10 psychological facts about you that you definitely didn't know

Have you ever wondered why you feel the way you feel and do the things you do? The way your brain functions is directly related to what you do. The amazing thing is that every “unique” mind, at some level, functions the same in different people. Below is a list of more than 100 psychological facts that provide clear evidence of why certain things happen to us the way they do and our reactions to those things. Interesting facts about human psychology will help you learn more about yourself and the society around you. These psychological facts can help answer many questions about you as a person.

— Many people told me that psychology is my thing. “They meant that your place is in a mental hospital.” Voroniny

Interesting psychological facts about humans

Let's look at the most mysterious facts of our psychology that will help you better and more easily study and understand yourself:

1. 70% of your brain's time is spent replaying memories and searching for the perfect moment.

2. 90% of the things people can't say in person, they send as text messages
3. Smarter people underestimate themselves, while ignorant people think they're brilliant.
4. Marrying your best friend reduces your risk of divorce by 70% and is likely to last a lifetime.
5. In most cases, you make your choice unconsciously
6. You want to know more options and information than you can realistically process.
7. Your brain perceives rejection as physical pain.
8. Your mind reworks the monotonous speech of boring people to make it more interesting
9. Your decisions will be more rational if you think in another language
10. Your chance of being happy is 50% dependent on your genetics.
11. You are much more likely to buy when you imagine what you could do if you had this product.
12. By telling yourself that you slept well, you can make yourself think that you did.
13. Around the world, people between the ages of 18 and 33 are most susceptible to stress. After age 33, stress levels begin to decline
14. You love a song because it is associated with an emotional event.
15. You can only remember 3-4 things at a time
16. You can read faster with long segments on a line, but prefer shorter ones
17. You imagine objects from above and at an angle
18. Anger increases people's desire to possess something.
19. Money spent on gaining valuable experience will always mean more to you
20. Children in a regular high school experience as much anxiety and fear as psychiatric patients did in the 1950s.
21. The length of your tongue is related to your sexuality. Those who can lick their elbow are more willing to try new sexual experiences.
22. It has been proven that, from a psychological point of view, it only takes 4 minutes to fall in love.
23. If you finally did what you were so afraid of, then you become happier because of it
24. If you care about someone, you will be unable to lie to that person
25. If you can't stop the flow of your thoughts at night, get up and write them down. This will calm your mind and you will be able to fall asleep
26. If you tear off paper stickers from drink bottles, this indicates your sexual dissatisfaction.
27. If you tell other people about your goals, you will likely be less likely to succeed. Research shows that doing so can make you less motivated.
28. If people cry from joy, the first tear always appears in the right eye, and if from pain, then in the left
29. Women generally prefer men with deep, husky voices as they seem more confident and non-aggressive
30. Women whose best friends are mostly men are more likely to be in a good mood
31. Closing your eyes makes it easier to remember something
32. Shy people don't talk much about themselves, but can talk a lot about other people, thinking they know them very well.
33. Research from 2014 proved that Internet trolling is associated with Machiavellianism, as well as mental disorders - sadism and psychopathy
34. The cells of people who have experienced major depression become biologically older than those of those who have never experienced depression.
35. The cells of the body react to everything that is played in your mind. Therefore, negative thoughts weaken the immune system and you feel sick
36. Being ignored has a chemical effect similar to the pain of a serious injury.
37. When you hold your loved one's hand, you feel less pain and worry less
38. When you're single, you see happy couples everywhere, and when you're single, you notice happy singles.
39. When you try to remember an event from the past, you are actually remembering the last time you remembered it, not the event itself
40. When people are observed, they behave better
41. When someone tells you they want to ask a question, 98% of your time is spent remembering everything bad you've done recently.
42. When a person dies, his brain remains active for 7 minutes in the left hemisphere, which is responsible for dreams. It's like a sequence of memories of a dying person
43. Comedians and funny people are actually more likely to be depressed than others
44. Lying requires intense mental work
45. Any friendship that began between the ages of 16 and 28 is likely to be strong and long lasting.
46. People look more attractive when they talk about what interests them
47. People with high testosterone levels enjoy other people's anger
48. People with low self-esteem are more likely to criticize others
49. People often regret decisions they make quickly
50. Bilingual people may change spontaneously when switching from one language to another
51. People who live together for a long time become similar to each other
52. People who argue a lot tend to be more loyal, honest and open with friends
53. People who try to make everyone happy often end up feeling the loneliest
54. People who are good at detecting sarcasm in communication are often good at reading people's minds
55. People who spend a lot of time in the sun seem happier
56. People who are capable of experiencing strong feelings of guilt are better able to understand other people's thoughts and feelings.
57. People who are passionate about the installation profession are usually good conversationalists
58. People like a personal touch, especially when it comes to small gifts
59. People who sleep a lot want to sleep even more
60. Less than 10% of all people say they are not perfectionists in any area of ​​their life
61. Many of us are afraid to experience happiness for fear that something tragic might follow.
62. It's really possible to die from a broken heart - it's called stress-induced cardiomyopathy
63. Silence often means that you think the other person is not ready to listen to your thoughts.
64. Our emotions do not affect the way we communicate. In fact, it's the other way around: the way we communicate affects our mood
65. There has not been a single case of a person who was blind from birth suffering from schizophrenia.
66. Some people are genetically predisposed to be pessimistic or negative about things
67. It cannot be said that men have a more developed sense of humor than women - they just joke more, not caring whether others like their humor or not.
68. New research shows that memories can be passed on genetically. This means that different phobias may develop based on the memories and experiences of ancestors, rather than your own.
69. A review of 80 scientific studies concluded that active participation in the life of religious communities and adherence to religious norms and rules of life significantly reduce the risk of developing depression
70. Loneliness for long periods of time is as bad for your health as regularly smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
71. About 80% of people use music as a means of getting rid of all negativity in life
72. Online dating and online shopping operate on the same psychological principle.
73. Singing reduces feelings of depression and anxiety
74. Human behavior depends on physical sensations
75. Behavior affects moral principles
76. Positive people stay happy longer
77. The last person who appears in your mind before you fall asleep is the cause of either your happiness or your pain.
78. An attractive and respectable appearance can easily mislead
79. Approximately 68% of respondents imagine their phone vibrating, although in reality there is none. Psychologists suggest that this is due to the electrical activity of the body
80. The presence of an attractive woman increases the likelihood of risky behavior in young men
81. Pretending to be carefree is a habit of those people who tend to be the most caring.
82. Listening to music with high sound quality induces feelings of calm, relaxation and happiness
83. Travel stimulates the brain and reduces the risk of heart attack and depression
84. From a biochemical point of view, the state of romantic love cannot be distinguished from obsessive-compulsive disorder
85. Narcissistic people most likely need casual sex not for pleasure, but to demonstrate their authority
86. The heart has nothing to do with the feeling of love - it is just a chemical reaction in our brain
87. Auditory hallucinations may vary depending on race. Patients in the United States find the voices harsh and angry, while patients in Africa find them to be quite positive and often hear God's messages in them.
88. Dreams are 70% made up of inner thoughts, which have more weight and meaning than our conscious thoughts.
89. The combination of red and blue colors is difficult for vision
90. The ability to instantly respond with ridicule to a stupid question is a sign of a healthy brain
91. The average time a woman can keep a secret is 47 hours 15 minutes
92. There are more than 400 types of different phobias recognized by psychologists
93. There is a gene that can cause an almost constant negative attitude towards everything
94. Texting good morning or good night wishes activates the part of the brain that is responsible for feelings of happiness.
95. The type of music you listen to affects the way you perceive the world
96. The way you dress is related to your mood. Therefore, choosing the right clothes in most cases helps you feel happier.
97. The way a person treats restaurant staff says a lot about his character
98. Women have twice as many pain receptors on their bodies as men, but they also have a higher pain threshold
99. The people who give the best advice tend to have the most problems.
100. Skilled liars are better at recognizing other people's lies.
101. Smart people have fewer friends. The smarter a person is, the more selective he is in choosing friends.
102. Successful and rich people are considered smarter and wiser, and vice versa
103. While the belief that money can buy happiness is strong, research shows that rising incomes don't make people much happier.
104. The person who tries to make everyone happy usually ends up feeling the loneliest
105. The more you talk about someone, the more likely it is that you have fallen in love with that person.
106. The more you spend on others, the happier you feel
107. The higher a woman's IQ, the more difficult it is for her to find a partner
108. The longer you hide your feelings from someone, the harder it is to feel attracted to that person.
109. The happier we are, the less sleep we need
110. The more complex the decision that needs to be made, the more likely people are to leave things as is.
111. The smarter a person is, the faster he thinks, and the more careless his handwriting
112. Chocolate and shopping are more addictive than LSD and steroids

Dunning-Kruger effect

This psychological paradox can be considered a balm for the soul for a huge number of competent and undeservedly unappreciated professionals who were unable to make a dizzying career leap. A fact has been discovered in psychology that proves that smarter and more knowledgeable people often doubt their own minds, while stupid and superficial people are confident in their own wisdom.

The fact is that superficially knowledgeable specialists more often make erroneous decisions, but due to their own limitations and low qualifications they are not able to assess that the cause of the failure was their personal stupidity. Moreover, their expressed self-confidence, which is easily read by their demeanor, convinces others that in front of them is a truly competent and irreplaceable specialist. This explains why in companies and corporations it is often upstarts, not burdened with the burden of knowledge, who make fast careers.

Another psychological fact shows that this set of qualities allows even experienced recruiters to successfully pass professional interviews, since most questions are aimed at identifying high self-esteem, which typical representatives of the Dunning-Kruger effect always have more than the average applicant, even with very high qualifications.

If a person is not hopeless and is capable of professional and personal growth, then an understanding of their place in the labor market will inevitably come. But sometimes such “business geniuses” continue to wander from office to office in management positions, remaining confident in their own irreplaceability and in the inability to appreciate their enormous potential by their previous employer.

Bonus: 10 very interesting facts about human psychology

1. Regarding the volume of our short-term memory, the law “magic number 7 plus, minus 2” is true. What does this law say? He says that a person is able to retain no more than 5-7 blocks of information at a time in his short-term memory. This indicator is true for almost all people with average mental abilities. You will very rarely meet people whose short-term memory can hold more than 10 characters. For example, when you remember a phone number, it is easier for you to fix it in memory, having previously broken it down into unique sets of information.
2. The combination of colors such as blue and red makes a heavy impression on our eye receptor.
   The “chromostereopsis” effect works. This effect is as follows: some colors come to the fore for us, while others, on the contrary, are pushed back. This leads to severe eye fatigue. Also, this fact occurs when red and green are located close to each other. Typos make sense too
3. “Nezhavno and kookm podyarke rhapsolezhnye bkuvy in solva. It’s very important to keep up the good work and get on with it.” This conclusion was made by scientists from the University of Cambridge. This happens due to the fact that our brain has the ability to read not one letter at a time, separately, but perceive the word as a whole. And as you can see, the information that the brain perceives (words) is different from the information that you see (text from mixed up letters). This speaks to the difference between what your brain sees and what it perceives.
4. Being at the most important and interesting meeting, listening to an exciting speech by a professional speaker, you are able to keep your attention on for no more than 10 minutes. Afterwards, you should rest a little to restore your level of attention. By the way, those who often speak to audiences need to take this fact into account.
5. Do you want to jumpstart your ingenuity, increase your ability to find solutions to various problems and problems? Dream more often! According to research by domestic psychologists, we do this at least 30% of the time. Some spend even more time on this, but as you have noticed, this only increases creativity and resourcefulness.

   Dream more often - it's very useful!

6. If you decide to develop a habit, it will take you 66 days. This is an average figure. If this action is very important and pleasant for you, then the number of days for turning it into a habit will be dramatically reduced, but if, on the contrary, it will increase.
7. The potential number of your friends is limited.
   Even if you have tens of thousands of friends on social networks, you can call only a few of them a true friend. This is the so-called Dunbar number, which indicates the greatest number of people close to you that you can have. It ranges from 50 to 150. Attracting attention
8. Food, love passion and danger, in any case, attract your attention. I think everyone has at one time or another slowed down to observe accident situations. The oldest part of the brain prevents us from doing this. With all our desire, we cannot simply ignore those issues, phenomena, situations on which our life and its continuation depend.
9. You know how to do things that have never been done before. For example, imagine that for the first time in your life you were given an iPad to read an e-book. Already in the process of turning on and loading the book, you will mentally imagine what it will look like and how you will need to operate it. This is influenced by your previous experience, some incomplete facts from the past and, to some extent, intuition.
10. Isn't it true, you perceive your memories as certain films that you seem to play when you remember this or that incident? In fact, by turning to your memories, you supplement them with some new facts. What matters is that the nerve pathways carry out impulses differently each time. Your late life experience and the desire to fill in the missing memories play a role here. For example, you want to remember whether your aunt was at the last New Year's Eve party. But remembering that you usually celebrate this holiday together, you can safely include her in these memories.

Fact #4 - We can remember no more than 4 things at a time

Scientists have proven that we can remember no more than 3-4 blocks of information at the same time, and it is stored in memory for no more than 30 seconds. If you don't repeat it again and again, it will be forgotten very quickly.

Let's take an example: you are driving a car and talking on the phone at the same time. The interlocutor dictates a phone number to you and asks you to write it down. But you can't do that, so you remember. Repeating numbers systematically will allow you to retain them in short-term memory for 20-30 seconds after you stop mentally repeating them.

Prohibition of dual relationships

The prohibition on dual relationships is another important ethical principle of psychological counseling. Consulting relatives, friends, employees, close acquaintances is inappropriate. Sexual relations with a client are unacceptable. This is why decent psychologists refuse consultations to their friends and acquaintances. Not everyone knows about this rule, so they are sincerely perplexed when they receive a refusal. On the one hand, their complaints are quite understandable: “I work as an IT specialist, I can fix a friend’s computer cheaper than a stranger’s. Why can’t my friend advise me at a discount?!” However, such a ban has a completely logical justification. Being in a personal relationship with a client, the consultant loses objectivity. And it is necessary for consultations to be successful and bring results. In addition, the client will not always fully disclose to his friend, employee, or even acquaintance. After all, in the eyes of those with whom we regularly communicate, we want to look as beautiful as possible. We cannot always fully “expose” our feelings and thoughts. In this regard, it can be much easier for a stranger to open up. I think many of the readers have had episodes in their lives when they started very personal conversations with casual acquaintances, say, fellow travelers on the train; discussed with them topics that are awkward to discuss with loved ones.

Fact #7 – There are 3 things we can’t ignore: hunger, sex and danger.

Have you ever wondered why people stop on roads where there has been an accident or at tall buildings with a suicidal person on the roof about to jump down? Yes, it is interesting for us to watch the development of such extreme events, because we are inquisitive creatures. However, the reason for this behavior lies in the presence in our brain of a small region responsible for survival. It is he who forces us to scan the world around us all the time, asking ourselves 3 questions:

• Can I eat this?
• Is it suitable for reproduction?
• Is this life-threatening?

Food, sex and danger are the 3 main things that determine our existence, so we cannot ignore them.

Requirements for a psychologist

First of all, the profession of psychologist presupposes that a specialist has a certain amount of knowledge in this field, which can be obtained at any higher educational institution that provides specialized training. In addition to the theoretical basis, the specialist must also have some personal qualities:

• optimism;
• self-confidence;
• the ability to sense the patient's emotions;
• equal treatment of all people, regardless of their individual characteristics;
• communication skills and the ability to convey information to a person;
• politeness and attentiveness;
• friendliness and ability to relax the client;
• tolerance, mental balance.

The salary of a psychologist largely depends on the professionalism and the institution where the specialist works. In government organizations you should not count on a large income; it is approximately equal to the average salary of a public sector employee in the region. In private practice there is no limit as such; a session can cost 30, 50 or even 100 dollars.

Do not miss:

Pros and cons of the profession of psychologist

Advantages:

• the opportunity to use professional skills in everyday life;
• Helping people gives you moral satisfaction;
• development of a tolerant attitude;
• the ability to set realistic goals and achieve them;
• the opportunity for limitless personal growth.

Flaws:

• there is a desire to give advice to everyone with or without reason;
• taking the client's problems too closely;
• projection of one’s own difficulties onto the client’s life.

The career of a psychologist comes down to the growth of a specialist’s professional qualities, his competence and demand. To achieve success in this field, fundamental skills alone are not enough. It is necessary to constantly improve qualifications through trainings and seminars.

A psychologist can work both in specialized centers and in organizations that require specialists in this profile (schools, universities, correctional institutions). Some work out of state in private practice.

There are many myths and confusion associated with the question of who a psychologist is. In the modern world, the profession of psychologist is one of the most popular and widespread.

The makings of this profession originated in ancient Greece, where specially trained people had long conversations with patients and tried to use this to cure their soul - or, in other words, “psycho”.

Over the course of several thousand years, much has changed in psychology, but the concept has remained virtually unchanged. The main role in this science is played by the inner world of a person - his conflicts, traumas, thoughts, emotions.

The nineteenth century was the century of biology, the twentieth - the century of physics, the twenty-first - the century of psychology. Arkady Petrovich Egides