5/20/2023 0 Comments Counter clockwise langer![]() Immensely readable and truly fascinating, Counterclockwise offers a transformative and bold new paradigm: the psychology of possibility. With only subtle shifts in our thinking, our language, and in our expectations, she tells us that we can begin to change the ingrained behaviour that sap health, optimism, and vitality from our lives. Drawing on landmark work in the field and her own body of colourful and highly original experiments, Langer shows that the magic of rejuvenation and ongoing good health lies in being aware of the ways we mindlessly react to social and cultural cues. The retelling of the study has been snapped up by Jennifer Aniston's new production company, with Aniston tipped to play Prof Langer.If we could turn back the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back physically? For more than thirty years, award-winning psychologist Ellen Langer has studied this provocative question, and now, in Counterclockwise, she presents a conclusive answer: opening our minds to what's possible, instead of clinging to notions about what's not, can lead to better health - at any age. In any event there is likely to be more interest in the 1979 experiment. "If you take something like heart disease positive thinking can have a role, because while it won't heal your heart on its own, positive thinking will feed into positive actions like healthy eating or exercise which will help." Whatever the cause he believes there is a place for the type of positive thinking shown in the study. ![]() Prof Weisman believes another factor could be motivational, the men are simply trying harder by the end of the week, or it could be similar to hypnotism, where people do better on memory tests because they are told they have a better memory. The same could be going on here, by getting people to act younger they feel younger." "Part of it could be self perception, for example if you get people to smile they feel happier. Why some people age faster than others is mysterious "I think there could be multiple things going on here and the question is which explanations really hold water. Richard Wiseman, professor of public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, thinks the results of Prof Langer's experiments are fascinating but the big question is what's causing them. "My own view of ageing is that one can, not the rare person but the average person, live a very full life, without infirmity, without loss of memory that is debilitating, without many of the things we fear." Now after over 30 years of research into the connection between the mind and the body and with the confidence and conviction of a Harvard professor, she feels she has a fuller story to tell. As a young academic, she feared this might taint the experiment and affect the acceptance of the results. She first published the scientific data in 1981 but she left out many of the more colourful stories. Prof Langer believes that by encouraging the men's minds to think younger their bodies followed and actually became "younger". By the final morning one man had even decided he could do without his walking stick.Īs they waited for the bus to return them to Boston, Prof Langer asked one of the men if he would like to play a game of catch, within a few minutes it had turned into an impromptu game of "touch" American football. Over the days, Prof Langer began to notice that they were walking faster and their confidence had improved. They weren't being treated as incompetent or sick. "You have to understand, when these people came to see if they could be in the study and they were walking down the hall to get to my office, they looked like they were on their last legs, so much so that I said to my students 'why are we doing this? It's too risky'."īut soon the men were making their own meals. Understandably, Prof Langer herself had doubts. The men were entirely immersed in an era when they were 20 years younger. "I told them they could move them an inch at a time, they could unpack them right at the bus and take up a shirt at a time." When they got off the bus at the retreat, Prof Langer did not help the men carry their suitcases in.
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