5 Psychology Facts That Will Make You Question Everything

Your brain is running the show every second of every day, and sometimes it makes decisions before you even realize what’s happening. From why we remember embarrassing moments so clearly to how our surroundings can influence our behavior, psychology is full of surprisingly weird facts.

Here are five that might make you look at your own brain a little differently.

Memory feels like a recording, but it really isn’t. Every time you remember something, your brain reconstructs the memory rather than simply playing it back.

That means details can change over time, and you can even become confident about something that never actually happened. Researchers have demonstrated that people can be led to remember events that did not occur.

So that childhood story your family has told you for years? There’s a chance your brain has filled in a few blanks.

Sometimes your brain appears to begin preparing for a decision before you consciously realize you’ve made it.

Research involving brain activity has found signals associated with a choice can occur before people report becoming consciously aware of deciding. That doesn’t necessarily mean your brain is secretly controlling everything you do, but it does show that conscious decision-making is more complicated than it feels.

In other words, the thought “I’ve decided” may sometimes be your brain catching up with a process already underway.

Ever had a task you couldn’t stop thinking about because you hadn’t finished it?

There’s a psychological phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect, which describes our tendency to keep unfinished tasks more mentally active than completed ones.

That lingering feeling that you really need to finish that thing isn’t necessarily you being dramatic. Your brain may simply have trouble letting go of an open loop.

Unfortunately, your brain apparently did not get the memo that you already have 47 open loops.

Ever walked into a room where everyone was laughing and suddenly felt happier?

Emotions can spread from person to person through a process often called emotional contagion. We naturally pick up on facial expressions, voices, body language and other social cues, which can influence how we feel ourselves.

That means the people around you can affect your emotional state without saying a single word.

It also explains why one extremely grumpy person can somehow make an entire car ride feel like a hostage situation.

Humans tend to notice and remember negative experiences more strongly than positive ones. Psychologists call this the negativity bias.

Think about it. Someone can give you ten compliments and one criticism, and somehow your brain decides the criticism deserves a three-day residency in your head.

This tendency likely has deep evolutionary roots. Paying attention to potential threats would have been useful for survival. The problem is that your modern brain can react to a rude email with some of the same attention it once needed for actual danger.

For more articles like this, click here...READ MORE

Psychology is fascinating because so much of what we think of as “just being human” is influenced by processes happening beneath our conscious awareness. Memory, decisions, emotions and attention are all far more complicated than they seem.

And honestly, knowing that your brain occasionally makes things up, keeps unfinished tasks alive and remembers criticism from 2009 probably makes your quirks seem a little more understandable.