Is the constellation really accurate?

Chapter III Mental Model Determines Our Destiny

Do you believe in constellation?

Maybe you are a huge fan of constellations, so arrange your trip according to the rising constellations every week. Maybe you just look at it occasionally when you are in a bad mood, or you really want to know the character of your crush ... no matter what kind of person you are, the following story is worth reading.

Professor Hans Jürgen Eysenck (19 16- 1997), the main contributor to modern personality science theory, had become the most cited psychologist in modern times when he died in 1997. He devoted his life to quantifying some factors in human nature and had interesting experiments on the relationship between constellations and personality.

Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is a famous psychological scale. Each scale has more than 50 different descriptions. Respondents need to choose "Yes" or "No" for each description. According to these answers, we can analyze personality characteristics from two dimensions: "introversion-extroversion" and "neuroticism". According to ancient astrological legends, there are six extroverted constellations and six introverted constellations in the twelve constellations.

Extrovert constellation introverted constellation Aries, Gemini, Leo,

Libra, Sagittarius, Aquarius Taurus, Cancer, Virgo,

Scorpio, Capricorn and Pisces In addition, people in three earth signs (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn) can maintain emotional stability and peace of mind, while people in three water signs (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces) are relatively more neurotic, and their emotions and mentality are more prone to fluctuations.

So is this really the case? Eysenck decided to do a psychological experiment.

After being rejected by many astrologers, Eysenck and the famous British astrologer Jeff Mayo jointly conducted a personality survey. A few years ago, Mayo opened an astrology college with students from all over the world. They selected more than 2000 people to take part in the survey voluntarily. They provided their date of birth and completed the Eysenck personality questionnaire.

The result is beyond everyone's expectation! The personality characteristics of these people are completely consistent with the personality description of the constellation!

People with signs of extroversion do score higher on extroversion traits than others; Compared with people in the earth sign, people in the three water signs also scored significantly higher on neuroticism. Therefore, the astrological magazine Phenomenon claims that these discoveries "may be the most important progress in astrology in this century".

Amid the cheers of astrology, Eysenck began to doubt himself. He suddenly realized that there was something wrong with his sample selection: he chose a group of people who believed in constellations to do the experiment. In the words of this book, these people were installed with a mental model of constellation personality determinism. In their inner world, constellations and personalities are related.

With this in mind, Eysenck made the next experiment: the object of the experiment was 1000 children, who had almost never heard of the relationship between personality and constellation. This time, the survey results have undergone a subversive change: children's scores in extroversion and neuroticism have nothing to do with their horoscopes. Personality has nothing to do with the constellation!

The result of this experiment dealt a severe blow to the astrological circle. They originally thought they were "spokesmen and protectors of astrology", but suddenly they turned against each other. In this regard, the astrological circle gives its own explanation: these children have not yet matured and have not developed the character endowed by astrology.

Abstract of this chapter: (2)

In response to this counterattack, Eysenck made a third experiment: this time he chose adults as the subjects of investigation. These interviewees have different understanding of astrology. It is found that if the respondents are fully aware of the influence of constellations on their personality, their questionnaire results are very consistent with astrological legends. On the contrary, if the respondents don't know much about astrology, their questionnaire results are not so consistent with astrological legends.

At this stage of the experiment, the conclusion is quite clear: people will gradually develop their own "constellation character" because of their belief. Personality, the mental model of the constellation, not only makes them see the world, but also makes them believe that it is their own personality, then lives according to that personality and finally becomes the person described by the constellation.

To put it simply: people will really become what they think they should be. Mental models have changed us so powerfully.

See if the test is accurate?

Look at the following constellation description, and then give yourself a score (0-5) according to this description, where 0 is the least favorite and 5 is the most favorite. How high would you rate yourself?

You need others to like and appreciate you, but you are usually very hard on yourself. Although you do have some weaknesses in your personality, you can usually make up for them. Your ability in some aspects has not been fully exerted, so it has not yet become your advantage. From the outside, you are a person with strong self-discipline, but you are often anxious inside. Sometimes, you will strongly doubt whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

You tend to change and enrich your life, and when you encounter constraints and restrictions, you will feel dissatisfied. You are proud of being a person who can think independently. Without satisfactory evidence, you won't accept other people's opinions and statements. However, you also think it is unwise to be too outspoken in front of others. Sometimes you are extroverted, approachable and willing to associate with others, but sometimes you are introverted, cautious and taciturn. You have many dreams, some of which seem unrealistic.

How many points would you give yourself?

This is an experiment made by bertram Freer, a psychologist, in Introduction to Psychology in the late 1940s. He got a description from a horoscope book on the newsstand a few days ago, and took out 65,438+00 sentences from 65,438+00 different constellations to form a paragraph. He asked his students to rate themselves according to this test, with 0 being very inaccurate and 5 being very accurate. In that year, 87% of the students gave 4-5 points. Obviously, the students were "calculated" by the teacher. Are fooled by their own mental models.

Of course, you may have seen this constellation description, or you may have seen this fragment and story in many books. Then your reaction is usually: "Yes, but I do have friends. He is a Pisces and she is very special. "

This reaction can only continue to prove my point: people would rather deceive themselves than believe that they have been deceived. Because he lives in the walls of his own mind.

If you still doubt. I suggest you do a personal experiment. Keep a diary for yourself and record daily events. Then the next day, please ask a friend (if you like, I am willing to play) to hide the constellation described in yesterday's constellation, leave a specific description, and disturb your choice. What are your chances of choosing your own constellation?

I have tried it many times on different people myself, and the correct rate has never exceeded 10%. In short, it is no different from Bai Meng.

What is a mental model?

Can you read this article?

As long as the first and second words are in the right position, it will not affect the structure of a word. Resources can be a whole, or you can turn it into a whole. This is because we haven't received any mail. But the word as a whohe.

A study by a British university shows that what matters is not the order of letters in a word, but that the first letter and the last letter should be in the right position. The rest of the letters can be completely jumbled, but you can still read every word easily. This is because we read each word as a whole instead of letter by letter.

Have you found that you only need to see the first and last two letters of the letter, and the rest will be automatically filled in by memory?

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Combined with the context, your brain fills in the blanks automatically as follows

read

Have you noticed that although our eyes are reading all the time, our brains don't process all the letters? We only extract the first two letters and fill in the rest ourselves, which is enough for us to read smoothly. This is why when memorizing words, you can easily recognize a word, but you may not be able to write it down.

Walter Freeman, an American neurophysiologist, found that the neural activity caused by sensory stimulation disappeared in the cerebral cortex. This means that our brain receives information from the outside world, then discards most of it and uses only a small part of it to build an inner world to represent the outside world. In this way, it seems that we are looking at the world through an invisible lens. The lens filters out most of the information, and we fill the world through our hearts, just like you fill letters.

The Book of Changes says: the benevolent regards it as benevolence, the wise regards it as wisdom, and the people do not know it for daily use, so the way of a gentleman is fresh. Simply put, you can only see what you want to see in the real world.

What we see is the world we built ourselves.

If we only see part of the world, how can we deal with this part? Listen to the following story.

On a narrow mountain road, a truck driver is climbing the mountain. He has been driving for three hours, and he is a little sleepy. Just as we were about to reach the top of the slope, a car drove right in front of us. The driver of the car stretched out his head, reached a finger and shouted at him, "Pig!" " With a whoosh, two cars passed by. His drowsiness woke up at once, and he immediately put out his head and shouted at the back of the car, You are the fucking pig! Your whole family are pigs! He turned proudly and looked at the downhill road ahead. Oh, my God, a bunch of pigs! He failed to brake and fell into the ditch.

The driver opposite not only told him that there was a pig in front, but the fixed-minded driver thought it was an insult.

If the human brain is likened to a computer, and the driver runs his own inner program in the brain, then when he receives the message of "pig", this program quickly constructs a world where the opposite driver calls me a pig, so the driver quickly responds "You are a fucking pig!" . This made him lose the opportunity to avoid the crisis-in fact, others mean "be careful of the pig in front!" " " .

Why is this happening? Perhaps it is because the driver has been scolded, or in his vocabulary, "pig" is associated with swearing. In short, we build our own world in our minds according to past experiences and memories.

Do you have such an experience? Have you ever seen something and immediately said, "Oh, it must be …", only to find out later that it was a wrong view, but you actually lost many opportunities? That's because your brain has built a wrong world model.

We use a fixed program to process the information entering the brain, then build a hypothetical world model based on experience and memory, and then respond to this hypothetical world. In short, we have created a world model for ourselves! And live according to this created world. This is how our brains work. In many cases, we can deal with very complicated problems quickly in this way. For example, a master of Weiqi can deal with calculations that can compete with computers according to his own experience and chess path (his own Weiqi model); But sometimes, this model will make us make some obvious mistakes, such as the driver hitting a pig.

Have you ever wondered why students in the same class get completely different results? Why do people who read the same book react differently? Is it also an opportunity for someone to turn a blind eye and someone to act immediately? Why do identical twins have completely different fates? The reason is simple, although they are in the same world, because they see a completely different world.

Even if we live in the same world, we will feel a completely different world. From this point of view, you are reading the only book in the world, because you and I created this book together. Whether the meaning of this book is to smile or change your life depends largely on you.

We wear different lenses and filter most of the information in the world. We also use our different experiences and memories to explain this information and build our inner world, thinking that that is the real situation of the world. No wonder Zen Buddhism has "color is empty, and empty is color" (color refers to tangible things. ), translated as mental model, means that all real things are mental models, and all mental models are the real world to you.

We often refer to this as everyone's different "way of thinking" or "mindset". This invisible "lens" and a set of fixed "thinking programs" construct an inner world model, which is our mental model.

Do you wish you were luckier?

How lucky are you if your personality can be changed? Is this obvious external factor also influenced by mental model?

Richard wiseman, a British psychologist, described his experiment on the relationship between luck and personality in his "Weird Psychology":

I sent a newspaper to each volunteer to read carefully and told me how many photos were in it. In fact, I also prepared an opportunity for them to make money in this newspaper, but I didn't tell them. In the middle of the newspaper, I wrote this sentence in half a page in large font: "If you tell the researchers to see this sentence, you can win 100 for yourself!" Those unlucky people were completely absorbed in counting the number of photos, so they didn't find this opportunity to make money. On the contrary, lucky people look relaxed, so they read the big letters in the middle of the newspaper and won 100 for themselves. This simple experiment shows that lucky people can always seize unexpected opportunities and bring good luck to themselves.

In fact, those who install the "lucky mode" have built a lucky world full of opportunities, and it is easier to find potential opportunities outside, while those who install the "unfortunate mode" often turn a blind eye to opportunities because there is no such thing as "opportunity" in their hearts.

In this way, the lucky people confirm their "lucky mode" again and again, thus believing in their "lucky world" more, while the unfortunate people firmly believe in their "unfortunate world". Have you ever seen some people around you always seem to wear angel's light rings, and everything is so smooth and smooth, while some people seem to be born unlucky and kowtow when drinking cold water?

Much depends on whether they have a lucky mode or an unlucky mode in mind.

Different people have different opinions.

Finally, tell a psychological joke, and before that, sweep the blindness:

Psychological counselors often use an ink experiment to judge the inner world of the inquirer (as shown below). These paintings are made by splashing ink on paper and then folding it in half. In other words, they are meaningless. The counselor will show the visitors these pictures and then ask them to answer what they see. According to their answers, judge the anxiety level of a person's inner world. For example, people see dead animals, dead bats, torn bear skins and skeletons. Such visitors are likely to have suicidal tendencies and so on. All right, here comes the joke. Get ready to laugh.

A psychologist showed the inquirer an ink experiment and asked him what he saw. The caller read the first article and said, "Sex." In the second picture, he said "sex"; After reading the third picture, he said, "It's still sex." In the next ten pictures, he replied: "sex, sex, sex." After the ink experiment, the psychologist said seriously to the caller, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid you have some sexual problems." You care too much about sex. The caller was surprised: "I can't believe my ears! "You just showed me a stack of *

The benevolent has different opinions, the wise has different opinions, and the adulterer has different opinions. If a friend around you can tell dirty jokes and feel ambiguous about everything, he has a mental model of "prostitutes meet prostitutes" in his mind.

Our mental model determines what kind of world we can see. More interestingly, this self-built "real world" in turn confirms this model for us to see. According to the above conclusions, the old saying in Zhouyi can be upgraded to: benevolent people see benevolence, and wise people see wisdom and gain wisdom. We think that grapes are sour, and grapes are really sour; Parents think that children are really not so good, and children are really bad beyond your imagination; You think that "men don't have a good thing", then you can meet a series of men with poor water.

It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy: a woman thinks her husband is having an affair (building a world model of her husband's infidelity), so the more she looks at it, the more she looks like it. Every day, she checks three groups of words with two words. After half a year, her husband finally figured it out: the cost of not cheating is the same! Anyway, home is not home, it is better to find one! (Naruhito) So the prophecy really came true. ...

This may remind you of the "law of attraction" or the psychological law of "dreams come true". Indeed, the mental model is by far the best psychological explanation for this statement.

How did we kill ourselves? How can we bring ourselves closer to the ideal?

We build a world for ourselves, then strengthen it repeatedly, and finally let us believe that the world is built by us. From this perspective, we are wizards of our own lives. We build a fantasy world for ourselves, and then let this fantasy come true slowly in reality.

What predictions do you make for yourself every day?

What's the world like in your mind?

What patterns do those who are happier than you have in mind?

If there is an opportunity, you can jump out of this mode and install a better mental model. What kind of world will you see?

PS: The original text is taken from the book "Tearing Down the Wall in the Heart"