By Helen Fields, ScienceNOW

How can you make people better at sports? Tell them they’re using equipment that previously belonged to a professional athlete. No, really. A new study finds that golfers significantly improved their putting ability when they believed the putter they were using belonged to a celebrity golfer.

The research was inspired by a passage in the 1953 book Zen in the Art of Archery, where author Eugen Herrigel describes shooting badly, handing his bow to his teacher for a few shots, then getting it back and shooting better: “It was as if the bow let itself be drawn d...