by Steven Novella via NeuroLogica Blog

“I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”
- Daily Affirmations With Stuart Smalley.

The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. (more here)

Self-help books are full of advice for thinking positively, and using affirmations to tell ourselves that the reality we wish to be true is in fact true. This is interesting because psychologists have discovered that people in general have a large positive cognitive bias – a wishful thinking bias. All other things being equal, we will tend to assume that what we wish to be true is actually true. Sometimes we can maintain this belief despite significant contradictory evidence.

It may be that this bias exists because it relieves cognitive dissonance. Essentially, it makes us feel better, and that may be sufficient. However, there is also a theory that such wishful or positive thinking is, to an extent, self-fulfilling. People who think they will be successful will take advantage of opportunities and work harder to make that success a reality. Expectations can even affect other people, the so-called Pygmalian effect. If teachers believe that a student will perform better, that expectation may improve the student’s performance.

Richard Wiseman points out, however, that visualizing the goal (“I am a success in my business”) does not work (so much for positive affirmations). What is helpful is visualizing the process by which a goal can be achieved.

Within the “New Age” spiritual community, however, this psychological discussion over the impact of positive or wishful thinking is all moot. Within this community there is the widely held belief, or at least claim, that wishful thinking does not just create a successful attitude – it actually alters reality. This belief reached its pinnacle, perhaps, in the widely successful book, The Secret. This book promoted what it called the “Law of Attraction” – that wishing something to be true attracted that very thing to you. Essentially the secret is that the universe will answer your wishes – so wish away.

This is literally a childish attitude. Children often behave as if asking hard enough of the universe for something might produce the thing wished-for. Most adults have learned that the universe does not work this way – or perhaps they have just learned to hide this childish desire that they still harbor. They use their better developed frontal lobes to rationalize what they wish to be true (manifesting as a positive cognitive bias).  Reframing this wish-fulfillment desire as a “law” makes it sound a bit more respectable, however.  The Secret, and other such nonsense, in essence just gave some adults permission to embrace their childhood wish-fulfillment fantasy.

What does all this have to do with the Higgs boson?

A recent article by Mike Adams on his website, Divinity Now (Exploring Conscious Cosmology) argues that the scientists who “discovered” the Higgs actually got the results they wished for through “intention” – the word used by believers to refer to wishing, again to make it sound a bit more respectable. And yes – that is the same Mike Adams of NaturalNews infamy – the crank site that promotes, in my opinion, all sorts of medical pseudoscience. Apparently Adams is branching out into consciousness pseudoscience.

MORE . . .

Related articles

• The Higgs and Wishful Thinking (theness.com)
• Why The Electron Can’t Have a Mass Without the Higgs Field (profmattstrassler.com)
• The Higgs and Wishful Thinking (skepticblog.org)