The Profile Dossier: Alia Crum, the Researcher Helping Optimize Your Mindset

“It’s essential to recognize that mindsets are not peripheral, but central to health and behavior."

What is your core belief about stress?

Alia Crum, the director of the Stanford mind and body lab, has a provocative view on stress: It can be a good thing if you know how to use it.

She says your mindset toward stress informs how your body reacts to it. It’s part physiological response, part placebo effect.

Crum defines mindset as a core assumption about a…