47 facts, each with a source
Psychology facts
Psychology facts about the mind that is reading this. Every time you recall a memory you rewrite it, researchers planted a fake childhood memory in one person in four, and placebos keep working after you are told they are placebos. Each one links to the reference behind it.
Cognitive Biases
- Your brain can be convinced a rubber hand is yours.
- In a classic experiment, a stranger asking for directions was swapped for a different person mid-conversation while two workers carried a door between them.
- Researchers hid a small image of a gorilla in a stack of lung scans.
- A random number changes what you will pay.
- Watch a mouth say one syllable while your ears receive another and you will hear a third that nobody produced.
- You value the thing you assembled yourself far above its worth.
- People tapping a well-known song predicted that half their listeners would name it.
- Once you notice a thing you start seeing it everywhere.
- A psychologist handed his class personality profiles and asked how accurate they were.
- People wearing an embarrassing shirt guessed that about half the room noticed.
- Say any word aloud thirty times and it briefly stops meaning anything.
Memory
- Researchers implanted a fake childhood memory in 1 in 4.
- Every time you recall a memory, you rewrite it.
- Students wrote down where they were when the Challenger exploded, then were asked again years later.
- George Harrison plagiarised a hit without knowing it.
- Doorways erase your train of thought. Measurably.
- You judge an entire experience by two moments.
- London cab drivers physically grow part of their brain.
- Photographing something makes you remember it worse.
- You can hold about four things in mind at once.
- Ask a witness how fast cars were going when they smashed into each other, rather than hit, and the estimates rise — and a week later they are likelier to remember broken glass that was never there.
- Time speeds up as you get older.
Emotions
Sleep
- You are paralysed every single night.
- Before artificial light, Europeans commonly slept in two blocks with an hour or two awake in between.
- Acting out your dreams is one of the strongest known early warnings for Parkinson's disease.
- Rats that ran a maze replay the same firing sequence in their sleep, sometimes sped up, sometimes backwards.
Social
Decision Making
Personality
Mental Health
- The colour of a pill changes how well it works.
- Placebos still work when you are told they are placebos.
- Playing Tetris within hours of a traumatic event reduces the number of intrusive flashbacks in the days that follow.
- The famous study where healthy volunteers faked symptoms to get committed shaped psychiatry for decades.