15 Mind-Blowing Psychological Statistics
15 Psychological Facts That Will Blow Your Mind is presented by techcraze2023! The study of the mind and behavior is a focus of psychology. There have been and will continue to be studies done to try to understand why we are the way we are.
Even if we are learning more and more every day, there is still a lot we don't understand. More exciting than others are some study results.
But you're not even tired! That's a response, yawn. There are various theories explaining why yawns are contagious; one of the leading ones is that they demonstrate empathy. This explains why young children who haven't yet developed a sense of empathy or those on the autism spectrum are less likely to yawn.
Number 3: We Care More About A Single Person Than About Massive Tragedies In another University of Pennsylvania study, researchers examined people's behaviour as it related to donating to causes based on certain stimuli. One group was shown a starving young girl. The second group was told a statistic about millions of people dying of hunger, and the third group was taught about both.
Those who heard only about the statistic donated the least, followed by those who heard about both. Those who heard about the little girl donated double what the statistics group did. Psychologists attribute this to the fact that if a problem feels too big, we feel helpless and insignificant, like our efforts won't have any payoff. In this case, helping save one starving girl seems more attainable than ending world hunger.
Number 4: Beginnings and Ends Are Easier to Remember Than Middles Have you ever been grocery shopping and forgotten your grocery list? When trying to remember things without it, you can visualize it and remember things close to the beginning and the end. But the things in the middle are a little fuzzy.
A study in the Frontiers of Human Neuroscience confirmed this. It's called the serial-position effect. It's also why you might remember the end of your manager's presentation but not the middle. So it really is a thing, and you may not have ADHD after all.
Number 5: "It Takes Five Positive Things to Outweigh a Single Negative Thing." You might have heard the advice to start and end your day by thinking about a few things you're grateful for. This helps keep us balanced because we have what's called a negativity bias, which makes us focus on the bad instead of the good. It’s useless to ruminate on the negative things that bring you down. Shoot for a ratio of five good things to one bad in your life. You just might manifest something wonderful!
Number 6: Food tastes better when someone else makes it. Ever wonder why food always tastes better when mom makes it? In fact, food tastes better whenever anyone else makes it, assuming they're a decent chef. Researchers attribute this to the fact that when you're preparing a meal for yourself, by the time you're ready to eat, it's been so long that it's less exciting, and as a result, you enjoy it less.
Number 7: "We'd Rather Know That Something Bad is Coming Than Not Know What to Expect." Have you ever felt a drop in your stomach when someone says, "We need to talk?" Your mind is immediately flooded with a million different bad things it could be about.
If it's a romantic partner, you'd probably rather they just break up with you then and there. If it's your boss, you'd rather they just fire you on the spot.
Researchers have found that we prefer knowing something bad is going to happen over uncertainty. This is because when our brain doesn't know what to expect, it goes into overdrive trying to predict any possible consequences, both good and bad.
Number 8: "When One Rule Seems Too Strict, We Want to Break More" In the psychological phenomenon known as "reactance," people tend to break more rules when they feel like certain freedoms are being limited in an effort to regain the freedom that they perceive as being taken away.
This is best illustrated with teenagers. When grounded, not only might they sneak out, but they may end up engaging in other risky behaviors as a form of reaction.
Number 9: There's a Reason We Want to Squeeze Cute Things Puppies and babies Don't you just want to love them, squeeze them, and cuddle with them? Well, apparently, that's a natural reaction, and it's known as "cute aggression."
According to an article in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, the idea behind cute aggression is that when we're overcome with positive feelings like those elicited by an adorable pup or baby, a tad bit of aggression balances out those overwhelming feelings so that we don't harm innocent little beings.
Number 10: We Unintentionally Believe What We Want to Believe Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret facts in a way that confirms what we already believe. This explains why people with certain political views prefer certain news outlets over others.
Forget even trying to get Uncle Fred to change his stance on international relations. Not only does confirmation bias lead us to seek out information that agrees with what we already believe, but it also causes us to reject contradictory information.
Number 11: You're Programmed To Most Love The Music You Listened To In High School. Good music triggers the release of dopamine and other feel-good chemicals. "This is my jam!" said every teenager at a party at some point. Ah, the days of high school... Or, actually, between the ages of 12 and 22, when the importance of everything feels magnified. Music included.
Studies show that we still connect to the music we bonded to during our teenage years, more so than we ever will as adults, despite the passage of time.
Number 12: Memories Are More Like Pieced-Together Pictures Than Accurate Snapshots False memories are something that you recall in your mind but that isn't actually true, either in whole or in part. An example could be believing you started the dishwasher before you left for work when you really didn't. This is because our brains can sometimes inaccurately fill in the blanks when they only remember the gist of what happened.
Number 13: We Look for Human Faces, Even in Inanimate Objects Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive specific, often meaningful images, such as faces, in random or ambiguous visual patterns.
A common example is the man in the moon. Some scientists attribute it to the fact that, as social beings, recognising faces is so important that we'd rather create one where it doesn't exist than miss a real one that does.
Number 14: "People Rise to Our High Expectations and Don't Rise if We Have Low Ones." The Pygmalion Effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance.
In a well-known study from the 1960s, researchers informed teachers that certain random pupils had great potential based on their IQ test results. They discovered that, at least in part because of their teachers' higher expectations, those children who were labelled as "high-potential pupils" really ended up becoming high achievers. Our Brain Doesn't Think Long-Term Deadlines Are So Important.
Number 15. Yes, you could begin that significant project for work or school right now, but you still have a few months to go. Before you know it, those months have passed, and you're rushing to do tasks that should have taken months in only a few days. Unimportant things that are urgent are more enticing.
They provide you with immediate satisfaction since they take less time and are simpler to do. Short-term deadlines, like those defined in days, are easier for our brains to absorb than long-term ones, like those measured in months or years.
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