Psychology addresses the complexity of the human being, his behavior and his mental processes.
Among the different facets of study of this science, there are the so-called psychological phenomena. What are the most common psychological phenomena? In this article we will find out.
10 psychological phenomena that deserve to be explained
Our brain works in a somewhat surprising way, sometimes. We have collected ten psychological phenomena that you may not have known about and that you may be interested in knowing.
1. Cognitive Dissonance
It means that when we have two contradictory thoughts or beliefs, or we make decisions and behave differently than we think, we will feel bad or have anxiety or discomfort When we become aware of such discomfort or tension, people unconsciously tend to regain balance to reduce the dissonance. Then, we can behave or argue in favor of the decision we have made, to give ourselves peace of mind and convince ourselves that we have done it right.
Let’s take an example: a soldier must go to war but thinks that it is not right to kill another human being. If he has killed someone, he can argue that he has done it to defend the country. Another example is the smoker who knows that smoking harms him and that it increases the chances of contracting cancer and other diseases. Advertising and campaigns prohibiting smoking in public places increase internal tension and contradiction. We know that smoking kills, but we prefer to deny it. There are people who would say: “we have to die of something”, “the doctor told me that my lungs are impeccable”, “I control it”, etc., and in this way we reduce the tension.
One-third of people report experiencing hallucinations at some point in their lives Likewise, ordinary people often have paranoid thoughts. The brain acts like this to fill in the lack of information. The problem is when that happens very often, because it can be an alarm of problems in certain regions of the brain.
It is known that when schizophrenics have hallucinations, it is because the region that would be responsible for sending the message is actually activated. The sound, images or smells they perceive really exist for them, even though there is no stimulus that triggers them.
3. The Placebo effect
Occurs when the subject believes that a drug or medication has an effect on him, although said effect has no physiological basis Examples of placebo are many products with “magical and miraculous effects” sold in pharmacies, energy bracelets, etc.
Researchers have found some curiosities such as:
4. Obedience to authority
Numerous studies show how people in power can control our behaviors and lead us to do things we don’t want to do. In Stanley Milgram’s famous study, 63% of participants continued giving electric shocks to another human being just because someone in authority told them to do so.
5. Choices mediated by emotions
We are not very good at either making decisions or understanding why we make those choices. As the scientific communicator says Eduard Punset, “we have been taught to be very logical and reasonable when making decisions, but it turns out that there is not a single reasonable decision that is not contaminated by an emotion. There is no project that does not begin with an emotion. And there is no project that does not end because of an emotion.”
Furthermore, when we make a decision, even if the decision is not good, we tend to rationalize why that decision is the best option. Emotional Marketing is responsible for gathering this knowledge and applying it to seduce our emotions and get us to buy a specific product.
6. Fantasizing reduces motivation
Thinking that we have already been successful in the past can reduce our motivation Furthermore, we could consider the argument valid that thinking about success inevitably leads us to create the conditions for it to happen, but in reality this is rather counterproductive.
7. Brainstorming doesn’t work
As B. Nijstad’s (2006) studies showed, group thinking reduces the power of brainstorm , because in groups, people are lazier and worry more about what others think. It is better to think alone when it comes to creating ideas.
8. We should not suppress thoughts
By stopping thoughts you actually get to think about them even more. It is one of the strategies most used by people who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and most assume that this tactic has rarely helped them.
9. We can train multitasking
In general, Multitasking reduces efficiency because we have to allocate different cognitive resources to different tasks simultaneously But recent studies show that you can learn to multitask. You just have to train.
10. It’s the little things that matter
We think that it is the big events in our lives that change us or make us happy, but in reality it is the little things that add up and make us who we are.
Like in The Alchemist we must be aware that the life journey must be valued for itself, in each of its circumstances, regardless of the achievement of the achievements to which we aspire.
