10 Psychological Facts That Will Blow Your Mind
The human mind – which controls how we think, feel, act, and behave – is a complex machine, full of nuances and mysteries that we still don’t fully understand, despite decades of study and research in the field. However, the more and more we do learn, the more surprising it becomes. Here are 10 facts that may surprise you about yourself, and the way your mind works!
1. False memories:
Many people believe that the human memory system is much like a video tape recorder – you can simply recall memories at will, freely and easily. However, the truth is that the human memory is not as reliable as we think. Our minds are moldable and flexible, an advantage in some areas, a disadvantage in others. The human brain actually has the ability to make up entire false memories, but these new false memories can impact you just as significantly as “real” memories. This has ramifications for areas where we rely on human memories, such as eye-witness testimonies, or false confessions. Even if something happened a certain way, the person recalling the event may be 100% confident that the event happened differently, even if faced with evidence to the contrary.
2. The McGurk effect:
The McGurk effect is a sensory illusion in which the visual input affects the way that the person perceives the auditory input. In short, what someone sees influences how they hear the sound. This particular effect occurs when the visual component of one stimulus is paired with the audio of another stimulus, leading to the perception of a third stimulus or sound. So, if you hear someone say “bat”, but see someone else saying “fat”, your perception of the “b” sound will shift to the “f” sound based on your visual input, regardless of what the auditory input actually is.
3. The Dunning-Kruger effect:
This is an effect where people consider themselves to be more competent than they are in actuality. If someone lacks self-awareness, then they are likely to think more highly of themselves than is necessarily warranted, and are unable to objectively evaluate their own ability (or lack thereof). This is specifically associated with cognitive and mental ability. So, the next time you see someone who seems overly cocky or confident, someone who thinks themselves to be the smartest person in the room, watch carefully how they interact with others – they may simply lack self-awareness, leading them to think of themselves as smarter than they really are!
4. People who watch more crime television series tend to overestimate the rate of crime in the world:
This may be simply due to the fact that because they have so much exposure to a certain type of scenario while watching television, they overgeneralize and extrapolate what they see on television to the state of the world.
5. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and linguistic relativity:
This hypothesis of linguistic relativity states that the language that a person speaks can influence, to a degree, thought, behavior, and perception of the world. There are two variants of the theory: a strong and a weak version. The strong version of the theory states that a language will determine and limit decisively a person’s personality and cognitive perception of the world, while the weak version believes that a language can only influence that perception. An example would be if a person speaks a language with many different words for different shades of green, they would be much more receptive to different tones and hues of the color where someone who spoke English would only be able to see one color.
6. Couvade Syndrome/sympathetic pregnancies:
Expecting fathers, or males whose partner is pregnant, can sometimes experience a sympathetic pregnancy. While they do not actually become pregnant, they experience a range of symptoms usually associated with pregnancy, such as back aches, nausea, minor weight gain, hormonal level changes, and sudden and random food cravings. The causes for this syndrome are unclear, with some psychologists considering it a psychosomatic affliction.
7. The average number of people that you feel genuinely close to is around 150.
This phenomenon has also been noted in studies involving apes, such as chimpanzees and bonobos. The number is based on the relationship between the size of your brain and the size of your social group – because of this study, many businesses and organizations create groups or teams no larger than 150, in order to ensure that each member feels connected and comfortable with the other members of their team.
8. Desserts served in round dishes are perceived to be sweeter than those in dishes in other shapes:
Not only the plate shape, but the color of the plate and of the food, the atmosphere of the environment, and even the arrangement of the cutlery also influences how your mind perceives or assumes the food will taste. The most defining influencing factors, however, are plate color and shape, with round dishes or plates leading to a supposedly sweeter-tasting dessert. The color of the plate as well as the shape of the plate influence each other even further, leading to various results. Now imagine or try eating the same pastry at home with plastic fork and plate compare to a high-end restaurant.
9. You read more quickly when the text is in a certain font:
Serif fonts that include extra appendages or “feet” on the letters, such as Times New Roman, increase the need for processing in your mind and thus use up more mental energy and capacity. Sans-Serif fonts, however, such as Arial or Verdana, do not have these extra appendages, and thus are streamlined for the mind to take in and process, leading to faster reading and comprehension times.
10. You are more attracted to people who look, behave, or speak similarly to you:
This idea or concept is referred to as acculturation theory, and states that you will try to decrease the differences between you and another person in an interaction in an attempt to achieve a more level “playing field” and mutual ground upon which both groups can stand. This may occur when you spend a semester abroad in another country, and find that your speech has started to take on an accent, even in your first language – this is because as you speak to other people in that country, you want to try and be more like them so that they identify with you and will as a result be more receptive and open to you.
If you want more psychological topics, here’s 9 psychological facts about love, or psychological facts about crushes.