1. Cognitive dissonance
This is perhaps one of the weirdest and most unsettling findings in psychology. Cognitive dissonance is the idea that we find it hard to hold two contradictory beliefs, so we unconsciously adjust one to make it fit with the other.
In the classic study students found a boring task more interesting if they were paid less to take part. Our unconscious reasons like this: if I didn’t do it for money, then I must have done it because it was interesting. As if by magic, a boring task becomes more interesting because otherwise I can’t explain my behaviour.
The reason it’s unsettling is that our minds are probably performing these sorts of rationalisations all the time, without our conscious knowledge. So how do we know what …show more content…
The gap between people with mental illness and the ‘sane’ is a lot smaller than we’d like to think.
3. The placebo effect
Perhaps you’ve had the experience that a headache improves seconds after you take an aspirin? This can’t be the drug because it takes at least 15 minutes to kick in.
That’s the placebo effect: your mind knows you’ve taken a pill, so you feel better. In medicine it seems strongest in the case of pain: some studies suggest a placebo of saline (salty water) can be as powerful as morphine (Hrobjartsson et al., 2001). Some studies even suggest that 80% of the power of Prozac is placebo.
The placebo effect is counter-intuitive because we easily forget that mind and body are not separate.
4. Obedience to authority
Most of us like to think of ourselves as independently-minded. We feel sure that we wouldn’t harm another human being unless under very serious duress. Certainly something as weak as being ordered to give someone an electric shock by an authority figure in a white coat wouldn’t be enough, would …show more content…
Incredible multi-tasking skills
Despite all the mind’s limitations, we can train it do incredible things. For example we hear a lot about our multitasking abilities, but with practice, did you know people can read and write at the same time?
One study of multitasking trained two volunteers over 16 weeks until they could read a short story and categorise lists of words at the same time. Eventually they could perform as well on both tasks at the same time as they could on each task individually before the study began.
Read a full description of the study, along with potential criticisms, here.
10. It’s the little things
We tend to think that the big events in our lives are the most important: graduation, getting married or the birth of a child.
But actually major life events are often not directly as important to our well-being as the little hassles and uplifts of everyday life (Kanner et al., 1981). Major events mainly affect us through the daily hassles and uplifts they produce. The same is true at work, where job satisfaction is strongly hit by everyday
This is perhaps one of the weirdest and most unsettling findings in psychology. Cognitive dissonance is the idea that we find it hard to hold two contradictory beliefs, so we unconsciously adjust one to make it fit with the other.
In the classic study students found a boring task more interesting if they were paid less to take part. Our unconscious reasons like this: if I didn’t do it for money, then I must have done it because it was interesting. As if by magic, a boring task becomes more interesting because otherwise I can’t explain my behaviour.
The reason it’s unsettling is that our minds are probably performing these sorts of rationalisations all the time, without our conscious knowledge. So how do we know what …show more content…
The gap between people with mental illness and the ‘sane’ is a lot smaller than we’d like to think.
3. The placebo effect
Perhaps you’ve had the experience that a headache improves seconds after you take an aspirin? This can’t be the drug because it takes at least 15 minutes to kick in.
That’s the placebo effect: your mind knows you’ve taken a pill, so you feel better. In medicine it seems strongest in the case of pain: some studies suggest a placebo of saline (salty water) can be as powerful as morphine (Hrobjartsson et al., 2001). Some studies even suggest that 80% of the power of Prozac is placebo.
The placebo effect is counter-intuitive because we easily forget that mind and body are not separate.
4. Obedience to authority
Most of us like to think of ourselves as independently-minded. We feel sure that we wouldn’t harm another human being unless under very serious duress. Certainly something as weak as being ordered to give someone an electric shock by an authority figure in a white coat wouldn’t be enough, would …show more content…
Incredible multi-tasking skills
Despite all the mind’s limitations, we can train it do incredible things. For example we hear a lot about our multitasking abilities, but with practice, did you know people can read and write at the same time?
One study of multitasking trained two volunteers over 16 weeks until they could read a short story and categorise lists of words at the same time. Eventually they could perform as well on both tasks at the same time as they could on each task individually before the study began.
Read a full description of the study, along with potential criticisms, here.
10. It’s the little things
We tend to think that the big events in our lives are the most important: graduation, getting married or the birth of a child.
But actually major life events are often not directly as important to our well-being as the little hassles and uplifts of everyday life (Kanner et al., 1981). Major events mainly affect us through the daily hassles and uplifts they produce. The same is true at work, where job satisfaction is strongly hit by everyday