Mind-Blowing Psychology Facts that Seriously Explain Everything
Dr.P. Madhurima Reddy
MA, M.Sc., MEd, M.Phil., Ph.D., Ph.D.,Hon.Doc,Hon.D.Litt
Psychologist, Life, Wealth & Business Coach
Peak Performance International Trainer
NLP Master Practitioner Licensed (UK)
Mind-Blowing Psychology Facts that Seriously Explain Everything
Psychology Facts About Love
And Relationships
Allowing yourself to experience the negative emotions of an event in your life might actually help you move past it faster
If we have a plan B, our
plan A is less likely to work.
Every now and then, it hurts to be prepared. In a series of experiments from researchers found that when volunteers thought about a backup plan before starting a task, they did worse than those who hadn't thought about a plan B. What's more, when they realized they had options, their motivation for succeeding the first time around dropped. The researchers stress that thinking ahead is a good idea, but you might be more successful if you keep those plans vague.
Fear can feel good—if
we're not really in danger.
Not everyone loves scary movies, but
for the people who do, there are a few theories as to why—the main one coming
down to hormones. When you're watching a scary movie or
walking through a haunted house, you get all the adrenaline, endorphins, and
dopamine from a fight-or-flight response, but no matter how scared you feel,
your brain recognizes that you're not really in danger—so you get that natural
high without the risk.
Why do you yawn when someone else
does, even if you aren't tired? There are a few theories about why yawning
is contagious, but one of the leading
ones is that it shows empathy. People who are less likely to show empathy—such
as toddlers who haven't learned it yet or young people with autism—are also
less likely to yawn in reaction to someone else's.
We care more about a
single person than about massive tragedies.
In another University of Pennsylvania study, one group learned about a little girl who was starving to
death, another learned about millions dying of hunger, and a third learned
about both situations. People donated more than twice as much money when
hearing about the little girl than when hearing the statistics—and even the
group who'd heard her story in the context of the bigger tragedy donated less.
Psychologists think that we're wired to help the person in front of us,
but when the problem feels too big, we figure our little part isn't doing much.
Beginnings and ends are
easier to remember than middles.
When people are asked to recall items
from a list, they're most likely to think of things from the very end, or from
the very beginning, found one study published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience. The middle gets muddled, which could also play into why you
remember your boss wrapping up her presentation, but not so much about the
middle.
It takes five positive
things to outweigh a single negative thing.
Our brains have something called a "negativity bias" that makes us remember bad news more than good, which is why you quickly forget that your coworker
complimented your presentation but keep dwelling on the fact that a kid at the
bus stop insulted your shoes. To feel balanced, we need at least a five to one
ration of good to bad in our lives.
We'd rather know something
bad is coming than not know what to expect.
Researchers who published their work
in the journal Nature have found that it's less stressful to know something
negative is about to happen (e.g., there's no chance we'll get to a meeting on
time) than when we don't know how things will work out (e.g., we might be on
time after all). That's because the part of our brain that predicts consequences—whether
good or bad—is most active when it doesn't know what to expect. If stepping on
the gas will help us beat traffic, we'll go through that stress instead of just
accepting that we'll have to come up with a decent excuse when (not if) we're late.
We always try to return a favor.
It's not just good manners—the "rule of reciprocity" suggests that we're programmed to want to help someone who's helped us. It probably developed because, to keep society working smoothly, people need to help each other out. Stores (and some frenemies) like to use this against you, offering freebies in hopes that you'll spend some cash.
When one rule seems too strict, we want to break more.
Psychologists have studied a phenomenon called reactance: When people perceive certain freedoms being taken away, they not only break that rule, but they break even more than they otherwise would have in an effort to regain their freedom. This could be one of the best psychology facts to explain why a teenager who can't use his phone in class will chew gum while stealthily sending a text.
Our favorite subject is
ourselves.
Don't blame your self-absorbed brother
for talking about himself—it's just the way his brain is wired. The reward
centers of our brains light up more when we're talking about ourselves than
when we're talking about other people, according to a Harvard study.
There's a reason we want
to squeeze cute things.
"It's so cute, I just was to
smoosh it until it pops!" That's called cuteness aggression, and people
who feel it don't really want to crush that adorable puppy. Research published
in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience found that when we're feeling overwhelmed by positive
emotions—like we do when looking at an impossibly cute baby animal—a little bit
of aggression helps us balance out that high.
Our brains try to make
boring speeches more interesting.
We hear voices in our heads when we
read aloud, our brains also "talk" over boring speeches. If someone
is speaking monotonously, we'll subconsciously make it more vivid in our heads.
Some people enjoy seeing
anger in others.
People with high testosterone
remembered information better when it was paired with an angry face than a
neutral one or no face, indicating they found the angry glare rewarding. The
researchers said it could mean that certain people enjoy making someone else
glare at them—as long the flash of anger doesn't last long enough to be a
threat—which could be why that guy in the office won't let go of that stupid
joke at your expense.
In a famous 1950s experiment, college
students were asked to point out which of three lines was the same length as a fourth. When
they heard others (who were in on the experiment) choose an answer that was
clearly wrong, the participants followed their lead and gave that same wrong
answer.
We aren't as good at
multitasking as we think we are.
Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that even when you think you're doing two things at
once, what you're actually doing is switching quickly between the two
tasks—you're still focusing on one at a time. No wonder it's so hard to listen
to your partner while scrolling through Instagram.
Our brains want us to be
lazy.
Evolutionarily speaking, conserving
energy is a good thing—when food was scarce, our ancestors still had to be
ready for anything. Unfortunately for anyone watching their weight, that still
holds true today. A small study published in Current Biology found that when walking on a treadmill, volunteers would
automatically adjust their gait to burn fewer calories.
Being lonely is bad for
our health.
Researchers found that the fewer
friends a person has, the higher levels of the blood-clotting protein
fibrinogen. The effect was so strong that having 15 friends instead of 25 was just as bad as
smoking.
Memories are more like
pieced-together pictures than accurate snapshots.
Even people with the best memories in
the world can have "false memories." The brain generally remembers
the gist of what happens, then fills in the rest—sometimes inaccurately—which
explains why you insist your wife was with you at a party six years ago, even
though she's adamant she wasn't.
There's a reason that
certain color combinations are hard on your eyes.
When you see bright blue and red right
next to each other, your brain thinks the red is closer than the blue, making you go practically
cross-eyed. Same goes for other combinations, like red and green.
Putting information in
bite-sized pieces helps us remember.
Your short-term memory can only hold on to so much information at a time (unless you try one of
the simple ways to improve your memory), which is why you use "chunking" to remember long
numbers. For instance, if you try to memorize this number: 90655372, you
probably naturally thought something like 906-553-72.
You remember things better
if you've been tested on them.
Sorry, kids! One of the most useful
psychology facts is that testing really does work. One study published in the
journal Psychological Science found that people are more likely to store information in
their long-term memory if they've been tested on the information (the more, the
better) than if they just study and don't need to remember it right away.
Too much choice can become
paralyzing.
The whole "paradox of
choice" theory has been criticized by researchers who say it hasn't been
shown in studies, but there is some evidence that our brains prefer a few
options to a ton. When singles at speed-dating events met more people and those people had more diversity in factors like age
and occupation, the participants chose fewer potential dates.
When you feel like you're
low on something (like money), you obsess over it.
Psychologists have found that the brain is sensitive to scarcity—the feeling that you're
missing something you need. When farmers have a good cash flow, for instance,
they tend to be better planners than when they're tight for money, one study
found. When you're feeling cash-strapped, you might need more reminders to pay
bills or do chores because your mind is too busy to remember.
We keep believing things,
even when we know they're wrong.
Researchers in one Science study fed volunteers false information, then a week later
revealed that the facts weren't actually true. Even though the volunteers knew
the truth (now), fMRI scans showed that they still believed the misinformation
about half the time. It's one of the psychology facts to know that could make you smarter.
We look for human faces,
even in inanimate objects.
Most of us haven't seen Jesus in a
piece of toast, but we've all noticed cartoonish faces seemingly staring back
at us from inanimate objects. That's called pareidolia, and scientists think it comes from the fact that recognizing faces is so
important to social life that our brains would rather find one where there
isn't one than miss a real-life face.
We will always, always,
always find a problem.
Ever wonder why when one problem
resolves, another one takes its place? It's not that the world is against
you—but your brain might be, in a sense. Researchers asked volunteers to pick
out threatening-looking people from computer-generated faces. "As we
showed people fewer and fewer threatening faces over time, we found that they
expanded their definition of 'threatening' to include a wider range of
faces," writes researcher David Levari, PhD. "In other words, when they ran out of threatening faces
to find, they started calling faces threatening that they used to call
harmless."
We'd rather skew the facts
than change our beliefs about people.
Humans hate "cognitive dissonance": when a fact counters something we believe. That's why
when, we hear that a loved one did something wrong or garbage, we undermine how
bad it really was, or we tell ourselves that science exaggerates when a study
tells us we really need to move more.
People rise to our high
expectations (and don't rise if we have low ones).
You may have heard of the Pygmalion
effect before—basically, we do well when other people think we will, and we
don't do well when people expect us to fail. The idea came from a famous 1960s study in which researchers told teachers that certain students
(chosen at random) had high potential based on IQ tests. Those students did
indeed go on to be high achievers, thanks to their teachers' expectations in
them.
Social media is
psychologically designed to be addictive.
Told yourself you'd just quickly check
your Facebook notifications, and 15 minutes later you're still scrolling?
You're not alone. Part of that has to do with infinite scroll: When you can
stay on the site without actually interacting and clicking, your brain doesn't
get that "stop" cue.
We can convince ourselves
a boring task was fun if we weren't rewarded.
Here's another great example of
cognitive dissonance: Volunteers in one Psychology of Learning and Motivation study did a boring task, then were paid either $1 or $20
to convince someone that it was actually pretty interesting. The ones who were
paid $20 knew why they'd lied (they got a decent reward) and still thought it
was boring, but the ones who'd only gotten a buck actually convinced themselves
it really was fun, because their brains didn't have a good reason to think
they'd been lying.
Power
makes people care less about others.
You've
probably heard about the famous Stanford prison experiment. (Refresher: College
students were randomly assigned to be either a prisoner or guard in a fake
prison, and the "guards" started harassing the "prisoners."
That's pretty extreme, but later studies have found that when people feel like
they're in a power position, they become worse at judging a person's feelings
based on their facial expressions, indicating a loss of empathy.
Our
brain doesn't think long-term deadlines are so important.
Pretty
much everyone has procrastinated at one time or another, even though we know
logically that it would make more sense to get a jump on our taxes than to turn
on Netflix. We prefer urgent, unimportant tasks because we know we'll be able
to complete them. There's also evidence that when we see the deadline looming
in terms of days, rather than months or years, because we feel more connected
to a day-by-day passing of time.
Money
can buy happiness, but only up to a certain point.
Research
shows that in terms of income, people have a "satiation point" where
happiness peaks and earning more won't actually make you happier. Different
studies have suggested various amounts (one 2010 study said $75,000, but a 2018 survey said $105,000), but
the point is the same: Constantly aiming for more, more, more won't necessarily
do you any good.
It's
not just how much money we make, it's how we spend it.
Even
if you haven't topped out to your happiest income, your money can still
determine your happiness. You've probably already heard about research that
shows we're more
satisfied when we spend money on experiences (a nice meal out or theater
tickets) than on possessions because it helps us socialize and feel more alive.
But another study published in Science found another strategy for using
money the most satisfying way: spending on other people instead of ourselves.
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