The Harvard Scientist Who Says You Can Use Your Thoughts To Improve Your Health | Ellen Langer

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Ellen J. Langer is the author of eleven books, including the international bestseller

Mindfulness, which has been translated into fifteen languages, and Counterclockwise:

Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility. Most recently, she is the author of The

Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.

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Langer is the recipient of, among other numerous awards and honors, a Guggenheim

Fellowship, the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public

Interest from the American Psychological Association, the Award for Distinguished

Contributions of Basic Science to the Application of Psychology from the American

Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology, and the Adult Development and

Aging Distinguished Research Achievement Award from the American Psychological

Association.

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She is the author of more than 200 research articles and her trailblazing experiments in

social psychology have earned her inclusion in The New York Times Magazine’s “Year

in Ideas” issue. A member of the psychology department at Harvard University and a

painter, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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In this episode we talk about:

The power of placebos
Why she isn’t a fan of positive thinking as it is talked about in new age circles
Her version of mindfulness, which is quite different from the version we usually talk about here on the show, which comes out of Buddhism
Psychological treatments for chronic illness