Enclothed Cognition: How To Change Your Self Belief

0:28Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. personal self-belief. And to start off, I'm going to tell you a story about a study that was done that kind of works with this perfectly. It's a study that was done on children that were between the ages of four and six years old. And it's what's now been termed and coined as the Batman effect. And basically, this is the way that it worked. They took three groups of children and they basically had them do these different types of puzzles. So some of them were just puzzles. Some of them were they had to, you know, go in and try to unlock something with a bunch of different keys when none of the keys actually worked.

1:05And they had the three different groups. And it was basically these hard tasks for children to do. One group would go in, nothing different about them. They would just come in and try to do the really difficult puzzles. The other group would come in and they would do the puzzles, but they were given the instruction to try to see yourself from the outside watching yourself do it. So basically, that's the way they described it to children, basically in third person. And what this helped children do is to build a little bit more self-awareness of themselves. And so it was do the puzzles, but just try to view yourself as if you're watching yourself do it.

1:40And then the third group, which was really interesting, is they would say, what we want you to do is pick your favorite costume. And they had a bunch of different costumes that they could wear. One of them was a Batman cape. One of them was Wonder Woman. Another one was Dora the Explorer. Some of them were their favorite Disney princesses. And they could wear it and then go do the puzzles. And that was it. They would just pick an outfit and then just go do the puzzles. Well, group one, the group that was given no instructions to do the puzzles, did the absolute worst. They did not put as much effort in.

2:12They gave up sooner. Group two, which is the aspect of self-distancing and watching themselves do it, They did 13 % better and worked longer and were more diligent than the first group that just went in and did it. Because as they looked at themselves from the outside, they went a little bit further because it's almost as if somebody was watching them, right? And then group three, which we're told just pick an outfit, pick an outfit, did 23 % better than group one. They were more resilient. They were more diligent. They didn't want to give up as much. And what's really, really interesting is that group one, the children would give up pretty quickly and they would speak to themselves because children speak out loud a lot of times and their self-talk is usually spoken out loud.

3:01Their self-talk was something like, I can't do this. They would say stuff like, this is too hard. I'm not smart enough. I'm not old enough to get this. Now, where do you think those came from? Do you think they just made those thoughts up in their head? Or do you think that that's a story that either they have gotten from the outside world, somebody in the outside world saying that to them, or hearing someone that is a primary caregiver say that to themselves? Yeah, that's usually where our internal story comes from. Usually your internal story that you have in your head, your internal narrative, is either the way that your parents talked to you when you were a child or the way that you saw your parents talking to themselves when you were a child.

3:41And so they usually get it from their parents talking to them or hearing their parents talk to themselves. And so without saying, hey, we want you to see yourself from the outside, which is self-awareness, they were basically on autopilot. And on autopilot, they were working from their unconscious programmings. Now, think about this for a second. Before we go any deeper into this study and other studies, when did you learn to give up? When did you learn what fear was? When did you learn who you were? Good or bad or all of that. When did you learn all of this stuff? Because if you think about it, does a baby decide to stop trying to walk because they're taking too long to get it?

4:23I've never, never in my, maybe it's happened before, but never in the history of my entire life have I ever heard of a child that just decided to stop walking because they didn't get it. No, they persist. They don't understand language. They don't have an internal narrative yet because they don't understand language. They might understand a couple words, but they don't have full sentences of I'm not good enough for that perception of themselves. So they don't understand every word their parents are saying around them. But at some point, we as children learn what we can and what we can't quote unquote can and we'll quote unquote can't do.

4:59You know, like some of the kids say, I'm not smart. I'm not old enough to get this. Whose parents ever told them like, oh, you're not old enough yet. Right. You have to start thinking of this. And if you're a parent, you definitely got to start thinking about this with your children. So what is crazy about it is the unconscious programming is how most people are unconsciously operating in the world every single day. Now, the cool thing is when they're seeing themselves from an outsider's perspective, they're developing self-awareness. It's almost as if they're being watched, so they want to do better.

5:29And so they're not really in their own head with their stories. They're kind of outside of their head watching themselves do it. But the coolest part about it is how well the children do or did when wearing the costumes. And the interesting thing about it is that their self-talk actually changed when they were wearing a superhero's outfit. And they stopped, instead of saying like the other children, I can't do this. This is too hard. I'm not smart enough. I'm not old enough to get this. They would say things like, I'm never giving up. Batman would never give up. Come on, Dora, you got this. and they would speak to themselves as the greatest version of themselves.

6:09And their perception of themselves changed their self-talk. Group one, children gave up very quickly. And they had to actually, what's interesting is some of the children, and like such group one was like, they give up in just a few minutes. Some of the children, even though the puzzles, like the keys that they had to use were never going to work. Some of the children who are in group three, who are in the Batman outfits, the Dora outfits, the princess outfits, they had to pull them away because they were thinking to themselves, oh yeah, Dora would never give up. Batman would never give up. Superman would never give up with this.

6:45So I'm not going to give up. How they perceive themselves to a challenge changed. So they literally had to pull these children away from doing it. So what's the most important part of this is to understand our own self-perception is going to dictate what we do or don't do with our entire lives. They no longer saw themselves as quote-unquote just a little child. They viewed themselves as the best version of themselves that they could be, their favorite superhero. So what do you believe of yourself? Because what you believe, and this is a corniest thing I could say right now. What you believe is essentially what you will achieve.

7:27What you think you are is how you're going to show up in the world. You believe whatever you believe of yourself, your self-perception, that needs to be worked on. And so this whole thing is a study in psychology called enclosed cognition. And so you would think, I mean, yeah, it worked really well with children. That's cool. Does it work with adults? and the crazy thing is it does. I'm glad that you asked, does it work on adults? And it does. So there's a few different studies I want to bring up to you. There's one of them called the influence of clothes on cognitive processes. And so this is before the term in clothed cognition was brought up and started to be more studied.

8:09This is just like, hey, does somebody's brain work better depending on what clothes they actually wear? And what they looked at was they looked at how a uniform that somebody was wearing affects their cognitive processing, particularly on how their feelings of power and control were. And so basically what they did is they had two different groups of people. When they would go into work and do stuff, they had one that had to wear business attire and another one that had to wear casual clothing. And they had to complete tasks that were assessed with their abstract thinking. And then abstract thinking, so you have an idea in psychology, it's a measure linked to a sense of power.

8:49Their abstract thinking is a measure that's linked to their sense of power. And so participants that were in formal business attire had more abstract thinking, which correlates to a heightened sense of power. They subconsciously, or even maybe consciously viewed themselves differently based off of what they were wearing. And the people who are more dressed up viewed themselves better and more in a sense of power. And we've all had this before. You know, you dress up, you wear something formal, you haven't worn something formal in a while, and you're feeling yourself. You're like, damn, I look good today.

9:19This looks great. You know, I look real good today. That's the song that's rolling in your head. You're like, I'm fucking killing it, right? You walk a little bit different. You talk a little bit different. You have better posture based off of what you're wearing. We've all been here before. And so that was the first study that was done where they just found out that their cognitive processing changed. They thought more highly of themselves and in more of a sense of power. So that was a study was done in 2010. And then 2012, this is the original study that was done on enclosed cognition. What they had people do is they had people, the study is they want to see if wearing a lab coat would affect participants' attention.

9:54So could they be more focused if they were wearing like a doctor's lab coat? And researchers performed several different experience where the attire that someone was wearing was changed. And so in one of them, they had participants wearing a lab coat and the lab coat, they would hand it to them and they would say, hey, this is a doctor's coat. Go ahead and go through these studies. This is a doctor's coat. Go ahead and go through these studies. When they were told it was a doctor's coat, it increased sustained attention compared to those that were wearing regular street clothes. Also, another one of the studies that they did was they went a little bit further into two different groups.

10:32One of them wore a lab coat and they wore a lab coat and they were told that it was a painter's coat. It's the exact same lab coat, just so you know. This is a painter's coat. Go ahead and do this. Another group were told that it was a doctor's coat and go ahead and wear this. And those that were wearing the doctor's coat, the quote unquote doctor's coat, had significantly fewer errors on attention demanding tasks. They did a thing called a Stroop test than those that were wearing the coat and thought that the coat was either a painter's coat or they weren't wearing a coat at all. And so the people who thought, this is crazy, like if you really actually think about how nuts this is, there's people who are given a coat, white coat, and said this is a doctor's coat.

11:19They performed the best and they finished the test in less time with less errors by wearing a white coat that was told it was a doctor's coat. Then people came in and they gave them the exact same coats but told them it was a painting coat. And they did not do as well as the other people. They were actually pretty equal to the people who were just wearing their normal clothes, which shows you that literally what you're wearing and what you think of what you're wearing will change the way that your cognitive processing works, your focus will work, but also what you perceive of yourself. I coach a lot of business owners.

11:56I have for years now. And this is the reason why I always tell people to go through when they wake up in the morning, if you work from home, Wake up in the morning, go through your morning routine, get a workout in, and then shower, at least if nothing else, shower and change your clothes. Shower, brush your teeth, change your clothes as if you were going to go to the office because you're different when you're showered, you're dressed like you could go to the office. If you're still wearing your pajamas while working, it's a way different vibe than if you meditated, worked out, read a little bit, showered and got dressed.

12:32It is the feeling of I'm showing up for work. If you wear pajamas when you're getting work done at home, you haven't mentally closed out the act of sleeping and switched on to the act of working. Like what? And think about it. Would you ever show up to the office? If you worked for Google, would you ever show up to the office in your pajamas? No, then don't do it at home. There's no difference. And this is a, I actually have a friend who wrote an entire book on this. His name's Todd Herman. Great book. It's called The Alter Ego Effect. and he really started to dive into this and he was one of the guys, I'm gonna have him on the podcast in the next few months most likely, but he was one of the guys who actually helped, actually the guy who helped Kobe Bryant develop the alter ego of the Mamba, the Black Mamba.

13:20And so what he does is he used to realize years ago when he was younger that he was very shy, he was very timid, but he was a speaker and he was a coach and he wanted to put himself out there. and days would go by where he was supposed to make some cold calls to call up places to try to get himself on stage and he just would go by and not they wouldn't do it he wouldn't do it he would do it because he was just so afraid of being rejected and so he's like i need something and so he went to lens crafters got a pair of of um what should have been prescription glasses but literally there's just a lens in there they're non-prescription glasses and so he said when i put these glasses on.

13:55I am a badass, hardworking, doesn't care about rejection. Because when he first started his business, he was so shy and he was afraid of making cold calls. And he said, who do I want to embody when I put on these glasses? And he wanted to embody Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Campbell, and Superman. I was like, I want to be the blend of these three men. So when I put this on, it's almost like a light switch goes on and I click into being a different person. and his, he called himself super Richard. His, you know, his name is Todd, but his real first name is Richard. So he called himself super rich.

14:26Like he actually named this alter ego and wanted to say like, I'm going to be dressed and be good to go. And when I put on these, these glasses, I'm no longer Todd. I'm super Richard. But then he realized as he got older and he started having children, he's like, I don't want to be that person at home. I don't want to be super Richard. I'm going to be, I don't want to be a badass when I go home, who doesn't care about rejection, is hardworking. And so what he does is he has, when he's done working and he works from home, he takes his glasses off. And when he walks out of his door in his office, he has a little wristband.

14:59And I think the wristband says family first or something like that. And when he puts on his wristband, he imagines himself embodying the personalities of two people who he really looks up to. Number one was his father, which he said was an amazing human. And the second one is Mr. Rogers, because he thought, if I'm going to be in front of my children, I want to embody certain qualities, in these people and who I want to be. So who, uh, my father reminded me of that. Mr. Roger reminded me of that. And he puts that on his wrist so that he walks into the, the, the room where his children are. He's not the hardcore business guy.

15:30He's somebody completely different. And it shows you how you can literally use this thing in clothed cognition to be someone else. And this isn't like, you know, you're going to lose yourself and become a different person and have multiple, multiple personalities or anything like that. It's just you deciding how you want to show up because all too often, how do we show up? We show up as, oh, I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I don't know if I could do this. I don't know if it's going to work. Is that helping you in any way? Like you're already believing that you're somebody else. You might as well stop believing that you're a piece of shit.

15:58You might as well start believing that you're something great, that you're something amazing that can achieve anything that you want, right? You might as well. So really, what do you have? What do you believe in yourself? It'd be a great question for you to ask pen and paper and write down, what do you believe in yourself? Who do you think you are? and then ask yourself, what do you want to believe in yourself? Is there some sort of reminder that you can have to remind yourself of who you are, who you're going to be? If, you know, obviously you're probably not going to go to the office, maybe, maybe not wearing a Batman cape or, you know, adore the Explorer outfit.

16:31If you want to, you definitely can, but do you have something that you could have? Is it a watch? Is it a pair of glasses? Is it a certain way that you dress where you just dress a certain way and it makes you feel a certain way about yourself? This isn't pseudoscience. This is actually proven in psychology that enclosed cognition is a real thing. How can you use enclosed cognition to start to change your own self-perception? Because what you perceive of yourself is what you're going to achieve in this world. If you don't think that you're good enough, if you don't think that you can achieve things, I guarantee you, you will not.

17:02But if you start thinking of yourself a little bit more highly, you dress a little bit better, you make sure you go through your morning routine, you make sure you take your shower, you leave the house in a certain way. it's just something you really need to think about. You're going to show up differently in the world. Another one of my mentors, he's an extremely successful guy. I was interviewing him for my podcast like five years ago. And we were talking about, I don't even know how we got on the topic, but I had this really old, beat-down Hyundai Santa Fe. And it was old. It was light blue.

17:36I had had it for years and years and years. And I only got it because I needed a small SUV. because at the time, you know, years before then, probably, yeah, four years before then, I needed a small SUV so I could travel around the state of Florida and I could go and do my sales and all that stuff for a company that I worked for. And I only still had that car because of the fact that I was like, you know what, I'm going to run it into the ground. I had this, this like badge of honor of like, yeah, I drive a piece of shit. And even though I can afford a new car, I don't. And he said something and he didn't even realize what he did to me, but he goes, you know what?

18:09I just find that when I drive a nicer car, I just show up better. And I was like, shit, I hate driving that car. I hate every moment that I'm in that car. And I probably show up worse to things and don't drive to things that I want to go to because I don't want to be in that car. And so I thought to myself, you know what? I'm going to buy something different. I bought my first truck. I'd always want a truck for a long time. And within the first week I was like, yep, I see the difference. I completely see the difference in the way I feel about myself, the way I feel about going, the way I feel about other people perceiving me in this vehicle.

18:42So I'm not saying that you need to go out and buy a Ferrari. I'm not saying that you need to do any of these things. You can try whatever it is that you want. It's your prerogative, but you got to start thinking about these things. The clothes that you wear, how you take care of yourself. You know, if you get your workouts in your meditation, the cars you drive, you know, the things that you do and just start to think to yourself, can I use this idea of enclosed cognition to change my self-perception, to show up a little bit better. And if I can, might as well try it out and use it and see how it works for you.

19:09So if you try it out, let me know. Send me a message on Instagram and tell me how it's worked for you when you start to try it out for a week, two weeks, three weeks. That's all I got for you on this episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in at RobDialJr. And also if you love this podcast, you're definitely going to love Mindset Mentor Plus. It is something that I'm launching very soon to help you integrate every single one of these episodes into your lives. Each episode is going to be coming with detailed worksheets, multiple pages, thought-provoking journal prompts of how you can take this episode, journal through it, work through it in your life, and then also targeted assignments based off of exactly what it is that we teach so you can take this and put it into your life.

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20:18And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. Thank you.