A psychology professor debunks Rhonda Byrne’s world-bestselling book and film – and her theory of personal success through a magical connection with the universe.
Imagine you really wanted something and all you had to do was ask the universe and you would get it. That’d be awesome, right?!
The book has sold more than 35 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. Byrne has gone on to produce several related books, including The Greatest Secret, and associated merchandise, like a card deck. Oprah Winfrey, who lavishly embraced The Secret, devoting two episodes of her talk show to it in 2006, said it embodied the message she’d been trying to share for 21 years: “you are responsible for your life”.The Secret is effectively a repackaging of the “power of positive thinking” pop psychology from recent decades – and, centuries earlier, the quackery of the metaphysical movement.
An alluring fiction On Amazon, more than 40,000 customers have taken the time to review the book. The average rating is 4.6/5. Perhaps this should not be surprising. There are several ways of knowing about the world. We can defer to authority. We can rely on our intuition. We can employ logic. And we can make observations based on our experiences.
To persuade you, The Secret takes you down the peripheral route, the one where you don’t put much effort into your research – “Einstein used it! There must be something to it!” – rather than the central route, where you think critically about claims. “Just because she says Einstein used it doesn’t make it valid. And how does she know he used it?”
The Secret is less able to appeal to logic, though it attempts to by referring to the pseudoscientific “law of attraction”. Again, the secret of The Secret’s success lies in the suggestibility of association. Referring to a “law” implies there is a scientific basis to the principles – and we all know science is logical, right?
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