19 psychological facts that you did not know about yourself

The human psyche is one of the biggest mysteries in the world.

Although researchers have learned a lot of interesting facts about the psychological characteristics of the person, and can even predict our behavior, based on certain rules, much remains unknown.

Did you know how wrong your memories, how long your habits are formed, or the number of friends that you can buy?

These and other psychological facts to help you learn more about yourself.

Psychological processes of human

1. Your brain is also active during sleep as during wakefulness

When you are asleep and dreaming, your brain processes and integrates the experience of the whole of the day, creating the association of the information received, decides what to remember and what to forget. Surely you have often heard the advice to "sleep well" before an exam or important event. If you want to remember that learned, best go to sleep after you learned the material and before you need to remember that.

2. You can remember only 3-4 elements simultaneously

There is a rule of "magic number 7 plus or minus 2", according to which a person can not hold more than 5-9 pieces of information simultaneously. Much of the information in short-term memory is stored for 20-30 seconds, and then we quickly forget it, but if you do not repeat again and again.

While most people can keep in mind about 7 digits for a short period, virtually all of us hard to keep in mind the 10 digits.

Recent studies show that we are able to store much less: about 3-4 pieces of information simultaneously. Although we try to group the data we receive, our short-term memory still remains rather limited.

For example the phone number is divided into several sets of numbers, so that we can remember it easier.

3. We did not perceive the combination of red and blue

Although these colors are used in many national flags, red and blue color difficult to read our vision when they are next to each other.

This is due to an effect called "hromostereopsis", which leads to the fact that some colors "stand" while others are deleted. This causes irritation and eye fatigue.

Most of all, this effect is a combination of red and blue as well as red and green.

4. You see things differently than they perceive

According to research by the University of Cambridge, "nezhavno in kaokm podyakre rpasoloezhny bkuvy in slvoe. Smaoe vaonzhe is chotby pearvya and ponesdyalya bkuva blyi on svioh Mets ».

Even if the rest of the letters are jumbled, you will be able to read a sentence. This is because the human mind does not read every letter, but the word as a whole. He always treats the information received from the senses and how you perceive information (words) are usually different from what you see (matted letters).

5. You are able to hold the attention of about 10 minutes

Even if you are in a meeting, you are interested in the topic, and the man sets out interesting object, the maximum attention, you are able to maintain it for 7-10 minutes. After that, your attention starts to weaken and you need to take a break, to continue to hold your interest.

Psychological characteristics of human

6. The ability to postpone the pleasure comes from childhood

Your ability to postpone immediate gratification of their desires occurs in early childhood. People who from an early age can defer pleasure better in school and cope better with stress and frustration.

7. We are committed to the dreams of 30 percent of the time

Love in the clouds? According to psychologists, we all love to indulge in dreams, at least 30 percent of the time. Some of us even more, but it's not always a bad thing. The researchers argue that people who love to dream, tend to be more creative and better solve various problems.

8. The habit is formed within 66 days

Scientists studying how long certain actions become a habit, found that we average it takes about 66 days.

The more complex the behavior that we want to buy, the longer the time we have. For those who would like to acquire the habit of doing exercise, usually required in the 1, 5 times more time so that it becomes automatic, than those who drew up the habit of eating fruit for lunch. Even if you miss a day, go two, it will not affect the time of acquiring the habit, but missed too many consecutive days can slow down the process.

9. You overestimate your reactions to future events

We are not very well predict the future. To be precise, we overestimate our response to future events, whether pleasant or negative. Studies have shown that people believe that positive events, such as marriage or a big win will make them much happier than it actually happened. Similarly, we believe that negative events, such as job loss or accident, cause we have much more depressed than in reality.

10. Do you blame the other person, not the situation (and the situation, and not yourself)

Remember, when you're waiting for the other person, who was late for a meeting. Chances are, you have explained the delay of his irresponsibility and nesobrannosti. In the same situation, you wrote off its late on external circumstances (traffic jams).

In psychology, this is called the "fundamental attribution error" - that is, the tendency to blame the behavior of other people's inner personality characteristics and their behavior - external factors ("I had no choice," "I had no luck"). Unfortunately, even being aware of our tendency to make unfair judgments, we still continue to make this fundamental mistake.

11. The number of friends that you may have a limited

Even if you can boast of several thousand friends in social networks, in fact they have a lot less. Psychologists and anthropologists have identified "Dunbar's number" - that is, the maximum number of close relations that a person can have, and it is from 50 to 150.

12. You can not not pay attention to food, sex and danger

Have you noticed that people always stop to look at the scenes of accidents. In fact, we can not ignore the danger of the situation. Each person has an ancient structure of the brain, which is responsible for the survival and asks, "Can I eat it? Can I do this with sex? Could this kill me? ».

Food, sex and danger - that's all he cared about. After all, people will die without food, without any kind of sex do not continue, and when a man dies, the first two points will not make sense.

13. Do you know how to do things that have never done before

Imagine that you have never seen the iPad, but you gave him and asked him to read in the book. Even before you turn the iPad and begin to use it in your head already is a model of how to read with the help of books. You will have suggestions on how the book will look like on screen, what functions you can use, and how you do it.

In other words, you have a "mental model" of reading books with the tablet, even if you have never done this. Your mental model is different from the model that has a human, read before e-books and those who do not know what the iPad.

Our mental models are based on incomplete facts, past experience and even intuitive ideas.

14. You want more choices than you can overpower

If you go into any supermarket, you will find a huge range of products, and all because people need a large variety.

In one study conducted in the supermarket, researchers presented participants of 6 kinds of jam, then 24 kinds of jams. Although people often stayed at the counter with 24 kinds of jam, they are 6 times more likely to buy jam on the counter with 6 kinds of jam.

It is easy to explain: despite the fact that it seems to us, if we want more, our brain can handle only a limited number of items at a time.

15. Are you happy when busy with something

Imagine that you are at the airport and you need to pick up the luggage. Thus you need about 12 minutes to get to the baggage claim. When you get to the baggage reclaim belt, you will immediately take away your suitcase. How eager are you feeling?

Now try to imagine a similar situation, but once you get to the issue of the tape in 2 minutes and wait for their luggage 10 minutes. Although in both situations receive the baggage took you 12 minutes in the second case, you probably were more impatient and unhappy.

If a person has no reason to be active, he decides to do nothing. And although it helps us save energy, doing nothing makes us feel impatient and unhappy.

The brain and the mind

16. Most of the decisions you make unconsciously

Although we like to think that all our decisions are carefully monitored and thought, research suggests that daily decisions are actually subconscious, and it is the cause.

Every second, our brains are attacking more than 11 million individual pieces of data, and since we can not all this carefully check our subconscious helps us to make a decision.

17. You changed their memories

We take our memories as a little "movies" that we lose our head and believe that they are stored as well as videos in our computer. However, this is not so.

Every time you think back to some event, you change it, since nerve pathways are activated differently each time. It can influence later events, and the desire to fill the gaps in memory. So for example, you do not remember who else was at the meeting of relatives, but because your aunt is usually present, with time, you can include it in your memories.

18. You can not perform multiple things at once

If you think that a well can perform several things at once, you're wrong. Scientists have proven that we can not do things right once 2-3. Of course, we can go and at the same time talk with his friend, but our brain focuses on only one priority function at a particular time. It says that we can not think about two different things at the same time.

19. Your most vivid memories are wrong

Memories of exciting and dramatic events in psychology called "vospominaniya- flash" and they turned out to be full of errors.

Notable examples of this phenomenon are related to the events of 11 September. The psychologists asked participants to describe in detail what they were doing, where they were and other details related to the event, immediately after the attack, and after 3 years. It turned out that 90 percent of the later descriptions from the original. Many people can describe in detail where and what they were doing at the moment when they heard the news. The problem is only that the details are not correct, because the strong emotions associated with memory, distorted memories.