General psychology is an important discipline because it focuses on understanding, explaining and predicting human behavior, emotions and mental processes. According to Psychology Today, the principles of general psychologyhave an impact on relationships, in the workplace and in many other environmentsGeneral psychology is an important discipline because it focuses on understanding, explaining and predicting human behavior, emotions and mental processes.
According to Psychology Today, the principles of general psychology have an impact on relationships, in the workplace and in many other environments.
Below are 10 awesome psychological studies to help you enhance your social understanding with the help of psychology :
1. 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. 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.
2. The Bystander Effect.
Would you rather get into an accident on a crowded street or one with just a few people? If you said the more crowded place, you might want to reconsider. Several studies have shown that people are far less likely to help others when there’s a crowd nearby, as opposed to when they are alone.
The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation. Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley popularized the concept following the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in New York City.
3. The Marshmallow Experiment.
In the late 1960s, Walter Mischel tested children’s ability to delay gratification by sitting 4-year-olds at a table with marshmallows. The children were allowed to have one marshmallow now, or two 15-minutes later. Most children said they’d wait but ended up giving in, with only a few making it to the 15-minute mark. The children who delayed gratification longest ended up as more successful adults, received higher SAT scores, were less likely to be obese and less likely to have drug or behavioral issues.
We can’t take you back to your childhood. But you can learn something from the most successful 4-year-olds, who practiced avoidance techniques like covering their eyes. If you’re trying to curb a bad habit, do the same. Remove the offending item from your home, and avoid situations in which you might be tempted to do it. Not exposing yourself to temptation makes maintaining willpower far easier.
4. Optimistic People Have Healthier Hearts
Those of you that see the glass as half-full, may have an advantage over your glass half-empty counterparts.
A study published in the journal Health Behavior and Policy Review found that if you have an optimistic outlook on life than chances are you have better cardiovascular health.
The study looked at over 5,100 different adults between the ages of 45 and 84. They were rated according to the American Health Association’s heart-health criteria using 7 metrics.
The metrics included blood pressure, body mass index, fasting plasma glucose and serum cholesterol levels, dietary intake, physical activity and tobacco use.
Higher optimism was associated with higher health scores. People who were the most optimistic were 50% to 76% more likely to be in the intermediate to ideal heart health ranges.
Rosalba Hernandez – one of the researchers – said this:
“At the population level, even this moderate difference in cardiovascular health translates into a significant reduction in death rates.”
5. Spotting Narcissism and Low Self-Esteem on Facebook
Think you are a narcissist or someone with low self-esteem?
Most of you will probably have the knee-jerk reaction of “NO!” But let’s take a look at what your Facebook posts say about you.
Research from Brunel University identified common posts with personality and other traits. Here’s a quick rundown of their results.
- People with low self-esteem post updates about their current romantic partner
- Narcissists post updates about their achievements more frequently. They also had more updates about their diet and exercise routine to broadcast the effort they put into their physical appearance
- Conscientiousness people give more updates about their children
- Extroverts would post updates about social activities and everyday life
- People who rate high in openness to experience were more likely to update about intellectual topics
These shouldn’t be taken as hard and fast rules. But it might give you an indication of what type of person you or someone else might be by seeing what they post the most about.
6. The Spotlight Effect.
The spotlight effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are. Being that one is constantly in the center of one's own world, an accurate evaluation of how much one is noticed by others has shown to be uncommon.
In 2000, Thomas Gilovich set up a series of studies to learn about the powers of perception. Participants wore shirts depicting various people’s faces, then predicted how many people would remember who was on their shirt. In both instances, the participants drastically overestimated how many people would notice who was on their shirts. In a brainstorming exercise, they thought other group members would judge their mistakes more harshly – but also thought they’d spoken more often than they had, and would be rated higher on the value of their contributions.
Today, Gilovich’s findings are known as the ‘spotlight effect.’ Because human beings are egocentric, we assume that everybody is focusing on us, when in fact they’re busy wrapped up in their own lives.
7. Hallucinations are common
Hallucinations are like waking dreams, and we tend to think of them as markers of serious mental illness. In reality, however, they are more common amongst 'normal' people than we might imagine. One-third of us report having experienced hallucinations, with 20% experiencing hallucinations once a month, and 2% once a week (Ohayon, 2000).
Similarly, 'normal' people often have paranoid thoughts. The gap between people with mental illness and the 'sane' is a lot smaller than we'd like to think.
8. Key to Charisma is Quick Wit
There are some people who can walk into a room and others seem drawn to them.
While people might find certain characteristics more charismatic than others, a psychology study this year finds one of the keys to charisma is a nimble mind.
You might jump to the conclusion that people with a high IQ may have an edge. However, this isn’t necessarily the case. It’s a bit more complex than that.
What is more important is the speed of the social response. The study included over 400 people. Psychologists found that those people who could answer general knowledge questions quickly were perceived to have more charisma by their friends.
One of the researchers, William von Hippel, explains further:
“Although we expected mental speed to predict charisma, we thought that it would be less important than IQ. Instead, we found that how smart people were was less important than how quick they were.
So knowing the right answer to a tough question appears to be less important than being able to consider a large number of social responses in a brief window of time.”
9. Trying to Suppress Your Thoughts is Counterproductive
When you're down or worried about something, people often say: "hey, try not to think about it; just put it out of your mind!"
This is very bad advice. Trying to suppress your thoughts is counter-productive. Like trying as hard as you can not to think about pink elephants or white bears. What people experience when they try to suppress their thoughts is an ironic rebound effect: the thought comes back stronger than before. Looking for distractions is a much better strategy.
10. Psychopaths Don’t Yawn
Nobody likes creepers. Or psychopaths for that matter.
So what’s a good way to spot a psychopath?
If they don’t exhibit contagious yawning.
Yawning after watching someone else yawn has been linked with social bonding and empathy. Other social animals do it too, including dogs and monkeys.
Students at Baylor University took a personality test gauging their psychopathic tendencies. They then watched short 10 second clips of different facial expressions while having electrodes hooked up to different parts of their face.
The study revealed that the more empathetic someone was, the better chance of them yawning in response.
Brian Rundle from the study has a word of caution though:
“The take-home lesson is not that if you yawn and someone else doesn’t, the other person is a psychopath.
A lot of people didn’t yawn, and we know that we’re not very likely to yawn in response to a stranger we don’t have empathetic connections with.”
So a better indicator would be that if a person doesn’t yawn in response to a friend’s yawn, they may be a bit low on the empathy scale.
