Mind Over Mind: The Surprising Power of Expectations

We all know expectations matter - in school, in sports, in the stock market. From a healing placebo to a run on the bank, hints of their self-fulfilling potential have been observed for years. But we've never fully understood why.

Journalist Chris Berdik offers a captivating look at the frontiers of expectations research, revealing how our brains work in the future tense and how our assumptions - about the next few milliseconds or the next few years - bend reality.

We learn how placebo calories can fill us up, how fake surgery can sometimes work better than real surgery, and how even imaginary power can be corrupting. We meet scientists who have found that wearing taller and more attractive avatars in a virtual world boosts confidence in real life, gambling addicts whose brains make losing feel like winning, and coaches who put blurry glasses on athletes to lift them out of slumps.

Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, history, and fascinating true stories of expectations in action, Mind Over Mind offers a spirited journey into one of the most exciting areas of brain research today.