Psychology is a science capable of offering an explanation to the multitude of events that occur in our daily lives and, without being aware of it, all human beings fall into the trap of certain biases or interesting psychological effects.
Some hurt us, others don’t; some are typical of certain societies, others are common among adolescents, etc. Either way, what they have in common is that the brain uses shortcuts to save all the information that we need to process on a daily basis. This sometimes leads to some interesting effects.
- Safeguarding the information we receive during the day is of paramount importance.
- Although sometimes our brains can make mistakes.
- These biases or effects generally promote our adaptation.
Think of the days of the caves. It was better to be fast and efficient than analytical and slow. These latest features, if they can lead us to a more correct answer, can also lead us to ‘Too late’.
What is also true is that today’s advertising, business and culture echo these psychological effects in which we usually fall and rely on them to improve their sales. And so it was. Below are some examples of interesting psychological effects, although there are many more. Who do you identify with?
A cognitive trend or bias is a misinterpretation and illogical interpretation of the information available, giving very little or very little importance to certain aspects.
How many times have you read your horoscope and thought: that’s exactly what’s wrong with me!Can I help you? Once again, it’s your brain that’s brains. What you’re reading isn’t what happens to you in particular. You were a victim of the Barnum effect, also known as the Forer effect.
This happens when we are told or read certain descriptions that seem to fit perfectly with what we know about ourselves, however, if we look at them carefully, we can see that these are general, vague and inaccurate descriptions that could fit the profile of a large part of the population.
Take the test yourself; read the following excerpt
“Pay attention to the projects you undertake, Libra, you always put more weight than you can handle. Check your limits. This week, there will be someone who will want to ask you for help, try to do what you can, but do it. “Don’t take responsibility for emotional change. Your health may get worse, but it won’t last long, so you’ll regain weight as usual. On Mondays and Tuesdays you will feel very active, but then the pace will slow down. slowly going down ?.
As you can see, almost everyone could fit in here, who doesn’t try to undertake a personal project and sometimes goes to work, who doesn’t have around them anyone who’s going through a difficult time, who isn’t cold?occasionally or do you have back pain? On Mondays and Tuesdays we are more active, of course we arrive from the weekend and then accumulate fatigue.
This effect is widely used in advertising campaigns. Imagine that you are shopping and you see a coat that you like, it has two labels: one with a very high value and another with a much lower value, which would be the current price.
Without thinking about it, buy the coat, what happened? The first prize served as an anchor you took as a reference to think that you were paying a good deal and therefore couldn’t miss this opportunity.
This happens when we overestimate someone’s personal motivations at the expense of those in the situation. In other words, people generally refer to “character,” “personality,” etc. , as the cause of something rather than thinking that the person’s circumstances or environment can have far more influenced their behavior, leading to erroneous explanations about the way others.
This occurs when we overestimate the number or degree of people who agree with what we think is a way to exaggerate confidence in our own beliefs, even if they are false, this effect can have negative consequences: it prevents us from opening ourselves up. the world, the ideas of others, the way others think and feel.
Therefore, we run the risk of losing valuable information that would be extremely useful, for example in the case of owning a business and working with more people who don’t think the same way and who could bring other ways of looking at things.
This effect leads to overestimation of the relationship between two variables that are, in fact, independent, for example, let’s think of pathological players. You can say that “the slot machine is fashionable because it hasn’t received an award for a while. “
In this sense, we establish a relationship between time and the probability that someone wins, which we rationally know is irrelevant, especially if we know that slot machines follow a program of variable or random reason.
Is it also known?with nuances?such as the Pigmalecao effect on education, or the Rosenthal effect on the field of organizations and companies. It is an effect that occurs when we have deep beliefs about a specific problem and act on it.
What happens is that reality ends up confirming these beliefs as if it were a prophecy, for example, a person suffering from pathological jealousy may end up promoting infidelity with his initially unfounded jealousy, his behavior of interrogating the couple, spying on him and harassing him tired of the other, who may end up leaving the relationship.
Finally, the blind spot effect refers precisely to the fact that, most of the time, we do not recognize our own biases and effects. We think it’s something that “happens to others,” when it’s common, to a greater or lesser degree, to bend and fall into different effects.
As you can see, no one can get rid of these interesting psychological effects, it is important to know them and recognize them when they appear, for example in sales, promotions, addictions, etc.
In that sense, when the psychological effects are doing us more harm than good, it is interesting to try to name them, know that they exist and not fall into the trap. And how did you identify yourself?