The same strange thing happened to other participants. One woman said she was so drained that she couldn’t lift her arm to make another mark. But she then lifted her arm to adjust her hair, apparently without any difficulty or discomfort. And when participants read poems aloud until their voices were hoarse, they had no trouble complaining about the task—and when they complained, they didn’t sound hoarse anymore. According to Langer, they weren’t faking it. Rather, “the change of context brought renewed energy.”
