The systematic study of mental processes and human behavior has been questioned for some time. why we act the way we do Human psychology has surprising curiosities that are relatively unknown. We recommend that, if you like reading about this type of curiosities, you take a look at our previous installments:
In this article that we present today we propose to present a total of five impressive psychological discoveries that provide answers to some enigmas of our psyche.
Are you ready to meet them? By clicking on the links you can access more detailed information about each of the discoveries.
1. The Halo Effect
He Halo effect It is one of the concepts that has attracted the most attention of social psychologists and groups. This is a cognitive bias through which the overall impression about a person (for example: “he is nice”) It is generated from judgments that concern certain specific traits (for example: “he is smart”). To further exemplify the phenomenon of the Halo Effect, we could bring up the case of the stars of the big screen.
The famous actors who appear in the highest-grossing films are usually people with great physical attractiveness and people skills. They are one of those people who know how to captivate with their gestures and their gaze, they perfectly master the image they project. These two traits (physical attractiveness and friendliness) make us assume, through this curious psychological effect, that they are also intelligent, generous, friendly, etc. people. He Halo effect It also happens in the opposite direction: if a person is not physically attractive, we will tend to think that he or she is an unpleasant or uninteresting person. That is, in this case we will tend to attribute specific negative traits.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, when we remain lost in thought without thinking about anything in particular or we are about to fall asleep, our brain only consumes 5% less energy than when we try to solve difficult puzzles
Not only that: when this happens, large regions of the brain begin to emit signals in a coordinated manner, causing hundreds of thousands of neurons to work together to… it is not clear why. The fact that these areas of the brain, which are part of what has been called Default Neural Networkstop working together when we are paying attention and using our focused attention to solve tasks or reflect on specific things has caused this pattern of electrical signals to be called “the dark energy of the brain.”
3. Cognitive dissonance
Why do we deceive ourselves? This is another question that psychologists and philosophers have asked themselves throughout the centuries. In the study of human psychology, cognitive dissonanceIt is described as discomfort or the contradictory feeling we experience when our beliefs conflict with what we do or when we defend two discordant ideas at the same time.
Psychologists of the caliber of Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith They demonstrated something surprising and that marked a before and after in the study of cognitive dissonance. If a person is asked to lie and does not consider himself a person who habitually lies, he will manage to tell the lie and will continue to think of himself as an honest person. Curious, isn’t it? But how is this possible? The human mind resolves these types of cognitive dissonances by persuading yourself that the lie you just told is, in fact, a truth. Although this may operate at a not very conscious level, the truth is that our brain tends to think well about us
He false consensus effect It is another cognitive bias that is studied in all Psychology faculties. The false consensus effect makes Many individuals tend to overvalue the degree of “agreement” that others have with their views or opinions Certainly, we tend to perceive that our opinions, values, beliefs or habits are the most common and supported by the majority of people around us. This belief causes us to tend to overestimate the confidence we have in our opinions, even if they are erroneous, biased or minority.
From now on, remember: the false consensus effect can make you believe that your opinion is shared by other people… and maybe you are the only one who thinks that way
5. The Westermarck effect
He incest It is one of the most universal taboos and, curiously, it is difficult to rationally justify its existence adhering to the values of “as long as it does not harm anyone, it should not be prohibited.” However, from the point of view of evolution Yes, reasons can be found to avoid incest since it can result in the birth of individuals with health problems or difficulties in living independently.
Based on this idea, the researcher Edvard Westermarck He even proposed that human beings have an innate propensity not to feel sexual attraction to people with whom we have had frequent contact during childhood. This translates into a lack of sexual desire towards people who are statistically very likely to be part of our family.
This phenomenon, known as the Westermarck effect, has been found in numerous studies on the subject, the best known being a research in which it was found that people who had been raised in the same kibbutz (a typical agrarian commune in Israel) are much less likely to intermarry.
Triglia, Adrián; Regader, Bertrand; García-Allen, Jonathan (2016). Psychologically speaking. Paidós.
Papalia, D., & Wendkos, S. (1992). Psychology. Mexico: McGraw-Hill, p. 9.
