MemeMachineGo!

Here’s a provocative story. 67% hotel maids reported that they didn’t exercise, over a third of that 67% saying they didn’t get any exercise at all, despite having an obviously physical job. A researcher educated one group of maids in just how many calories their jobs burned, and tracked them and a control group of maids whom they didn’t tell anything.

One month later, Langer and her team returned to take physical measurements of the women and were surprised by what they found. In the group that had been educated, there was a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio — and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure.

One possible explanation is that the process of learning about the amount of exercise they were already getting somehow changed the maids’ behavior. But Langer says that her team surveyed both the women and their managers and found no indication that the maids had altered their routines in any way. She believes that the change can be explained only by the change in the women’s mindset.

The article makes no mention of the researchers recording even self-reporting on the groups’ food consumption. I’m inclined to suspect that the one group may have changed their habits, some of them possibly without thinking about it.

It remains an interesting suggestion of the mind’s power over the body, though.