500+ Psychology Facts | ✍

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671. We look for human faces, even in inanimate objects.
Most of us haven't seen Jesus in a piece of toast, but we've all noticed cartoonish faces seemingly staring back at us from inanimate objects. That's called pareidolia, and scientists think it comes from the fact that recognizing faces is so important to social life that our brains would rather find one where there isn't one than miss a real-life face.

672. We'd rather skew the facts than change our beliefs about people.
Humans hate "cognitive dissonance": when a fact counters something we believe. That's why when, we hear that a loved one did something wrong or garbage, we undermine how bad it really was, or we tell ourselves that science exaggerates when a study tells us we really need to move more.

673. We can convince ourselves a boring task was fun if we weren't rewarded.
Here's another great example of cognitive dissonance: Volunteers in one Psychology of Learning and Motivation study did a boring task, then were paid either $1 or $20 to convince someone that it was actually pretty interesting. The ones who were paid $20 knew why they'd lied (they got a decent reward) and still thought it was boring, but the ones who'd only gotten a buck actually convinced themselves it really was fun, because their brains didn't have a good reason to think they'd been lying.

674. People rise to our high expectations (and don't rise if we have low ones).
You may have heard of the Pygmalion effect before—basically, we do well when other people think we will, and we don't do well when people expect us to fail. The idea came from a famous 1960s study in which researchers told teachers that certain students (chosen at random) had high potential based on IQ tests. Those students did indeed go on to be high achievers, thanks to their teachers' expectations in them.

675. If you talk more, you’ll laugh more.
You may think you laugh hard after hearing a crazy joke but in reality you will laugh harder after telling that crazy joke. Studies have found that speakers laugh 46 percent more than the listeners. This is why people laugh at their own jokes, even when it’s not funny.