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]

I want to get back into riding again - I took lessons seriously as a teenager and then Life Happened and it's been a while - and that's one issue I have to get over. My body keeps going 'but we're probably much more BREAKABLE now, are you SURE?'

Feh. I miss horses, I will triumph! :)

But yes, I know what you mean about ponies/mules/donkeys often having that attitude. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. (Actually, I think it's a good thing for a lot of kids because kids are not known for their judgment skills and sometimes, having a pony who'll go 'are you NUTS? I'm not doing that!' will save their bacon. :) )

Oddly, to some extent, that is also an attitude that, as I understand it, people who do Three Day Eventing or hunting look for in their horses - maybe a little less so (because they do want the horses to trust them to jump something that might look odd but is actually safe, since course designers like to make odd-looking jumps as a test) but they definitely want a degree of self-preservation because when you're jumping mostly fixed jumps and fences and that sort of thing that won't fall down easily, you REALLY want your horse to be willing to go 'you know, we're not going to clear this, I am going to stop/run out' instead of trying, chesting the jump, and flipping over and squishing you flat. Though apparently this is a trait that seems to be getting harder to find.

[mouseworks]

Ponies in the US are notorious for deciding that having children on their backs at all is an imposition.

[quiet000001]

We have a shortage of decent pony riders in the US who are old enough but still small enough to actually train the smaller ponies. Add that to a general climate which tends towards 'bubble wrap your child' parenting, and you have issues getting ponies trained properly.

(Not that I think that a novice kid should be tossed up on a green or rank pony, but there does seem to be much more of an attitude in the UK where once you've got the basics, it's expected that you'll just learn to deal with training issues and if you fall off, unless you're seriously hurt - which is pretty unlikely if you're wearing proper safety equipment and on small ponies - you just get back on and carry on with what you were trying to do.)

So basically in the US, we teach ponies that if they get the rider off then they get a break while everyone fusses over the rider's bruise and debates if it needs an hospital visit, and in the UK they teach ponies that if they get the rider off the rider is more than likely to just get right back on. (And if that particular rider is too injured to do so, there's probably someone else who can fill in just long enough to put the pony through the paces so it doesn't think it's gotten out of working.)

[mouseworks]

The code from my mother, who learned to ride in Kentucky, was get back on a horse that threw you. I'd always thought that was about making sure the rider didn't lose nerve, hadn't thought of it from the perspective of the horse before.