Understanding ourselves and others

How about a magic trick

A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").

When people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs.

The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behaviour.

The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.

The tendency to over-expect small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).

Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how or by whom that information is presented.

The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. Results from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers.

For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."

The tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves, such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of the quality of the end result.

The tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.

Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.

The tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviours of a person they dislike, to attribute their positive behaviours to the environment and their negative behaviours to the person's inherent nature or of young people to be more negative information in the descriptions of others.

A vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.

The tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would credit them.

The tendency for a person's positive or negative physical traits to "spill over" from one personality area to another in others' perceptions of them (related to the physical attractiveness stereotype).

The belief that we see reality as it really is objectively and without bias; that the facts are plain for all to see; that rational people will agree with us; and that those who don't are either uninformed, lazy, irrational, or biased.

The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests.

W hy are all men in my life acting li ke pigs?

a. Men are pigs by nature. b. Men are influenced by cultural

and educational factors. c. I have been looking for good

men in the wrong places.

a. If all men are pigs, then we wouldnt have chivalry in any culture and all families and

couples would be dysfunctional.

b. If men are influenced by cultural and educational factors,

then we wouldnt see chivalry or respect for women emerge in

specific contexts.

c. If I have been searching for them in the wrong places ex. sport bars, then better men could be

found somewhere else ex. Theatre, improvisation clubs.

a. Research on studies regarding chivalry and

respect as qualities observed in male behaviour.

b. Go out in other social contexts and observe whether

better candidates would be larger in number there.

If I do meet better men in other places, maybe the first 2 hypothesis were wrong and the 3rd hypothesis

is much more li kely to be true, until future evidence is brought to

my attention.

Be on your way