Today we'll talk about 10 Psychology Factsthat will blow your mind. Let's begin. 

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1. Bystander Effect: In 2000, a group of young men attacked 60 women in a parade in Central Park, New York City. Thousands of people watched but no one called the police. This is the Bystander Effect, the more people witness someone in need of help - the less likely someone would take action. Everyone thinks someone else would do something until no one does. The same case happens when there’s a possible danger. In 1970 psychologists Bibb Latane and John Larney had people answer a questionnaire in a room. After twenty minutes a smoke would come out from the wall vent. When alone the person freaks out in twenty seconds and leaves to inform the researchers of the billowing smoke. But when in a group people would wait until they are blinded by the smoke. What happens is each person doesn’t want others to think he’s a fool so he checks if the others are freaked out, but the person next to him thinks the same. Even more, a third person watches them and assumes there’s nothing he should be worried about. So he’s even less likely to freak out. This is why when it seems there’s something wrong, you should trust your instinct and exit the room right away. And why you should be the first one to offer a helping hand, because if you don’t know one else will. 

2. You can trick your brain into thinking time is going slowly: Ever wonder why time seems to go faster as we age. Apparently it has something to do with how our brains process information. When we receive new information our brain digests it more slowly so time feels elongated. This explains why time seems to go faster as we grow older. When we were kids everything was new, summers seem to go longer. The more familiar the world becomes the less the brain writes new information so times slips off more quickly. Conversely, if you take in new information, like learning a skill, reading a book, or going to new places, you can make time go slowly. Guess the perfect example for me is while I was writing this it felt forever because I was learning new things. Usually the whole evening will passed by quickly when I’m glued to the computer playing games but this one seem to have gone forever. 

3. Brand Loyalty: Mac Vs PC, Iphone Vs Android, we’ve all seen it across the internet. Whatever your preference is it’s not because you’ve rationalized over them, but because you’ve rationalized your past choices to protect your pride and ego. In an experiment in Baylor University, researcher shooked up participants in brain scanners. They were given unmarked cups of COKE and PEPSI. They were asked to choose which tastes better. Some participants, who preferred COKE all their lives, stayed with their choice even when the brain scanner shows they like PEPSI more. They lied because sometime in the past they became loyal to COKE. Their memories had to match their emotions. Take this on a bigger scale, like non-essential expensive products like smartphones. For example an Apple product, Apple doesn’t advertise its technicalities but rather they show you types of people who would purchase them. And if you see yourself as someone who has taste and talent, a sort of person who would own one, you’ve been branded. Are there other products better than Apple? It doesn’t matter, those considerations come after you’ve seen yourself as someone who would own a Mac book. And when people argue, they are not defending the product per se but their own choices, which is tied to their self-image. 

4. Creativity activates when you’re tired: Do you wonder why big business ideas happen when you're in a shower after a long day from school or work? This happens because our brains are less efficient when you're tired. During the day when you're wide awake our brain processes information faster. It crunches data efficiently, filtering unnecessary information to do tasks quickly. After a long day it becomes tired. But because it’s not efficient any more, its open to all kinds of information. This is where your creative brain activates because you’re thinking outside the box. You're able to invite all kinds of things, the mundane and useful to form an ingenious idea. 

5. Groupthink: We think problems are solved when people gather but the truth is it likely hinders progress. The problem is each person thinks he should conform to the decision of the group. This happens during a brain storming where the boss is present and people are familiar with each other. Each one feels he shouldn’t destroy the group’s harmony so each one becomes agreeable. If not others might get mad at him, causing him to lose friends and his job. The boss, assuming everyone agrees because no one speaks out makes a decision, that turns out to be a bad one. For a groupthink to happen it needs three major ingredients. People who like each other, isolation, and a deadline. According to psychologists, for any plan to work, the following guidelines should be followed. The boss shouldn’t express his opinion because his could become the opinion of others. The group should break into pairs to discuss the issue do develop a level of dissent. Once in a while an outsider should give an opinion. And finally a group needs an asshole, someone who isn't afraid of getting fired. His mission is to find faults in the plan. 

6. Pratfall Effect: We tend to like people who make mistakes more. In 1966 psychologist Elliot Aronson tested this theory. He had participants listen to recordings of people who are taking a quiz. The aim of the test was to see if recordings of someone spilling over a cup of coffee makes that person more likable, turns out its true. Mistakes makes us more human, people feel closer to you when they can relate to your occasional mishaps. When people don’t make mistakes, they create distance and an unattractive air of invincibility. This is the reason why when there’s someone new in a group and he makes a silly mistake, in the full view of everyone, they become amused in a positive way, and starts to accept the new kid. So don’t be afraid to look like a fool sometimes, it can work in your favor. 

7. Straw Man fallacy: When people you are arguing with are losing they may try to be deceptive to prove their side. One perfect example which I've heard personally is one politician starts to accuse a human rights defender of perpetuating crimes. The former believes drug dealers should be shot on sight but the latter believes in the rule of law. The politicians then accuses the other of protecting criminals. Now the other is then forced to lay out human rights records to prove the other wrong, although it wasn’t what he was suggesting in the first place. Straw Man fallacy is when one uses your argument to create an artificial one, the straw man, then attacks it because its easy to. Beware when an argument starts by “So you're saying..” a straw man is about to be summoned. 

8. Procrastination: You're all familiar with this situation. Rearranging your desktop instead of doing your report. Starting a diet plan but eventually going back to eating garbage. Procrastination isn’t just about being lazy, its when you overestimate your future self. When you write a new year’s resolution you're full of motivation, but what you don’t realize is the future you is different from you who is in the NOW. At the present your pumped up but how about the person down the road when he or she is offered a chocolate cake? This is what present bias is, its not knowing that what you want know isn’t something that you would want later. This is why you will write down the same new years resolution for the tenth time. Why your watch later list is full of great films and documentaries but you keep passing them for Family Guy. And this is why at the moment, you prefer to have an immaculate desktop than not cramming when the deadline is near. When you are making plans your ideal self is the one writing it, but at the moment you go for whats easy to do. The key to beating procrastination is outmaneuvering it. Want will never disappear, but you can force yourself how to manage it. If you want to eat healthy, you should subscribe to meal plans. Even when your future you starts to hate it, you won’t have a choice but to eat it. Or if you want to get fit, get a fitness coach who will look after your progress. 

9. You're hardwired to love music you listen to as a teenager Listening to your favorite music shoots up your dopamine, the feel good chemicals in your brain. This is stronger when your brain is developing, from the age of 12-22. According to psychologist Petr Janata, the music we listened to in our formative years becomes associated with emotional memories. These are the times when you becomes you. And it’s only fitting to say that your memories that are formed during this time is what mostly contributes for the rest of your life. The music itself becomes etched in your mind that it triggers emotion. This is why you hear old people sing Beatles in karaoke nights. These songs trigger emotions they’ve had during the best years of their lives. 

10. You're more likely to join a cult than you realize If you think you're too smart to join a cult, you're dead wrong. Turns out people who join a cult are regular people like you. From afar many groups seem like cults. Its hard to determine what is and what is not, as the line between the two is blurry. The point is, its easy to fall into a cult because it’s the same process when you’ve found your social group. I mean before you became friends with your social group, you didn’t rationalize why you wanted to be a part of them. Like any primate beings, people like belongingness. They wanna be part of a pack with same minded people. We assume people join a cult because they wanna fulfill an emotional void, that a charismatic leader like LRH and Charles Manson could give. But people fall into cults because of their ideas. These people seem to have figured everything in life, and they wanna follow it too. You might still think you're too smart for that but many people as well flock around great leaders like Gandhi, Socrates, Elon Musk. We idealize ourselves around an idea, and if we found a charismatic figure whose ideas magnify ours, and it turns out many people follow that person as well, we tend to fall into that group. According to psychologist David Myers, a cult can form spontaneously. It starts when people form around a charismatic person, who then becomes an authority figure. He then uses his followers to spearhead his agenda. If he lacks human power he then starts to recruit more, often masking his true agenda, as not to scare away potential recruits. Some cult leaders are conscious of the whole scheme, some do not until they’ve realized what they’ve done. In the end history will decide where they are in the moral spectrum. Are they like a Jim Jone who had convinced his followers to kill themselves, or a Mohandas Gandhi, who has convinced his followers to follow him on a 241 mile journey by foot to protest against salt taxes?