The brain is a good thing, but it is scarce.

The brain is a good thing, but it is scarce.

There are many phenomena in life that people are puzzled, or they can't agree on whether astrology and fortune telling are reliable, whether names and birthdays have an impact on life, whether some people are born "lucky", whether superstitions are credible, whether there should be regional darkness and so on.

The author of Weird Psychology is richard wiseman, who is known as "the first professor of mass psychology communication in Britain". He used to be a professional magician, and later studied for a degree in psychology at London University. He devoted himself to studying seemingly unreasonable behaviors in people's daily life by scientific methods, and his research in the fields of intuition, deception, luck, humor and paranormal is internationally renowned.

This book is divided into six chapters.

The author uses several experiments (including forward experiments, astrology financiers, financial analysts, children who have no analytical ability to make investment decisions, some big data experiments and reverse experiments, and whether the same birthday has the same life trajectory) to demonstrate that astrology is pseudoscience and inaccurate. Then ask the question: "Since it is not allowed, why do so many people still believe in astrology?" . The author gives the answer with a famous experiment by Professor bertram Freyer: "Astrology and graphology don't really need to be accurate, as long as they look accurate. As long as people are given a very general description, their brains will induce them to believe that these descriptions have very unique insights. " The same is true of fortune telling. "People who are easily deceived would rather deceive themselves than face the fact that they are easily deceived.". Later, people named Professor freire's experimental results "Barnum Effect". Furthermore, the author throws another question: "So, a person's date of birth has nothing to do with real science?" The answer is no, the author leads to the psychology of time, pointing out that the positive and negative constellations in astrology do exist, that is, a person's date of birth is related to a person's personality, but it is definitely not the reason given in astrology (such as the arrangement and distribution of stars). The reason given by the author is temperature: babies born in winter have to face a worse and worse environment, so they will be closer to caregivers than babies born in summer, so they will be closer in life. In the experiment, the author made statistics in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere respectively, which proved that the results had nothing to do with the month, but only with the temperature.

It is more reliable to judge whether a person is lying according to their tone of voice and what they say casually. The description of a liar usually lacks details; There are many pauses and hesitations in speeches; In order to keep a certain distance from lies, they will try to avoid using words that point to themselves, such as "I"; And they won't say how they feel. They remember trivial details that people who tell the truth may forget. Usually, we think people can judge whether they are lying by their actions, such as eye contact and gestures. Almost everyone thinks that liars tend to avoid eye contact, wave nervously and fidget in their seats. The author points out that this is actually inaccurate.

The author also discusses the wonderful function of "hint", that is, by manipulating people's memories, reminding them of things that never happened. Research shows that the plasticity of human memory is more amazing than we can imagine. Once an authoritative person points out that we have had some kind of experience, most people will find it hard to deny it, and then they will imagine filling in the gaps in their memories. After a period of time, the boundary between facts and fictional plots became indistinguishable, so we began to believe lies.

In this chapter, the author discusses the idea of "superstition", enumerates its influence on people's lives, and proves that "all kinds of superstitious statements are not credible" through many experiments, and then puts forward: "Since it is not credible, why can it stand the test of time and so many people believe it?" The explanation given by the author is as follows:

In order to cope with uncertainty, many people become superstitious. In the period of increasing uncertainty, people will urgently seek a sense of certainty, which will prompt them to support a strong leadership mechanism and believe in various uncertain factors that claim to determine their fate, such as superstition and witchcraft. The author illustrates this point with experiments of people's psychological changes during the German economic crisis and the bombing of Israel.

People often have strange ideas about the world because they have experienced some seemingly strange things. The concept of coincidence makes simultaneous events look not only meaningful, but also more than coincidence. But it is some little-known statistical laws that make seemingly impossible things unexpectedly come true, one of which is the law of large numbers, so if something seemingly coincidental happens, it may just be because there are too many people (the sample is very large, although the probability of occurrence is very small). Another coincidence that people often encounter is the phenomenon of "small world". For example, two strangers meet at a party, only to find that they have acquaintances. This phenomenon can be explained by the package delivery experiment of Stanley milgram, a famous American psychologist: it takes only six people at most to deliver a package to a complete stranger.

Too rich imagination and suitable background information. People with rich imagination are more likely to associate some strange things. If you add appropriate background information (supernatural and strange information) to some places or objects in advance, it may also induce people to have superstitious ideas.

The role of infrasound waves. Infrasound waves can't be heard by people, but the energy is huge. Earthquakes and atomic bombings produce infrasound waves. Experiments show that infrasound may cause chest vibration, affect breathing, and cause nausea, headache and cough. Sound waves of a specific frequency may also cause eye vibration, thus distorting vision. These sound waves can move small objects and even make candlelight blink strangely.

The law of large numbers, also known as the law of large numbers and the ratio of large numbers, is a concept in mathematics and statistics, which means that the more numbers, the closer its average value will be to the expected value.

It is found that in repeated experiments, with the increase of experimental times, the frequency of events tends to a stable value; At the same time, it is also found that the arithmetic average of the measured values is also stable in the measurement practice of physical quantities.

First of all, subconscious stimulation has no effect on people's decision-making.

A person's name has an impact on his occupation, place of residence, place of death and marriage. In bars, people who listen to classical music are more likely to order expensive drinks. Within two weeks after the media disclosed the suicide, the number of local suicides will increase by about 30%, and the proportion will be higher if the media reports celebrity suicides. All these tell us that our thinking patterns and feelings will be unconsciously influenced by external factors. Our names have influenced our self-evaluation and career choice. Just reading one sentence can affect our feelings about age and our memory of common sense. A slight smile or touch can determine how much we tip waiters in bars and restaurants. The concert played in the store sneaked into our minds and affected the amount of money we spent. An interesting topic, question: a man and a woman meet on two bridges, one is a suspension bridge, which is very high and dangerous; The other is an ordinary bridge, which is very low and strong, so which bridge is more likely for two people to have sex? The answer lies in the suspension bridge. Explanation: When people see people who are attractive to them, their bodies will be ready to take possible actions at any time, so their hearts will beat faster. Compared with the lower bridge, the rickety characteristics of the high suspension bridge will make the heartbeat of people crossing the bridge in this way accelerate. When two people meet on a high suspension bridge, they will unconsciously think that their heart beats faster because of each other. Therefore, their bodies will send a wrong signal to their brains, making them feel attractive to each other. Therefore, the moral of this question is: If you want someone to fall in love with you, you'd better avoid new age music, country walks and wind chimes when dating, because they will only make people more calm. On the contrary, if you choose to go to a rock concert, play a roller coaster or watch a horror movie with the person you like, your chances of success will be greatly increased. The author also did some research on the way men and women strike up a conversation, and the results are as follows:

Different chat topics will bring different dating success rates, because men and women may have different tastes in a topic, so there is no topic. .

Best pickup line. People who are better at chatting up people will encourage them to talk about themselves in strange, interesting or funny ways. Why does this work? The author answers with an experiment about straws and funny sounds. This experiment shows that people who have shared funny experiences with each other feel closer and find each other more attractive.

If the number of words "describe yourself" and "describe each other" is controlled at 7: 3, it is likely to attract the most responses.

Jokes make people laugh because they can give readers a sense of superiority. This feeling arises because people in jokes look stupid. The stronger the sense of superiority given by jokes, the happier people will laugh. The theory of superiority was put forward by Plato, an ancient Greek scholar, as early as 400 BC.

The attraction of humor. Unconsciously, people will actively imitate the facial expressions of people around them, which plays a vital role in team survival, cohesion and centripetal force. By imitating others' expressions, we can feel others' feelings quickly, because it is easier to empathize and communicate with others. If one person in a group laughs, others will automatically imitate this person's facial expression and become happy. If someone feels sad, scared or panicked, the emotions they show will also infect others.

The relationship between laughter and health. As the saying goes, "Smile, you are ten years younger" still makes sense. Laughing at life can relieve anxiety; People who can relieve stress with humor will have a healthier immune system, and the chances of stroke and heart disease will be reduced by 40%.

There is no funniest joke in the world. Because everyone is interested in different things, or the "punchline" is different, women like jokes that men look stupid, the elderly will laugh at jokes of amnesia and deafness, and the powerless will make fun of authoritative people.

Research shows that immoral behavior is very common in today's society. Although most people claim to be honest and upright citizens, many of us are dishonest when we have the opportunity. I didn't expect that the quality of people in Europe and America was not much better. After reading all kinds of experiments done by the author, I began to believe that human nature is evil. . Therefore, the key is to formulate a legal system, separate the three powers, and use laws to bind people. It is not feasible to rely entirely on conscious leadership like China.

Similar psychology. We will help people like us. When people in need are very similar in age, background and taste, people are most willing to lend a helping hand.

People usually think that clergy are the most honest and car salesmen are the least trustworthy. Through experiments, the author proves that there is not much difference in the performance of honesty between the two in practical actions.

The author uses the method of "throwing envelopes" to evaluate the kindness of people all over the world, and draws a conclusion that population density is the best index to predict the degree of helping others. The greater the population density, the lower the degree of helping others.

The person who sticks to the end is the winner in life ~ ~