As you sow, so shall you reap?

Literature in Psychology is full of concepts about thoughts, beliefs, and actions. How thoughts are created, what are their influences, how thoughts become beliefs, and beliefs guide our decision process- these are the pet domains of both academic scholars and motivational speakers. A so-called New-Age concept made famous by Rhonda Byrne- The Secret aka The Law of Attraction (LoA)- technically isn’t new age. Even before the famous book/movie, people have talked about it in different forms. In brief, for the very few people who are hearing it for the first time, this concept requires us to think (or focus) only on what we want to achieve. Not contradictory thoughts that go against our desires. That is because thoughts have energy, and energy resonates with like objects. Having the right thoughts creates the right energy that eventually comes true as a physical manifestation.

One may or may not agree with the metaphysical part. But there is no doubt about the fact that thoughts influence behaviour. And having the right thoughts may result in the person taking the appropriate action to achieve the result. Psychologists have even talked about priming, where not natural but artificially induced thoughts have caused people to alter their behaviour. In controlled experiments, different cues eliciting different emotions made people behave differently. In an experiment, making people hear words associated with old age (grey, wrinkle, bald, etc) is shown to slow their walking speeds in a particular corridor!

There is no doubt about the power of thoughts? But the question remains- does the LoA work? Can thoughts become things and can we really reap what we are thinking about? The following analogy may help. If we sow nightshade, there is no question about a harvest of mango fruits. But does sowing a mango plant always result in mango fruits? No- it also depends on soil nutrients, weather conditions, and even random or unaccounted factors. Even after there is a mango tree, there is no control on the number of mangoes harvested per year or for that matter, the sweetness of the fruits. And when the mangoes get harvested, there is no control on the market price! That is why the law of attraction does work at some times. One cannot and should not think only of the fruits- the constraints are important as well. Using another analogy, focusing only on the rose presents an incomplete picture- there are thorns as well. Needless to say, the concept of  LoA has been heavily abused in many contexts- like in the propagation of pyramid schemes, by gambling addicts, and in the execution of risky projects.

No psychological concept- whether academically rigorous or metaphysical- comes without caveats. Blanket generalization of any concept, whether in the physical, biological, or social sciences leads to errors, at times disastrous in nature. There is always a context. In many cases, the contexts are understood, like in Newton’s laws of Mechanics. Those apply to uniformly accelerated macroscopic bodies with velocities much less than that of light. In other cases, like the Law of Attraction, the dynamics are still unknown.