.

Either way without any evidence or argument into the mechanism is involved then the theory is simply arbitrary.

[Harry Chong]

Adams! You are mad! I'm fat because I'm a lazy unemployed slob, not because I hang around fatties.

[Dewey]

The Secret is a rewriting of:

Use the Force, Luke. Use the Force.

Obi Wan/Yoda

[Nomen Nescio]

The Secret is a sensation but it is a long read at about 200 pages. The same idea is expressed in the much more concise It Works (ISBN 0875163238) which, at 28 pages of vaccuous nonsense, is a much shorter read. You won't have to trudge through tortured explanations of thoughts radiating out as magnetic force (never mind that, with electro-magnetism, like repels and opposites attract; and what about the inverse-square law which never gets a mention?) But, of course, The Secret must work. Take a look at these testimonials of the power of the law of attraction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icklckUsOGM

[Arby]

We all like to “fit-in” with the crowd even if it means doing something stupid and totally outrageous. Any organization that profits from gambling highly advertises the lucky “winners” implying this could be you and does not mention all the losers. Also, if you do talk to a “winner” they rarely tell you of the lifetime of losses they experienced in gambling to that point and are in fact way in the hole.

Brittany exposed belly button influenced millions of slim young, and some not so slim or young women to bare their midriffs. With men, Elvis’s hair and smirk were duplicated by many. No area of human endeavor is exempt from the copycat; fashion, food, health cures, religion, entertainment, politics and any other phenomenon that someone has made popular.

We are like lemmings and sometimes will even jump off cliffs to belong. My favorite fall from grace was Jim and Tammy Bakker; they both got what they deserved. Lesson here, be careful who and what you idolize, it can come back and bite you.

[JustMe]

It reminds me of the Dilbert Secret.

With the Dilbert Secret, you write what you want 25 times each day. Be specific. For example: This time next year, my book will be number one on the New York Times best seller list. Do this and next year your book will be number one.

Unlike the Secret, the Dilbert Secret does not require you to believe that it works for it to work. It just works.

The Secret has a great disclaimer in that if you don’t get what you ask for, then you either did not really believe or else you had a bad thought, in either case you caused your own failure.

[John]

The universe provides.