Tag: psychology
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Being stoned does not necessarily make you a bad eyewitness
Being stoned does not necessarily make you a bad eyewitness. A recent study by Vredeveldt et al has shown that witnesses to a crime could pick the thief out of a line up just as well if they had been smoking marijuana as if they had not. Participants were asked, either before or after consuming…
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You are useless at statistics.
You are useless at statistics. Yup. Useless. Intuitively, I mean. You may well be able to sit down and work out the actual objective chances that something will happen, but that is not how the brain naturally works. Your brain works in stories and pictures, not complicated mathematics. If you watch somebody tossing a coin…
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A smile won’t make you happier if you are being watched
In the last post I mentioned the feedback your brain receives when you smile. Effectively, it thinks, “Hmm. I’m smiling; I must be happy”, and you actually become happier. This was shown in a famous study by Fritz Strack in 1988. However, attempts to replicate this experiment were not always successful. Some worked and some…
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If you smile you will feel happier.
If you smile you will feel happier. We think of our facial expressions and body language as being caused by our feelings and attitudes. However, it goes the other way too. If you smile, that tells your brain that you must be happy. Fritz Strack asked his participants to either hold a pen horizontally between…
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Token Gestures Can Lead to Big Changes in Behaviour
Token gestures can lead to big changes in behaviour If we show some small commitment to a point of view, it can greatly influence our future behaviour and opinions. This is why marketers hold competitions where you are encouraged to state why you like a particular product. That small sign of commitment (even if you…
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Fighting Your Prejudices Could Make Them Worse
We all have prejudices. Stereotypes are a necessary part of our psychological make-up and prejudices are an unfortunate side effect of these. However, we are sentient beings who should be able to rise above these prejudices, see them for what they are, and act in a fair and unbiased manner. Right? Weeeell… sooooort of. Imagine…
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Your Self-Image is Very Flexible
If I asked you a question about yourself, the answer would depend on what else is on your mind. Your self-image is extremely susceptible to the availability heuristic. This heuristic causes you to assume something is important or more likely if you can easily think of an example of it. So if I asked if…
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If your teacher thinks you are dumb, you will be.
If your teacher thinks you are dumb, you will be. The Golem Effect is where if someone has a negative opinion of you, you will perform worse for them than you would have otherwise. The Pygmalion Effect is the opposite – a positive opinion will result in your overachieving. Teaching is the most obvious environment…
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We act out our own stereotypes
We cannot help acting out our own stereotypes. By this I mean, if we have a stereotype which applies to us, we are prone to conforming to that stereotype. Priming is the means by which social psychologists, being extremely devious, awaken a schema in someone without their knowing it. It is like getting a thought…
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“Will a major storm devastate a small island in the near future?” An example of the availability heuristic.
Do you think a major storm is likely to devastate a small island quite soon? I am no meteorologist but, being a psychologist, I expect that your answer to this question was “yes”. Two horrific storms are lashing different parts of the world as I write this. The newspapers and websites are full of the…