83. The psychology of 'lucky girl syndrome'

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here. Back for another episode Today. On the agenda, we have a highly requested episode from all you listeners out there. I ran a poll on my Instagram the other day at that psychology podcast shameless plug if you want to give us a follow, and I essentially asked what do you want to hear? Overwhelmingly you all wanted to hear about the psychology of Lucky Girl syndrome. And guess what we are going to do it. We are going to dive into all of the nitty gritty science and psychology of this trend. And spoiler alert, there are a lot of theories to talk about today, so many more than I anticipated. I think Lucky Girl syndrome has been doing the rounds across TikTok and Instagram in the past few months. I am sure we have all seen viral videos of people recounting all of the good things that have happened to them. The job offers the unexpected fifty dollar note on the ground, free coffees, new love interests that have started to crop up once they've adopted this mindset that they are a lucky person. But how much proof is there that positive affirmations like the universe is working in my favor and positive thinking actually creates tangible changes in our lives. Well, that is where the psychology comes in. I think what sometimes bothers me about this trend is all the people putting it down to luck or manifestation. We are here to bust that myth today by providing some pretty interesting explanations behind the workings of lucky girl syndrome and all that comes with it. We are going to examine theories like self fulfilling prophecies, confirmation bias, the external versus internal locus of control, the Pygmalion theory, and even dive into some of our brain anatomy to explain why this idea of positive and lucky manifestation may actually have some evidence behind it. So come along for the journey. We're going to reveal a lot of the truth and of course, the psychology behind this trend and what it actually means for our lives. I will acknowledge there is also a dark side to lucky girl syndrome. I don't think we can discuss this phrase or this without also talking about privilege, and that may be controversial, but I do think that at a brief glance of the most popular videos associated with this trend, we will primarily see people who are very attractive, very wealthy, well off, and healthy. And some of the controversy of this trend is that manifestation sometimes ignores things like wealth and privilege in favor of a simple explanation, so I think we should definitely proceed with caution. We will talk about that later. This is probably one of my favorite episodes that I have ever done. I know I am setting the expectations high from the outset, but wow, when I first started researching this, I had no idea what I would find, and it has blown my mind. So I am really excited to be able to share. If you have been confused or skeptical of this lucky girl trend, you're in the right place. We have a lot to discuss today, so let's jump right into it. For those of you who are thinking what in the world is lucky girl syndrome and have no idea what I'm talking about. You're just along for the ride. Let me give you a brief synopsis and overview. This idea has emerged largely on TikTok and trending videos in which people essentially explain how by convincing themselves and believing that they are lucky, good things inevitably happen to them. It's often accompanied by certain affirmations and positive thinking statements. One of the most popular audios that goes along with these videos is about how your life is supposed to go well and things are meant to work out for you. These creators essentially say that their secret to a great life is assuming and believing that the they will have a great life, and with that they show how they have received all these amazing benefits like I mentioned, new jobs and unexpected money and new outfits and positive news. You will find thousands, maybe millions at this point of videos exactly like this, all across TikTok and platforms like Instagram. Although this idea of lucky girl syndrome really began to trend last year, it's not entirely a new concept. In fact, it's essentially just manifestation, or the idea of manifestation that has been wrapped up in fancy packaging and given a new name for this generation. Let's go back a little bit the origins of manifestation, which is essentially what Lucky Girls syndrome is. It can be traced back to various philosophical and spiritual traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Greek philosophy, even Christianity, among others. But the idea that we now speak of and that we normally think of when we think of manifestation. It was popularized in quite a few pop psychology books and publications that were released in the early two thousands, and then the idea was scooped up by people like Oprah and other inspirational thought leaders until it kind of trickled down to everyday people like you and I. Vox wrote a really fascinating article on this topic. I will leave it in the description, and it essentially concludes that lucky Girl syndrome is just the latest revision of historical ideas like the law of attraction or assumption, which essentially proposed that our thoughts and our beliefs can alter our reality. For example, believing that I will be rich will make you rich, and you attract what you desire and what you put out into the universe. I think this sounds very simplified and undervalues the power of individual action, hard work, and agency. You are not the only one manifestation the law of assumption attraction, and with that, trends like lucky Girl syndrome have been repeatedly criticized by many psychologists as being essentially a pseudoscientific self help trend with no basis in actual science or traditional academic research to back it up. Of course, you can't make magical things automatically happen with your mind as far as we know, that's not physically possible at this stage. But when we dive deeper into this science behind the impact of positive affirmations on our brain, we might reach a different conclusion. And it doesn't have anything to do with abstract concepts like mind control or fate or the power of the universe, but with how our minds can be altered by our beliefs to approach life in a way that does impact our decision making, our outlook, our success, and therefore the outcomes of our lives at the end of the day. The power of lucky Girl syndrome is that it retrains our brain into adopting a more positive mindset. Therefore, by believing you're a lucky person, by repeating it as a lot of these videos instruct you to do and that you deserve good things and that you will be successful, you actually have a greater tendency to seek out experiences, situations, opportunities in which this is confirmed. There has been legitimate studies on this, and it backs up some of those anecdotal experiences we see on social media. One study in particular, it hypothesizes that believing you are lucky or some other positive statement about yourself, it promotes positive, goal oriented behavior, which produces those positive outcomes. It's not that we manifested these things, but that because of our beliefs, we implicitly and unconsciously work harder, we pursue more opportunities, and these actions are what produces the outcomes associated with lucky girl syndrome. It's not so much spiritual, it's not so much to do with the universe or some intangible force. It really is based in the mind. This can be explained by the psychological concept of self fulfilling prophecies, otherwise known as the pigmalion effect. In psychology, a self fulfilling prophecy revolves around this idea that our expectations impact how we act, which as a result, impacts the outcome so that it is the one that we expected. A self fulfilling prophecy. Just to give you more of a definition, it's basically a belief or an expectation that an individual holds about something in the future that manifests purely because the individual believes it and therefore it impacts their actions. There are some real world and clinical examples that confirm this theory. The first one that comes to mind is the placebo effect. When we believe something like a medication will work, that inadvertently alters how our mind perceives our response and our reaction and the impact of the medication, making it so that we either actually display a positive response or our brains mimic positive symptoms in order to confirm our belief that the medication is effective. I know that sounds like a kind of a random example, but what it shows is the power of the mind to actually alter our environment in some ways because of how strong it wants to believe in something. That's why when they do clinical trials with new medications, they give one group a placebo and one group of medication that actually works to see whether it's just purely the act of taking the medication and believing that it will work that helps people. In one particularly famous study that my fellow psychology students will definitely know about, they examined the grades of children before and after they wore fake glasses to see whether it would influence how the teachers treated them or how these students performed themselves. And what they found was that their grades actually improved because teachers implicitly associate glasses with intelligence. Therefore they treated the students better, they showed them more attention, they were more involved in the academic success because they held an implicit belief that glasses equals academic ability. So it shows how our belief system will unconsciously impact how we choose to act and behave in a way that will confirm our pre existing belief, resulting in our expectation becoming a reality. This also occurs on an individual level as well, as explained by the pigmalion effect, whereby our self imposed expectations all to how we behave and therefore where we end up. If you believe that you attract good people, that you are magnetic and attractive and beautiful, you will behave this way based on your belief system, and people pick up on that energy and how you hold yourselves and will react to that attitude. It's part of the reason why we always say that confidence matters more than conventional beauty, because people will react to how you hold yourself and treat you accordingly. And it's an example of how the beliefs we hold about ourselves therefore impact how we act, which actually creates the positive outcome that we expected in the first place. Of course, this doesn't always happen voluntarily or on a conscious level, hence why we don't always attribute the fruits of our labour to our actions, but rather this idea of manifestation. Essentially, we are stubborn creatures and we don't like to be wrong, so our minds work behind the scenes in order to make our beliefs a reality, so that we avoid the pain of being embarrassed or questioning ourselves and therefore injuring our self esteem. That is essentially the psychological basis behind lucky girl syndrome and behind positive affirmations. In another vein, though, this idea of confirmation bias can also be used to explain this phenomena whereby our brains will unconsciously work to affirm your belief by ignoring instances or experiences that don't align with your idea of being lucky, like getting a parking fine or slipping on the street, and it will amplify the events that confirm the idea that you are lucky, such as something favorable happening for you, and we end up having an altered view of our reality. Confirmation bias essentially refers to our tendency to process information by looking for or interpreting information that is consistent with our values and what we expect and ignoring counter evidence. And all of this offers a deeper insight into the underlying psychology of lucky Girl syndrome and the broader idea of manifestation. Our brain is phenomenal. It is a very very powerful tool, and what we tell it will impact our reality, not in some hidden way, but because our brains will alter how we act. Maybe I'm getting repetitive with that, but I really think it's an important link or kind of thought to follow through. But it doesn't mean that positive affirmations and positive self talk aren't actually highly beneficial. Regardless of some of the flimsy scientific reasoning and the impact of self fulfilling prophecies and confirmation bias, I do truly believe in the psychological power and impact of affirmations on our life, particularly how we interpret the world. I have talked about affirmations before in my confidence episode and in some of my other episodes. They've worked for me, and there are a number of scientific explanations that confirm this. I'm going to dive into them in just a second. Let's discuss some of the evidence for lock of your syndrome, manifestation, whatever you want to call it. Like I mentioned before, much of the evidence for this trend rests upon the power of affirmation and positive thinking or self talk. I'm going to use an explanation from the Berkeley Institute to explain this, because they said it very well. When we repeat positive affirmations enough, we begin to integrate these statements into our belief system, which in turn creates a more positive mindset. And a more positive mindset is associated with things like greater resilience and optimism, problem solving and as a result, life satisfaction, less stress, and better coping skills. That is the mechanism behind this technique. There are a number of affirmations associated with Lucky Girl's syndrome that I want to pause and talk about for just a second. Here are a few of my favorites. I really did do my research. I was very interested when I started seeing all these tiktoks come up on my feed. I may or may not have written some of them down before I really looked into it, but these were the ones that I actually had in my notes app and I thought they were interesting to share. So some of the affirmations you will see in these trending videos you maybe have already seen them, are things like great things are always happening to me. I am so lucky. Everything is always working out for me, The universe is working in my favor. There's something that these all have in common. They all concern things that have to do with some external source of power or fate. And although they may work, if you truly want to use affirmations and unlock their psychological power, you need to change them to be focused on your strength and your power, and your agency and your qualities rather than some external, intangible force that's acting beyond your control. So let me give you some examples. Instead of saying things like great things are always happening to me, or everything always works out for me, say things like I am always moving towards something better, I am an intelligent and strong person, I deserve love, I work to attract good things into my life. These affirmations are all about how you see yourself, and at the end of the day, that is the only factor you really have control over. When we routinely use affirmations concerning things beyond our control, it can often lead to a negative or toxic mindset, whereby we blame all of the good things in our lives all of the bad things on elements beyond our control. And there is a slight problem with that because it rests on this idea of an internal versus an external locus of control. I'm going to give you a summary if you've never heard about this before, but essentially, people who believe that external forces like luck and fate or the universe determine their outcomes, they have an external locus of control, whereby there are things beyond their power, that are acting beyond their kind of mindset or vision, that are truly responsible for what's happening in their life. Hence the term external. In comparison, those who hold themselves responsible for their successes, they have internal locus of control. Internal meaning individual having an external locus of control has been repeatedly associated with things like less motivation, more problematic behaviors, even in some studies criminal behavior, not saying that that's always the case, but people who have an external locus of control, they're more likely to be quite pessimistic, and they're more likely to be inactive in the face of adversity. And that makes sense, right, because if you truly believe that everything is outside of your power and outside of your control, you're going to act accordingly, so when things are happening in your life that you might actually be able to change. Your whole mindset is focused on things moving without you needing to do anything, so you become inactive and therefore some of your life outcomes might be declining or become worse. This is why I really recommend that if you are someone who uses affirmations, that they be about your own abilities, like I said, the only thing that you can control in your life is your own actions, is yourself. So it's important to reinforce that, thereby enabling you to feel more successful when good things happen, but also understand that you can change your reality when bad things happen. I'm very sorry I've gone on a bit of a tangent there. I realize that now I've just gone way of course, so let's get back on track. Why do affirmations work on a neurological level, Well, it has a lot to do with one brain structure in particular, it's called the reticular activating system, and this part of the brain is located just above the mid brain. It's pretty small, it's kind of tiny, actually, but it is responsible for a lot of really important things like wakefulness, our ability to focus, but most importantly in this topic, how we perceive the world. Its main function is to choose what information in our environment to process and which stuff that we can disregard as irrelevant and we can filter it out. Consider it like a metal detector for our brain. It only buzzes, for lack of a better word, when we come across something that we deem as important, So it filters things out. It says, you know, that random thing on the sidewalk. We might see it, our eyes might pick up on it as something in our environment, but we probably can't remember it because our brain, particularly our recticular formation, has chosen to ignore it. That's how it works, and our mindset, our outlook, our set of beliefs and expectations about the world, is what the recticular activating system enlists to undertake this filtering process. And surprise, surprise, guess what can greatly impact that belief system. You guessed it. Positive self talk and affirmations. When we believe we are strong and intelligent, when we believe we are lucky, this system, this part of our brains will confirm that for us, it might not be objectively true that we are lucky or that we are strong, but when we believe it, we feel it, we see it, So that's what really matters. That is basically a very roundabout way of saying that there may be some truth in Lucky Girl syndrome. When we break it down to its core components. It's not mystical, it's not some magical thing. It's very much neurological and psychological, whereby it's based in the kind of systems and patterns of behavior and habits that our brain enlists to protect us in some ways and to sort out the information in our environment. So it can be very powerful. It can be very impactful on our lives. However, I don't think I would be doing this topic justice if I didn't mention the inherent privilege associated with lucky girl syndrome. I think it is very easy, like I said, to believe that you are lucky and destined for greatness and that everything works out for you when you are already coming from a place of extreme wealth and opportunity, and particularly privilege in many Western societies. I can admit that I am one of these people. You know. I grew up in Australia, which is a relatively safe place. I'm well educated as of my parents. I have a nice job, and yes, I did work hard to get to this place. But it doesn't mean that there weren't a lot of factors in my favor from day one, from the day I was born. Now that I think about it, I don't think I have seen any videos of people claiming that lucky girls in during works for them. Out of developing countries or places with famine or drought or war. It feels particularly elitist to suggest that just believing good things will make your life good. You know, if it was that simple, we wouldn't see so much suffering in the world. It looks it's like to me, at least, that this trend is very much reserved for individuals who, the majority of which already have all the tools that would have enabled their success. Anyways, it's not luck that has given them a good life. It's not positive self talk. It's this kind of global systemic, ingrained system of wealth distribution and inequality. Maybe that's an inconvenient truth. It might upset some people, but I do think that it deserves some focus. We can't be blind to some of the reasoning behind this stuff. I think trends like lucky Girl syndrome have a habit of becoming these huge Internet sensations and attracting a lot of craze whilst minimizing a lot of the crucial truths and kind of pushing sometimes a dangerous narrative that simply believing is going to fix all of your problem when we know when we look at the world that it probably doesn't. Of course, no singular individual or creator or person who supports this trend is to blame. It's not about shaming people and being like you should be embarrassed or you should be ashamed that you believe this. I really don't think that's the case on an individual level. I think it can be really really beneficial. Like I do genuinely believe in the power of a positive mindset, but I do think it's important to believe and recognize both things at once. That it is based in a system of privilege. Not everyone is going to have a lucky Girl syndrome experience, but for some individuals it can be pretty life changing to shift to a positive mindset for the pursuit of your own goals and your ambitions in life. Also, we haven't mentioned this yet, but whether you are in innately pessimistic or optimistic person also seems to matter when we discuss manifestations or lucky Girl syndrome, and it's very important and relative to the quote unquote success of these mechanisms and these tools for manifesting a lucky and a happy life. A pretty brief explanation, but essentially, there is a difference between people who are optimistic and pessimistic. I feel like most people know that. But an optimistic person they see good things everywhere. They're really confident and hopeful about what the future holds. They believe that things will work out for them. They are very happy and have a great outlook on the potential opportunities that will come their way. The pessimist, on the other hand, they observe mainly the negative aspects of everything around them. They are always prepared for the worst, They always expect the worst. They see the world as kind of a scary, dangerous, ambiguous space. I think it's common sense, but we can see that a positive mindset and a perception of our inherent luckiness is going to be a lot harder for someone who is generally pessimistic, and pessimism is not always something that you can change. Attributes like pessimism and optimism, they obviously fall on a spectrum, but they are a core part of our personality and our temperament that we are born with, so they can be very hard to shift or to alter. So saying to a friend who is pessimistic that in order to secure their future or they need to do is manifest good things or have a positive outlook or repeat a certain number of affirmations every day. I don't think it's going to be entirely helpful. If anything, it could potentially be quite patronizing. Of course, there are some things you can do to break out of a pessimistic mindset. I actually think that's an entirely separate episode that's going to make such a good episode. I should really do that. But I think it just goes to show that distinction between people who are optimistic and pessimistic, that the application of being a lucky girl is going to be very nuanced and differ from person to person. It's a nice thing to believe and probably very easy if you are naturally optimistic. I'm going to call myself out here, that's what I'm like. But it's not as simple as the trending TikTok sounds and viral videos make it. See, so what have we learned today? I think lucky girl syndrome is a very attractive idea. It is very attractive to be told that you can sort your life out, you can have an amazing life by doing something really simple like repeating to yourself a series of phrases or words every day. And I do really see the benefit in that. From a psychological perspective, like we mentioned, having a positive mindset is very indicative of later on life satisfaction and success because it will subjectively change how you perceive the world, how you act, and how you see your successes versus your failures. But when we dig deeper into it, we can see that lucky girl syndrome or manifestation, the law of attraction, all of those things. It doesn't really have anything to do with some mystical, higher up source of infinite wisdom and power. It's not about the universe. It's not about some abstract idea. It's really about our brains and how our brains are taught to process information and how they implicitly impact our actions and our behavior to create positive outcomes and confirm our expectations and our biases. So it is a very complicated interaction, I think, a very interesting interaction, one that I am very glad we talked about today and will say, if you are someone who believes in lucky girl syndrome, congratulations. That is amazing. People are allowed to have their own opinions and are allowed to view their lives a certain way. If you've had a really amazing, wonderful, like inexplicable experience with lucky girl syndrome. Can you let me know, because I really do want to hear about it. I find it really interesting watching these tiktoks and being like, wow, how did she do it? Because I'm even sold on it sometimes having investigated this and looked at the science and the psychology. But like I said, we cannot discuss this idea or this trend without also acknowledging privilege thinking about it on a deeper level. Maybe that was a controversial thing to say, but of course we cannot talk about something like lucky girl syndrome, or a trending sound on TikTok, or something like positive affirmations without also having a look into the deeper reasons behind why it's so compelling. And sometimes that does force us to acknowledge hard controversial truths like privilege. I'm sorry if it offended you, but I do just think it's a valuable skill to think about things like lucky Girl syndrome, like anything in our lives, from different perspectives. So I really enjoyed this episode. It is probably one of my favorites. I really enjoyed looking into all the research and the science. I found so many unexpected things. Maybe you already knew all of this, in which case you are much smarter than me and you should be running my podcast. Please get in touch. But I really do hope that you learn something and that you're able to apply some of the things that we talked about today to your own life. That is always the aim of the show, and I am so glad if you've listened this far, as I always say, if you feel cool to do so, if you feel compelled, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now. It really does help the show to reach new people. It's just me doing it here, so it's really nice when people leave me really love reviews or they send me nice messages. It really does make my day. So if you want to join the community, if you have an episode that you think I should cover, I love to hear it. I love when people have ideas for me. So please follow us at that Psychology podcast on Instagram. 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