My latest book is “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely. You could equally call this  a business book or a social sciences book. The major idea of this book is this: human beings will often make what appear to be irrational decisions, but they make them in predictable ways. There are many, many applications in this book, but I want to focus on one study and its application.

The researcher realized that there is a stereotype that says Asian-Americans are good in the math and sciences. There is also a stereotype that says that women are poor in math and sciences. What happens to Asian-American women? Do they buy into the pro-math stereotype or the anti-math stereotype? To find the answer to this question the researcher divided a group of Asian-American women into two groups. The first group was asked questions which called to mind their gender. They discussed co-ed dorms and other feminine perspectives. The second group discussed topics which called their ethnic background to mind. Researchers asked questions about what languages were spoken at  home, cultural traditions, etc. Following these discussions both groups of women were given a mathematical test. Can you predict the results?

The Asian-Americans who were reminded about their status as women performed far worse on the math test than the women who were reminded that they were Asian. Their state of mind and expectations created different results for them.

In a related study, young undergraduates at NYU were asked to put jumbled sentences together. One group had words relating to age, infirmity. Their words included things like Florida, ancient, cane, false teeth. The other group had age-neutral words to work with. Once the sentences were assembled, the participants were told their study was over, and they were free to walk down a long corridor to exit the building. Now here is the remarkable thing: the age-based sentence group walked out of that building slower, with a halting gait, as if they were old! Compared to the other group of comparable NYU undergrads, this group of students exited the building substantially slower! Wow… the powerful suggestion of just assembling sentences created a difference between the groups.

So how does that apply to us? Well, there are two questions we need to ask ourselves.

First of all, what are the expectations we have about ourselves that either inspire us or hold us back?

Second, what are the expectations of others that we communicate day in and day out?

These are profound questions. Are we holding ourselves or others back because of false expectations? Are we able to inspire others with our expectations? Do we truly tend to get what we expect?

What are we expecting?