Any Scientific Basis for Neuro Linguistic Programming?

Question

Over the years, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) has been creeping into popular culture. It is used by a lot of self-help gurus, and also in context of the right way to educate and learn (e.g., visual learner, auditory learner, etc.)

At its core the NLP presuppositions seem vague. (e.g., "Choice is better than no choice", "People work perfectly", "All actions have a purpose.")

My question is: Is there any credible proof of NLP being anything more than just placebo?

(In my mind I was comparing The Seven Hermetic Principles [not that I subscribe to them] and NLP — trying to to figure out if NLP can score more points than the 7 principles in being scientific, verifiable and substantial.)

Answer 1

It seems that there is no scientific basis for NLP. Reading Neuro-linguistic programming: Cargo cult psychology? (2009)

From the abstract:

It concludes that after three decades, there is still no credible theoretical basis for NLP, researchers having failed to establish any evidence for its efficacy that is not anecdotal.

And from the conclusion: (link not in original quote)

To adapt this [Cargo Cult] term one more time, NLP masquerades as a legitimate form of psychotherapy, makes unsubstantiated claims about how humans think and behave, purports to encourage research in a vain attempt to gain credibility, yet fails to provide evidence that it actually works. Neuro-linguistic programming is cargo cult psychology.

Answer 2

A similar question was answered here previously.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a somewhat controversial area of research, often relegated to journals like The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.¹

The NLP paradigm as a whole is generally discredited in the more mainstream scientific literature. A widely cited text on the topic concludes to say that:

We found little if any evidence to support NLP’s assumptions or to indicate that it is effective as a strategy for social influence. It assumes that by tracking another’s eye movements and language, an NLP trainer can shape the person’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions (Dilts, 1983). There is no scientific support for these assumptions.²

Tomasz Witkowski of the Polish Skeptics Club published an article in Polish Psychological Bulletin, reviewing the literature on this subject.³ His conclusions although mixed, are also unambiguous:

The qualitative analysis indicates the greater weight of the non-supportive studies and their greater methodological worth against the ones supporting the tenets. Results contradict the claim of an empirical basis of NLP.

Among many reputable sources, Witkowski cites an article in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, which concludes:

They were unable to find any support for the NLP-derived hypothesis that subjects showing differential ability across sensory modes would choose word phrases reflecting their preferred sensory mode.⁴

1. See for example, "Rapport Building for Salespeople: A Neuro-Linguistic Approach" by William G. Nickels, Robert F. Everett and Ronald Klein, The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management , Vol. 3, No. 2 (Nov., 1983), pp. 1-7.
2. "Be All That You Can Be: Enhancing Human Performance" by D. Druckman in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology Vol 34, No 11 (2004), pp. 2234-2266
3. http://web.archive.org/web/20150525143628/http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ppb.2010.41.issue-2/v10059-010-0008-0/v10059-010-0008-0.xml
4. Fromme, D. K., & Daniell, J. (1984). "Neurolinguistic Programming examined: imagery, sensory mode, and communication." Journal of Counseling Psychology, 31.

Answer 3

Ap Dijksterhuis has done experiments on effects of new code games on the problem solving skills. The results showed that such games greately increase the performance in problem solving and finding a right choice- tasks.

Dijksterhuis A., Bos M., Nordgren L., Baaren R. van. On making the right choice: the deliberation-without-attention effect. 2006. Science. Vol. 311. P. 1005-1007. ** Dijksterhuis A., Olden Z. van. On the benefits of thinking unconsciously: Unconscious thought can increase post-choice satisfaction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2006. In press.

(I think I found a working link here http://www.unconsciouslab.com/publications/Dijksterhuis%20Meurs%20-%20The%20generative%20power%20of%20Unconscious%20Thought.pdf )

In fact, that website has a number of publications on this theme: http://www.unconsciouslab.com/index.php?page=Publications&subpage=By%20year

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman experiment about how framing may affect perception and decision making: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1685855

Answer 4

There's quite a few techniques/approaches that are combined under the umbrella of 'NLP' and I suppose efficiency and effectiveness of those can vary from one to another, but there are certainly some interesting studies that show noticeable effect sizes:

1. "Neurolinguistic programming used to reduce the need for anaesthesia in claustrophobic patients undergoing MRI."

The main outcome measures were the ability to tolerate a successful MR examination after neurolinguistic programming, the reduction of median anxiety scores produced by neurolinguistic programming, and models of costs for various imaging pathways. Neurolinguistic programming allowed 38/50 people (76%) to complete the MR examination successfully. Overall, the median anxiety score was significantly reduced following the session of neurolinguistic programming.

2. "Neurolinguistic programming training, trait anxiety, and locus of control."

This study reports on within-person and between-group changes in trait anxiety and locus of control as measured on the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Wallston, Wallston, and DeVallis' Multiple Health Locus of Control immediately following a 21-day residential training in neurolinguistic programming. Significant with-in-person decreases in trait-anxiety scores and increases in internal locus of control scores were observed as predicted. Chance and powerful other locus of control scores were unchanged. Significant differences were noted on trait anxiety and locus of control scores between European and U.S. participants, although change scores were similar for the two groups. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that this training may lower trait-anxiety scores and increase internal locus of control scores. A matched control group was not available, and follow-up was unfortunately not possible.

3. Effect of neurolinguistic programming training on self-actualization as measured by the Personal Orientation Inventory.

This study reports within-person changes on self-actualization measures of the Personal Orientation Inventory following a 24-day residential training in neurolinguistic programming. Significant positive mean changes were found for 18 master practitioners on nine of the 12 scales and for 36 practitioners on 10 of the 12 scales. Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that training increases individual self-actualization scores.

That is form just a cursory look at PubMed search results.

Answer 5

Gareth Roderique-Davies who wrote the "NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING: CARGO CULT PSYCHOLOGY?" article fails to understand what Feynman meant with Cargo cults. NLP doesn't engage in the kind of irrelevant research that Feynman criticized when he criticized research of rat psychology as cargo cult research. The charge about being a cargo cult is about incorperating some practices of productive scientists like doing experiments but getting no useful results. Claiming that NLP integrates the research practices of academia is a failure to understand what NLP is about.

A psychologists named Kevin Hogan who's no member of the NLP community did a study of his understanding of NLP Eye Accessing Cues "NLP Eye Accessing Cues: Uncovering the Myth". The NLP community thinks that he misunderstood their ideas and therefore his experiment didn't work.

Evaluating NLP based on the soundness of it's presuppositions isn't what empiric research is about. Empiricism is about testing whether a technique works in the real world.

You wouldn't test whether a technique of surgery works by letting a researcher read a text about surgery and then perform surgery based on his understanding of surgery. Any serious study that wanted to establish whether NLP works would have to test interventions that are performed by skilled NLP practitioners instead of testing some part of NLP theory.

There are no published studies that tested whether NLP based interventions such as the NLP phobia cure work.

On a similar token asking is NLP different from placebo misses the point. A placebo is a purely psychological intervention. Everyone agrees that NLP is about purely psychological evaluations. If you want to evaluate the usefulness of a psychological evaluations than one should compare it to the conventional treatment.

But are their cases where there's scientific evidence that NLP works? The Fast Phobia Cure is an example. In his literature review paper "Neuro-linguistic programming and application in treatment of phobias" Mahishika Karunaratne writes:

This paper reviews evidence available in literature produced in the UK and US and reveals that NLP is a successful treatment for phobias as well as being particularly efficient due to the relatively brief time period it takes to effect an improvement.