In 1998 psychologists Ap Dijksterhuis and Ad van Knippenberg at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, asked half a group of volunteers to carry out a simple mental exercise that involved imagining the mindset of a typical university professor. The other half imagined a football hooligan. All then had to answer some general knowledge questions. The professor group got 60% of their questions right, while the hooligan group got only 46%.
Focusing on the body rather than the mind, John Bargh and his colleagues at New York University asked their volunteers to do a mental task involving words relating to old age, such as “wrinkled”, “grey” and “bingo”.
A second group were shown words unrelated to old age. The researchers then said the experiment was over, and secretly recorded the time each participant took to walk down the long hallway to the exit. Those with old age on their mind took significantly longer to walk down the corridor.
So it seems that just a few moments of thinking time can prime you to perform either better or worse than normal at both mental and physical tasks.
.png)