Manu Joseph: the frequently told story about the power of self-belief is mostly hogwash

The story is that nobody could run a mile in under four minutes. Then an Englishman called Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3:59.4 seconds. It was considered one of the greatest feats in sports at the time.

Then, something strange happened.

Just weeks later, another man ran a sub-four-minute mile. Within two years there were apparently dozens. The moral of the story came to be that Bannister had shown that something could be done, and that made other athletes believe it could be done, as a result of which they did it. This is called the ‘Bannister Effect.’ What he had breached was ‘the psychological barrier.’

To give you an idea of how entrenched this is as an ordinary truth of our times, consider what the famous motivational speaker, Tony Robbins wrote: “After Roger Bannister ran that 4-minute mile, within just two years, 37 people also ran a 4-minute mile. And remember, no one in history had ever done that before. This is the power of imagery training—of visualizing the results over and over, as if it had already happened. We all have beliefs that limit us.”

One of the world’s most popular writers, Malcolm Gladwell, said once, “For years, no one even comes close. Then Roger Bannister breaks the record in 1954, and suddenly, everyone can break four minutes. Did runners get ‘better’ in 1954? Not really. They simply became aware that running four minutes was possible.”

But the Bannister Effect is hogwash. It is actually evidence that people tend to come to the most interesting conclusion while missing what is obvious underneath.

This is my theory of what really happened. In the 1940s and 50s, some people in advanced economies indulged in a niche mid-distance sport. Also, the mile is a British imperial unit. So, the one-mile race was popular chiefly in the UK.

It did seem that no one could run it in under four minutes. Some came close, but four minutes appeared to be the very limit of human capability—though the measure of minutes and seconds itself is just an accident of Sumerians coming up with a 60-base number system instead of a decimal one.

Then one day in 1954, an English medical student named Roger Bannister breached the four-minute barrier. The British went berserk as they do with all their accomplishments.

They were still influential then, which meant they held the powers to transmit news and opinion. It was a highly unequal world where a small pool of people could create world news very fast.

The breach became one of the greatest sporting feats of that era. Its extraordinary fame resulted in more mile races. Young men who were otherwise uninterested in running a mile gave it a shot. Suddenly, the mile race expanded across classes and societies.

That is why Bannister’s record could not survive long.

His feat was replicated not because he demolished any psychological barrier, but because, at the highest levels of human athleticism, it was an ordinary feat. The world record for a mile today is 3:43.13.

As it happens, the feats of a small group are no longer so when more people find opportunities to give them a shot. This is why the kind of people who used to win marathons and other races don’t anymore; and why not as many upper-city boys break into the Indian cricket team or IITs, places they once monopolized.

You may argue that even if Europe only measured a small fraction of humanity that played a niche sport, it is still true that Bannister was the first among hundreds or thousands to breach a famous barrier; there must have been a reason why no one else could before him even though the sport was timed for years and so, perhaps he did show it could be done.

That is the absurd thing. Bannister may not have been the first to run a sub-four-minute mile even in his time.

I am not preparing to say a Kenyan boy ran it faster than him on his way to school. Even among Caucasian Europeans, there is a simple indicator that the barrier was breached long before Bannister, just that no one looked carefully.

The more mainstream race than the mile run was the 1,500m one. A mile is just over 1,600m. In 1944, the 1,500m world record was 3:43, held by the Swede Gunder Hägg. At that pace, he would have run a mile in about 3:58, if he had been made to run just another 109m. Yet, for a decade, near hysterical hype grew around the four-minute-mile barrier.

The influence of the class that created news was so strong that they could construct a false psychological barrier, and when one of their own broke it, they could manufacture the notion that it was an extraordinary feat. And when others who were more gifted achieved it in no time, they could transmit the idea that Bannister had shown the way. And the myth still endures.

The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’