Are "Manifestors" Actually More Rich and Successful?

The data is in.

Getty Images | Miljan Živković

“When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.” —Norman Vincent Peale: The Power of Positive Thinking, 1952.

Do you believe visualizing a successful outcome causes it to be drawn closer to you? Do you believe the universe sends you people and events to aid your success? If you strongly agree with these questions, you may be a “manifestor”.

Every now and then I run into someone who, within the first 5 minutes of meeting me, tell me that we “must collaborate” because the universe sent me to meet them. This tends to be a particular type of person. Usually they wear spiritual clothes, have elaborate tents at Burning Man, and love to do ayahuasca ceremonies.

I say do you. These people can be a lot of fun to hang out with, trust me. But I’m always a little skeptical that the universe revolves around the person I’m meeting and I’m just what— merely existing to help aid that person with their success? I’m skeptical that’s how the universe works.

But I have a very open mind. Maybe these manifestors are on to something. Maybe if I became a manifestor then the universe would suddenly revolve around me too. Sounds fun. However, surprisingly little academic research has investigated manifestation beliefs. Of course having an optimistic attitude and positive expectations for your future can be beneficial, but manifestation-specific beliefs may lead to unrealistic expectations, false hope, and worse goal attainment.

So I was excited to see a new set of studies that actually put manifestation beliefs to the test.

What is Manifestation?

Psychologists Lucas Jon Dixon, Matthew Hornsey, and Nicole Hartley argue that manifestation beliefs share an underlying form: much like a radio transmitter, a person’s thoughts and emotions transmit invisible yet powerful messages. If a person wants to be wealthy or happy all they need to do is think, feel, and act in a way that affirms the belief that they are already wealthy or happy and this will transmit the “energy” or “vibration” of wealth or happiness into the universe which is then returned to them by a higher power. That is “the secret”.

Since no direct measure of manifestation beliefs existed in the academic literature, the researchers created one and then validated it across the course of three studies (collective sample = 1023 people). These are the items on their scale:

Manifestation Scale

Personal Power

1. Visualizing a successful outcome causes it to be drawn closer to me.

2. I can speak success into existence through positive self-talk.

3. I am more likely to attract success if I believe success is already on its way.

4. I am more likely to attract a successful outcome if I act like it has already come true.

5. If I think about achieving success, those thoughts alone make success more likely.

6. Success is more likely to come to me the more I focus on positive emotions.

Cosmic Collaboration

7. I attract success into my life with the help of the universe or a higher power.

8. The universe of a higher power sends me people and events to aid my success.

9. I ask the universe or a higher power to bring me success.

10. To attract success, I align myself with cosmic forces or energies.

11. My soul, spirit, or higher self helps me attract success.

They found that this scale has a “sound psychometric structure”, meaning it’s internally consistent, stable over time, and normally distributed. Interestingly, endorsement of these manifestations beliefs was pretty high— over one third of participants endorsed manifestation beliefs! So this is not a fringe phenomenon, and is definitely worth exploring.

Is Manifestation Really the Secret to Success?

The researchers found that the Manifestation Scale measures a unique form of magical thinking and is strongly related to positive thought-action fusion biases (e.g., “If I think of myself being in a car accident, this increases the risk that I will have a car accident”; “If I think of myself winning a competition, it increases the chances that I will win”), karmic justice (e.g., “In the long-run, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people”) and dispositional hope (e.g., “I can think of many ways to get out of a jam”, “I energetically pursue my goals”).

However, the data hints at a paradox: while on the one hand manifestation beliefs are subjectively self-enhancing, there was little evidence the beliefs make an actual impact on more objective metrics. For instance, manifestors were more likely to have a positive view of themselves and their chances of succeeding but there was no correlation whatsoever between manifestation beliefs and income or education attainment.

Also, manifestors were more likely to believe they would achieve their life goals (which tended to be more external) and remained confident even if they were very far away from reaching their goals. According to the researchers, “this suggests manifestation belief is uniquely related to overconfidence or overoptimism in goal attainment. Our results also suggest that manifestation belief is especially related to increased belief in achieving externally derived goals related to image, fame, and fortune.”

Manifestors were also more likely to believe they could achieve an unlikely level of success in shorter time than non-manifestors. Manifestation beliefs also had a stronger preference for risk taking, manifestors were more likely to have riskier investments (i.e., cryptocurrency), and they were more likely to have been bankrupt. “Therefore, there is a risk of negative financial outcomes for those who believe in manifestation,” note the researchers.

The researchers raise an interesting point that these relationship would be difficult for manifestors to detect simply by thinking about their experiences:

Making accurate attributions for success and failure may be particularly challenging for manifestors, as the belief system encourages positively reframing failure. For example, a manifester who fails at something may say they are “not yet in complete vibrational alignment” with their goal, or that “God’s delays are not God’s denials”. While reframing can be an effective emotion-focused coping strategy, it has the potential to become harmful if it leads to denial or false hope.

The researchers also found strong links between manifestation beliefs and religious and non-religious spirituality. Ethnic minorities were more likely to hold cosmic manifestation beliefs suggesting that manifestation may be particularly appealing to spiritual people in minority populations who have experienced barriers to the “American Dream”. It’s a belief system that provides them hope.

Conclusion

There is not shortage of people aspiring to greater riches, success, and happiness and no shortage of “influencers”, “gurus”, and “experts” who will promise to take you there. However, so many of the beliefs that are claimed to make you more successful are untested.

This important study found that while manifestation beliefs may lead to greater confidence in one’s capacity to achieve one’s goals, there is little evidence of the beliefs actually impacting success in those goals. Perhaps success takes a lot more work, resources, opportunities, and sheer luck than simply vibrating your desires to the universe.