The Expectation Effect

How Your Mindset Can Change Your World

By: David Robson

Narrated by: John Sackville

“As David Robson makes plain in this compelling book, the way we think about the world can profoundly shape how we navigate it. Based in science and packed with smart advice, The Expectation Effect will expand your mind—and maybe even extend your life.”
—Daniel Pink, New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human

A journey through the cutting-edge science of how our mindset shapes every facet of our lives, revealing how your brain holds the keys to unlocking a better you

What you believe can make it so.

You’ve heard of the placebo effect and how sugar pills can accelerate healing. But did you know that sham heart surgeries often work just as well as placing real stents? Or that people who think they’re particularly prone to cardiovascular disease are four times as likely to die from cardiac arrest? Such is the power and deadly importance of the expectation effect—how what we think will happen changes what does happen.

Melding neuroscience with narrative, science journalist David Robson takes readers on a deep dive into the many life zones the expectation effect permeates. We see how people who believe stress is beneficial become more creative when placed under strain. We see how associating aging with wisdom can add seven plus years to your life. People say seeing is believing but, over and over, Robson proves that the converse is truer: believing is seeing.

The Expectation Effect is not woo-woo. You cannot think your way into a pile of money or out of a cancer diagnosis. But just because magical thinking is nonsense doesn’t mean rational magic doesn’t exist. Pointing to accepted psychology and objective physiology, Robson gives us the practical takeaways we need to improve our fitness, productivity, intelligence, and happiness. Any reader who wants to take their fate into their own hands need only pick up this book.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.

One of the most thought provoking and belief-challenging books I’ve ever listened to.

I’ll admit was a little bit skeptical. We’ve all heard the anecdotal cliches about thoughts and attitudes affecting our behavior and our lives. This book is entirely based around clinical studies, which demonstrate over and over again, the significant impact our expectations have all aspects of our lives, including physiological processes (like metabolism and aging) that I previously thought of as more or less determined by genetics and physical factors only. Without a doubt, the most interesting and “belief-challenging” book I’ve read on mind and body.

Proof to support what I always believed

I have always believed that the mind can control all aspects of your life. I particularly related to the chapter about the effects of aging. Being in my sixties, I have personally experienced negative attitudes from young and old regarding aging. I truly believe that “age ain’t nothing but a number”! Great book! I will recommend to others and listen again.

Really Inspiring !

It’s such a pragmatic way, which should be made illegal, or looking at changing your mindset and tips and tricks, backed up by science on the way to which you master change.

Expect the book to be good

The stories in the book were very good. The science behind them was better. Recommend for everyone to read and listen. The story of the blind lady was something. Also the one about the standardized tests.

Life changing tier

It makes it to my highest tier of books alongside deep work. Got to come back and re listen to this one