4 Powerful Psychological Effects that Change Student`s Behavior

How to get “behind the scenes” of the brain? How to decrease the level of stress while studying? How our instincts influence our decisions?

Next four facts will tell you secrets of the functioning of the human brain. Use them for your studying and you will become a super student!

1) You like others more when they make mistakes.

Those who never makes any mistakes seems to be less sympathetic than those who are always right. Perfection creates distance and irritating aura of invincibility.

This effect was found by psychologist Elliot Aronson. It’s called “Pratfall effect”. It is the tendency for attractiveness to increase or decrease after an individual makes a mistake, depending on the individual’s perceived competence, or ability to perform well in a general sense.

So don’t be afraid of mistakes, especially while studying.

2) Great expectations create a new reality.

If you believe in something – one day it will happen. This is called the “The Pygmalion effect”, or “Rosenthal effect”.

Psychologist Robert Rosenthal studied it. He showed the teachers a list of students who have had a very high IQ test results. But this list does not correspond to reality, Rosenthal chose the names of students randomly.

At the end of the year, these students showed significantly better results than the rest. Expectations of teachers for these children were higher, and these expectations created a new reality.

3) The more choices, the less likely we are to be satisfied with them.

Do you know what is buyer’s remorse or buyer’s regret? You buy something and then begin to regret: it was possible to buy cheaper, or a different model, or to use offers, coupons, discounts.

Even when our final decision is quite right – we can feel unhappy, if we had too much choice. This is the “paradox of choice”.

The more people see that you need help – the lower the probability that any of them will help. If you need help – do not look for it in the crowd.

When you need to choose your school, university, classes, tasks – anything, don’t be afraid of choices and remember about “paradox of choice”.

4) Your mistakes are not as noticeable as you think.

Many our feelings are just a game of imagination. Anxiety and self-doubt that you feel every time you make a mistake, in fact, does not reflect reality. People notice our mistakes much less than we think.

To check this “spotlight effect” team of psychologists asked a group of people to wear strange t-shirts for a day. And then estimate how many people noticed it. Estimates of the subjects were two times higher than the actual number. People are focusing on you much less than you think.

Knowing this, you can feel much calmer and be yourself in public space.

So, don’t worry if you make mistakes or if you have some problems with studying. Maybe, it’s just your brain playing with you. If you need a tutor to become more confident – use Tutorz.com. We have more than 3500 Psychology tutors in the USA.