The human psyche continues to be one of the biggest mysteries in the world. Even without looking Despite the fact that researchers know many interesting facts about the psychological characteristics of a person, thanks to which they can predict the behavior of people in a given situation, many features remain unknown. Do you have any idea how wrong your memories are, how long it takes for your habits to form, and how many friends you can make? In this article we will describe psychological facts that will help you better understand yourself.
10 psychological facts that will help you understand yourself
Psychological Fact #1. A person can only remember 3-4 elements at a time
There is a rule of the so-called magic number 7 plus minus 2, according to which a person is not able to store more than 5-9 blocks of information at the same time. Most of the information can be stored in short-term memory for 20-30 seconds, after which we quickly forget everything, except when the information is repeated many times.
Most people are able to retain about 7 digits in a short period of time, but remembering everything 3 digits more, 10 digits, is much more difficult. According to recent research, we are able to store about 3-4 blocks of information at the same time. To make it easier to remember, the phone number is divided into several sets of numbers.
Psychological fact #2. When perceiving the combination of blue and red, difficulties may arise
This combination is quite popular, these colors are often used in many national flags.
The difficulty comes from an effect called chromostereopsy, which causes some colors to come to the fore while others fade away. This phenomenon provokes irritation and eye fatigue. It is with the combination of blue and red that this effect manifests itself to the maximum.
Psychological fact #3. 30% of our time is devoted to dreams
We all like to have our heads in the clouds sometimes – imagine how the future will turn out, fantasize about summer travel, etc. Psychologists say that this process takes 30% of the time of each person, and even more for especially dreamy people. It is believed that individuals who love to dream are distinguished by ingenuity and are able to solve certain problems much better than others.
Psychological fact #4. The process of forming a habit lasts 66 days
Scientists who have studied how certain actions become habits have been able to find out that on average this process lasts 66 days. Depending on how complex the behavior is, the longer it will take to turn it into a habit.
For example, those who wanted to make a habit of regular exercise took one and a half times longer than those who undertook to develop the habit of eating fruit for lunch. Even if a couple of days are missed, the habit will gradually develop, however, the process slows down significantly if too many missed days accumulate.
Psychological fact #5. The number of friends you can have is limited
Professor of evolutionary anthropology Robin Dunbar developed the Dunbar Number theory, according to which the size of the cerebral cortex limits us to managing social circles of approximately 150 friends, no matter how sociable we are.
Psychological Fact #6. Close attention can only be held for 10 minutes
Even if you are very interested in a topic that is discussed at a meeting, lecture, etc., after 7-10 minutes your attention will inevitably begin to wane. After 10 minutes you need to take a break – this will help keep your interest going.
Psychological fact #7. Ignoring food, sex and danger is impossible
Due to the ancient structure of the brain, the human being is always faced with three main questions: "Can I eat this? Can I have this sex? Can it kill me? Without food, a person will die, without sex, he will not continue his race, and because of the danger that can take his life, the two previous points will not make sense.
Psychological fact #8. A person is happier when he is busy with something
Introduce yourself in the following situation: You are at the airport and want to collect your luggage. It will take you approximately 12 minutes to reach the baggage claim area. Here you are already at the baggage claim and in a few seconds you are holding your suitcase in your hands. How impatient do you feel?
Now imagine an identical situation, but if you were to get to the pick-up area for only 2 minutes, but waited for your luggage for a whole 10 minutes. Even though it took the same amount of time to get the luggage in each situation, in the second case, the person clearly becomes more impatient and unhappy.
So, idleness helps to conserve energy, but makes us unhappy.
Psychological Fact #9. A man remakes his memories
Memories are perceived by us as small "movies" that we periodically play in our head and are sure. That they are stored just like videos in our computer. In fact, this is not the case at all.
Whenever a person mentally returns to a certain event, he changes it, as the neural pathways are activated differently each time. This process can be influenced by later events, as well as the desire to fill in gaps in memory. For example, you can't exactly remember everyone who was at your father's anniversary, but since your aunt usually attended such events, over time you can include her in this memory.
Psychological Fact #10. You blame the other person, not the situation (and the situation, not yourself)
Remember the moment when you had to wait for a friend for 30 minutes – What thoughts did you have at that moment? Most likely, you were outraged by such a delay, and you explained its delay by incoherence and irresponsibility. And now remember the situation when you were in the place of a latecomer and, of course, in your case, external circumstances acted as me (traffic jams, a long absence of transport, etc.), but not the reasons that you identified for your friend.
This phenomenon is called "fundamental attribution error" - this is a tendency to blame the behavior of others on the internal characteristics of personalities, and one's own behavior – the influence of external factors ("I was just unlucky", "I could not have done otherwise"). Even if a person is aware of how erroneous his judgments are. he is unlikely to be able to get rid of it completely.
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