Mel Robbins describes a Dartmouth psychology experiment where participants with a fake scar drawn on their face reported feeling judged by strangers, even though the scar was removed before they talked to anyone. The study shows how our expectations shape what we perceive. Your self-doubt works the same way: the insecurities you carry into a conversation become the reality you experience.
Chapters
What drives self-doubt? I wanna share with you one particular study, which I have never forgotten from the moment that I came across it. It's from the late '70s, early '80s. So a psychology professor by the name of Robert Kleck at Dartmouth, he conducted this fascinating experiment, which really reveals how self-doubt works and where it comes from. He brought people together and with one group, he drew a scar on their face, on the right side of their face between their ear and their mouth. This really noticeable, visible disfigurement. He let them see themselves in a mirror so they can go, okay, I have this scar on my face. And then he sent everyone out into conversations with strangers. Now, after the conversations, he then asked everybody, how did you feel the conversation went? The group without the scar felt like it was a fine conversation. Yeah. The group with the scar reported feeling judged. They felt like it was tense. Their conversation partner was cold. And they felt like they were treated differently because of that scar. Now, that in itself would have been a really interesting experiment on prejudice and discrimination. Or perception of. Or perception of. Exactly. And that's where we get to the interesting piece, because if I pause right now and I take you back right before these people were sent into these conversations, so they've just seen themselves in the mirror, right? Right before they're sent into it, the researcher said, okay, I'm going to apply some moisturizing cream to the scar to set it. So it doesn't crack. What was done though was the scar was removed entirely. Whoa. There was no scar. These people went into these conversations believing they had a scar. And they didn't. They didn't. And that led them to have an expectation about how people would treat them, which then led them to pay attention to things that objectively did not exist. It changed how they showed up. They created the reality they expected. And this is called expectation bias. We don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we expect it to be. Now, when we think about what that means for us, when you're thinking about this from your own perspective, anyone who is watching or listening, what kind of scars are you carrying into every single conversation, every interaction, every meeting, every interview, every conversation with your loved one? How is that affecting how you not only show up, but what you're interpreting and noticing that may not even be there. Because until we're aware of these scars, we don't realize just how much they're creating the world that we're living in.
