10 Amazing Phenomena of a Normal Human Mind
The basic fact you should know is that your mind isn’t just a mirror, not even a passive observer of reality. What we assume out there in the world we stand in, is actually coming from in here. And we have come up with these few phenomenons which are in reality a byproduct of how the brain works.
10. Clustering Illusion
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The clustering illusion is the intuition that random events which occur in clusters are not really random events. The illusion is due to based on a counterintuitive but false assumption regarding statistical odds.
For example, it strikes most people as unexpected if heads comes up four times in a row during a series of coin flips. However, in a series of 20 flips,there is a 50% chance of getting four heads in a row. It may seem unexpected, but the chances are even better. Now if you have got 3 consecutive heads, you’d think next flip can’t be heads, though there is still a 50% probability. Thinking that the probabilities have changed is a common bias. This has caused gamers to lose thinking the probability has changed.
9. Reverse Psychology
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You may love your wife, but every wish of hers sounds like an unbearable behest. Your parents’ wishes are already long ignored. Not to mention what you feel when an undesirable boss gives you some orders. Don’t you sometimes do things just because somebody said you should’nt? Aren’t you sometimes tempted to do them? When you do something that is forbidden, you may be demonstrating reactance as your motivation. Reactance is a drive to do something you’ve been told (threatened) not to do. We may respond with reactance because we humans just don’t like it when somebody takes away our freedom to choose how we behave. In fact, reactance theory is sometimes called “ forbidden fruit” theory.
The theory assumes there are “free behaviors” individuals perceive and can take part in at any given moment. The level of reactance has a direct relationship to the importance of eliminated or threatened behavioral freedom in relationship to the importance of other freedoms at the time.
So take my advice, tell someone to do the opposite of what you really want, and they will rebel ending up doing what you want.
8. Paramnesia
Paramnesia also called as Déjà Vu, is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the recent past). The experience of paramnesia seems to be quite common among adults and children alike. Paramnesia or déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of “eeriness,” “strangeness,” “weirdness”. Certain researchers claim to have found ways to recreate this sensation using hypnosis.
The similarity between a déjà-vu-eliciting stimulus and an existing, but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation. Thus, encountering something which evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered may lead to déjà vu.
7. Apophenia
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Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data, defined as unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
There have been many instances of perceptions of religious imagery and themes, especially the faces of religious figures. In 1978, a New Mexican woman found that the burn marks on a tortilla appeared similar Jesus’s face. Thousands of people came to see the framed tortilla. Japanese researcher Okamura published a famous report in which he described inclusions in polished limestone as preserved fossils of tiny humans, gorillas, dogs, dragons, dinosaurs, and other organisms, claiming “There have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period.. except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm.” Okamura’s research earned him an Ig Nobel prize in Bio Diversity in 1970.
6. Horn’s Effect
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Horn’s Effect, also called the devil’s and reverse halo effect where individuals, brands or other things judged to have a single undesirable trait are subsequently judged to have many poor traits, allowing a single weak point or negative trait to influence others’ perception of the person, brand or other thing in general. Simplifying it, when we consider a person bad (or may be good) in one category, we are likely to make a similar evaluation in other categories. It is as if we cannot easily separate categories. It may also be connected with dissonance avoidance.
Like for example: you have been late to work the past 4 days; your boss notices and ends up thinking you are lazy and careless although there might be good reasons for you being late, perhaps your stomach was upset, your car broke out or the it was raining cats and dogs. The problem is, because of one negative aspect that may be out of your control, your boss might assume you a bad worker.
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this article is awsm..i luv the human brain phenomenons. <3
i felt the same thing n always wondered y it happens..
I liked that article a lot. I didn’t realise the Purkinje Lights had a name! I used to notice it loads as a child, but could never explain it to anyone. It just made me sound nuts.
I’m glad I finally have a name to the Purkinje Lights effect. I used to wonder what the hell it was when I was a kid, and now I know, so thanks for that.
There is not a 50% chance of getting 20 heads in a row. If you want to get 20 in a row the chance of getting that is .5^20. The chance every time of getting heads is .5, but to get 20 in a row the probability is much smaller than that.
You seem to have misread it. It clearly states that in a series of 20 flips, the chance of a string of four heads in a row some time during the series is 50%.
Which is correct, out of all the possibilities for 20 flips, half contain four heads in a row.
Very interesting. The human mind is a very complex mechanism and I believe that we will never come to understand it completely.
With the spinning lady, try to make her switch directions every single turn she does. its pretty hard but i managed to do it 4 times in a row. i have a feeling its a good brain excercise.
And here I was thinking I was the only one who used to do the number 2 (Purkinje Lights Phenomenon)