it's an academic and applied discipline
that involves the scientific study of
mental functions and behaviors or to put
it more simply today we're gonna talk
about your mind this is psychology how
many friends can you have or more
specifically is there a limit to the
number of people that you can maintain a
stable social relationship with these
are relationships where you know who the
person is and you know how each person
relates to every other person in the
group and no not Facebook friends turns
out that there is a limit would be
pretty awkward if I brought this up
otherwise it's something called Dunbar's
number and the limit is 150 people ever
wondered why why do you want things why
do you do things why do you feel the way
you do about certain things why do you
keep on living turns out that psychology
more or less has the answer to all of
these questions enter the world of
dopamine dopamine was discovered in
Sweden in 1958 and is created in various
parts of our brains it's critical in all
sorts of brain functions such as
thinking moving sleeping mood attention
motivation seeking and reward basically
in its simplest form dopamine is a want
system it is what keeps us motivated to
move through the world learn and survive
research on rats for example show that
if you destroy dopamine neurons rats can
still walk chew and swallow what will
starve to death even when food is right
next to them they have basically lost
all the saiyr to eat take this example
you're walking through a public square
you're looking around and suddenly see a
friend in the crowd the friend
recognizes you but even though you for a
moment is looking right at him
you do not recognize him
when your friend stops and says hello do
you realize you just looked right at him
and somehow you still missed it this is
because you can only think of one thing
at a time
you cannot mentally focus on more than
one task no matter how good you might
think you are at multitasking people are
capable of switching between several
tasks wery quickly though which can
create the illusion of multitasking we
can also learn to do something physical
while focusing on another mental task
such as walking and talking on the phone
at the same time however a study was
done and with these very circumstances
which made it clear that people who talk
on their phone while walking bump into
other people much more and doesn't
really notice and/or remember things
happening around them this phenomenon is
called inattentional blindness if I
asked you to draw an object any objects
at all what perspective would you draw
that object in from above from the side
from below turns out that most people
would end up drawing it like this at a
somewhat tilted angle as if you were
slightly above the object looking down
it's called the canonical perspective
the interesting thing is that it seems
to apply to almost everything even
objects you wouldn't normally see in
this top-down type of perspective such
as a truck or a horse and when you take
a photograph you're also most likely to
take it from this perspective no matter
if you're aware of it or not we can't
really explain why this is exactly it
seems people just like and prefer to
view things this way some of you
watching this might see yourself as a
quite logical self-aware type of person
I know I do
so when you make a somewhat larger
decision you carefully think it through
and consider everything before making up
your mind but research shows that
although you want to think that your
decision-making is a conscious
deliberate process it's not for example
let's say you want to buy a new TV you
consider the size of the TV that works
best in your room
the range of TV brands you're willing to
buy from price versus quality whether
you should get a blu-ray player and so
on and so on but the things that has the
biggest impact on what TV you end up
buying happens unconsciously
things such as what are most other
people buying or am I the type of person
who always has the newest technology or
am i more known to go for shock value
like getting our 120 inch TV this is why
we can sometimes feel like we know what
is the right thing to do as in trusting
your gut because unconsciously you've
already made up your mind have you ever
been in a situation where you're for
example listening to someone explaining
something or showing you how to do
something and without thinking about it
you start to imitate those movements
whether you have or not it's something
our brains learn to do from a very early
age just watching other people doing
stuff causes some of the same neurons in
your brain to fire as if you were
actually doing those same things
yourself
these are appropriately called mirror
and neurons
mirror and neurons Mirror Mirror Mirror
Mirror the same thing happens with
empathy when you try to empathize with
someone
we are literally experience what others
are feeling through these mirror and
neurons
Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror if you want
someone to try something new and
different it will work best if you make
them happy first studies have shown that
when people are sad were scared they
want what is familiar but when we're
happy we're much more likely to try
something new and are not as concerned
of what is and isn't familiar this ties
in with the fact that when we're sad
were scared we feel much more vulnerable
compared to when we're happy and thus
you might feel that you need to protect
yourself even if that new thing you're
scared of is a new type of serial
among my family and friends I wouldn't
say I'm really known to have the best or
most accurate memory all of the time but
here is something I can at least use in
my own defense memories are not stored
like a movie or image like it would be
on a hard drive that is ready for use
whenever you need it
instead memories are actually
reconstructed every single time we think
of them but this reconstruction
sometimes gets similar events mixed up
and sometimes even make stuff up for
example imagine this if you spend time
with the same friend at school almost
every day when you remember something
from a day where he wasn't actually
there the reconstructed memory might
think he was because he usually is to
you that memory makes total sense and it
will seem just as real as the original
event so in a sense your brain
reconstructs the memory you're trying to
remember in the way it thinks would be
most logical but not necessarily the
most accurate this is why the testimony
of eyewitnesses at crime scenes can many
times differ greatly one thing to keep
in mind about well everything I've
talked about in this video and a lot of
the research you'll find about
psychology overall is that most of it is
being tested on Western audiences or
Western I mainly mean the US and Europe
why this matter is because another study
showed that the way we think is
different depending on what culture we
come from it showed for example that
when presenting different images to
people around the world people from Asia
focused on the surroundings and things
in the backgrounds while people from the
West focused on the main or dominant
foreground objects and looking at the
brain patterns while performing several
of these tests reveal that our way of
thinking is very different in many ways
the point is that the study revealed
that not only are our culture's
different but because of our culture we
also think differently no wonder people
can get along for those of you who's
watched my top 10 facts series for some
time now might have noticed a certain
structure of how I present my
content I usually but not always begin
with the fact that is short and just
basic the facts in the middle are
somewhat random and then I end the video
with what I think will be most
fascinating or the most complex and
there's actually a reason why I do this
and it's something called progressive
disclosure this is a fancy term that is
used in the field of psychology to refer
to providing information in increasing
chunks of size and complexity we can
only process a small amount of
information at a time and thus we
actually prefer when for example text is
divided into paragraphs compared to just
a wall of text
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you