Psychology
Discover facts about psychology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Psychology
Doing nothing can feel more innocent than causing the same harm.
Doing nothing can feel more innocent than causing the same harm. In studies of omission bias, people can judge harmful action more harshly than harmful…
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Doing something good can become an excuse for a later lapse.
Doing something good can become an excuse for a later lapse. Researchers call this proposed pattern moral licensing: an earlier good deed can reassure someone…
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Consumers will completely change their preference between two options when presented with a third, asymmetrically dominated option designed solely to manipulate them.
Consumers will completely change their preference between two options when presented with a third, asymmetrically dominated option designed solely to…
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A smile changes when the eyes join in.
A smile changes when the eyes join in. A Duchenne smile combines raised mouth corners with muscle movement that narrows the eyes and lifts the cheeks. That…
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Agreeing to a massive, unreasonable request becomes highly likely if you have already agreed to a tiny, seemingly innocent favor beforehand.
Agreeing to a massive, unreasonable request becomes highly likely if you have already agreed to a tiny, seemingly innocent favor beforehand. A tiny favor can…
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Rejecting a massive, completely outrageous request makes you significantly more likely to agree to a smaller, secondary favor immediately afterward.
Rejecting a massive, completely outrageous request makes you significantly more likely to agree to a smaller, secondary favor immediately afterward. The huge…
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Judging the likelihood of an event based entirely on how easily an example comes to mind is a mental shortcut known as the availability heuristic.
Judging the likelihood of an event based entirely on how easily an example comes to mind is a mental shortcut known as the availability heuristic. A plane…
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Humans lose roughly ninety percent of newly learned information within a matter of days unless they actively and aggressively review it, as demonstrated by the Ebbinghaus…
Humans lose roughly ninety percent of newly learned information within a matter of days unless they actively and aggressively review it, as demonstrated by…
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Nostalgia began as a diagnosis for homesickness.
Nostalgia began as a diagnosis for homesickness. Seventeenth-century physician Johannes Hofer used the term for severe distress associated with being away…
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Doing someone a favor can change how you feel about them.
Doing someone a favor can change how you feel about them. In a classic 1969 experiment, participants who returned prize money as a personal favor to a…
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Placing a disproportionately high value on products you partially created yourself is a consumer bias brilliantly dubbed the IKEA effect.
Placing a disproportionately high value on products you partially created yourself is a consumer bias brilliantly dubbed the IKEA effect. When you assemble a…
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Feeling safer can change the risks you take.
Feeling safer can change the risks you take. Risk compensation is the idea that people adjust their behavior when protection changes: feeling safer can make a…
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Reaction formation makes people loudly oppose desires they secretly have
Someone who feels a desire they find unacceptable may respond by leaning hard in the opposite direction—condemning it, avoiding it, or loudly insisting they…
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A bonus can teach people to optimize the wrong thing
If pay depends on call numbers, ending calls quickly becomes valuable even when a customer still needs help. This is the incentive problem: the measurable…
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When emotional distress causes real pain
Your mind and body don’t keep emotional pain in a separate, sealed compartment. Distress can shift stress signals, tense muscles, and make physical sensations…
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Munchausen syndrome fakes severe illness for attention
Someone with factitious disorder imposed on self may invent or produce symptoms to take on the role of a seriously ill patient. The illness can bring…
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Source amnesia keeps the fact but loses the messenger
A fact can survive in your memory after its origin has vanished. Without the source attached, you may mistake something heard in passing for something you…
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How gaslighting makes you doubt your own reality
Gaslighting works by making you distrust the very tool you use to judge what happened: your own memory. Repeated denial and confident contradiction can turn a…
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Why adults still chase gold stars
Adults chase gold stars in grown-up packaging. A compliment, a leaderboard rank, or a public award makes progress visible and gives other people a reason to…
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Phobia therapy gives fear a competing story
Exposure therapy helps a person approach a feared situation in a planned, supported way. Instead of escaping every time the alarm rises, they gain experience…
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Jerusalem became the setting for a named psychiatric syndrome
Clinicians documented visitors who developed intense religious delusions or felt compelled to preach during trips to the city. Many had previous psychiatric…
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A kidnapped psychiatrist ended up counseling his captors
A 1996 report described Peruvian psychiatrist Mariano Querol reading and talking with his kidnappers, developing a relationship he believed helped him…
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Prospective memory fails when you need to act later
Remembering a fact is different from remembering to act on it later. A future intention has to survive until the right moment, then get triggered by a cue:…
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Why old habits can suddenly come back
Breaking a habit often means building a competing response, not erasing the old one. When you’re tired or stressed, that newer response takes more effort; the…
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