The Psychology of Possibilities: Extending the Limits of Human Functioning

Abstract

In a study by Langer and Crum (2007), female room attendants who were primed to view their work as a form of exercise demonstrated decreases in BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, and weight. This study showed that — especially for individuals unaware that they are getting required amounts of physical exercise — priming the idea of exercise can result in benefits without actually changing daily habits. The results support a monistic model of human functioning, which sees the mind and body as ontologically indistinct components of a single system. The study suggests that female attendants could not previously experience the benefits of their work owing to the lack of its inclusion in common conceptions and national public health definitions of physical activity. This calls into question the extent to which national conceptions and labels of health and disease perpetuate the prevalence of these diseases. As researchers and medical professionals, we still don’t fully know the extent to which the institutionalization of individuals with mental illness and with chronic disease is merely a direct result of the institution-alization of their labels and conceptions into the larger social system in the first place. In other words, it could be that we don’t really become sick until the hand that feeds us apples decides to call them bad apples.