9 Surprising Psychology Theories That
Will Change The Way You Think
Hi there,
My name is Pete Hollins and I’ve been lucky enough to be able obtain two degrees in
psychology.
What are the practical benefits of these degrees? Well, for most people, unless you
are planning to go into research or counseling, not much! I’ve dabbled in both, and
have recently started to write about human psychology in my books. It’s been a
great change of pace for me and I find that I have a lot to share with people on
account of the research, studies, and theories I’ve been exposed to over the years.
The key to making use of these degrees is to see how they can apply to our everyday
decisions in our everyday lives.
Thank you for visiting my site and thank you for showing enough interest to request
and download this cheat sheet! This isn’t a list of discoveries you can just find on
BuzzFeed or some other generic site. They are nuanced and proven ways that our
brains have quirks, or function in ways we wouldn’t expect them to. And yes, above
all else, they can make a huge difference in how you think about yourself and
interact with others.
Without further ado, here are the 9 surprising psychology theories that will change
the way you think.
Striving to improve life from the inside out,
Pete Hollins
www.Petehollins.com
Theory One: The Pratfall Effect
The Pratfall Effect comes from a study conducted by Elliot Aronson. The subjects
heard one of two scenarios: someone answering an oral quiz, and someone
answering an oral quiz but also knocking over a cup of coffee by accident. With no
other information or context, people rated the people who knocked over the cup of
coffee as universally more likable.
What were the implications of this study? Do we like clumsiness?
Actually, kind of. More accurately, we like vulnerability and people showing their
human sides. Clumsiness is just a part of that. When people make mistakes and
otherwise break from any façade they might have about themselves, this makes
them appear more relatable and likable to others.
There’s a certain amount of bumbling and fumbling that is actually incredibly
endearing. The opposite, perfection and never showing weakness, is threatening
and uncomfortable because you feel like you are inadequate and have to filter
yourself.
Suppose you have a new substitute teacher. You’re going to be on your best
behavior. But about five minutes into the first class, the substitute casually swears
and makes fun of another student in a nice way. You are going to relax instantly
because you know you don’t have to keep up a façade or filter, and that’s exactly
how the Pratfall Effect works.
Intentionally making small mistakes or flubs, and then handling them in a genuine
and positive manner will endear people to you instantly. This can be especially
effective if you want to appear non-threatening to new people.
Theory Two: Reactance Theory
If you have ever dealt with young children, you will be very familiar with Reactance
Theory.
Reactance Theory is essentially the compulsion all humans have to exercise their
sense of free will and freedom. This occurs when we don’t like to be told what to do,
we attempt to circumvent rules and regulations, and we do things just to be
contrary and not listen to others. We will attempt to find a way to successfully assert
our free will and ignore what we have been told to do to avoid the feeling of being
commanded.
This was coined by Brehm in 1966 in his seminal publication, A theory of
psychological reactance.
The classic example is with children – if you tell them they can’t do something, they
are more likely to want to do it simply because they feel that their freedom and
sense of free will has been restricted, so they will act to reclaim it. Of course, we see
this all the time with stubborn adults as well who might not understand why they
feel compulsions to go against the grain and blaze their own trails. Of course, this is
also where the term reverse psychology comes in, because many people
unknowingly try to prevent psychological reactance by using reverse psychology.
Ultimately, we hate feeling like we are just acting on the wishes of someone else,
even if that is our job. We might swallow it like bitter medicine even if we know it is
best for us – that’s the feeling of psychological reactance kicking in.
Theory Three: Loss Aversion
We hate to lose things.
In fact, we hate to lose things so much that we often would rather not lose anything
as opposed to gain a lot. This is referred to as loss aversion, and it perfectly
encapsulates people’s strong tendency to prefer avoiding loss as opposed to
acquiring gains.
Studies by Kahneman and Tversky showed that the motivation, and thus decisional
influencing, of avoiding losses are twice as powerful as acquiring a gain.
That’s why one of the most effective sales techniques is the free 30-day trial. It
doesn’t matter that you don’t actually own something, the act of removing
something from your home is so much more painful than spending the same money
to simply buy it.
The idea that we have ownership over something is hard to overcome because we
don’t like the idea of giving it up. Most of the time when given a choice, people prefer
to avoid the loss, and in a sense, play it safe because of loss aversion.
A 2013 study by Cullen et al. found that first giving someone a reward, then
threatening to take it away as a penalty was a far better motivational tool than
handing out a reward after achievement. The fear of losing something that was
already yours, having it ripped from your fingers, was far more powerful.
Scenario A: I give you ten dollars, then flip a coin. If the coin is lands on heads, I take
the money back.
Scenario B: I flip a coin. If the coin is a heads, I give you ten dollars. Which do you
prefer? Scenario B is clearly more comfortable psychologically, even though the
outcomes are exactly the same. The only difference is that you have psychologically
claimed ownership over something.
Theory Four: The Clustering Illusion
The Clustering Illusion is when we attempt to see clusters, patterns, and
predictability in situations where there is inherently none. There may be some sort
of correlation, but there is absolutely no causation, and the probabilities don’t
support it.
But we feel that there should be a pattern, which guides our actions and decisions.
This was discovered by Gilvocih, Vallone, and Tversky.
The most prevalent examples of this are the gambler’s fallacy and hot hand fallacy.
The gambler’s fallacy is when the gambler, losing at a table, keeps repeating, “My
time to win is due. It’s been red for so long, it must be black soon!” While that
sounds comforting, it’s also 100% false because the probability for a card to be black
or red is 50%, and that doesn’t change regardless of time. We are attempting to see
a pattern where there is none, and want to deny the random nature of life so we can
feel like we can have some control and predictability within it.
The hot hand fallacy works in the same way. The athlete keeps trying to hit a
baseball, and proclaims that since he has failed so many times in a row, “he is due
for a hit.” Probability-wise, he absolutely is not!
Suppose you flip a coin, and it comes up heads nine times in a row. Do you think it’s
more likely to come up tails on the tenth flip? It’s not, and the feeling we have that it
should be tails is the clustering effect. You are trying to impose your own perception
onto the world, and it actually works the opposite way – the world imposes its
reality on you.
Life is more chaotic and random that we might like, and we also have control over
less than we think. The clustering effect is just a defense mechanism to deal with
this reality.
Theory Five: Cognitive Dissonance
Theory
Speaking of defense mechanisms, cognitive dissonance theory is full of them. In fact,
it’s what causes a majority of them. Leon Festinger developed this theory in 1957.
Cognitive dissonance theory is when you have conflicting or contradicting thoughts
simultaneously, but they seem to make perfect sense to you. There are much more
involved and convoluted ways of explaining this theory, but it boils down to the fact
that you are able to do mental gymnastics to justify two thoughts that simply don’t
make sense with each other.
In other words, we solve the dissonance and discomfort with rationalization and
defense mechanisms. We construct reasons for two conflicting thoughts to be
acceptable and glaze over the details – this is easier than changing one or both of the
thoughts, so it’s usually the easiest way out.
For example, you feel that you are an extremely moral and principled person, but
you consistently steal foodstuffs from the local grocery store. These are conflicting
thoughts that would cause a significant amount of discomfort and dissonance –
unless you justify and rationalize both sets of behavior to fit together. For example,
you could reduce your dissonance if you told yourself you were making a stand
against grocery stores, or you thought food was overpriced so you were protesting
it.
If you don’t have this rationalization for your behavior, then your self-image as a
moral and principled person goes out the window – so you protect it and make
yourself feel acceptable.
Cognitive dissonance explains why people engage in all sorts of unhealthy behaviors
and actions but don’t see themselves as unhealthy or needing help.
Theory Six: Friendship Limits
How many friendships can you have at once? Jari Saramaki answered this question
in 2013 with his study Persistence of social signatures in human communication.
Many of us might suppose that we have large circles of friends, but in reality, you
probably have large circles of acquaintances. That is, you know many people, but
none on a deep or significant level. It turns out that we have only a limited amount
of social bandwidth and energy, and this truly limits the amounts of friendships we
can actively have at one time.
In the study, it was found that people spent 40% to 50% of their social energy and
contact on only three people. The people may have changed from time to time, but it
was generally impossible for people to spend more energy on more people.
This means we are doing ourselves a disservice when we try to engage too many
people at once. You can recognize the top three people in your life and focus on
them, or you can focus on meeting new people and growing your personal network.
You can’t do both effectively, and this theory forces you to be choosier about your
friends and prioritize better.
Focusing on three people is how you gain real friends instead of a circle of
acquaintances. Anything else and you become an afterthought to everyone.
Theory Seven: The Dunning-Kruger
Effect
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is when incompetent people vastly overestimate their
abilities.
It’s also when competent people underestimate their abilities, but as you can
imagine, that’s less of a problem.
In other words, people that lack knowledge or are otherwise unskilled in an area
vastly underestimate the amount of intricacy and nuance involved. Therefore, they
see themselves as skilled because they don’t know what is actually involved – they
aren’t proficient or skilled enough to recognize their lack of skill. It’s when people are
too stupid to know that they know nothing.
Take an artist who is wonderful at drawing stick figures. If he doesn’t understand
how watercolors or acrylics work, he will assume they are as easy as stick figures
and overestimate his abilities because he doesn’t have the exposure or ability to
know otherwise. He only sees the finished product, which can look deceptively
simple, and assumes there are no other steps to it.
He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and when we operate with incomplete
information, we grow falsely confident – that is the essence of the Dunning-Kruger
effect.
Point being, if something seems too easy or good to be true, you are probably only at
the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you need to know. Always err on the side of
asking more questions, even if you just need to ask, “Is that it? There’s really nothing
else to it?”
Theory Eight: The Urge to Conform
This study was conducted by Solomon Asch of Swarthmore College in the 1950s and
broadly demonstrated the compulsion to conform and “fit in” despite our best
instincts and interests.
The study asked participants to engage in a vision test. In each run of the study,
there was only one subject, and the rest of the people present were Asch’s
confederates. They would attempt to influence the true participant to conform and
act against their free will. The participant sat around a table with seven
confederates and was asked two questions:
1. Which line was the longest in Exhibit 2?
2. Which line from Exhibit 2 matches the line from Exhibit 1?
Below is what the participants saw and made their judgment on. When participants
were asked this question alone, through writing or without confederates who would
provide a range of answers, they consistently answered in the exact same way:
obviously Line C and Line A, respectively.
However, when confederates were present and provided incorrect answers, what
followed was surprising.
When the true participant was surrounded by confederates who gave incorrect
answers, such as stating that Line C was equal to Exhibit 1 or Line B was the longest
in Exhibit 2, they also conformed their answers to be stunningly incorrect based on
the social pressures of the people around them. Over one-third of the true
participants gave an obviously wrong answer.
Asch successfully displayed that people, whether they believe it or not, wish to
blend in with their peers and their environment so they don’t stick out. Asch
commented, “The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably
intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black.” He had
the opportunity to ask participants after the experiment whether they actually
believed their altered stances, and most did not and simply wanted to go along with
the group because they did not want to be thought of as “peculiar.” Others thought
the group’s judgment was actually correct and felt their new answer to be correct as
well.
People’s sense of free will is subverted by emotional reactions to what other people
are doing. The psychological implications of Asch’s experiment may not be
groundbreaking—we are all afraid of judgment, but the degree to which we strive to
avoid it is huge and can be said to make us a follower in a negative way.
Theory Nine: The Speed of Wit
A 2015 study by William von Hippel called “Quick Thinkers Are Smooth Talkers:
Mental Speed Facilitates Charisma,” provides a clear and instructive lesson that will
make an impact on how others perceive you. As you might gather from the name of
the study, his discovery was that speed of thought and dialogue was more related to
people’s ratings of charisma than many other traits, including being correct or
accurate. In fact, if you were to prioritize one aspect of interaction, quickness would
be highest rated.
The researchers asked test participants to rate how funny and charismatic their
friends were depending on how they performed on a series of tests. Friends of the
participants were also present and observing the tests. In the first test, participants
were asked to answer trivia questions given out in rapid succession. Afterward, the
participants’ friends were asked to rate their friends who actually took the tests.
Conventionally, you would assume that the friends of the participant would rate the
participant more charismatic and funny based on how they conducted themselves
and the presence they had in the room while they were taking the test. After all, we
established that charisma is about some positive impact on the surrounding people.
Maybe, like with the General Charisma Inventory, the participant smiled at
everyone, got along with the researchers, and made people laugh. Isn’t this our first
indication of charisma?
If not, perhaps they rated them on how well they performed on the first test.
Intelligence is attractive, and attractiveness is an element of charisma, right?
Perhaps humans are less shallow than we would expect, and we rate correctness
and accuracy highly.
Instead, neither of those factors mattered whatsoever. It turns out that charisma
wasn’t related to a positive impact on surrounding people or accuracy or the
appearance of intelligence. What mattered most was how quickly the participants
answered—the speed with which they took action. The friends of the participants
didn’t necessarily care whether the participant performed the task correctly. All
they based their decisions on was speed.
The study concluded that people tend to have a more favorable impression of you
depending on how quickly you speak or take a position. It doesn’t really matter
whether you are correct, accurate, or maybe even sensible. So to appear more
charismatic, it’s better to speak first and loudly, even if you have nothing to say and
even if you are speaking gibberish (to a reasonable extent). Slowly and correctly,
while it may not be seen as negative, clearly won’t have the overwhelmingly positive
effect that acting quickly will have.
People apparently tend to have a natural attraction to others who “think on their
feet,” and it is seen as one of the ultimate expressions of someone desirable and
charismatic. Of course, this is the same tendency that allows us to fall for people
who are smooth talkers and conmen, the consummate used car salesman. If
someone appears to have a speedy answer for everything, especially in a confident
and assertive manner, then we find it appealing for some reason.
Overall, whether we deem someone charismatic is more of an emotional reaction
than a logical one, so it makes sense that speed dictates it.
The researcher Von Hippel perhaps summed it up best: “Although we expected
mental speed to predict charisma, we thought that it would be less important than
IQ. Instead, we found that how smart people were was less important than how
quick they were.”