An Experiment on Verbal Self-Suggestion as a Means For Behavioral Change

Abstract

This study examines the behavioral changes resulting from using affirmations through verbal self-suggestion. An experiment on smoking was conducted on 60 test subjects. 30 Turkish speaking subjects repeated an affirmation in Turkish and 30 German speaking subjects repeated an affirmation in German. The objective of the experiment was to make the test subjects quit smoking through verbal prompting only, and to analyze the effects of language differences in reaching this goal. This article offers the results of the experiment.