15 Interesting Psychology Facts You Have To Know - Deep Thoughts
Psychology Facts about human behavior, life, attitude, students, and people; What are the most interesting facts about human behavior?
1. Lying requires a lot of mental effort. We make the same decision hundreds of times each day: do we lie or do we tell the truth? It occurs with virtually no thought and we’re all guilty of ignoring the impact of these “apparent” inconsequential little “white” lies. Even the smallest lie will impact your life by jeopardizing relationships, costing you money, creating health issues, and affecting your credibility. Being honest on the other hand, offers almost no negative effects.
2. Watching a heart-wrenching movie causes people to think deeper. Wonder why "Titanic" became one of the biggest box office successes of all time? It wasn’t the special effects, the plot, or even the acting. It wasn’t even the “love story” aspect as many would guess. Research at Ohio State University believes watching a tragedy (motion picture) makes people think more deeply and introspectively about their relationships, which in turn improves their happiness.
3. Getting in a fight may not be as appealing as being intimate with your wife or eating your favorite food, but research says acting aggressively is just as rewarding for your brain as sex and splurging on your favorite food. The brain processes aggression in the same manner as sex, and as a result, produces dopamine.
4. People who think they are being watched will generally behave better. One working theory suggests the presence of “others” encourages us to do the “right” thing to gain “social” acceptance and approval. Another theory postulates the presence of “others”, distracts us from the task at hand and diverts our attention away from thinking within character.
5. Mowing your lawn can enhance your happiness. Australian researchers believe that when grass is cut, it discharges chemicals that make you feel happy and tranquil. The same researchers even go so far as to hypothesize, that it may even help to prevent the mental decline of getting old.
Dr. Nick Lavidis, a neuroscientist at the University of Queensland, said the scent works directly on the brain, particularly affecting the regions responsible for emotion and memory. These two areas, he said in a news release, "are responsible for the flight or fight response and the endocrine system, which controls the releasing of stress hormones like corticosteroids." The scent and the chemicals of freshly cut grass help regulate those areas.
6. Unhappy people tend to disparage others more readily. Are your friends a bunch of complainers and misfits? If they are, you might want to take a look in the mirror. There appears to be truth in “misery loves company”. The adage corresponds to the law of attraction, which states, that we create our reality. We attract those things in our lives (money, relationships, employment) that we focus on. I wish I could tell you that your best course of action is a simple restatement of affirmation, but no affirmation is going to work if your thoughts or feelings are negative.
When we focus on negatives such as, "having less,” then we create the experience for ourselves. When we are centered on "I hate my job" then we will never notice the aspects that might or could be satisfying. Ultimately, just wanting something isn't going to bring “it” to us by obsessing about not having “it”. All we will experience is not having “it" and ultimately inhibiting our potential.
7. Awakening on the wrong side of the bed may have truth to it. There appears to be a wrong side of the bed to wake up on, or at least a wrong one to go to sleep on. A 2011 study found those who sleep on the left side (if you’re standing at the foot of your bed) are likely to report being happier than those who sleep on the right.
8. The more difficult the decision, the more we avoid making it. Just the word “try” implies we aren’t going to make it. You can “try” forever and still never succeed. This of course goes against everything we understand as logical. After all, don’t we advance in life from hard work? However, the law of reverse effect creates resistance against us in the first place. I for one have eliminated the word “try” from my vocabulary and my children’s.
9. People commonly regret quick decisions. It’s not that a quick decision is right or wrong, it is the regret we feel from feeling rushed, not from being rushed. In simple terms, it's not how much time you took to make your decision; it's whether you felt you allotted enough time to make your decision.
10. Placebos may offer as much relief as actual treatments. Often patients report feeling better (as much as 35%) after receiving a drug with no active ingredient. For decades, such findings have often been called the placebo effect, and have been dismissed as “psychological”. Recent research has shown the placebo effect can generate actual biological change, a finding that is standing the medical world on its head. I do not endorse eliminating prescribed medications, but I would speak with your physician regarding alternatives.
11. A calorie chart in restaurants doesn’t lead to healthier choices. After speaking with, and researching my initial answer I feel compelled to change my first response from: A calorie chart in restaurants can lead to less healthy choices, too: A calorie chart in restaurants doesn’t lead to healthier choices.
This is a significant difference from my previous response, and I apologize for any misunderstandings or incorrect assumptions to the readers. The truth is: that calorie menus in restaurants don’t lead to “LESS” healthy decisions,/they simply don’t lead to “better” decisions.
12. People seldom notice what’s right in front of them. Here’s an anecdotal explanation I like to use because it involves people who are paid to notice. Twenty-four radiologists were asked to examine lung scans and search for nodules, which are potentially indicative of cancer. They examined five scans with an average of ten nodules on each. On the last scan was an image of a gorilla, 48 times larger than the included nodules and a gorilla. Despite its obvious presence, 20 of 24 radiologists didn’t report seeing the gorilla.
13. People need only one thing to be happy. I received countless replies and comments about this single statement. I have primarily rewritten all my answers so that I could elucidate on what the “one thing” might be. In essence Curly (City Slickers) was right, but his answer didn’t seem to satisfy many people. Here is my answer in the shortest way I can put it.
All we need to do to be happy is to be focused on what we have right here, right now, rather than worry about what we don’t have or may never have.
14. Men with a deep voice are often perceived as more sexy. They are also perceived to cheat more readily by women.
Men and women will use voice pitch as a warning sign of future betrayal. So the more attractive the voice, a higher pitch for women, and lower pitch for men, the more likely he or she will cheat," says Jillian O'Connor, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior at McMaster University and lead author of the study.
15. People buy into stereotypes more often than not. Psychologists have long believed that only prejudiced and bigoted people have stereotypes. Recent studies have debunked this theory in favor of: All of us have and use stereotypes, all the time and generally without realizing it.
A stereotype is an exaggerated learned belief, image, or bias about a person or group. It is a generality that doesn’t allow for differences or variation. Stereotypes are based on images in media, reputations passed on by parents, peers, and other members of society. Stereotypes can be positive or negative.
Now that you know we all have and work from stereotypes, we can all work to eliminate them from ourselves and more importantly from our children’s lives.
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