Stanford researchers explore how the human mind shapes reality

The mind can shape health, behavior and maybe even society as a whole. Stanford researchers are bridging disciplines to understand what our minds can do and how they do it.

BY NATHAN COLLINS
Search the internet for “the power of the mind,” and you’ll find some strange things: a program that promises to show you how to attract success simply by focusing on it, a great many nutritional supplements and a video purporting to show a Shaolin monk breaking things with his head. But beyond the hucksters and the hype, the mind actually can do some remarkable things, including shaping our health and well-being.

“Our minds aren’t passive observers, simply perceiving reality as it is. Our minds actually change reality,” said Alia Crum, an assistant professor of psychology and director of the Stanford Mind and Body Lab. Crum and other Stanford researchers – including many who recently took part in a World Economic Forum IdeasLab panel and Worldview Stanford’s Power of Minds meeting, both sponsored in part by the Stanford Neurosciences Institute – are bridging medicine, psychology, education, business and more to understand not just what our minds can do, but also how they do it.

Shaping health

Probably the best known way the mind shapes reality is the placebo effect, where people get better if they simply believe they are being treated for a disease. For ages, that was viewed as just an experimental hassle – something to take into account when testing the effectiveness of a new drug, for example.

It’s essential to recognize that mindsets are not peripheral, but central to health and behavior.

—ALIA CRUM

Assistant Professor of Psychology

Yet doctors are starting to rethink placebos not as a hassle but as an actual path to better health. After all, placebo effects and the underlying mindsets and social contexts that create them have real effects on health, from reducing anxiety and blood pressure to easing pain and boosting immune systems.

Crum and colleagues have shown that those effects extend beyond medicine per se. People who believe doing physical work in a job counts as exercise live longer lives, independent of how much exercise they actually get. Likewise, telling people a milkshake they drank was “indulgent” made them feel more full. Telling them a drink they were consuming had caffeine raised their blood pressure.

“It’s essential to recognize that mindsets are not peripheral, but central to health and behavior,” Crum said. “If we truly want to tackle the diseases and crises of our time, we need to more effectively acknowledge and leverage the power of mindset.”