Neuro-Linguistic Programming: Does it do anything?

[reddragdiva]

... No.

The theory doesn't hold, so if you want to build further theory on it you're out of luck. (Wikipedia summarises the problems pretty well: the models are provably incorrect, it appears oddly hard to teach and communicate, and advocates even try claiming science is inadequate to analysing it.)

The master hack for getting people to do what you want is confidence: simply, to confidently tell them to do what you want. NLP works insofar as having a theory at all, even an erroneous one, increases your confidence. And what NLP actually sells is getting people to do what you want. So NLP delivers what it's selling. Sort of.

(I said "simple," not "easy." But that is the actual answer.)

Many other such marketed mental hacks work the same way, including ones that sell themselves as therapies rather than control techniques. They pretty much all work by applied confidence. Some with an admixture of exploiting cognitive biases.

If you don't buy that and think I'm just mired in pseudosceptic negativity, you could always try using NLP for weight loss, psoriasis or to cure cancer.

Comments

[quiet000001]

are you telling me homeopathy doesn't work? It doesn't really change the vibrations of the water molecules? *gasp*

(Or whatever the hell it is they claim anyway. I don't even understand how they think it works.)

(Slightly unrelated, but one of my favorite things to come up when you start getting alternative/herbal medication types going on about how drugs are evil and natural is better is when one of the natural is better types starts recommending things like willow bark tea. Because when it comes from a tree in a uncertain strength, it's fine, but when it comes from a production line with a lab with quality control checks to make sure each tablet has X amount, and goes into a bottle marked "aspirin" it's suddenly EVIL. Wtf?)

[mouseworks]

I have a friend here who is seriously in to herbal medicines. Here is Nicaragua where some of the herbs are quite powerful (often rather poisonous), so the placebo effect is something like "all the toxins leave your system and get purged, so you will feel some pain but that's the medicine working." What I've heard from her is "when bacteria become resistant to modern drugs, we'll have to go back to herbal medicine." Yes, and we'll die of infections just like we did before antibiotics.