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“In manifesting, at the bare minimum, what we’re going to do is we’re going to allow a person to have a positive perception of reality and overall improve their happiness, reduce stress (and) give people hope,” TikTok influencer Sarah Perl, explained in an interview earlier this year. “There’s nothing to lose.”
Only according to Yale psychologist Laurie Santos there actually is. Science, she recently explained, shows manifestation actually backfires.
The manifestation guru vs. the Yale professor
Under the handle HotHighPriestessPerl teaches her more than 2.5 million followers how to use the “power of their mind” to attract whatever they want in life. She’s one of many manifestation influencers touting the transformative power of positive thinking online.
Santos is an online sensation too, though in a very different way. An Ivy League research psychologist, her class ‘Psychology and the Good Life’ struck a nerve with Yale’s stressed out undergrads and became the school’s most popular course ever. That runaway success lifted Santos’ profile and she’s become a media regular (including here on Inc.).
Her recent appearances included the No Small Endeavor podcast where Santos insists Perl is dead wrong. Manifestation isn’t harmless if woo-woo positivity. Research, she explains, shows that spending too much time visualizing your own success actually makes you less likely to achieve your goals.
Everyone agrees positive thinking is great
‘Think positive’ is about the most common and harmless-sounding piece of success advice out there. And for good reason. Research shows positivity improves our physical health and our cognition. Very few people would pursue high risk, high upside undertakings like entrepreneurship without high, perhaps even delusional, levels of optimism.
Santos is clear that these upsides of positive thinking are very real.
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