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April 10 - June 3, 2023
THE MISCONCEPTION: When your emotions run high, people can look at you and tell what you are thinking and feeling. THE TRUTH: Your subjective experience is not observable, and you overestimate how much you telegraph your inner thoughts and emotions.
THE MISCONCEPTION: If you are in a bad situation, you will do whatever you can do to escape it. THE TRUTH: If you feel like you aren’t in control of your destiny, you will give up and accept whatever situation you are in.
You see events affecting your life along three gradients: personal, permanent, and pervasive.
Pessimism sits on one side of the gradient and optimism on the other. The more pessimistic your explanatory style, the easier it is to slip into learned helplessness.
This research was repeated in prisons. Sure enough, just letting prisoners move furniture and control the television kept them from developing health problems and staging revolts. In homeless shelters where people can’t pick out their own beds or choose what to eat, the residents are less likely to try and get a job or find an apartment. When you are able to succeed at easy tasks, hard tasks feel possible to accomplish. When you are unable to succeed at small tasks, everything seems harder.
THE MISCONCEPTION: Your opinions of people and events are based on objective evaluation. THE TRUTH: You translate your physical world into words, and then believe those words.
Later, when asked to rate the stranger’s personality, the people who held the warm coffee said they found the stranger to be nice, generous, and caring. The other group said the same person was difficult, standoffish, hard to talk to.
There’s a lot of research showcasing this phenomenon. You see people with bright clothes as being friendly and smart—bright. You see people who speak slowly as being less intelligent—slow.
Settings prime you to see the world a certain way, and all it takes to see things differently is a change of temperature, or the sturdiness of a surface. Texture matters.
The Anchoring Effect THE MISCONCEPTION: You rationally analyze all factors before making a choice or determining value. THE TRUTH: Your first perception lingers in your mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions.
Remember this study when you are in a negotiation—make your initial request far too high. You have to start somewhere, and your initial decision or calculation greatly influences all the choices that follow, cascading out, each tethered to the anchors set before.
THE MISCONCEPTION: You see everything going on before your eyes, taking in all the information like a camera. THE TRUTH: You are aware only of a small amount of the total information your eyes take in, and even less is processed by your conscious mind and remembered.
The problem with inattentional blindness is not that it happens so often, it’s that you don’t believe it happens. Instead believe you see the whole world in front of you.
Self-Handicapping THE MISCONCEPTION: In all you do, you strive for success. THE TRUTH: You often create conditions for failure ahead of time to protect your ego.
In the end, Alter and Forgas concluded the happier you are, the more likely you will be to seek out ways to delude yourself into maintaining your rosy outlook on life and your own abilities. Sad people, it seems, are more honest with themselves.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies THE MISCONCEPTION: Predictions about your future are subject to forces beyond your control. THE TRUTH: Just believing a future event will happen can cause it to happen if the event depends on human behavior.
Is a Snuggie better than a regular blanket? Are leisure suits the ultimate fashion statement? Is Inception, like, the best movie ever made?
When you fear you will confirm a negative stereotype, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy not because the stereotype is true, but because you can’t stop worrying that you could become an example proving it.
Research shows if you believe someone is going to be an asshole, you will act hostile, thus causing them to act like an asshole. This same research shows if people think their partner doesn’t love them, they will interpret small slights as big hurts—and this will then lead to a feeling of rejection that causes the partner to distance him- or herself. The feedback loop will build and build until the prophecy is fulfilled.
The current self is happy when experiencing nice things. The remembering self is happy when you look back on your life and pull up plenty of positive memories. As Kahneman points out, a two-week vacation may yield only a handful of lifelong memories. You will pull those memories out every once and a while and use them to be happy. There is a serious imbalance between the time you spend creating these memories and the time you spend enjoying them later.
Consistency Bias THE MISCONCEPTION: You know how your opinions have changed over time. THE TRUTH: Unless you consciously keep tabs on your progress, you assume the way you feel now is the way you have always felt.
you agree ahead of time to do something you later don’t feel like doing, you do it anyway so you don’t feel inconsistent or appear so to others. In any situation where you are primed to think of yourself in a certain way, you will be more likely to engage in behavior that proves you are.
THE MISCONCEPTION: Knowing a person’s history makes it easier to determine what sort of person they are. THE TRUTH: You jump to conclusions based on how representative a person seems to be of a preconceived character type.
Taste is subjective, which is another way of saying you are not so smart when it comes to choosing one product over another. All things being equal—you refer back to the advertising or the packaging or conformity with your friends and family. Presentation is everything.
THE MISCONCEPTION: Other people’s behavior is the reflection of their personality. THE TRUTH: Other people’s behavior is more the result of the situation than their disposition.
