The law of attraction is the belief that like attracts like: a person's thoughts and feelings are said to draw matching experiences into their life, so focusing steadily on what you want is supposed to bring it to you. The idea grew out of the nineteenth-century New Thought movement, was carried into the twentieth century by success books such as Think and Grow Rich, and became a global phenomenon with Rhonda Byrne's The Secret in 2006. Mainstream science treats it as unfalsifiable and unsupported by empirical evidence, but several of the habits it encourages overlap with findings psychologists do support.
That split matters because millions of people use vision boards, affirmations and scripting every day. The useful question is less whether the universe answers thoughts and more which parts of the practice help people reach goals and which parts quietly work against them. Psychology has a fairly specific answer, and it is not the one most popular books give. This guide traces the history, separates the law of attraction from the law of assumption, lays out the research, and sets Billy Carson's own reading alongside it.
What is the law of attraction?
The law of attraction holds that thoughts and emotions behave like a signal, and that the world returns experiences that match the signal you send. Positive, confident attention to a goal is said to draw it closer; fearful or resentful attention is said to draw more of what you fear. The Secret condensed the practice into three steps, often summarised as ask, believe, receive: state clearly what you want, act and feel as though it is already yours, and stay open to it arriving.
Most modern teachers describe the mechanism in the language of vibration or frequency, a vocabulary with a long history of its own, covered in our guide to how to raise your vibration. The key feature to notice is that the law of attraction is framed as an external force: the thought goes out, and circumstances are pulled in.
Where did the law of attraction come from?
The law of attraction came out of New Thought, a loose American movement of the mid-to-late 1800s built on the conviction that mind shapes health and circumstance. Its usual founding figure is Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (16 February 1802 to 16 January 1866), a clockmaker and watchmaker who became a mental healer in Maine. Quimby told patients that illness grew out of false beliefs, summed up in his motto "The Truth is the Cure". His best-known patient was Mary Baker Eddy, who later founded Christian Science. Quimby never published in his lifetime, though, and his papers did not appear until Horatio Dresser's The Quimby Manuscripts in 1921, so historians debate how much direct influence he had on the movement that claims him. Quimby himself did not use the phrase "law of attraction".
The phrase itself first appears in 1855, in volume IV of Andrew Jackson Davis's The Great Harmonia, where it is used in a spiritual sense about the soul rather than as a technique for getting things. The essayist Prentice Mulford, writing in 1886 and 1887, is generally credited as the first to frame it as a general principle of life, notably in his essay "The Law of Success".
Two early twentieth-century books turned the principle into a practical method. William Walker Atkinson's Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World (1906) stated plainly that like attracts like and tied thought to vibration. Wallace D. Wattles's The Science of Getting Rich (1910) taught that believing in the object of your desire and holding focus on it would bring it into being on the material plane.
From Think and Grow Rich to Abraham-Hicks
Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937) carried these ideas into the mainstream as business advice. Hill wrapped desire, faith and autosuggestion inside a program of persistence and organised planning, and the book was reported to have sold 100 million copies by 2015. It is a reminder that the early success literature paired mental focus with a great deal of practical effort.
In the late twentieth century, Esther and Jerry Hicks became the movement's best-known teachers, presenting material Esther described as coming from a group of non-physical beings she called Abraham. Their teachings, often called Abraham-Hicks, emphasised emotional alignment and vibration, and their 2008 book Money and the Law of Attraction reached the New York Times best-seller list.
What The Secret added, and why critics pushed back
The Secret turned the law of attraction from a niche idea into a household phrase. Rhonda Byrne's film was released in March 2006 and the book followed on 26 November 2006. Endorsement by Oprah Winfrey helped push it into the mainstream, and the book has sold more than 30 million copies in 50 languages.
Byrne's main addition was packaging: a short, confident formula and a claim that modern physics, especially quantum physics, explained it. That claim drew the sharpest criticism. Harvard physicist Lisa Randall rejected the use of quantum physics to support it. Psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, writing in The New York Times, disputed Byrne's scientific assertions. The author Barbara Ehrenreich, in Bright-Sided (2009), argued that this kind of relentless positive thinking breeds complacency and a failure to engage with reality. Critics widely described the book's core promise as magical thinking.
On the science, the position is plain. There is no empirical evidence that thoughts attract matching events, and because any success can be credited to the law while any failure can be blamed on wrong thinking, the claim cannot be tested or disproved. Mainstream researchers therefore classify it as unfalsifiable, and many label it pseudoscience. Supportive evidence is largely anecdotal and prone to confirmation bias.
How the law of attraction differs from the law of assumption
The law of attraction describes a pulling force, while the law of assumption describes a change of identity. The law of attraction says your thoughts send out a vibration that draws matching circumstances toward you. Neville Goddard (1905 to 1972), the Barbados-born teacher behind the law of assumption, taught something different: assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, live in that state as if it were already true, and the outer world will reflect it. In Neville's framework there is no attraction mechanism at all; the inner state is the cause.
In practice the two often blur, since both use visualisation and feeling. The difference matters for how people practise, and it is covered in detail in our guide to the law of assumption and Neville Goddard.
What psychology actually supports
Psychology supports the idea that what you expect and how you plan shape what you do, but it contradicts the idea that simply picturing a desired outcome helps. Several lines of research make the distinction clear.
Expectations help, fantasies can hurt
Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2002, volume 83, issue 5), ran four studies covering job seekers, people with a romantic crush, students facing exams and patients recovering from hip-replacement surgery. Positive expectations, meaning a judgement that success was likely based on past experience, predicted more effort and better outcomes. Positive fantasies, meaning pleasant daydreams of the outcome, predicted less effort and worse results.
A follow-up by Heather Barry Kappes and Oettingen, "Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy" (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2011), offered one explanation. Fantasising about an idealised future lowered systolic blood pressure, which the researchers used as an index of energisation, and in one study participants who fantasised reported lower accomplishment over the following week. The pleasant feeling of already having something appears to reduce the drive to go and get it.
Specific goals and process visualisation
Goal-setting research points the same way. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham's review in American Psychologist (2002), "Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation", summarised decades of evidence that specific, challenging goals lead to better performance than vague instructions to do your best.
Visualisation helps when it rehearses the steps rather than the reward. In a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (1999), Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor asked UCLA students preparing for a midterm to spend a few minutes a day either picturing themselves studying or picturing themselves receiving a high grade. The students who rehearsed the process started earlier, studied more and scored higher; those who only pictured the grade did not benefit. Our earlier piece on visualisation and mental rehearsal explores this further.
Mental contrasting and WOOP
Oettingen's answer to the fantasy problem is mental contrasting: imagine the desired future, then immediately imagine the main obstacle in the present that stands in the way. She later combined it with Peter Gollwitzer's implementation intentions (if-then plans, described in American Psychologist in 1999) into a four-step routine called WOOP: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. A 2021 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology by Guoxia Wang, Yi Wang and Xiaosong Gai pooled 21 studies with 15,907 participants and found a small-to-medium effect on goal attainment (Hedges' g of about 0.34), while noting possible publication bias.
A practical, honest way to use it
The research suggests keeping the parts of the law of attraction that clarify intention and dropping the parts that replace action. A workable sequence looks like this:
- Name a specific wish. One sentence, concrete and challenging, rather than a vague hope.
- Picture the best outcome briefly. Let it register as motivating, then move on instead of lingering in it.
- Name the obstacle inside you. Ask what habit, fear or gap is most likely to stop you.
- Write an if-then plan. If the obstacle shows up, then do one named, specific thing.
- Rehearse the process, not the prize. Visualise the work sessions, the conversation or the training run.
- Act and review. Take a concrete step today and check results weekly.
Beliefs and habits that run below conscious awareness also shape follow-through; our guide to reprogramming the subconscious mind sets out what the evidence supports there.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson approaches the law of attraction from the Hermetic and mystery-school tradition rather than from the self-help shelf. His 4BK TV series Egyptian Mystery School includes an episode devoted to the law of attraction (episode 15), placing it inside a wider curriculum on consciousness and ancient teaching rather than presenting it as a standalone trick. His position is that consciousness is primary rather than a by-product of matter, and that the observer participates in what unfolds; that is a metaphysical view drawn from his reading of Hermetic sources, not a claim of settled science.
The point Carson presses hardest is that attraction is not wishing. A conversation he recorded with Tiberius Grande is titled "The Law Of Attraction Requires An Energy Exchange", which signals his view that results require something to be given and done in return, not intention alone. His own manifestation method is built on three linked principles, thought, frequency and action, and treats action as the one step that cannot be skipped. On the 4biddenknowledge Podcast, in an episode on the fractal universe and consciousness with Natalie Namaste, he discusses his book Fractal Holographic Universe and frames the law of attraction within that model of consciousness.
The psychology above neither proves nor disproves Carson's metaphysics. It does, however, line up with his insistence on action: the research consistently finds that people who pair a clear intention with planning and effort do better than those who only imagine the result.
Watch, read and go deeper
Start with the law of attraction episode of Egyptian Mystery School on 4BK TV to hear how Billy Carson places the idea within the mystery-school tradition. For his consciousness framing, listen to the Natalie Namaste interview on the podcast. Then read his step-by-step method for manifesting what you want and compare it with the law of assumption. Every related guide is collected on the manifestation hub.
Frequently asked questions
Is the law of attraction scientifically proven?
No. There is no empirical evidence that thoughts attract matching events, and because the claim explains both success and failure it cannot be tested, which is why scientists call it unfalsifiable. What research does support is narrower: realistic expectations, specific goals and if-then planning improve performance.
Who first came up with the law of attraction?
No single person invented it. The phrase first appears in Andrew Jackson Davis's The Great Harmonia, volume IV (1855), Prentice Mulford framed it as a general life principle in 1886 and 1887, and William Walker Atkinson's 1906 book put it in its modern form. Phineas Quimby is usually named as the founder of the wider New Thought movement, though he never used the phrase.
What is the difference between the law of attraction and the law of assumption?
The law of attraction says thoughts send out a vibration that draws matching circumstances to you. Neville Goddard's law of assumption says you should assume the feeling and identity of the wish already fulfilled, and that outer events then reflect that inner state, with no attraction mechanism involved.
Can visualisation backfire?
It can. Studies by Gabriele Oettingen and colleagues found that pleasant fantasies about an ideal outcome were linked to less effort, lower energy and worse results. Visualisation tends to help when it rehearses the steps toward a goal or is paired with thinking about obstacles.
What is WOOP?
WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan, a routine developed by Gabriele Oettingen that combines mental contrasting with Peter Gollwitzer's if-then implementation intentions. A 2021 meta-analysis of 21 studies found it has a small-to-medium positive effect on reaching goals.
Sources and further reading
- William Walker Atkinson, Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World (1906).
- Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937).
- Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (2006).
- Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer, "The motivating function of thinking about the future: Expectations versus fantasies", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83(5), 2002.
- Heather Barry Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen, "Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2011.
- Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, "Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation", American Psychologist, 2002.
- Lien B. Pham and Shelley E. Taylor, "From thought to action: Effects of process- versus outcome-based mental simulations on performance", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1999.
- Guoxia Wang, Yi Wang and Xiaosong Gai, "A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions on Goal Attainment", Frontiers in Psychology, 2021.
