Hey everyone, and welcome to TopThink.
Today, we are going to learn about 15 psychology secrets most people don’t know.
Now, let’s begin.
1.
Information Cascades Sometimes, the decisions you make are influenced
by more than just your own opinion.
Let’s say you’re sitting in a meeting when your boss asks everyone in the room to
vote yes or no to a new policy.
The first person starts by saying yes, and the second follows, until suddenly the entirely
room has voted the exact same way.
Was it just an amazing idea or is something else going on here?
This is a great example of psychological phenomenon called an information cascade.
Researchers discovered that when groups makes decisions in sequential order their votes
will often change.
Even if you don’t originally agree with something, your opinions shifts because of
the choices made by the people in front of you.
This influence is so strong that many people are willing to ignore their own brain completely.
Let’s change our example a little bit.
Say your boss shows everyone in the room a picture of a square.
He asks each of you to say how many sides it has.
To your surprise, the first person says three.
And the second says the same thing.
You know the answer is four, but you start to doubt yourself.
So when the question comes to you, there’s a good chance you’ll answer incorrectly.
Not because you actually believe squares have three sides, but because we sometimes sacrifice
our better judgment to avoid standing out.
2.
Peak-End Impressions Imagine you spent the entire day at an amusement
park.
For most of the day, it was crowded, hot, and expensive.
You didn’t have a very good time, but there were a couple fun rides.
And the park did get cooler and less crowded toward the end.
So how would you rate the experience overall?
Even though you were miserable for the most of the day, you’d still remember this as
an extremely positive experience.
That’s because of the peak-end effect.
When people form impressions of events, they don’t look at the experience as a whole.
Their mind creates an average of two particular points.
The most intense moment and the very end.
If those two points were positive, then your impression of the event will follow suit.
Unfortunately, the peak-end effect can really skew your memory.
When you start to forget the little details, you will only remember this biased impression.
You might repeat past mistakes or avoid fun experiences, all because you misjudged things
the first time around.
3.
Belief Bias How do you determine the strength of someone’s
argument?
You look at the evidence.
You listen to their points.
And you see if it proves their conclusion, right?
Turns out, most people judge the validity of an argument based solely on its conclusion.
If the end result sounds positive and reasonable, people will say the argument makes just as
much sense.
A 2004 study found that this mistake is even more common when making snap decisions.
If time is limited, people consistently favor the conclusion that sounds the most believable
on the surface.
This lapse in judgment is caused by a belief bias.
And it can affect almost anyone.
Even the most sensible, well-educated people will support nonsensical arguments if the
conclusion sounds right.
4.
Automation Bias It’s no secret that our society is relying
more and more on automated technology.
Its influence is so strong that it’s begun to change the way we make decisions.
Recently, it has created a trend that researchers are calling an automation bias.
This psychological bias occurs when people blindly accept automated information as truth.
We’re so used to having computers that we don’t think through things ourselves.
We assume all computers are correct and unbiased, so we don’t bother using our own brains.
5.
Pygmalion Effect You can’t always control how well you perform.
Sometimes, it’s entirely up to the people around you.
The Pygmalion effect is when external opinions increase or decrease individual performance.
People naturally internalize the harmful labels and criticisms that others give them.
No matter how ambitious they are, discouragement can still cripple anyone’s confidence and
self-worth.
6.
Ironic Process Theory If I told you to stop thinking about something,
what would happen?
It would probably be all you could think about?
Everyone has experienced this, but very few people know that this phenomenon has a name.
It’s called Ironic Process Theory and is one of the most well researched paradoxes
in psychology.
Whether it’s food, animals, or emotions, when you try to stop thinking about something,
that thing will dig deeper and deeper into your brain.
7.
Worse-than-Average Effect Imagine you’re going rock climbing for the
first time.
You realize almost immediately that you don’t r know what you’re doing.
So if I asked you to rate your rock climbing proficiency out of ten, you’d probably give
yourself a 1 or a 2.
But the truth is you’re just as good as anyone else who’s never rock climbed before.
When facing a difficult challenge, the worse-than-average effect convinces people they’re sitting
at the bottom of the barrel.
They don’t realize that most people are just as inexperienced as they are.
But what happens when we excel at something?
If a task seems simple, we significantly overestimate our skill level.
This is called the better-than-average effect.
We assume we’re more talented than everyone else, even if the activity is just a lot easier.
8.
False Memory Believe it or not, many people create and
store memories that never actually happened.
A false memory is when something imaginary obscures or replaces real events in your brain.
When you recall that memory down the road, you’ll remember its contents completely
wrong.
Researchers are still exploring why exactly false memory is so prevalent.
The problem is there’s currently no reliable way to prove that one memory is false and
another is true.
So it might be awhile before we get a useful explanation.
9.
Faces in the Clouds When you look up at the clouds, what do you
see?
Maybe you spot a face, an elephant, or some other random object.
Most people don’t know that these images are caused by pareidolia, which is when people
see familiar shapes in vague stimuli.
In other words, the clouds aren’t actually shaped like faces or elephants.
Your brain just hones in on lines and patterns to create something familiar.
10.
Familiar Road Bias Have you ever wondered why road-trips feel
longer when you’re traveling to an unfamiliar place?
There’s actually a name for this common psychological mistake.
It’s called the familiar road bias.
When driving somewhere you go all the time, you underestimate how long you spend driving.
But if it’s somewhere you’ve never been before, you do the opposite.
You assume you’ve been driving way longer than you actually have.
That’s because you invest more cognitive effort when you’re driving to an unfamiliar
place.
You think more and pay more attention, so time seems to slow down.
11.
Digital Amnesia Digital amnesia or the Google Effect is a
relatively new trend in psychology, because it’s caused by the accessibility of search
engines.
Many people naturally forget information when they know they can find it online somewhere.
Do still remember all those random facts you learned in elementary school?
Probably not, because you don’t have to.
Why bother to remember every capital city when you can just look it up on Google?
12.
Dysrationalia This phenomenon explains why so many smart
people fall for obvious tricks.
Think about email scams and pyramid schemes.
Plenty of people make bad choices and get cheated out of their money, but it’s not
because they’re stupid.
Researchers don’t know exactly why dysrationalia exists, but here’s their best guess.
When you’re feeling ignorant or uninformed, you’re more likely to fall for the confidence
of someone who appears to be an expert.
You lower your logical shields and blindly put your faith in their better judgment.
Unfortunately, these characters rarely have your best interests in mind.
13.
Paradox of Suspense Have you ever re-watched a horror movie, but
still jumped every time a monster popped on screen?
You know what happens, but the suspense still gets to you.
Why is that?
It’s caused by the paradox of suspense.
Many people will forget information and fall for the same tricks in the midst of an immersive
narrative.
Inside that fictional world, we actively lose sight of what we already know.
Of course, this paradox is a good thing.
If it didn’t exist, movies, TV shows, and books wouldn’t be worth re-experiencing.
14.
Telescoping Effect The telescoping effect is when people perceive
recent events as more remote and remote events as more recent.
In other words, they start recalling their life out of order.
This often happens after experiencing something significantly positive or negative.
Think about weeks and weekends.
At the beginning of the week, it somehow feels like you’ve been working forever, while
the weekend seems like it happened ages ago.
15.
Distinction Bias If I handed you a dollar, you’d take it,
right?
And you’d probably be happy about it.
But what if I gave you the choice between one dollar and five dollars?
Suddenly, getting only one-dollar feels like you got the short end of the stick.
Even though you were perfectly happy with one dollar in the first scenario, the addition
of a better option changes you opinion.
That’s because most people exhibit a distinction bias.
When something better comes along, you view any alternatives negatively, even if you wouldn’t
have a problem with them on their own.
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