Psychology
Discover facts about psychology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Psychology
Why missing childhood can change language forever
The heartbreaking case of Genie proved that your brain operates on strict, unforgiving deadlines. Locked in a room for the first 13 years of her life with…
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Talking to yourself can help with difficult tasks
Society loves to label adults who talk to themselves as unhinged, but Lev Vygotsky knew you were just doing high-level brain maintenance. He observed that…
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How snacks helped treat a child's rabbit phobia
While her male peers were busy traumatizing infants to prove a point, Mary Cover Jones figured out how to fix them. She took a kid named Peter who was deathly…
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Why babies stop at the visual cliff
Before we knew how babies perceived depth, Eleanor Gibson threw some heavy glass over a massive drop-off and watched to see if they'd happily crawl to their…
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Your brain may decide before you do
Benjamin Libet ruined the concept of free will for everyone by wiring people up to EEG machines and asking them to flick their wrists. He discovered that the…
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Groups can agree on a light that isn't moving
Muzafer Sherif locked people in a pitch-black room, shined a stationary dot of light on the wall, and exploited a visual glitch called the autokinetic effect,…
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How chimpanzees solved a banana puzzle
Wolfgang Köhler stranded a bunch of chimpanzees on the island of Tenerife during WWI and discovered they were entirely capable of "aha!" moments. Instead of…
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A classroom experiment turned into a fascist movement
High school history teacher Ron Jones wanted to show his students how easily ordinary Germans fell for fascism. He succeeded a little too well. By introducing…
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The cruel study that tried to create stutters
In a masterclass of unethical cruelty, Wendell Johnson decided orphans were acceptable collateral damage for a thesis. He isolated perfectly normal-speaking…
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Yawning is just an involuntary reflex
Nobody actually knows why we open our mouths and inhale deeply when exhausted. The current reigning theory is brain-cooling, but frankly, it just looks like…
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Screaming at completely harmless vegetables
Phobias reveal how hilariously broken our threat assessment systems are. People will casually drive metal boxes at ninety miles an hour, but totally lose…
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Why guilt returns after you make the same mistake
Guilt is a fascinating internal mechanism designed to make you suffer for a mistake just long enough to feel absolved before repeating it. It is essentially a…
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Why pretending to care can make people like you
The magical ability to smile, nod, and make people believe you care deeply about their weekend plans when you are entirely zoned out.
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When your social battery dies at the party
Spending an eternity preparing to go to a party, only to arrive and immediately wish you were back in your pyjamas doing absolutely nothing.
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Mocking people with complete sincerity
Saying the exact opposite of what you mean just to see if the person you are talking to is smart enough to catch on. It is verbal gymnastics for the deeply…
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Delaying tasks is just poor self regulation
Procrastination has nothing to do with laziness. It is just your pathetic inability to handle the mild discomfort of starting a difficult task, preferring…
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People buy expensive backyard grills in midlife crises but still feel old
Deciding that buying an outrageously expensive backyard grill will somehow reverse the relentless marching of time. Spoiler: you still feel old, but now you…
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Enforcing toxic workplace positivity
Plastering 'good vibes only' posters all over an office to aggressively ignore the crumbling morale. Mandatory fun is enforced strictly to mask the underlying…
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Why nobody answers the group chat
Watching an urgent question sit completely unanswered in a group message because everyone mutually assumes someone else will eventually reply.
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Some people see TV static everywhere
A bizarre neurological glitch where your visual feed is permanently overlaid with television static. It is the ultimate built-in filter, except you cannot…
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Doing the exact opposite of instructions
Humans possess an incredibly stupid instinct where being politely asked to complete a simple task immediately makes them want to burn the whole project down.
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Why narcissists can look like executive material
We claim to value empathy, yet consistently promote narcissists to executive suites. Overwhelming self-obsession mimics competence just well enough to fool…
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Controlling night visions requires effort
Lucid dreaming sounds like a fun nighttime superpower until you realize it requires keeping a relentless journal and performing reality checks while awake,…
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Treating phobias can mean facing them all at once
The medical consensus for fixing your paralyzing fear of spiders is to essentially torture you with spiders until your brain gets exhausted. It is called…
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