Thoughts And The Reality of Pets & Children

So while we're still on the topic of thoughts affecting reality, let's turn our attention to our animal friends. Do you have a pet dog or cat? Would you like it to be smarter? Just start believing that it is smarter, and it will immediately start becoming smarter.

What? You don't believe Mr Wang? Let me make an even more grandiose claim. This "thought-affects-reality" method will work even for your pet hamster. Start believing that it is a smart little rodent, and its IQ will also expand.

Yes, this has been scientifically verified for rodents. In a famous experiment, a group of graduate students were given some rats and were told that these rats had been specially bred for their superior intelligence, especially for their "navigational" ability. Another group of students were given some other rats and were told that these rats had been specially bred for their stupidity.

All the students were then asked to train their respective rats to figure their way out of mazes. True enough, the supposedly "smart" rats ended up performing much better than the "stupid" rats. Most of the "stupid" rats did not even manage to make it past the start line in the maze.

Of course, the truth was that none of the rats had been specially bred for anything. All the rats had been randomly chosen for this experiment. They were "equal" rats. However, the (objectively false) belief that certain rats were smart led to the superior performance of those rats. The (objectively false) belief that certain rats were stupid led to the inferior performance of those rats.

Another simple example of thought affecting reality.

"Mr Wang, that's amazing," you say. "But are you sure it works for dogs and cats?"

Well, actually I don't know of any such experiments involving dogs or cats. After Robert Rosenthal finished his rat experiment, he skipped the dogs and cats and went on directly to human children.

In a school environment, teachers were, in effect, tricked into believing that certain children had been tested, and had already been proven, to be smarter than the other children. All other variables were controlled for. Eight months later, due to the teachers' false beliefs, the supposedly "smarter" children indeed turned out to be smarter. Despite having the same teachers and the same classroom lessons and the same school environment, the supposedly "smarter" children showed more intellectual gain on their IQ tests than the other children. In some cases they showed about twice as much improvement as the other children:

"All of the children in the study were administered a nonverbal test of intelligence, which was disguised as a test that would predict intellectual "blooming." The test was labeled "The Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition."

There were 18 classrooms in the school, three at each of the six grade levels. Within each grade level, the three classrooms were composed of children with above-average ability, average ability, and below-average ability, respectively. Within each of the 18 classrooms, approximately 20% of the children were chosen at random to form the experimental group. The teachers of these children were told that their scores on the "Test of Inflected Acquisition" indicated they would show surprising gains in intellectual competence during the next 8 months of school.

The only difference between the experimental group and the control group children, then, was in the minds of the teachers.

At the end of the school year, 8 months later, all the children were retested with the same test of intelligence. Overall, the children from whom the teachers had been led to expect greater intellectual gain showed a significantly greater gain than did the children of the control group, thereby supporting the "Pygmalion" hypothesis." Link.

Here's the simple, practical summary. If you want your children to be smart, start believing that they are smart. If you want your children to be stupid, start believing that they are stupid. Whatever you choose to believe about your children, will come true.

Now, Mr Wang invites you to consider this. If your beliefs about another person, or even a rat, can already affect his/its mental abilities, how would your beliefs about yourself affect ..... your own mental abilities?