Social Workout

Academics

NYU Profs Attack Oprah Nation

Set your intention!
Put it out there, and the universe will take care of the rest...
You can have anything you want that you first create as a possibility, and then enroll others in your having...
The Secret Law of Attraction...

Sound familiar? These are all variations on a foundational concept of popular psychology: That verbalizing a dream, i.e. sharing it with others, is the first step to making that dream come true. Hello Oprah, Landmark Forum, and Deepak Chopra's daughters' shiny new Web site Intent.com.

Not so fast say some buzzkill NYU psychologists. Apparently, talking the talk, makes us feel good, but doesn't much improve our execution. Worsens it, in fact. Seems once we've put our dream out there, we feel so good, that we don't feel the need to actually do any work. Hilarious. Depressing. Maybe not true.