Manifesting: How Powerful Are Our Thoughts?

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, we are pitting facts against finessing your future. We are looking into manifesting. Can you really use the power of your mind to create the future that you want? Because according to folks online, the answer is yes. It's f***ing real, man. Manifesting is real. This s***, it works. What I'm about to tell you is going to change your life. And here's what you need to do to change your life. You focus on what you want and then act as if you already have it. While you're writing this or typing this, I want you to genuinely feel the emotions as if that thing has already happened to you. So what would it feel like if you received what it is that you desired? How happy would you feel? What would that moment look like? We're method acting. We're cosplaying our future self. And before you know it, whatever you wished for will appear. And this idea that just by thinking about what you want, you can get it, it's become almost mainstream. One survey of over 300 people found that about a third of them believed manifestation could be real. And people say they've manifested all sorts of things. I manifested my crush. I also manifested some speaking opportunities, some partnerships. This is how I lost weight, a size 16 to a size 4. Literally, I manifested my green card. A Nespresso machine. I actually manifested a full man. And maybe it sounds strange that you could think your way to a Nespresso machine or a green card or a full man. But scientists have actually been studying the best way to achieve your goals for years. And that's what we're telling you about. Today. So get ready for your dreams to come true. Because when it comes to manifesting, there's a lot of. But then there's science. Science vs. Manifesting is coming up just after the break. As long as you believe it to be true. 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Today, we are manifesting our futures. We're making dreams come true. And look, already one of your dreams is going to come true. Because senior producer Rose Rivela is in the room. Sounds like you manifested some coffee not too long ago. Hi. Hello. Hi, Wendy. So a few weeks ago, just so the audience knows, we each decided we were going to manifest something. Try to do this. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And you were going to try to manifest doing well in a swimming race. Yeah. So I am going, I signed up to swim an open water race and swimming a mile at the beach, and I've never done that before. So that's what I decided to manifest. Like, just like a good race, safe race, finishing the race and not coming in last. Because there's also ego involved. Have you done this yet? Have you done the race yet? It's in a few days. Okay. So as we were chatting, we thought your manifestation goal, you know, it's kind of in your control, but we thought maybe ride up the ante a little for what I'm trying to manifest. Uh-huh. And so I, here's what I'm doing. I'm trying to manifest every time I need to ride my bike, it will not rain. I feel like that's a good one because it's very like universe, do me a solid. Yeah, that's right. And what I didn't tell you at the time. Is that as a kid, I believed, convinced myself that I could indeed make clouds disappear. Oh, so you were drawing on an ancient power. So when we would go on family trips, I have very distinct memories of mom saying, you know, we're going to go on a hike today, Wendy. So no clouds, please. And me being like, I've got it. And I was like, I'm going to go on a hike. the mythology of manifesting. - It goes a step further. not just you know what's a really nice thing to do just picture your goals and dreams you'll feel great they say those dreams will happen yeah so will they happen so i asked i asked laura about that so do people after they do the best possible selves intervention actually make their best possible self come true i have no idea i don't know um i don't know i don't know laura why don't you know they didn't test for it they didn't follow them you know 10 20 years later or whatever and as far as i can tell of all these all these studies that like had people do the best possible self thing none of them actually like that wasn't their goal they didn't they didn't find they didn't follow up and see like did you make it come true so who do we need for this for our big m magic i don't know if i could offer you big m magic but i can offer you big s science i'll take it i do have some answers for you about that and it's going to come up after the break this episode is brought to you by sofi the all-in-one finance app where you can bank borrow and invest it's time to achieve your financial ambitions earn more on your savings with the sofi bank high yield savings account ditch your higher interest credit card debt with a sofi personal loan or start investing on an easy to use platform with sofi invest wherever you are on your financial journey sofi has got you covered learn more at sofi.com spotify this episode is brought to you by born in roma fragrances by valentino beauty the iconic fragrance duo donna born in roma eau de parfum is a feminine fragrance featuring juicy black currant central jasmine woody cashmere and warm vanilla its masculine counterpart womo born in roma eau de toilette has notes of fresh violet leaf aromatic sage green vetiver spicy ginger and mineral salt shop at macys.com this episode is brought to you by sofi the all-in-one finance app the sooner you start investing the more potential you have to build your money even for beginners sofi makes it simple with an easy to use app to get you going sofi is offering up to one thousand dollars in stock when you open and fund a sofi self-directed brokerage account learn more at sofi.com spotify brokerage offered through sofi securities llc member finra sipc terms apply thinking about refreshing the carpet in your home now's the time to do it for a limited time at the home depot get 10 off installed carpet projects on trusted brands like life proof life proof with pet proof technology home decorators collection and traffic master plus with installation starting at just 49 cents per square foot upgrading your space is more affordable than ever at the home depot offer valid september 24th 2026 through october 4th 2026 exclusions apply for licenses see home depot.com license numbers welcome back today we are manifesting we are trying to make our dreams come true with our minds senior producer rose rimla is telling us all about it hello wendy um yeah i wanted to check in about your manifesting experience you said that you were manifesting sunny days while bike riding or at least no rain and you sent me some evidence that you were doing your homework that's right i'm a good student there is this gray cloud looming it will not rain it will not rain the gray cloud that i see before me will dissipate it will not rain and i too have been trying to manifest something a good swim so i'm imagining that i'm in the water i'm towards the end of the race i'm watching everyone on shore cheering and as i'm swimming the water is getting shallower and shallower i'm getting up to the shore and i get out of the water and i'm like oh my god i'm going to die i'm going to die i'm going to die and i cross the finish line and i'm just celebrating with everyone and eating a hot dog maybe um and then i check the results later and i'm fifth place i love it you're like you can manifest whatever you want you could have been first place oh yeah you're right you're right oh i'm ruining it i'm sending out my negative vibes of course and you're thinking no no no manifesting dreams i want to be fifth i don't even need a medal oh rose and you call yourself american remember how remember my score on the narcissist test i think so the idea here behind this this whole thing is that um you're you're supposed to be putting out positive vibrations into the universe and then the universe will match your positive vibrations um i've heard it described as like turning around and turning around and turning around and turning around and turning around and turning yourself into an antenna that you like tune to what frequency you want um the universe to be on so like it only you send the signals this is how manifestation is supposed to work yeah basically i'm summarizing a bunch of different schools of thoughts because this whole concept has been around at least a century and you know there was this big book that came out about it a while back the secret uh if you remember that yes wow but moving away from vibes the big science question here is does the act of like thinking about manifesting something up your chances that you'll actually get what you want and for this we need gabriella etienne she is a professor of psychology at new york university and her research is all about how people turn their wishes and fantasies into things that they can actually achieve so she had this one big question that i was going to ask her and she said i'm going to experiment where um one of the things that they did was they recruited students who were in their last year of grad school and asked them do you ever have you know positive fantasies about your future job once you get out of grad school and she found that some people just naturally do this a lot they do this more than other people and so what's cool about the study is she followed up a couple years later and asked them basically like how is it going with your career are you getting a lot of job offers are you making a good salary are you getting a lot of money are you making a good salary and what we find is that the more positively these university graduates fantasize about their success in work life the less successful they were two years later the more positively that they fantasized the less successful they were basically backfired yeah the more they dreamed about like getting a job and having a job that they liked that paid them well the less likely they were to have a job to they had less they reported having like fewer job offers and they made less money than people who didn't really fantasize about that stuff wow wow so less job offers less money totally different to those folks on socials we were hearing from before and i found other examples of manifesting backfiring there was a survey of almost 400 people that found the ones who believed in manifesting the most were more likely to have made risky financial investments they did stuff like they bought crypto um they believed in some like get rich quick stuff and they were more likely to have declared bankruptcy than other people oh okay yeah which made me think of all the advice from manifesting people about how you need to spend so much time you know daydreaming and like just thinking about all these good things that are going to come to you so that sounds actually like pretty given your results maybe that's really bad advice it's good advice if you want to just feel good it makes you feel good we found that too but if you really want to go and get your fantasies in reality then it's bad advice and does gabrielle know why it backfired well what might be going on is that the people who are fantasizing more were putting in less work to actually get what they wanted like gabrielle found that those graduate students that she followed up with two years later um the ones who fantasized a lot they weren't putting in as many job applications as their peers and there was a similar study she did about college students fantasizing about getting good grades and the ones who fantasize the most about their good grades spent less time studying so gabriella thinks that this backfiring effect is all about where you put your energy maybe people don't put so much effort in their realization of the positive fantasies they spend too much time off in la la land they forget to actually fill out their job too much time and what we later found in in the experiments is that they they feel already arrived they feel already in the positive future our mind is very strong so they feel in the positive future and if you already feel accomplished what do you do you relax yeah it's not just that people were less motivated. She's also seen a physiological reaction in people's bodies. So in a study where they had people fantasize while they measured their blood pressure, she found that their blood pressure actually went down while they were fantasizing. So her idea is that as you're fantasizing and feeling good and relaxed, you just have less fire in your ass to actually go out and then accomplish these goals. That's how Gabrielle thinks about it. Yeah, that's right. And I will say this is different from sort of generally having a positive or optimistic outlook on life. You know, being a person who kind of generally believes that things will go okay for you, things will work out. That's actually associated with good outcomes, even being good for your health. But fantasizing, not so much. So then I guess for folks who do have goals and want to achieve them, but has science learned a better way to do this? Do we have a science-backed way to manifest? Yeah. I mean, there's actually a whole branch of psychology that's dedicated to figuring out how to help people set and achieve goals. And we can draw from that. Great. It turns out a critical thing is not being too Pollyanna about what you want. You actually have to consider the hard stuff or bad stuff that might come up. And I think that's a really important thing. Which is the exact opposite to TikTok, right? Which is just saying, you know, just focus on. Just think about what you want. Yeah. And scientists like Gabriela have come up with some, I guess, you know, to compete with our TikTok colleagues out there, we should probably call them hacks. Right. Okay. So hack number one, think about your obstacles. Yeah. And Gabriela has tested this by having people pick a goal and imagine why that goal would be so great, you know, but then also imagine what the obstacles might be to getting there. So like add in a splash of realism. And she's found that this approach works better than just focusing on the goal or just focusing on the obstacles. You need both together. Great. And she's done experiments where this technique has gotten people to do more exercise, to deal with issues at work, and has even gotten children to do their homework. So that's really something. Okay. Okay. But if you really want to take it up a notch, you got to go a little further, which brings us to hack two, use if-then statements. I remember these. Yeah, from our ADHD episode. So these come up in ADHD coping strategies as well. So the idea is to think up specific obstacles that could come up in, you know, stopping you from getting your goal. And think about what you're going to do. If you're going to do something, that obstacle comes up. And put it in the statement, if blank, then why? So if this happens, then I'll do why. For example, there was a study of T girls who wanted to avoid getting pregnant. And the researchers had half the girls do this exercise where they made if-then statements about what could go wrong with their birth control. They said stuff like, if I forget to take my pill one day, then I will, you know, use a condom the next time I have sex. Or if my partner doesn't want to use a condom, then I will, I don't know. Tell them to f*** off. Yeah. And researchers followed up with these people a couple years later and found that in the group that made these if-then planning statements, there were half as many pregnancies among them compared to a control group. Uh-huh. Wow. Wow. A review paper found that overall, people using these two, max, imagining an obstacle to their goal and then coming up with an if-then statement for what to do, generally works pretty well. The paper found a small to medium effect size for people achieving their goals using these methods. A small to medium effect. Which in psychology is not bad. I mean, that's true. That's the world, that's the entire field of psychology is based on small to medium effect sizes. And actually, Wendy, now I guess I can finally ask you, did you get rained on? No. Oh, forget it. Throw the whole episode out. Manifestation works. Oh my god. Sometimes it was, yeah, it was really quite surprising. The, I would arrive at my destination and rain would start. Well, Wendy, you may very well be a weather witch and I, I wish that for you. Right. But actually, like seriously, what do you think explains that? Um, coincidence of course. Uh-huh. But you know what? Maybe because I really wanted it to happen, I was probably just way more aware of the weather than I normally would. So leading up to the time I would have to go. I wouldn't cheat. I wouldn't look at the radar. Uh-huh. But maybe if I'm being really honest with myself, I would think, you know what? I could see some clouds off in the distance, but it's looking pretty good now. I'll go now instead of- I'll just leave a little earlier. I'll leave, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just became hyper aware of the weather. Yeah, I think so. Plus, I mean, I think if you were to keep doing this, there might be times when you get like a little drizzled on and you're like, oh, that doesn't count. Or yeah, I don't know. You will just notice moving forward every time that did, it did supposedly work and you might not notice every time it didn't really work. Classic confirmation bias. For sure. Of course. And also, I think a lot of us have a certain amount of main character syndrome. I'm not accusing you, Wendy, but I think- Definitely, definitely not fifth place, Rose. It reminds me actually of a story that Laura King told me. She's the psychologist that we heard from earlier. It was about something that happened to her when she was in college. And at the time, she was training to be a singer and she was at a voice lesson one day. And I was trying to hit this high note and trying to hit this high note and I could not do it. So at the end of my lesson, like the last few minutes of my lesson, I was like, this is my lesson. My teacher said, let's try this one more time. And so he's running up the scale and he's running up the scale. And I'm trying to hit that note. And when you're trying to hit that really high note, right, you're almost whooping as if you're making a siren sound, right? Like a child. And so I'm making this noise and suddenly this, you know, I open my mouth as wide as I could and I hit the note and I sustained that note. And I stood there on this stage. And this amazing sound is coming out of me. And then the building started to shake. And the floor of the stage is shivering under my feet. And this old building is like, snow is falling off the roof in these grand, boom, boom. And I'm standing there sustaining this note, right? I caused an earthquake, right? In rural Ohio, in the middle of January, I'm standing there and I'm thinking, oh my God, right? Like I caused an earthquake. This is incredible. I felt like I had discovered my superpower, right? And I was thinking, I'm standing there thinking, I will only use these powers for good. My voice teacher, who was a very, you know, religious slash spiritual man, I am not kidding you, got down on his at the piano bench. Wow. Okay. So this became a kind of super meaningful, personal touchstone, right? Like I'll never forget that time I caused an earthquake. Of course not. And I've just shared the story so many times. And then a few years ago, I thought, did that happen? Yeah. You're like, wait, what? And so I started looking it up. And it turns out there was an earthquake. On this day in January in Ohio at exactly that time. And that's when I started thinking about, oh my God, like all over Ohio, so many people caused that earthquake, right? So many, like someone slammed a door and it started. Someone sneezed really hard. Someone turned on their hairdryer, right? Yeah. All of us caused that earthquake because that's how human cognitive processes are, right? Something big happens and we're like, whoa, what did I do? Mm. Yeah. Okay. So Rose, your, your swim, your big swim is in a couple of days, right? Yes. So yeah, I'll call you afterwards. I'll let you know how it went. Great. Good luck. Hello? Hello, Wendy. It is I. I have, I have completed my race. I don't know why I said it like that. Did you have a good swim? Yes. The weather was perfect. Wow. You're welcome. Did you get crowd cheering on the other side? Actually, yeah, it did kind of end the way I had envisioned it in my, my goal that I, you know, I was swimming, the water is getting shallower and shallower and people were cheering and like waving me in and, uh, that part came true. But the big question, fifth place? I got 71st place. But you said for yourself. What's your age category? Did that change it? In my age category. How do you feel? first open water swim. Yeah. Yeah. I feel good. And I have one more thing to tell you, Wendy. Oh, yeah. This week, there were 32 citations in this episode. Oh, great. If people want to see them, they should click on the link in our show notes for our transcript. And that's where all the citations are. Great. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Katie Foster-Keys, Michelle Dang, and Meryl Horne. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all of the researchers we reached out to for this episode, including Dr. Lucas Dixon. A special thanks to Mark Johnson. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We are everywhere. And if you like what we're doing, give us a five-star review. It helps others find the show. If you are listening on Spotify, follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time. On any journey using Uber, it helps to know you're getting into the right car. Pin verification adds an extra step to make sure your ride is yours. Before the trip begins, your app gives you a unique pin. Just tell it to your driver, and they'll enter it in their app before the ride can start. That way, you know you're in the right car taking the right trip, and your driver knows you're the right passenger. Make sure your ride is your ride with pin verification from Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off. This is your home, Road Warrior Mom. Home of the Save. 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