The Power of Suggestion

[hilbert90]

I've recently been debating someone about teaching math. I said that one shouldn't say a certain concept is "difficult" before the student tries to learn it because this will likely have the effect of making it more difficult to learn. I was wondering if anyone knew any experiments or papers that have been published on suggesting something is difficult actually making the task more difficult.

Obviously a very simple setup would be to give a control group of people foreign words to memorize a translation of and the same set to another group where it is suggested that the words have given people a lot of trouble in the past. My guess is that there would be a very significant difference in how easily or quickly they learned the words.

If anyone has any ideas on this or anything related or where else to ask that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[SWM]

There has definitely been research on this, just recently. Unfrotunatley i dont rmemeber were i read it, or who authored it.

The research does support your hypothesis though, telling people they can do something or something will be easier will result in a greater success rate and the opposite telling people that something is difficult will result in failure.

I think this might be called priming.

There was also some research done with patients who had schizophrenia and the doctors that treated them.
If the patient and the doctor beleived that recovery from schizophrenia was possible the patient was more likely to recover, and vice versa.

[Kiar]

It may not be very scientific but very interesting about the power of suggestion.



Unbelivable man.