“The Secret” to Success? The Psychology of Belief in Manifestation

Abstract

We explored the psychology of those who believe in manifestation: the ability to cosmically attract success in life through positive self-talk, visualization, and symbolic actions (e.g., acting as if something is true). In three studies (collective N = 1,023), we developed a reliable and valid measure—the Manifestation Scale—and found over one third of participants endorsed manifestation beliefs. Those who scored higher on the scale perceived themselves as more successful, had stronger aspirations for success, and believed they were more likely to achieve future success. They were also more likely to be drawn to risky investments, have experienced bankruptcy, and to believe they could achieve an unlikely level of success more quickly. We discuss the potential positives and negatives of this belief system in the context of growing public desire for success and an industry that capitalizes on these desires.

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)

Remember that your thoughts are the primary cause of everything.

—(Rhonda Byrne: The Secret, 2006)

Write a list down and describe your dream life . . . and visualize living that life and feel grateful for that life as if you’re already living it.

—(Joe Hehn: TikTok Manifestation Coach, 2022)

The degree of success people desire is rising. For example, a survey of 9.2 million Americans from 1966 to 2009 found recent generations placed higher value on achieving goals such as being rich, famous, and good-looking compared to past generations surveyed at the same age (Twenge et al., 2012). Paradoxically, this level of success remains elusive for many people as demonstrated by rising income inequality and other structural barriers to wealth and upward mobility (e.g., United States Census Bureau, 2015). Growing alongside this desire for success is an industry of “experts,” “gurus,” and “influencers” marketing inspiration, education, and systems of success.

The goals of the success industry often center around increasing self-determination and an entrepreneurial mind-set, reflecting the cultural ideals of the “American Dream.” However, many of these claims and strategies remain untested or are pseudoscientific (Spicer, 2020). A notable example was Rhonda Byrne’s (2006) book The Secret, in which she claimed to have found an ancient secret to success: Anyone could “manifest” anything they wanted into their life through partnering with a cosmic “law of attraction,” which delivers people’s goals and wishes provided they engage in positive thinking, visualization, and self-talk. The book and subsequent film went on to sell 30 million copies and became a popular culture phenomenon which is still relevant today: videos featuring the tag “manifestation” on TikTok have been viewed 34.6 billion times as of May 2023.

Despite its cultural relevance, manifestation beliefs and practices have received little academic attention. Although an optimistic attitude and positive expectancy can have a range of motivational and behavioral benefits (Oettingen & Reininger, 2016; Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978; Snyder et al., 2001), it has been argued that extreme positive thinking such as manifestation may be maladaptive, leading to unrealistic expectations, false hope, and poorer goal attainment (Aspinwall & Tedeschi, 2010; Gunn & Cloud, 2010; Jefferson et al., 2017; Oettingen & Mayer, 2002). This article subjects some of these ideas to empirical scrutiny, as part of a broader agenda to understand the psychology of those who believe in manifesting success and how such beliefs may be related to judgment, decision-making, and life outcomes.

Defining Manifestation

Although the content of manifestation beliefs may vary, they share a similar underlying form: much like a radio transmitter, a person’s thoughts and emotions transmit invisible yet powerful messages. These messages are received by a higher power (the universe, God, a higher self, depending on one’s spiritual outlook) and these powers send back to the person material experiences that match the original thoughts and emotions. Thus, a person can harness this reciprocal process to deliberately manifest whatever they desire. For example, if a person wishes to become wealthy, they should think, feel, and act in a way that affirms the belief that they are already wealthy (e.g., repeating “I am so grateful I am wealthy” or writing pretend checks to themselves). These symbolic actions transmit the “energy” or “vibration” of wealth, which is returned to them, materially, by the higher power (Atkinson, 1906; Byrne, 2006).

Sociocultural Roots of Manifestation

Manifestation belief has its roots in cultural movements of the late 19th century. Medicine and psychiatry tended toward psychosomatic explanations for illness, such as hostile impulses causing hypertension or attachment to one’s mother causing asthma (Sloan, 2011). At the same time, the New Thought spiritual movement began to popularize the idea that people could cure illness through positive mental visualization and self-talk (Atkinson, 1906; Travis, 2007). In the mid-20th century, prominent authors such as Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale applied this to achieving success in entrepreneurship and business. The idea that spiritual faith and positive thinking could manifest financial success also emerged in Pentecostal Christianity through the Prosperity Gospel: the doctrine that God financially rewards those who show faith through making financial donations to the church (Hutchinson, 2014). Today, people can read about how to increase their power to manifest success through many self-help books, create “vision boards” of one’s ideal life from magazine cut-outs along with Oprah Winfrey, or receive manifestation coaching from social media influencers (Travis, 2007).

Manifestation, Magical Thinking, and Success

Manifestation beliefs are likely reinforced by influential role models, many of which exhibit the common psychological tendency to explain success as being due to the strength of one’s personal belief, dedication, and resolve (Miller & Ross, 1975). Of course, to some degree this is true. A vast literature has studied the effect of interpersonal expectancies, where an observer’s prior beliefs about other people (e.g., a learner’s intelligence) can subtly cause those people to conform to the expectations of the observer, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy or “Pygmalion effect” (e.g., academic achievement). This phenomenon has been shown to influence therapeutic, research, relationship, learning, and employee outcomes (Constantino et al., 2012; Eden, 1984; Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978). Also, intrapersonal expectancies or personal self-fulfilling prophecies have been studied in the context of self-efficacy and goal setting (Judge & Hurst, 2007; Oettingen et al., 2001; Oettingen & Mayer, 2002; Oettingen & Reininger, 2016) and dispositional traits such as hope and optimism have been shown to affect future expectations and behavior (Crane & Crane, 2007; Snyder et al., 2001). Thus, one could argue that manifestation simply represents belief in personal self-fulfilling prophesies: that one can set aspirational future goals, behave in ways congruent with their aspirations, and see and make use of opportunities that arise because they are primed to pay attention to aspects of their world related to their goal. As we have defined it, however, manifestation involves the belief that pseudoscientific or spiritual forces aid this process. Also, in its extreme form, it represents a worldview where all experiences in life occur through this partnership between mind, mystical forces, and matter. Rather than being a normative form of positive expectancy, it is more likely to be a form of magical thinking.

Magical thinking is commonly defined as “belief in the ability to influence events at a distance with no known physical explanation” (Pronin et al., 2006, p. 218). Past research has highlighted the tendency to believe in laws of similarity or “like causes like,” which can be seen in beliefs and practices across cultures ranging from voodoo to homeopathy (Rozin & Nemeroff, 1990). Research has suggested that such magical thinking may stem from conflations between physical and non-physical phenomena and illusions of causality and control that can intuitively form as a natural developmental process in childhood. This can also happen in adults when two causally unrelated events are coincidently experienced in close succession (Matute et al., 2015). For example, an athlete who wins a race may associate winning with the fact they were wearing a particular pair of socks that day, and thus continue to wear those socks in the future to enhance their performance or control luck (Dömötör et al., 2016).

A form of magical causality closely related to manifestation belief is the tendency to believe in mental causes of physical events (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). For example, Pronin and colleagues (2006) found that spectators who were induced to think about and visualize an athlete’s success were more likely to believe that they had influenced the athlete’s subsequent performance. This shows that in particular circumstances, people tend toward believing they have an illusory degree of mental control over physical events.

However, there are also individual differences in the degree to which people believe they have mental control over physical events. For example, thought-action fusion is a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder in which people believe that the mere existence of a negative thought (e.g., a car accident) makes that thought more likely to happen in reality (Shafran et al., 1996). The construct has also been widened to apply to the extent to which people believe that positive thoughts (e.g., winning the lottery) cause positive events to happen (Craig & Lafreniere, 2016). Although positive thought-action fusion has been associated with stronger hopefulness, it was also related to increased risk propensity and impaired control of obsessive thoughts (Craig & Lafreniere, 2016). This suggests that while positive thought action fusion may have some psychological benefits, obsessively focusing on the importance of positive thoughts may have negative consequences. This mirrors concerns raised in conceptual research which has suggested that approaches to self-help that insist on positive thinking, may cause overconfidence, false hope, “saccharin terrorism,” and victim blaming (Aspinwall & Tedeschi, 2010; Jefferson et al., 2017). Thus, it is important to understand the personal and social consequences of such beliefs.

Measuring manifestation beliefs may extend work on personal expectancies and magical thinking in several ways. First, while magical thinking such as thought-action fusion is thought of as an involuntary cognitive bias, manifestation could be considered a belief system: a set of interrelated, socially constructed beliefs used to perceive and make sense of reality. Second, in contrast to thought-action fusion, manifestation beliefs are voluntarily adopted for the explicit purpose of achieving success in life (Gunn & Cloud, 2010), and are potentially consequential to areas of life success such as career, finances, relationships, and health. Third, manifestation beliefs differ from conventional beliefs about the causes of success, which may affect how “manifesters” set goals, plan for the future, take action toward achieving their goals, and make causal attributions about their own and others’ successes and failures (Oettingen et al., 2001; Oettingen & Mayer, 2002; Oettingen & Reininger, 2016). Thus, manifestation belief could cause life trajectories to be altered by decisions made on the basis of such beliefs.

Manifestation beliefs could also be exploited by those in the success industry to promote unproven or pseudoscientific pathways to success. For example, a budding entrepreneur could invest time and money in a get rich quick scheme that promotes manifestation belief, or act on advice to focus solely on positive outcomes in their business, leading them to neglect their rising debt. These potential consequences suggest that a better understanding of manifestation belief is warranted.

The Current Research

The aims of this article were to explore the psychology of manifestation beliefs, including what may influence the development and maintenance of manifestation beliefs, and how they are related to motivation, judgment, and decision-making. Because no direct measure of manifestation belief existed, we first developed a reliable measure of manifestation belief in Study 1 and then validated the scale using psychological and behavioral correlates in subsequent studies. In Study 2, we additionally investigated whether manifestation belief was related to current subjective (vs. objective) success and perceived likelihood of future success. In Study 3, we explored whether manifestation belief was associated with (a) risky financial behavior and outcomes and (b) judgments of the likelihood of, and timeframe for, achieving unrealistically high levels of future success.

Study 1

The aim of Study 1 was to develop a measure of manifestation belief, then to ascertain its dimensionality, reliability, descriptive statistics, and stability across time and demographic groups. We report additional details of analyses, measures, and exclusions in the Supplemental Materials available at: https://osf.io/zbxse/.

Method

Scale Construction

We conducted several pilot studies to develop items that accurately captured the construct of manifestation (see Supplemental Material). To generate the scale items, we first extracted a pool of quotes from nine popular self-help books that promote manifestation. From this process we identified two broad dimensions related to external magical powers and personal magical powers. Thus 14 items were chosen to represent the spectrum of beliefs related to these two dimensions. Next, we tested the face validity of the items by surveying participants using open response questions to ascertain how participants made meaning of the items. To determine content validity we also consulted five experts in magical beliefs, decision-making, and/or scale development. Guided by their feedback, we adjusted the wording of the items related to external powers to better represent manifestation specifically.

The final items needed to conform to the following criteria: (a) when rated in the extreme, the item should imply a category mistake that imbues one thing with the properties of another (e.g., an internal thought having a physical effect on the external environment; Lindeman & Svedholm, 2012); (b) there is an implied cause-and-effect relationship which is empirically unlikely (e.g., a thought causing a future event; Risen, 2016); (c) it must contain reference to manifestation (e.g., successful outcomes being brought forth or attracted). Thus, the final revised scale used for Study 1 contained six items related to the belief that one can draw upon magical powers to manifest success and six items related to manifesting success through positive thoughts, emotions, and symbolic acts (e.g., acting as if one is successful).

Participants and Design

The sample comprised community members from the U.S. recruited through Prolific Academic. ¹ Of 310 participants, 4 were removed from analysis for incorrectly answering an attention check “Please select ‘strongly disagree’” in either Wave 1 or 2. Sample demographics for this and other studies in this manuscript are detailed in the Supplementary Material. A portion of the sample (N = 103) re-completed the Manifestation Scale 3 weeks later so we could measure test–retest reliability.

Procedure and Measures

Because we wanted participants to focus on aspects of success in life that were meaningful to them while they were completing the Manifestation Scale, in all studies we first included a success orientation task which asked participants to write down three of their goals for success in life. Participants then completed the 12-item Manifestation Scale. As an introduction to the scale, participants were told “We’re interested in beliefs you may hold about how you achieve success in your life. Please rate how much you agree/disagree that each statement reflects a belief that you hold.” They then indicated their agreement on a 7-point Likert-type scale that ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Presentation of items was randomized.

To ascertain whether beliefs in manifestation differed between demographic groups we asked for participants’ age, gender, personal income from the last 12 months before tax, education attainment, and ethnic identity. Two items measured political beliefs by asking participants to indicate where they lay on a spectrum from 1 = liberal to 7 = conservative on (a) economic issues (e.g., social welfare, government spending, tax cuts) and (b) social issues (e.g., immigration, homosexual marriage, abortion).

Results and Discussion

Principal axis factor analysis with oblimin rotation revealed two factors with eigenvalues above 1.00. As expected, one related to personal power (i.e., the power to manifest success through positive thoughts, emotions, and symbolic acts) and one related to cosmic collaboration (i.e., partnering with supernatural, cosmic, or universal forces to manifest success). We aimed to retain scale items with factor loadings above 0.40, however, one item which we expected to load onto the Cosmic Collaboration factor loaded onto both factors above this level (“To attract success, I send out to the universe the same energy I want to get back”), so we removed this item from the scale. After removing this item, we re-ran the analysis, and the clean, two-factor structure is summarized in Table 1. Overall, both factors explained 73% of variance in manifestation belief and were highly correlated (0.71), suggesting both factors represented one higher order construct (for more detail see Supplemental Analyses).

Table 1.

Manifestation Scale Demographics and Factor Loadings: Study 1.

Item wording				EFA factors
		M	SD	1	2
Personal power subscale:
1	Visualizing a successful outcome causes it to be drawn closer to me	4.80	1.76	0.85
2	I can speak success into existence through positive self-talk	4.26	1.87	0.86
3	I am more likely to attract success if I believe success is already on its way	4.75	1.75	0.87
4	I am more likely to attract a successful outcome if I act like it has already come true	4.42	1.77	0.73
5	If I think about achieving success, those thoughts alone make success more likely	4.51	1.72	0.80
6	Success is more likely to come to me the more I focus on positive emotions	5.12	1.59	0.84
Cosmic collaboration subscale:
7	I attract success into my life with the help of the universe or a higher power	3.90	2.11		0.91
8	The universe or a higher power sends me people and events to aid my success	3.94	2.10		0.96
9	I ask the universe or a higher power to bring me success	3.86	2.19		0.94
10	To attract success, I align myself with cosmic forces or energies	3.25	2.00		0.63
11	My soul, spirit, or higher self helps me attract success	4.08	1.95		0.56
Eigenvalues				4.47	3.55
Variance explained				41%	32%
Cronbach’s Alpha				0.93	0.94

Note. N = 306. EFA = Exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring with oblimin rotation.

Reliability coefficients were excellent for both the Personal Power (a = .93) and Cosmic Collaboration (a = .94) subscales. The 11 items of the higher-order scale also had excellent reliability when entered together (a = .95). To determine the stability of the construct over time we administered the scale to 103 participants from the same sample three weeks after the first administration. Spearman-Brown reliability coefficients for the two time points were r_sb =.91 for the higher-order Manifestation Scale, r_sb=.88 for the Personal Power subscale, and r_sb=.92 for the Cosmic Collaboration subscale. This indicated participants answered consistently on scale items and answers remained stable over time.

Belief in manifestation was quite prevalent: the Personal Power subscale had a mean that was well above the midpoint (M = 4.64, SD = 1.50) while the Cosmic Collaboration subscale mean was slightly below the midpoint (M = 3.81, SD = 1.85). Overall, the Manifestation Scale had a total mean of 4.23 (SD = 1.56). ² The three scales showed skew (−0.10 to −0.63) and kurtosis (−0.21 to −1.15) within an acceptable range. Looking at the frequency of participants with mean scores on the Manifestation Scale between 5 (slightly agree) and 7 (strongly agree), we found 35% of the sample had some belief in manifestation (33.3% for Cosmic Collaboration, 49.7% for Personal Power).

As described in Table 2, scores on the higher-order Manifestation Scale did not differ significantly by age, gender, or income. There were several small but significant relationships between the Manifestation Scale and other demographic variables. People with lower education were more likely to score higher on the Personal Power subscale but there was no effect of education on the higher-order scale. A more conservative political orientation was associated with higher belief in manifestation (primarily on the cosmic collaboration subscale) as was identifying as Black/African American or Hispanic. White/Caucasian ethnicity was associated with lower manifestation belief. Ethnicity effects were only significant for the Cosmic Collaboration subscale, which suggests that differences in responding may be related to African American or Hispanic groups having a higher religious or spiritual connection to manifestation.

Table 2.

Bivariate Correlations Between the Manifestation Scale and Demographics: Study 1.

						Ethnic identity
Scale/subscale	Age	Gender	Income	Education	Political ideology	White	Black	Hispanic	Asian	Native American
Manifestation scale	−.07	.11	−.02	−.10	.18**	−.13*	.16**	.14*	−.07	.10
Personal power	−.08	.11	−.03	−.12*	.11	−.08	.10	.08	−.03	.09
Cosmic collaboration	−.06	.09	−.01	−.07	.21***	−.15**	.19***	.18**	−.10	.10

Note. Political ideology: high scores = more conservative. Ethnic Identity: dichotomous dummy variables were created to measure each ethnic identity. Gender: Males = 0, Females = 1.

^*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

In sum, Study 1 indicated that our Manifestation Scale had a sound psychometric structure: internally consistent, stable over time, and normally distributed. There was also evidence that endorsement of manifestation beliefs was relatively high. Given its prevalence in the community, it is important to understand the psychological and behavioral correlates of these beliefs, which was the focus of Study 2.

Study 2

Study 2 had two overlapping aims. First, we examined the validity of the scale by determining (a) criterion validity (i.e., associations with consumption of success industry material which promotes manifestation) and (b) construct validity (i.e., associations with psychological constructs which we expected to be related to the belief system). Second, we examined whether manifestation beliefs are associated with perceptions of current and future success.

Method

Participants and Design

U.S. community members were recruited from Prolific. We administered the survey in two waves to reduce common methods bias, fatigue, and hypothesis guessing. Participants completed the Manifestation Scale and demographics in Wave 1 and all other measures in Wave 2, 1 week later. The sample comprised 382 participants, 351 of which completed both waves of the survey. Three participants incorrectly answered attention checks and were excluded from analyses.

Measures

The Manifestation Scale

We included the 11-item Manifestation Scale as described in Study 1.

Success Industry Consumption

As a criterion validity check for the scale, we measured consumption of success industry material related to manifestation. We first identified four well-known success industry figures who have promoted various forms of manifestation: (a) Rhonda Byrne, (b) Napoleon Hill, (c) Tony Robbins, and (d) Oprah Winfrey. For each industry figure, we presented participants with a written description and images of the person and their work (see Supplemental Material) and asked participants if they had consumed any products by each author (0 = No, 1 = Yes, Excluded = I’m unsure, maybe). This formed the success industry consumption variable. We next asked how familiar participants were with each figure’s work (1 = Not familiar to 4 = Very familiar). Those who answered “Not familiar” were excluded from answering the following two items which measured (1) belief congruence (i.e., “How much do you agree/disagree that the ideas expressed in the author’s work reflect your own beliefs?”; 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree) and (2) emotional valence (i.e., “How would you rate your overall emotions about the author and their work?”; 1 = extremely negative to 7 = extremely positive). Scores on the belief congruence and emotional valence items were highly correlated (r_sb = 0.89–0.94), so we calculated the mean of both items to create the success industry attitudes variable for each separate industry figure.

To measure construct validity, we included the following psychological measures.

Negative and Positive Thought-Action Fusion

We expected thought-action fusion to be a related construct because it represents a cognitive bias toward believing inner thoughts cause external events to occur. As such, we included the three-item “Self” dimension of the Thought-Action Fusion Scale-Revised (Shafran et al., 1996), which measures the belief that having negative thoughts about oneself increases the likelihood they will happen (e.g., “If I think of myself being in a car accident, this increases the risk that I will have a car accident,” α = .90). We also included the six-item “Self” dimension from the Positive Thought-Action Fusion Scale (Craig & Lafreniere, 2016), which measures the extent to which people believe positive thinking causes positive events to happen (e.g., “If I think of myself winning a competition, it increases the chance that I will win”; 1 = disagree strongly to 5 = agree strongly, α = .89). Research suggests positive and negative thought-action fusion are separate constructs, with the negative form associated with psychopathology and the positive form observed more widely in the population (Craig & Lafreniere, 2016). Given our scale was designed to measure variance in manifestation belief in non-clinical samples and scale items only concerned positive thinking, we predicted that positive thought-action fusion would be more strongly associated with manifestation belief than negative thought-action fusion.

Religiosity and Non-Religious Spirituality

Historically, manifestation beliefs have emerged in both traditional (e.g., prosperity gospel) and non-traditional (e.g., new thought) spiritual contexts. Thus, we ascertained people’s religiosity by asking “How religious are you?” and whether they were spiritual by asking “To what extent would you consider yourself ‘spiritual, but not religious’?” (1 = Not at all to 7 = Very). Given that the cosmic collaboration subscale explicitly deals with spiritual or religious forces, we expected this subscale to be more strongly associated with spiritual and religious belief. Also, manifestation belief may only apply to a small subset of religious believers (e.g., some pentecostal and charasmatic denominations; Neubert et al., 2014) and so we expected smaller associations between manifestation belief and religiosity than with manifestation belief and spirituality.

Karmic Justice

Although thought-action fusion measures the degree to which a person believes in the power of thoughts to affect external reality, manifestation beliefs should encompass a wider metaphysical worldview related to universal justice. Specifically, manifestation implies that a spiritual or pseudoscientific force is involved in delivering future outcomes that correspond with present thoughts and symbolic behavior. To ascertain whether this is the case, we included the Karmic Justice dimension of the Belief in Karma Scale (White et al., 2019) which measures the belief that the universe operates on a system of cause and effect, where people’s actions are ultimately rewarded or punished later in life (e.g., “In the long-run, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people”; 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, α = .85). By including this scale, we were able to measure a more metaphysical style of cause and effect than the thought-action fusion constructs capture.

Dispositional Hope

We included the eight-item Adult Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1996) containing two dimensions: (a) “pathways thinking” or the ability to generate multiple routes to achieve their goals (e.g., “I can think of many ways to get out of a jam”; 1 = definitely false to 8 = definitely true, α=.93); and (b) “agency thinking” or the motivation to pursue those pathways (e.g., “I energetically pursue my goals”). Because hope represents positive expectations about the future it could be used to test whether the Manifestation Scale was measuring a uniquely magical construct or simply the belief that through goal setting and pursuit one can achieve their dreams. Thus, hope could be used as a test of discriminant validity.

Beyond strengthening the validity of the scale, the main focus of Study 2 was to examine whether stronger manifestation belief predicted higher confidence in achieving future success. Therefore, we included the following measures:

Perceived Current Success

To examine subjective perceptions of participants’ current level of success, we used the Short-Form Aspirations Index (Martos & Kopp, 2012) which measured the degree to which participants believed they had attained six common life goals (two items per goal). The index included extrinsic goals for becoming rich, famous, and having an appealing image, as well as intrinsic goals for personal growth, deep relationships, and social contribution (e.g., Life-goal: To be rich. “How much have you already attained this goal?”; 1 = not at all to 7 = very much). We first used individual life goals in descriptive analyses, so created mean scores of the two items representing each life goal (r_{sb =} .54–.91). We also used the higher-order intrinsic and extrinsic factors in analysis. Factor analysis showed a clean two factor solution (λ = 3.22, 2.80, 50% variance explained) and so we calculated the mean of the six items for each factor to form the intrinsic life goal (α = .87) and extrinsic life goal (α = .83) variables.

Perceived Future Success

Because manifestation is promoted as a powerful means of enhancing success (e.g., Byrne, 2006), it seemed reasonable to expect that manifesters would be more confident about the odds of achieving future success. Thus, we measured participants’ perceived likelihood of future success, again using the Short-Form Aspirations Index. Participants rated the likelihood they will achieve each of the six life goals outlined above (e.g., Life-goal: To be rich. “How likely is it that this will happen in your future?”; 1 = not at all to 7 = very). Individual life goals were reliable (r_sb = .67–.90), the factor analysis for higher-order factors showed two clean factors (λ = 3.11, 3.07, 52% variance explained), and good reliability (α_intrinsic = .86, α_extrinsic = .85). Thus, we calculated the means in the same fashion as above.

Demographics

We included the same demographic measures from Study 1 as control variables in analyses.

Results and Discussion

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

To verify the factor structure from Study 1, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). As seen in the top half of Table 3, the two-factor solution performed better than the one-factor solution. The two-factor solution showed a generally acceptable goodness of fit, with the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) falling just outside of acceptable model fit (.09) based on Browne and Cudeck’s (1992) criteria. When including error co-variances between one set of items within each factor (modification indices = 24.40, 9.05) the RMSEA reduced to .08. Latent variable factor loadings for individual items ranged from .72 to .94. As with Study 1, the factors were highly correlated (0.61), suggesting one higher-order construct (see Supplementary Material).

Table 3.

Goodness of Fit Indices for Confirmatory Factor Analyses: Studies 2 and 3.

Model	χ2 (df)	χ2/df	CFI	TLI	SRMR	RMSEA [90% CI]
Study 2 (N = 348)
1-factor model	870.60 (44)	19.79	.74	.67	.12	.23 [.22, .25]
2-factor model	167.20 (43)	3.89	.96	.95	.06	.09 [.08, .11]
2-factor model a	135.14 (41)	3.30	.97	.96	.06	.08 [.07, .10]
Study 3 (N = 369)
1-factor model	1,012.88 (44)	23.02	.75	.68	.12	.24 [.23, .26]
2-factor model	149.28 (43)	3.47	.97	.96	.05	.08 [.07, .10]
2-factor model a	115.88 (41)	2.83	.98	.97	.05	.07 [.06, .09]

Note. Explanations of abbreviations (with cutoff thresholds): χ²/df = Chi-square divided by degrees of freedom (≤ 5); CFI = comparative fit index (≥ .95); TLI = Tucker–Lewis Index (≥ .95); SRMR = standardized root mean squared residual (≤ .08); RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation (≤ .08); CI = confidence interval.

^aIncluding error covariances for one pair of items per factor.

Validity

We calculated bivariate correlations between the Manifestation Scale and psychological variables. As can be seen in Table 4, the Manifestation Scale and subscales were correlated with the psychological variables in the strength and direction hypothesized. Non-religious spirituality showed the strongest association with the Manifestation Scale (r = .55) and religiosity was slightly weaker (r = .41). As predicted, spirituality and religiosity were more strongly associated with the cosmic collaboration subscale than personal power. The Manifestation Scale shared a large relationship with positive thought-action fusion (r = .54) and a smaller relationship with negative thought-action fusion (r = .33). There was also a large association between karmic justice and the Manifestation Scale (r = .54). Dispositional hope was also associated with manifestation (r = .37). When all the psychological predictors were included in a least-squares regression, the strongest predictors of scores on the higher-order Manifestation Scale were (in order): non-religious spirituality (β = .32), positive thought-action fusion (β = .28), karmic justice (β = .23), and religiosity (β = .17). Dispositional hope was a relatively weak predictor (although statistically significant, β = .11). Negative thought-action fusion was not a significant predictor in the regression.

Table 4.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity: Study 2.

Variable	Subscales		Total scale
	Personal power r	Cosmic collaboration r	r	β
Non-religious spirituality	.39***	.58***	.55***	.32***
Positive TAF	.56***	.44***	.54***	.28***
Karmic justice	.47***	.51***	.54***	.23***
Religiosity	.17**	.53***	.41***	.17***
Hope	.39***	.29***	.37***	.11**
Negative TAF	.31***	.30***	.33***	.00
R 2				.57***

Note. N = 348. β = standardized beta coefficients from least-squares regression; TAF = thought-action fusion.

^**p < .01. ***p < .001.

As can be seen in Table 5, we found large to very large associations between the Manifestation Scale and favorable attitudes toward all four success industry leaders and their work (rs = .33–.73), as well as moderate associations with having consumed their products or services (rs = .19–.21). In regressions, the Manifestation Scale was also the strongest unique predictor of positive attitudes toward (βs = 35–.61) and having consumed (Odds Ratios = 1.35–1.75) the success industry material.

Table 5.

Manifestation Scale Predicting Success Industry Attitudes and Consumption: Study 2.

	Rhonda Byrne (The secret)		Napoleon Hill (Think & grow rich)		Tony Robbins (Life coach & author)		Oprah Winfrey (Television celebrity)
Attitudes	r	β	r	β	r	β	r	β
Manifestation	.73***	.61***	.64***	.58**	.48***	.41***	.33***	.35***
Negative TAF	.40***	−.02	.34**	.05	.26***	.08	.17**	.11
Positive TAF	.57***	.12	.54***	.09	.34***	.07	.22***	−.01
Religiosity	.13	−.19**	.32*	.09	.18**	−.02	.03	−.12
Non-religious spirituality	.40***	−.01	.28*	−.06	.30***	.06	.17**	−.04
Karmic justice	.55***	.20*	.48***	−.02	.30***	−.02	.15*	−.03
Hope	.26**	.06	.20*	.01	.15*	.04	.13*	.06
R 2		.62***		.52***		.25***		.17***
N	117	117	71	71	200	200	296	296
Consumption	r pb	OR	r pb	OR	r pb	OR	r pb	OR
Manifestation	.21***	1.75**	.18**	1.57*	.19***	1.35	.19**	1.45*
Negative TAF	.17**	1.56*	.09	1.17	.13*	1.34	.07	1.01
Positive TAF	.13*	0.94	.13*	1.21	.21***	1.39	.14*	1.20
Religiosity	.03	0.93	.13*	1.14	.03	0.92	−.01	0.91
Non-religious spirituality	.19**	1.10	.09	1.02	.12*	1.00	.10	0.97
Karmic justice	.03	0.63	.06	0.61	.11*	0.95	.02	0.73
Hope	.02	0.92	.10	1.13	.15**	1.18	.09	1.15
McFadden’s R2		.13**		.11**		.13***		.09**
N	330	330	327	327	326	326	307	307

Note. Demographics were entered as covariates in each regression model (see Supplemental Analyses). Cases with missing values, that reported no knowledge of the target, or who were unsure if they had consumed material were excluded from each regression analysis. Attitudes = least-squares regression; Consumption = logistic regression; TAF = thought-action fusion.

^*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

In summary, the scale was behaving as it should, overlapping strongly with attitudes toward various success industry figures known for advocating manifestation, and doing so over and above-related constructs. This speaks to the retrospective criterion validity of the scale. In terms of construct validity, the Manifestation Scale shared overlap with constructs that would be theoretically related to belief in manifestation, but the correlations were not so great as to imply redundancy. We also found evidence of discriminant validity, in that manifestation belief was mostly explained by non-religious spirituality, positive thought-action fusion, and karmic justice, and least explained by religiosity, hope, and negative-thought action fusion, as expected.

Associations With Perceived Success

To explore associations with perceived success we calculated correlations between the Manifestation Scale, current attainment of the six life goals, and likelihood of achieving the six life goals. As seen in the Supplemental Material, manifestation beliefs showed moderate to large associations with perceived attainment (rs .18–.31) and likelihood of achieving all six life goals (rs .24–.40).

Next, we conducted hierarchical least-squares regressions to ascertain the unique contribution of the Manifestation Scale in predicting estimates of future success. Because we expected that likelihood of future success may vary naturally with age, income, gender, and education level we included these as covariates in all regressions. Table 6 shows the results of these analyses. When added to the regression model, higher scores on the Manifestation Scale significantly predicted higher perceived likelihood of achieving extrinsic (but not intrinsic) life goals. When perceived current attainment was added to the model at step 3, hope and positive thought-action fusion became non-significant, whereas the Manifestation Scale continued to predict perceived likelihood of achieving extrinsic life goals.

Table 6.

Manifestation Scale Predicting Perceived Likelihood of Future Success: Study 2.

	Extrinsic life goals				Intrinsic life goals
Variable	r	β1	β2	β3	r	β1	β2	β3
Manifestation scale	.35***	—	.23**	.16***	.39***	—	.11	.04
Current attainment	.79***	—	—	.77***	.83***	—	—	.76***
Negative TAF	.16***	−.07	−.07	−.07	−.01	−.09	−.09	−.05
Positive TAF	.35***	.22***	.16*	.08	.27***	.14**	.11	.09*
Religiosity	.06	−.03	−.07	.01	.20***	.03	.01	.02
Non-religious spirituality	.16***	.07	.00	−.03	.28***	.13**	.10*	.06
Karmic justice	.30***	.08	.04	.02	.22***	−.10	−.13*	−.01
Hope	.32***	.27***	.24***	−.07	.63***	.63***	.62***	.11**
R 2		.28***	.30***	.73***		.49***	.49***	.76***
R2 change		.19***	.02**	.43***		.44***	.00	.27***

Note. N = 348. β1 = Standardized betas for least-squares regression when psychological variables entered into a model with demographics; β2 = Manifestation scale entered; β3 = Perceived current attainment of life goals entered. Demographics entered as covariates in all regression models (see Supplemental Analyses).

^*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

In summary, individuals who believe in manifestation tend to perceive themselves as more successful, both in the present and the future. The Manifestation Scale demonstrates predictive validity by improving the prediction of perceived likelihood of success over and above related constructs. This unique effect was comparatively strong and similar to that of dispositional hope. Interestingly, the scale remains a significant predictor regardless of demographic differences and current perceived success, which would typically affect likelihood judgments. For comparison, being hopeful only seems to increase perceived likelihood of future success when aligned with one’s current success level and not when this variation in current success is controlled for in regressions. Given this, and the fact that manifesters did not show more objective success in terms of income and education attainment in Study 1, manifesters’ perceptions of future success may be overly optimistic.

Study 3

In Study 3 we aimed to (a) confirm psychometric properties and enhance construct validity, (b) determine whether manifestation belief may increase the likelihood of becoming involved in risky business and financial ventures, and (c) further explore how manifestation belief may be related to unrealistic judgments about future success.

Method

Participants and Design

The sample was again recruited through Prolific. We administered the survey in two waves, with participants completing the Manifestation Scale and demographics in Wave 1 and all other measures in Wave 2, 1 week later. The sample comprised 400 participants, 375 of which completed both waves of the survey. Six participants were excluded for incorrectly answering an attention check.

Measures

The Manifestation Scale

We administered the 11-item Manifestation Scale in the same way as previous studies. As can be seen in the bottom half of Table 3, the CFA results were similar to those in Study 2.

We predicted that the overoptimism about future success experienced by manifesters may make them vulnerable to financial or investment opportunities which promise sizable but unlikely rewards. To test this, we included the following measures:

Risk Propensity

We used the eight-item General Risk-Taking Propensity Scale (Zhang et al., 2019) to measure the tendency to take risks in life (e.g., “I commonly make risky decisions,” 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, α = .94).

Cryptocurrency Investment

To measure participation in what is considered a volatile financial investment (Lammer et al., 2019) we asked participants, “Do you hold or own any cryptocurrency?” Those that answered Yes, currently were coded as “1” and those who said No or In the past, but not now were coded as “0” (those that answered Not sure/Prefer not to say were excluded).

Stock Trading

As a comparison to cryptocurrency we asked, “Other than 401k retirement funds, have you ever personally made investments or trades in the stock market?” Answers were coded in the same way as the cryptocurrency question.

Fraud Victimization

To ascertain whether participants had been victims of fraud we adapted a survey question from Jorna (2015). Participants answered whether in the last 5 years they had given personal details or money to anyone who had committed nine specific types of fraud (e.g., “Dishonestly notified you of having won a lottery or some other prize”) plus one response for “other” types of fraud not specifically listed. Each time participants answered Yes, I gave personal details or money to a type of fraud they were given a score of “1.” If they answered I’m unsure, I may have to any of frauds they were also given “1.” No responses for each fraud were coded as “0.” The total number of potential or definite frauds was summed to ascertain the total amount of times each person was, or may have been, a victim of fraud in the last 5 years. The number of potential fraud victimizations selected by participants ranged from “0” to “5.”

Bankruptcy

If manifestation belief is indeed related to risky and intuitive decisions in business and finance, we expected that this could lead to a greater likelihood of having been bankrupt. To ascertain whether participants had ever declared bankruptcy we asked, “Have you, or a business you have owned, ever declared bankruptcy?” (0 = No, 1 = Yes, Excluded = Not sure/Prefer not to say).

Building on findings from Study 2, we wished to further understand whether manifestation belief was related to overconfident or unrealistic evaluations of future success. Therefore, we included the following measures:

Get Rich Quick Belief

We created three items to measure whether people believed in the ability to get rich quick and the efficacy of get rich quick schemes (e.g., “Despite what critics say, you can get rich quick with the right advice and know-how”; 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree, α = .89).

Unlikely Success Scenario

Study 2 found relationships between the manifestation scale and increased likelihood of achieving success, regardless of one’s perceived current level. However, the degree of success was not a focal point of the aspirations measure in Study 2. Although we controlled for perceptions of current success, participants may have anchored to different levels of success when answering likelihood questions. Therefore in Study 3, we designed an unlikely success scenario where we first asked participants: “Briefly complete this sentence: ‘The personal or professional skill, quality, or talent I most value is my . . . ’” Participants wrote their response in a text box (“creativity,” “work ethic,” “honesty,” etc.). Their responses were then transferred to subsequent survey items using the “piping” function in the survey software (below we use “creativity” as a placeholder for where participants’ own text appeared). Next, we asked “Please imagine yourself in the following scenario: In the future, you achieve great success due to your “creativity.” This success includes you earning US$300,000 each year from building loyal fans/customers numbering over 100,000, who love your “creativity.” Plus you have made a positive difference in the lives of thousands of people from your “creativity,” earning you true respect and recognition.” This served as the unlikely success scenario for answering the following questions and allowed us to keep the unlikely quantitative aspects of success constant yet vary the qualitative elements to be meaningful to participants.

Success Likelihood

To measure perceived likelihood of success in this scenario we asked: “In your lifetime, how likely is it you will achieve this level of success?” (1 = not at all likely to 7 = extremely likely).

Success Timeframe

To measure judgments of how long this level of success would take to achieve we asked: “If you started pursuing this level of success today, how long do you estimate it would take to personally achieve it?” (1 ≤ 1 year to 7 ≥ 15 years). ³

We also included the following three psychological variables to enhance construct validity and to examine the effect of manifestation belief on financial risk and unlikely success variables, relative to other psychological variables related to judgment.

Decision Styles

Dual process theories of cognition have suggested that individuals process information and make decisions using two separate systems: the rational-analytic system and the experiential-intuitive system (Lindeman, 2018). A preference for intuitive thinking has been found to be related to magical thinking and epistemically suspect beliefs (Hamilton et al., 2016; Risen, 2016) and for this reason we also expected manifestation belief would be related to intuitive thinking. We had no a priori hypothesis for whether a preference for rational thinking would be related, given that evidence for a rational cognitive style and magical thinking has been somewhat mixed (Lindeman, 2018). Although belief in manifestation could represent a failure to reflect and deliberate on the causes of success (Pennycook, 2022), manifesters are encouraged to place high importance on the power of their thoughts. As such, manifesters may instead have a stronger preference for cognitive deliberation. To ascertain this, we included the Rational and Intuitive Decision Styles Scale (Hamilton et al., 2016) containing five items measuring a preference for rational decision-making through evaluating information thoroughly (e.g., “I prefer to gather all the necessary information before committing to a decision”; α = .87), and five items measuring intuitive decision-making through relying on feelings and quick decisions (e.g., “When making decisions, I rely mainly on my gut feelings,” 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, α = .88).

Core Self-Evaluations

We also wished to test whether manifestation belief was related to higher self-confidence and self-image. Although we thought belief in manifestation could enhance self-confidence, as it is based on magical thinking, any relation to overoptimistic judgment should not primarily stem from increased belief in one’s own ability to attain goals. Thus, we included the 12-item Core Self-Evaluations Scale (Judge et al., 2003) which measures positive self-concept consisting of self-esteem, self-efficacy, emotional stability, and internal locus of control (e.g., “I am confident I get the success I deserve in life.” 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, α = .92).

Deferred Gratification

Because manifestation implies that success can “appear” or be “brought forth,” it may be seen as a pathway to success for those with less ability to delay gratification. However, it was equally possible that manifestation could enhance a person’s ability to delay gratification through reframing delayed outcomes (“My thoughts and behavior are not yet in full vibrational alignment with my goals”) and maintaining hope for distant goals (Mischel et al., 2010). Therefore, we did not expect a consistent association between the Manifestation Scale and deferred gratification and included it as a test of discriminant validity. However, inability to delay gratification has been associated with a range of outcomes including compulsive gambling and poorer personal finances (Mischel et al., 2010; Moffitt et al., 2011; Parke et al., 2004). Considering this, it served as an appropriate construct for comparing the utility of the Manifestation Scale in predicting financial risk variables and unrealistic judgments about success. We included the adapted version of the 12-item Deferment of Gratification Scale (Haushofer et al., 2016; Ray & Najman, 1986) (e.g., “I enjoy something more when I have to wait for it and plan for it,” 1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree, α=.80).

Demographic Variables

We used the same demographic variables from the previous studies as controls.

Results

Construct Validity

We tested construct validity using the same methods as Study 2. As can be seen in Table 7, there was a large bivariate association between the Manifestation Scale and intuitive decision-making style (r = .36), a moderate association with core self-evaluations (r = .25) and no significant association with rational decision-making style (r = .02) or deferred gratification (r = −.04). Together the psychological variables explained 20% of the variance in the Manifestation Scale. By far the most important contributor was intuitive decision style (β = .40). Core self-evaluations (β = .21) and rational decision style (β =.18) were the next most important and deferred gratification was not a significant predictor (β = −.01). These findings suggest good convergent and discriminant validity, with the scale being related to the most theoretically supported construct (preference for intuitive thinking) and less related to constructs with less theoretical reasons to be associated (e.g., deferred gratification).

Table 7.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity: Study 3.

	Subscales		Total scale
Variable	Personal r	Cosmic r	r	β
Intuitive decision style	.36***	.28***	.36***	.40***
Core self-evaluations	.19***	.25***	.11*	.21***
Rational decision style	.07	.13*	.02	.18***
Deferred gratification	.00	.05	−.04	−.01
R 2				.20

Note. N = 369. Personal = personal power; Cosmic = cosmic collaboration; β = standardized beta coefficients from least-squares regression.

^*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Risky Financial Decisions

The correlational and least-squared regression analyses in Table 8 show that the Manifestation Scale was positively associated with risk propensity (β = .26, r=.24). In addition, for each unit increase on the Manifestation Scale, participants were 1.33 times more likely to own cryptocurrency (r_pb = .14) but not significantly more likely to own traditional stocks, as predicted. They were also 1.28 times more likely to have been a victim of fraud (r_pb = .09), and 1.42 times more likely to have been bankrupt (r_pb = .13). When entered into a regression, the Manifestation Scale significantly improved prediction of financially risky decisions over and above intuitive decision-making style, rational decision-making style, ability to defer gratification, and core self-evaluation.

Table 8.

Manifestation Scale Predicting Financial Risk Factors: Study 3.

Variable	Model
Risk propensity (N = 369)	r	β1	β2
Manifestation scale	.24***	—	.26***
Core self-evaluations	.01	.07	.02
Intuitive decision style	.25***	.20***	.10
Rational decision style	−.16***	−.04	−.09
Deferred gratification	−.20***	−.17**	−.17**
R2 (R2 change)		.20*** (.09***)	.25*** (.05***)
Cryptocurrency (N = 354)	r pb	OR1	OR2
Manifestation scale	.14*	—	1.33**
Core self-evaluations	.03	0.80	0.72
Intuitive decision style	.07	1.56**	1.29
Rational decision style	−.05	0.64	0.53*
Deferred gratification	.11	1.60*	1.64*
R2 (R2 change)		.10*** (.03*)	.12*** (.02**)
Stock trading (N = 355)	r pb	OR1	OR2
Manifestation scale	.05	—	1.16
Core self-evaluations	.08	0.93	0.88
Intuitive decision style	−.10	0.94	0.84
Rational decision style	.04	0.93	0.85
Deferred gratification	.18***	1.46*	1.47*
R2 (R2 change)		.12*** (.02)	.12*** (.00)
Fraud victimization (N = 356)	r pb	OR1	OR2
Manifestation scale	.09	—	1.28*
Core self-evaluations	−.16***	0.58**	0.52**
Intuitive decision style	.02	1.02	0.84
Rational decision style	.01	1.14*	0.98
Deferred gratification	−.10	0.81	0.81
R2 (R2 change)		.06*** (.03*)	.08*** (.02*)
Bankruptcy (N = 353)	r pb	OR1	OR2
Manifestation scale	.13*	—	1.42*
Core self-evaluations	−.06	0.55	0.49*
Intuitive decision style	.00	0.97	0.70
Rational decision style	.02	1.62	1.32
Deferred gratification	−.06	0.58	0.58
R2 (R2 change)		.20*** (.05)	.22*** (.02*)

Note. β1 = standardized beta coefficients for ordinary least squares regression, psychological variables added to the model with demographics. β2 = manifestation scale added. OR1 = odds-ratios for logistic regression step 1, psychological variables added to the model with demographics. OR2 = manifestation scale added. McFadden’s likelihood ratio R² used for logistic regressions. Demographics entered as covariates in all regression models (see Supplemental Analyses).

^*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Judgments About Unlikely Success

The correlational and least-squares regression analyses in Table 9 show that there were large associations between the Manifestation Scale and judgments of unlikely future success. The Manifestation Scale was associated with belief that one can get rich quick (r=.43, β=.40), higher perceived likelihood of achieving the unlikely success scenario (r=.35, β=.30), and judging they could achieve the unlikely scenario in less time (r = −.31, β = −27). The Manifestation Scale was the strongest unique predictor in regressions compared to the other psychological variables.

Table 9.

Manifestation Scale Predicting Unlikely Success: Study 3.

Get rich quick	Model
	r	β1	β2
Manifestation scale	.43***	—	.40***
Core self-evaluation	.20***	.25***	.18***
Intuitive decision	.20***	.22***	.06
Rational decision	.06	.15**	.07
Deferred gratification	.00	−.11	−.11
R2 (R2 change)		.12*** (.10***)	.24*** (.13***)
Unlikely success scenario: likelihood	r	β1	β2
Manifestation scale	.35***	—	.30***
Core self-evaluation	.32***	.33***	.28***
Intuitive decision	.14**	.17**	.06
Rational decision	.01	.06	.00
Deferred gratification	.08	−.01	−.01
R2 (R2 change)		.17*** (.12***)	.24*** (.07***)
Unlikely success scenario: timeframe	r	β1	β2
Manifestation scale	−.31***	—	−.27***
Core self-evaluation	−.20***	−.17**	−.12*
Intuitive decision	−.14*	−.19***	−.09
Rational decision	−.03	−.06	−.01
Deferred gratification	−.08	−.04	−.04
R2 (R2 change)		.08*** (.06***)	.13*** (.06***)

Note. N = 357. β1 = standardized beta coefficients for least-squares regression, psychological variables added; β2 = manifestation scale added. Demographics were entered as covariates in each regression model (see Supplemental Analyses).

^*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

In summary, manifesters are more likely to be overconfident about achieving unlikely levels of success and exhibit behaviors that may lead to financial harm. These associations seem specific to the manifestation belief system, and not self-efficacy, control, esteem, emotional stability, cognitive decision-making style, or ability to defer gratification. This may have consequences for career and business decision-making. In particular, manifesters may be more likely to believe claims made by those in the success industry about the level, likelihood, and timeframe of future success.

General Discussion

In three studies, we focused on understanding a form of magical thinking reinforced by the success industry: manifestation belief. To do this, we first developed the 11-item Manifestation Scale, which included two subscales: Personal Power (e.g., manifesting through positive self-talk, visualization, acting “as if”) and Cosmic Collaboration (e.g., partnering with supernatural or cosmic higher forces) which together formed the higher-order Manifestation Scale. It demonstrated sound psychometric qualities and showed evidence of construct and criterion validity. The findings suggest that the scale measures a unique form of magical thinking, as it is strongly related to positive thought-action fusion biases, karmic justice, and spirituality, while being distinct enough to be considered its own construct. Also, the positive expectancy associated with manifestation is not primarily due to increased perceived control associated with hopefulness or positive self-concept. The scores on the scale showed over one third of participants were “manifesters” to some degree, highlighting the prevalence of this belief system.

We found evidence of an interesting paradox: while manifestation belief seems to be self-enhancing, it shows little evidence of making an impact on objective levels of success. Manifesters were more likely to have a positive view of themselves and their chances of success. However, we found no relationship between manifestation belief and income or education attainment. Insofar as these variables are proxies for objective success, manifesters are not objectively more successful than non-manifesters.

Manifesters were also more likely to believe they would achieve their life goals and remained confident even if the gap between these goals and their current level of attainment was wide. Manifestation belief was the only unique predictor of this phenomenon, compared to other constructs shown to be related to belief in successful goal attainment, like dispositional hope (Snyder et al., 2001). 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.

Although magical thinking may help people maintain optimism during goal-pursuit (as suggested in ethnographic research; St. James et al., 2011), setting unrealistic goals or persisting in the face of disconfirming evidence has the potential to be harmful. According to our findings, manifesters were more likely to have a stronger preference for risk-taking, have riskier investments (i.e., cryptocurrency versus traditional stocks), and have been bankrupt. Therefore, there is a risk of negative financial outcomes for those who believe in manifestation. Note that these relationships were subtle and would be difficult for manifesters to detect by simply reflecting on their life experiences. Making accurate attributions for success and failure may be particularly challenging for manifesters, 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.” Although reframing can be an effective emotion-focused coping strategy (Wood et al., 2009), it has the potential to become harmful if it leads to denial or false hope (Aspinwall & Tedeschi, 2010; Gunn & Cloud, 2010).

In a similar vein, while manifesters may report having a more positive self-concept and higher chances of success, insistence on believing positive things about oneself can psychologically backfire. For example, Wood and colleagues (2009) found that when participants who were instructed to only focus on how a positive statement about themselves was true (i.e., “I am lovable”), those with a poorer self-concept felt worse afterwards. In a similar way, a manifester who may sustain this behavior over time, may see different degrees of benefit depending on the distance between their affirmed future ideal self and their actual self.

We also found evidence that manifesters were more likely to believe that they could achieve an unlikely level of success (earn US$300,000 a year, have US100,000 fans etc.) in shorter time than non-manifesters. This overconfidence could leave manifesters vulnerable to believing unrealistic and/or inauthentic claims from the success industry and others who promise unlikely success, such as get rich quick schemes. Manifestation belief could also decrease the effectiveness of attempts by consumer educators and regulators to inform consumers of the odds of succeeding in such ventures. For example, legal disclosures featuring typical levels of success are often given alongside advertising to help consumers evaluate risk (Bosley et al., 2020). However, mere exposure to rational explanations of probability and risk may not curb the expectations of those who believe they possess magical aids to success that defy probability.

As hypothesized, we found strong relationships between manifestation and religious and non-religious spirituality, confirming our hypothesis that manifestation beliefs are likely to be culturally transmitted through spiritual groups. Some explicitly religious (e.g., Prosperity Gospel) and less-religious spiritual ideologies (e.g., New Thought) have been known to promote manifestation as a pathway to the American Dream. For example, one study found relationships between belief in the Prosperity Gospel, low socio-economic status, and ethnic minority group membership (Schieman & Jung, 2012), and an ethnographic study suggested the Prosperity Gospel is seen by Hispanic Americans as a way to achieve the American dream (Lin, 2020). Given we also found the ethnic minorities were more likely to hold cosmic manifestation beliefs, it suggests manifestation is particularly appealing to spiritually oriented people in minorities who have experienced barriers to the American Dream.

Faith and fervent belief in manifestation may be particularly consequential. As with many religious or spiritual ideologies, maintaining faith and belief in the face of little material evidence is often considered virtuous (Sloan, 2011). Yet faith alone is unlikely to lead to success, and persistence due to faith could have opportunity costs, especially if failure is attributed to a lack of faith or belief, rather than other consequential factors. For example, if a person believes that manifestation can cure physical illnesses such as cancer (e.g., Hay, 1985) they may fail to seek expert medical treatment in a timely manner because they are convinced that once they have cleansed themselves of negative emotions or found the correct mental visualization they will cure their illness (Aspinwall & Tedeschi, 2010; Jefferson et al., 2017). Thus, future research should focus on the effects of manifestation belief in other high-stakes decision-making scenarios, such as health contexts (e.g., Davies & Ferris, 2022).

This article has several limitations. First, it is possible that manifesters are biased to respond more positively to survey measures of current levels of goal attainment and success because they are manifesting in real time: that is, they are symbolically acting as if they are more successful to cosmically manifest success in the future. Therefore, future studies may wish to employ alternative (e.g., behavioral, objective) measures to explore this. If biased responding does exist due to manifestation belief, then there is scope for the scale to be used as a control variable (much like social desirability) in studies of self-reported goal attainment and success, where responses may be inflated by manifestation belief. Second, it will be important to explore manifestation belief cross-culturally, both within the United States and between countries, to understand the generalizability of the construct. Third, although we found some interesting demographic differences in responses to the subscales, most of our analyses focused on the higher-order scale. As such, the predictive utility of the two subscales versus the higher-order scale deserves further exploration. Forth, due to the correlational nature of this paper, any implication of causation is speculative. For example, manifestation belief was related to thought-action fusion and engaging with the success industry. However, the nature of causality is probably complex: those more inclined toward involuntary forms of magical thinking like thought-action fusion may be more likely to be attracted to success industry material that promotes manifestation. Conversely, people may develop a belief in manifestation from engaging with such material, which instead leads them to develop stronger thought-action fusion. It also remains to be seen whether a desire for success motivates people to believe in manifestation or whether people develop stronger desire as a consequence of their belief in manifestation. Further experimental or longitudinal studies may help confirm this.

In conclusion, as the desire for more aspirational forms of success rise, so do the promises of a success industry of “experts,” “gurus,” and “influencers” who offer inspiration, education, and systems of success. However, many of these beliefs and practices remain untested. Therefore, this article developed the Manifestation Scale to measure an under-researched, yet popular form of magical thinking related to success: the belief that one can collaborate with the universe or a higher power to attract success through positive thinking, visualization, and symbolic actions such as acting as if one’s goals have already come true. Although manifesters may be more confident about themselves and their prospects for success, manifestation shows little objective evidence of aiding one’s success. Manifestation belief was related to risky financial investments and negative financial outcomes as well as overconfident estimates of the likelihood and timeframe for achieving unlikely levels of success. In developing the scale, we invite further exploration of manifestation belief and pseudoscience in the success industry and in high-stake domains such as career, finance, and health decisions.