Scientific studies on the power of beliefs

[Landi Star]

It's been pretty established among some schools of psychology that our thoughts and beliefs affect or determine our happiness (or level of life satisfaction). Studies on the methods of Cognitive Therapy (etc) indicate that changing our thoughts and beliefs can improve our lives.

It's also being proven more and more how our thoughts and beliefs influence or determine our body's health and healing. Science has been accepting this idea gradually, and the latest issue of "New Scientist" magazine covers some these findings in its feature stories (The main article "The Science of Voodoo" is online… a great read!).

What is more difficult is for science to prove (or acknowledge) how our thoughts and beliefs affect or determine outer circumstances and events.
The NS article on the power of beliefs and the placebo effect could have touched on that by noting that even the beliefs and expectations of the researchers can influence the results of scientific studies! (which is, I think, one of the reasons they make the studies "double blind", etc).

It may be a while before science takes a serious look at (or tries to prove) LOA/I-M, in terms of the inner-influencing-the-outer (probably 'cause this is more difficult to prove and still too radical a concept for science, except maybe in fringe quantum physics)…

But meanwhile, many of us have been making that inner-outer connection on our own, proving LOA/I-M through our own experience & observation, and putting the knowledge to good use for our benefit and evolution (which is what counts the most!).

Any comments on this month's "New Scientist" feature story or RE: the general topic of "scientific studies on the power of beliefs"?

[Landi Star]

Here's the link to the cover story in this month's "New Scientist" magazine (which I mentioned in my post above). It's a very good article on how our beliefs affect our health & the healing process (the short editorial is good too). here's the link:

The science of voodoo: When mind attacks body - health - 13 May 2009 - New Scientist

[themaster]

Nope sorry.. I have become bored of reading scientific articles..

However so you know there are many, many scientists who have published or at least sited works that prove some of LOA in a way..

- There is the random number project where dozens upon dozens of computers have their random numbers go up during significant events..
Global Consciousness Project -- consciousness, group consciousness, mind
- Science work was also done on this in the early 40's-50's (this scientist name I do not know) about the mind affecting gambling odds (real gambling.. dice throws and such) I reference him from a nice series I saw called "The 5th Dimension"
- There is no science but the fact that the CIA ran a remote viewing project and the testimony of those in it.. is interesting..

There are also about a dozen citings on strange science facts in some new age book out there.. that is of itself a experiment and has launched its experiment on the internet (I know not this books name just cause I have perused it.. not read it significantly)

The list can go on and on.. just remember science always feel touchy feely about stuff they have a hard time proving.. the random number generator experiment is one of their more interesting out there with data published on the internet..

[floslib]

Originally Posted by Landi Star

It's been pretty established among some schools of psychology that our thoughts and beliefs affect or determine our happiness (or level of life satisfaction). Studies on the methods of Cognitive Therapy (etc) indicate that changing our thoughts and beliefs can improve our lives.

It's also being proven more and more how our thoughts and beliefs influence or determine our body's health and healing. Science has been accepting this idea gradually, and the latest issue of "New Scientist" magazine covers some these findings in its feature stories (The main article "The Science of Voodoo" is online… a great read!).

What is more difficult is for science to prove (or acknowledge) how our thoughts and beliefs affect or determine outer circumstances and events.
The NS article on the power of beliefs and the placebo effect could have touched on that by noting that even the beliefs and expectations of the researchers can influence the results of scientific studies! (which is, I think, one of the reasons they make the studies "double blind", etc).

It may be a while before science takes a serious look at (or tries to prove) LOA/I-M, in terms of the inner-influencing-the-outer (probably 'cause this is more difficult to prove and still too radical a concept for science, except maybe in fringe quantum physics)…

But meanwhile, many of us have been making that inner-outer connection on our own, proving LOA/I-M through our own experience & observation, and putting the knowledge to good use for our benefit and evolution (which is what counts the most!).

Any comments on this month's "New Scientist" feature story or RE: the general topic of "scientific studies on the power of beliefs"?

I haven't seen the story, as I don't get the magazine, but I did want to address a couple of things. First, the placebo effect has been well documented for quite awhile now. Scientists have known strong belief that you will become better can in some cases make you actually get better. They don't know why this is, though I'm sure they'd love to figure it out.

I would agree that the idea of Intention Manifestation is one possible explanation, but it certainly isn't the only one. Also, science has less of an idea about how healing other people works, only healing yourself, via placebo. There's still work to do on how healing others work. I have heard there have been some studies of prayer and how it effects recovery rates, and that it seemed to be somewhat effective in helping people survive, but I've never seen the study myself, so feel free to take that with a grain of salt unless you know of the studies already.

The other point is that double blind experiments are nothing new either, but the main reason for double blind experiments, as far as I know, is more to prevent tampering with evidence (intentional or unconsciously due to bias) than to prevent ideas of subjective reality from effecting the results. An exception to this is some quantum physics experiments in which observation can effect the results, but even then, they seem to not be able to get around that. Also, this is more due to the behavior of quantum particles than the idea that reality itself is subjective.

[Landi Star]

The other day I tried to post with the link to the "New Scientist" article on beliefs & health ("The Science of Voodoo", which I discus in my post above), but my posts with links are going into "eternal moderation" (or being rejected?), maybe because I haven't been posting in this forum long enough (though I've been visiting for quite some time!)

Anyway, I won't attempt to put more links for now, but anyone interested in the "New Scientist" article about beliefs & health can google "the science of voodoo new scientist" and it will come up on top.

themaster… thanks for the info.

I'm not sure if the last book/website you were referring to is "The Intention Experiment" (book by Lynn Taggart). In their Website, they do these group mind-over-matter experiments. Anyone can participate. I've been in a couple of them… very cool and interesting!
Google "the intention experiment" to check it out.

floslib… I know that the placebo effect has long been known. I meant that the idea that beliefs can affect our health and healing has been gaining more and more scientific and cultural acceptance over the last few decades.
RE: 'double-blind' studies, I did hear or read somewhere that, apart from the tampering thing, the double-blind set-up is sometimes also is meant to help prevent beliefs or biases from subtly influencing the subjects (as through body language, etc). I haven't much delved into all this, though.

I'm not really very scientifically minded nor even care that much if LOA is substantiated by scientific studies or by "quantum physics". I think LOA is difficult to scientifically "prove", because of the many varying internal factors in individuals and the varying amounts of time between intention and manifestation.
I'm more of a life-experiencer & experimenter... and an enthusiastic LOA-"player"… and I'm curious and interested in "everything" (including some of these scientific LOA & Belief-studies!)

[WordKeeper]

Landi Star - I came to the I/M forum looking for a place to park some information that has "come" to me today and lo and behold I found your thread. I am drawn to it as though it were written for me.

Let me make a couple of comments in reply to a few points made in the posts. 1st - you might enjoy learning a little bit about Bob Jahn at PEARS (Princeton Engineering) who has done interesting work about thought effecting the physical. He and one of his former graduate students in engineering long ago wrote a book about their experiments and findings. Look it up. It came out of the Engineering Department at Princeton and is fascinating.

You are the 2nd person in 2 days whose post I have read saying that they are having a difficult time with posts disappearing. Something is definitely going on. I have not read the article you are referring to but cannot wait. I am excited about it.

BTW - one of my favorite books is The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz. I tout this book frequently and bring it up here because Schwartz developed a technique to facilitate OCD patients using their own thoughts to alter the neural functioning of their brains. It is a fascinating read.

Now - to the issue that brought me here in the first place. I was nudged twice this morning to read an article in the NYT: What You Don’t Know Makes You Nervous - Happy Days Blog - NYTimes.com

It is written by Daniel Gilbert a Harvard psychologist who is well known for writing Stumbling on Happiness.

Here is an excerpt from an interview that Gilbert gave some time ago. I chose these two excerpts because they agree with the very ideas that are often evoked on this particular forum.

Shambhala Sun - Stumbling on Happiness

A few hundred years ago, Sir Francis Bacon wrote quite articulately about how we find evidence to confirm our view. It’s a fundamental truth about the human mind. We have beliefs, ideas, and perceptions, and the brain gets to work very quickly trying to find evidence to substantiate them.

we’ve just done a study that shows that when people are offered the opportunity to do something selfish or something altruistic, they take the selfish option by and large. Culture has told them this is what they should do to be happy, but if you force them to take the altruistic option, they’re much happier. It’s a case of people not really knowing what will make them happy, not knowing what’s good for them. Altruism is a thing you might resist kicking and screaming—“I want to keep my money; I don’t want to give it away”—but if you give it away, it will probably make you happier than most of the things you could spend it on.

*****
I have much to think and write about this brief passages but time is fleeting and I must go right now. I hope you find this interesting. I am interested in learning more from you and looking forward to the article you began writing about.

[alan white]

From one perspective the belief/manifestation progression is not categorically seperate from other experiences. In that perspective, all experience is a result of belief, though much of that belief is counterpoised by those other sentients within the sphere of ones experience.
Belief, then, would have "weight", a sort of democratic system involving (predominantly) intelligent beings. Simpler beings are not difficult to convince; your dog is not amazed if you show him you have six ears on each side of your head. In this sense, the dog allows more but is less impressed with what comes of that allowing.
In any case, according to this view, you will not be likely to witness your dog flying, for example.
It is, in fact, an extremely energetic enterprise to stretch your beliefs to include such phenomena as flying dogs.
It appears, at least, that energy is at the root of belief-shifting (much as if the belief is a massive object like our Sun). Space is warped around the massive object, and strong belief warps surrounding belief as well.
This all must take place according to mathematical principles, just like the gravitational pull of planets does.
It will seem then that belief, like a particle in space, at rest a small distance from another similar (or larger or smaller) particle, wil eventually join its neighbor to become a larger more complex particle. Much like the experience of seeing a strange object in the sky----- the proximity to another being (like your friend) not only ensures that each person will view the object, but further, the consensus of "what happened" creates a stronger belief than would have developed had you been alone that day.
It is not only that it appears that belief is like mass with all of its attributes, but in fact that it could be argued that the scientific basis of gravitational laws are themselves only a material representation of the process and system of belief itself.
In such a perspective, the speed of light is more properly the "tell" of the mathematical limits of belief, or the "speed of perception".

[Landi Star]

WordKeeper… thank you for your wonderful and informative post and quotes. I will look into the work of the people you mentioned (Bob Jahn and Jeffrey Schwartz)

The article by Daniel Gilbert in the NYT was intriguing. I was struck by the study in which people who were tested and found to have a gene that supposedly makes them a lot more at risk for a disease felt better than those who might have the gene but were not tested. Seems that it’s because they felt they could prepare for the disease and not remain in uncertainty, etc.

Like many people (unaware of LOA) they invest in beliefs such that having a certain gene means they will get a certain disease… and they’d rather know if they have it and live with that assumed “certainty” (however bleak the prognosis is) than with uncertainty.

I feel in this case ‘ignorance is bliss’. It’s the belief that the gene causes a disease which can actually cause the disease. So why take the test? Finding out one has this supposedly “bad gene” can make it more difficult to believe in health!

It reminded me of one of the stories in that New Scientist article I mentioned (The Science of Voodoo) in which a doctor misdiagnosed a man with terminal cancer, gave him a few months to live, and the man died in the allotted time, even though the diagnoses was wrong! It was only his belief that he was going to die that caused his death!

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alan white… thank you for your thoughts.
I agree that energy is at the root of belief-shifting. I call it “focusing belief-energy.” You have a point too that when 2 people think they saw/experienced the same thing the belief is strengthened. This might be slightly different, but my partner and I are experimenting with joint manifesting!

[alan white]

Originally Posted by Landi Star

WordKeeper… thank you for your wonderful and informative post and quotes. I will look into the work of the people you mentioned (Bob Jahn and Jeffrey Schwartz)

The article by Daniel Gilbert in the NYT was intriguing. I was struck by the study in which people who were tested and found to have a gene that supposedly makes them a lot more at risk for a disease felt better than those who might have the gene but were not tested. Seems that it’s because they felt they could prepare for the disease and not remain in uncertainty, etc.

Like many people (unaware of LOA) they invest in beliefs such that having a certain gene means they will get a certain disease… and they’d rather know if they have it and live with that assumed “certainty” (however bleak the prognosis is) than with uncertainty.

I feel in this case ‘ignorance is bliss’. It’s the belief that the gene causes a disease which can actually cause the disease. So why take the test? Finding out one has this supposedly “bad gene” can make it more difficult to believe in health!

It reminded me of one of the stories in that New Scientist article I mentioned (The Science of Voodoo) in which a doctor misdiagnosed a man with terminal cancer, gave him a few months to live, and the man died in the allotted time, even though the diagnoses was wrong! It was only his belief that he was going to die that caused his death!

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alan white… thank you for your thoughts.
I agree that energy is at the root of belief-shifting. I call it “focusing belief-energy.” You have a point too that when 2 people think they saw/experienced the same thing the belief is strengthened. This might be slightly different, but my partner and I are experimenting with joint manifesting!

Not when two people "think" they saw something, if we are talking about belief engendering reality. The belief that something was seen is the same as the thing itself. No difference.
Even if you can't easily imagine there being no objective thing in the sky, pretending that you are co-creating helps. Its reality hinges on the belief.
Let's say the agreement of having seen something is by itself complete.
No single thing really exists. Each has their own sighting. Yet the belief depends on an acceptance that one single objective thing was seen.
That is what belief is. It is only an acceptance that each is apart from the thing, so there are three things, me, you, and it.
People insist on dividing experience into "normal real things" and "the hidden spiritual realm".
What divides the two isn't any actual categorial difference. Only belief divides the known from the unknown. This is why UFO researchers begin to see UFOs once they commence to study them, or why placeboes work, or why the term, "mass hypnosis" was coined.
Also why Bigfoot is very real to some people, yet no evidence emerges. Nor will it until the "audience" of the public would find such an animal possible.

[SimonaRich]

What some generations new for thousands of years the science is discovering only now.

[Lil Chris]

Originally Posted by SimonaRich

What some generations new for thousands of years the science is discovering only now.

Even if they couldn't explain why. I saw something on the discovery channel about how the Chinese or Japanese (I can't remember now) would make samurai swords and knew how to make them really strong, but didn't necessarily know why (the chemical reactions and bonding of the metals).

This could easily apply to beliefs as well, we can see why a belief does a certain thing but, can't exactly explain why (the chemical process)...

[Landi Star]

alan white… deep stuff!
I might add that the UFO researchers may begin to see UFOs only IF they’ve been convinced by the data and start to believe in them… The ones that remain skeptical may never see them (unless the UFO-focus makes a deep impression).

I agree with WordKeeper’s quote about that we look for and find the evidence to substantiate our beliefs.

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SimonaRich and Lil Chris:

I’ve read similar things about ancient cultures discovering various things without fully knowing the workings, mechanisms or explanations. Al Lil Chris said, “This could easily apply to beliefs as well; we can see why a belief does a certain thing but, can't exactly explain why….”

Science may never be able to fully prove that beliefs indeed manifest, nor fully explain how beliefs affect things, but we (the lay-folks) may get so lucid about how beliefs create reality and so skilled at using thoughts/beliefs/energy to manifest, that “scientific proof” becomes irrelevant.

Who needs scientific validation?! We can be our own empirical scientists (re: LOA) and inspire & encourage each others with our findings and stories!