We invented jazz, built the Sistine Chapel, and wrote Romeo and Juliet.
We also invented flat earth theories, multi level marketing, and the guy who shows up to a first date and spends forty five minutes talking about his ex.
We contain multitudes.
The same species that mapped the entire human genome will also, without hesitation, make a life changing financial decision based on a hunch they got in the shower.
Psychologists have been trying to make sense of us for over a century now.
Honestly? Respect the commitment. I would have quit after week two.
After digging through the internet junk, I found six interesting facts. You might recognize a few. Try not to see yourself in all of them.
You will anyway.
Have you ever wondered why people who went through brutal college hazing rituals swear their fraternity was the best experience of their lives?
Or why some people who had to wait four hours for a table at a restaurant will love a mediocre pasta dish like they never have before?
It’s called the effort justification bias. Our minds simply can’t allow us to think we suffered for no reason. So They rewrite the story. They say it was worth it. It was actually great. One of the best things I’ve ever done.
If someone invests time, money, or effort into something, they will justify it. Even if it’s terrible. Especially when it’s terrible. — Leon Festinger
Think about what it means for all of the cults.
Think about what it means for toxic relationships that people can’t escape.
Think about what it means for you, the next time you find yourself arguing for something merely because you’ve invested a lot in it.
Courtroom judges should be the epitome of rational decision making, right? Years of education. Legal training. The system is based on their impartiality.
A recent study examined the parole decisions of 1,112 judges and found that while judges were more likely to grant parole (65%) right after lunch, they were next to impossible (0%) to get right before lunch.
Zero percent.
Because the judge was hungry.
Your boss is more likely to reject your proposal if they just had a poor conference call.
You are more likely to be seen as boring by the date if they were stressed from traffic on the way.
An interviewer is less likely to want to hire you if they’ve interviewed six candidates before you and they’re exhausted.
None of this has anything to do with you.
And yet it has everything to do with what happens to you.
Which is profoundly unfair, and unfortunately how humans are. We are not the thinking organisms we imagine ourselves to be. We are moods in search of an opinion.
Before we move on! This post is public so feel free to share it.
I’m actually mad about this one.
Because it explains so much of the world. It explains Every politician who talks as if everything he or she is saying is true, even when it is rubbish.
It’s known as the confidence heuristic. We take confidence as a proxy for ability. He sounds confident, so he must be right.
But he probably isn’t.
In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people tended to see confident speakers as being more knowledgeable, even when the study authors informed them the speakers had been randomly assigned their opinions and had no specific expertise.
Didn’t matter. Confidence won.
This is how how political speeches, shouted with certainty, overpower nuance and doubt. This is how bullshit, delivered confidently, wins elections and beats truth.
The take home message is don’t be arrogant. The lesson is not to be persuaded by tone of voice.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou
But now there’s science to back it up. Memory scientists have repeatedly shown that emotional and factual memories are stored in different ways in the brain.
You can’t quite recall what was said on your best first date. But you remember how you didn’t want it to end.
You don’t remember the words of the fight that ended a friendship. You can feel the ice in your stomach when you left it.
So what does this mean?
It means what you bring to the room is more important than your resume, than your pitch, than your speech.
It’s what you make them feel while you are there.
The colleague who always leaves you feeling a little smaller after every interaction. The friend whose conversations always put you in a good mood. Your brain knows it, even if you don’t.
And so does everyone else’s.
Pay attention to this one. Jot it down if you need to.
When you’re having a chat with someone who is tearing down their ex, their best friend, their family, their co worker, and they are enjoying themselves, they’re not just blowing off steam. They are showing what they truly are to you, or maybe they simply trust you enough to speak without restraint.
Psychologists call it spontaneous trait transference. If you hear someone describe another, you will automatically link the traits with the speaker. We associate the traits with the speaker’s lips.
But beyond the psychology, just think about it logically.
If someone gossips to you, they gossip about you. If they make fun of the weaknesses of other people, they are keeping track of your weaknesses. If someone can’t say something kind about anybody who isn’t there, what do you think is said about you when you are not there?
How someone speaks about someone who can’t speak back is the best opportunity you will ever have to see what kind of person they are.
Look through it.
This is the one we all don’t like to hear.
Who is awesome one day and gets weird and icy the next. Who replies to your texts in minutes and sometimes doesn’t respond for days. Who makes you feel like you are the most important person in the world and then makes you feel as though you are nobody.
You probably have asked yourself a lot about what you did wrong. What changed. What you might do next time to get your good self back again.
But.
Inconsistency is consistency.
Attachment researchers have discovered that intermittent reinforcement, or getting love and connection on an unpredictable schedule, is one of the most addictive stimuli of all. That’s why gambling on slot machines is more addictive than on games where you win regularly. The unpredictability makes them more addictive.
Those friends, partners, and colleagues who want to be in our lives are there with a decent degree of consistency.
Not perfection. We all have hiccups along the way.
Note: Each relationship varies. Each circumstance is distinct. What I’ve noted here are not diagnoses or conclusive solutions. If you’re having difficulties, please consult a qualified expert who can provide tailored advice for your circumstances.
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