Over the years, scientists have discovered many secrets and flaws of the human brain that were safely hidden in our psyche. Sometimes we do something strange and then we think, "What is the logic of my behavior? Did it even exist?" In fact, there is always some logic, but most often it is hidden in certain peculiarities of your mind. You don't need to be an expert in psychology to understand what's going on in people's minds and use it to your advantage. There are some psychological tricks that work on an unconscious level, helping you gain the trust of another person, gain someone's approval and relax when you are under stress. Today we will talk to you about the psychological effects that affect you almost every day. Watch the video till the end to understand why we always want something that is impossible to achieve and why we behave in this or that way. Music.

When a group of people laugh, each person looks at the person they like. After a good joke or in the middle of an interesting discussion, every person instinctively looks at the person they like the most. This is because they want to make sure that the object of their desires approves and shares their sense of humor. So, to find out everything about a group of friends, prepare some really good jokes and watch everyone like a hawk. Your observations can be really surprising.

Anchoring effect: People feel that it is much easier to evaluate something if they have the original price, even if it is wrong, as a kind of anchor. It is often used by shops. For example, you wouldn't buy a $300 blouse in your right mind. However, if you see that it originally cost a thousand dollars, you will think that it is a sin to pass up such a great deal, even though the initial price may have been made up. Music.

We tend to see our memories as little movies or video clips, things that sit on some shelf inside our brains, safe and unchanging. But as it turns out, memories of past events change every time they pass before our minds. Their content affected black holes in memory and events that happened in the recent past. For example, you don't have clear memories of all the people who attended a family reunion several years ago. But since your aunt never misses such events, your mind ends up including her in the memories, even if she was not present at that particular event.

Chew something when you're nervous: Before an important conversation, public speaking, or any other event that makes you nervous, you should try chewing gum or even eating something. A 2011 study at Tokyo Medical and Dental University concluded that chewing significantly reduced feelings of anxiety. The thing is, no one eats when they're in danger, so while you're chewing, your brain thinks it's safe to relax. It sends a signal that releases tension and helps you calm down. Basically, you're tricking your own brain. The same Tokyo research explains that some ancient Mayans and Greeks who chewed resin were less tense than their peers who did not share the habit. Oh, maybe that's where the expression "she really bit him" came from. Wow, that would make her a stress cannibal. Well, maybe not after all. Music.

Focusing on the result: We often judge the rightness of a decision by the final result, rather than by the actions taken to achieve it. This effect is often used by advertisements that focus you only on the final result, for example, a purchase. So if you're using a brand new iPhone, you can't claim that the decision to spend all your money on it was the right one. Psychologists and sociologists have come up with something called Dunbar's number, the maximum number of people with whom a person can maintain close relationships. So even if you have thousands of friends on Facebook, you can only have meaningful communication with 50 to 200 of them.

A look can help you get all the information you need: If you don't like the answer someone gave you or don't feel like they're telling you the whole story, just keep looking at them. In this situation, the silence will become so unbearable that they will be ready to tell you anything just to end it. After all, the purpose of a look is to persuade. Try it and see if it works. If you succeed, give us a thumbs up. Hey, my dog ​​uses it on me all the time.

Paradox of Choice: The paradox of choice states that the more options there are, the less likely we are to be happy with our final choice. Keep in mind that sometimes you buy something and then regret it because you could have bought it on sale or you could have found another model. Even if the final decision is the best, we can remain unhappy because the choice was too great. Imagine you are at the airport and need to collect your luggage in ten minutes. You arrive at the pick-up point and immediately collect your suitcase. And now, a slightly different situation: you find a shortcut and manage to reach the baggage claim line in just two minutes. You then spend the remaining eight minutes waiting for your suitcase to show up. In both cases, it didn't take you more than ten minutes to claim your luggage. However, in the second scenario, you probably felt impatient and dissatisfied. This is because our brain does not like to be inactive and prefers to stay busy. And for each completed task, it rewards us with dopamine, the hormone of happiness. Ah, dopamine. Music.

Imagine that your future employer is a good friend: To avoid nervousness during an oral exam or job interview, imagine that the person in front of you is a friend you haven't seen in years. This will help you calm down quickly, and answering the person's questions will be much easier. Another thing to keep in mind: why not consider the possibility that the interviewer is just as nervous as you are? You never know. Maybe it's their first job interview or their first exam as a teacher. Walking in with a smile will not only make you feel more confident, but you'll also put them at ease.

Illusion of clustering: This illusion is characterized by the tendency to see a particular system in random coincidences. This is especially true for gamblers and lovers of signs of fate. Both can misinterpret events. Don't get upset. Music.

Studies show that our brain can store a maximum of three to four pieces of information at once. In addition, this information can only be stored for 20 to 30 seconds. After that time, we forget them unless we refresh them in our memory over and over again. For example, let's say you're driving and talking on the phone. Don't do that. The person on the other end gives you a number, but you can't write it down, so you try to remember it instead. You repeat the number over and over to store it in your short-term memory until you take the time to write it down. By the way, the fact that it is easier for us to remember three to four pieces of information at once explains why many things contain three to four digits or lines. If you have to work a lot with people, put a mirror behind you. If you have to talk to people a lot at work, hang a small mirror behind your desk. You will be surprised how much more friendly and willing many people will be to meet you in negotiations. This is because no one likes to see themselves angry or nervous. How cool is that? And the most important thing is that these psychological tips work. By the way, we have many more videos that reveal the secrets of human psychology. Check out the links at the top of the screen after you've finished watching this video. Falling effect: Imagine a couple walking down the street, and one of them suddenly hits a pole. Others are unlikely to think, "What an idiot." On the contrary, the first will seem even sweeter. This is because perfection is repulsive and mistakes are attractive. They make us more human. That's why you shouldn't get too upset if you've tripped in front of someone.

Our brain is constantly processing the information it receives from the sensory organs. It analyzes visual images and interprets them in a way that is accessible to us. For example, the reason we can read a text quickly lies in the fact that we don't actually read it. We simply notice the first and last letter of each word and intuitively fill in the rest based on our previous experience. As the saying goes, "It doesn't matter what order the letters appear in a word as long as the first and last letters stay in place." Well, that was weird. You see, we are looking at groups of jumbled letters, yet we perceive them as real words. And this doesn't just happen with lyrics.

If you think someone is watching you, just yawn. Strange, isn't it? Yawning is like a collective call. There is even a phenomenon called contagious yawning. It is typical for humans and chimpanzees to yawn when they see, hear, or just think about yawning. Some individuals are less susceptible to the influence of others' yawns, but of 328 participants in a study conducted at Duke University School of Medicine, 222 yawned while watching a video of people yawning. Are you yawning now just hearing about it? Hmm, that works. So, it is very likely that you will be able to use yawning to see who is watching you. To find out, just yawn and look around. In most cases, the person looking at you will also yawn. Not only that, but if you do it when the sun rises, you can yawn at dawn. Thank you very much.

Kuleshov effect: The effect when the viewer, after seeing two unrelated frames, unconsciously establishes a logical connection between them, is called the Kuleshov effect. Kuleshov made a short film in which the facial expressions of one man alternated with different frames. The audience thought his facial expression was different every time, depending on whether he was looking at a plate of soup, a dead girl or a woman on a couch. However, his face was the same the whole time. This effect is successfully used not only among filmmakers but also among marketers, instilling certain associations with a certain product or character.

Imagine you are at work and studying an important document. You suddenly realize that you have just read the same sentence three times in a row. Instead of analyzing the text, your mind wandered. Scientists from the University of California say that every day we spend 30 percent of our time daydreaming. Sometimes, for example, during long trips, this share increases up to 70 percent. But there is nothing wrong with that. Studies show that people who like to wander tend to be more creative. They are also better at solving problems and relieving stress. Music. Applause.

If you want to break up an argument, get something to eat and stand between the people who are arguing. This is called the Snack Man effect. Indeed, the story goes that one day there was an argument on the subway in New York. A woman attacked a man claiming he was stalking her. In the middle of the argument, another man stood up and stood between them. He stood there for a while, nonchalantly munching on his Pringles chips. Miraculously, the quarreling passengers calmed down, and peace was restored. The hero of the day was nicknamed the Snack Man and became an internet star. There is a simple psychological explanation for what happened that day. Eating is associated with relaxation and calmness. The probability of a person attacking someone who is eating is very low, so the conflict is resolved in an instant.

Negative body: Negative body is a state in which a person thinks that he is ugly, and therefore his personal life is a failure and his whole life is a failure. Most often, such people are attractive, and the problem is more in self-confidence than in real flaws. Have you ever wondered why people always stop to look at the aftermath of a car accident? Although passers-by find the scene of the accident disturbing, they continue to watch. Such curiosity drives our ancient brain, the part responsible for survival. Its function is to constantly scan the environment, asking and answering three questions: Can I eat that? Can I have sex with it? Can I be killed by it? Actually, there's a fourth question: Can I buy it at a discount? Food, sex, and danger are still things that are fundamental to our survival, so we can't help but pay attention to them.

If you want to get rid of something, simply give it to someone while you are talking to them. Imagine moving boxes or cleaning around the house. If you need help and no one offers it, just ask someone nearby a personal question or their opinion on something. When a person is answering a question, their brain is so busy forming thoughts that all other actions go on autopilot. In this situation, your interlocutor will take whatever you give him without even thinking.

Survival bias: Most often we judge the situation only by the successful people, the survivors, and therefore we only know one side of the story. For example, we envy the businessman who became rich by selling Bengali girls, but we don't know how many businessmen have failed with them. You should always try to look at things from different angles. As part of a recent study, scientists set up two tables in a supermarket. On the first table, they placed six types of jams. On the second, 24. As a result, 60% of customers stopped to try the jams on the first table. However, when it came to shopping, the second table proved to be four times more popular. Why did it happen? As we already know, our brain can only focus on three to four things at once. Therefore, it is easier to make final decisions when there are a limited number of options, such as six types of jams. However, we always crave variety. We love browsing a wide range of products. That's why we're more likely to stop by a table with 24 types of jams, even though we'll end up choosing the same brand we've bought many times before. Music.

If you want to become friends with someone easily, just ask them a favor. It doesn't have to be a big favor, just something simple: pass a sauce, a napkin, a piece of paper, or even ask for some advice. The person doing the favor will think you love them because you are doing something for them, however trivial it may be. Here's what one woman says: "Well, I never really liked the guy until one day he asked me to lend him $20. Then I thought he considered me close enough, maybe even a friend, to help him out, and lo! I began to love him." The hard-to-get effect: Roughly speaking, this is a phenomenon that says that the hard-to-get is always more desirable. Even if we look at it on a human level, close, high status, those whose thoughts no one knows, always seem more attractive than others. We'd like to believe that all our actions are the result of careful planning, but in reality, 60 to 80 percent of our daily decisions are made unconsciously. Okay, it's getting boring. We don't think about doing those things; we just do them. Every second, our brain receives millions of units of data. To prevent overload, some work is transferred to the unconscious: we put the keys in our pockets, turn off the lights, close the front door. We perform such actions automatically, without thinking. All right, take your hand off the echo button. Now you get it.

On the other hand, this often leads to self-dualism. For example, when we arrive at work and suddenly start worrying if we turned off the iron. Schedule important meetings for the beginning or end of the day. People remember things best when they happen at the beginning and end of the day; everything in between is a blur. That's why we recommend setting important appointments for these parts of the day. If you have a job interview, try to be either the first or the last candidate. Another trick to get attendees to arrive on time and be punctual is to specify an odd time and duration of the meeting. It's called access to Swiss trains. If a person sees a meeting from 9:22 to 9:46 in their schedule, they are more likely to be on time, and things will stick more precisely to the agenda.

Fear of beauty: Have you noticed that ordinary people are less likely to sit next to beautiful people? For example, in public transport, they do this only if there are no other free seats. In fact, some people feel excessive tension around beautiful people: excitement, double control of their actions, the desire to save face, and the fear of comparison. Such stress does not occur next to the average person. Pay attention to the direction of your feet while talking to other people. Now, people's feet can help you understand their true feelings in a conversation. If you approach them and they turn their body but not their feet, it means they are not interested in talking to you. Also, if the toes of their shoes are pointing the other way, it means they want to get away as quickly as possible. Or it could mean they had their hips replaced, and somehow the doctor got it wrong. Unlikely, but just saying.

Studies show that we can only perform one cognitive activity at a time. Try speaking and reading or writing at the same time while listening to an audiobook. Most likely, nothing good will come of it. Our brains simply cannot focus on two tasks at once. However, there is an exception: if the other activity is purely physical and automatic, the type of thing we do every day, then it is possible to combine both tasks. For example, you can talk on the phone while walking. But even then, there's a good chance you'll stumble and lose the flow of the conversation. Do you still need an echo? Maybe something else. All right. Copying other people's non-verbal language will help you gain their trust. Repeating other people's gestures, body posture or facial expressions can help you gain their trust. A person unconsciously does not realize that he sees himself in you because of familiar gestures. And to be honest, most people love themselves the most. The most important thing here is not to overdo it. For example, if someone scratches their nose, don't copy it. Use common sense. Also, to let people know you're paying attention, smile when you hear their good news and frown when you mention bad events in their life. Got it? Another great technique for gaining trust is a genuine smile. When your smile is not forced, your mood improves, you begin to radiate warmth and people feel good

Although some writing errors are possible due to translation or other factors, I believe the gist is conveyed in an understandable manner. Thanks for reading.