By separating the left and right brain (schizencephalic gyrus), it is found that the left and right brain have their own independent functions and control intervals. Humans receive information and send out actions through neurons. Normal people's left and right brains can normally fuse each other's information through the corpus callosum to make comprehensive and appropriate judgments and behaviors. However, people with split brains tend to make strange or contradictory actions, because their left and right brains have their own behaviors: if he can recognize an object, he can't say it.

So, how many brains does a person have? Which brain represents you? Current research shows that we should not emphasize the development of the unique functions of the left and right brain as advertised by enterprises. On the contrary, the way to improve yourself is to maximize the coordinated operation of the left and right brains.

2 Rich experience = bigger brain?

Experiments on mice show that monotonous environment stifles the learning potential of the brain, while abundant toys and games create a powerful brain: efficient transmitter transmission, larger neurons (almost no difference in number), larger synapses and a heavier and thicker cerebral cortex.

Revelation: Give infants and children more and richer sensory motor stimulation, and promote the establishment of more and more efficient neuronal connections in the brain.

Is human nature born?

By separating the influence of environment and genes, we study the congenital and acquired influences respectively. Scientists have studied the identical twins raised separately (different environments with the same genes), the twins raised together (similar genes in environment), the brothers and sisters who grew up together (similar genes in environment) or the adopted brothers and sisters (different genes in environment), and measured and compared a series of characteristics describing people, such as personality, temperament and intelligence, and found that genes have an important influence on people. For example, identical twins who have been separated from each other since childhood have many similar preferences and personalities when they grow up.

Where the environmental impact is strong, the influence of genes will be weakened, such as national characteristics and religious beliefs. On the contrary, where the environmental impact is less, the influence of genes will be more significant, such as intelligence and personality.

Life is neither a blank sheet of paper nor everything is predestined. Genes and environment often interact with each other in an inseparable way.

4 be careful to test the cliff

This is a classic psychological experiment, which creates a new experimental method, and many unethical experiments are prohibited. Cliff test makes experimenters panic or even fear by imitating cliffs, but it can't avoid causing physical harm to people, thus finding that "people and many animals are born afraid of heights, not learned from experience."

The key of this kind of experiment is to imitate the dangerous situation, achieve the expected psychological goal, and avoid the actual harm at the same time.

5 fixation preference

This experiment opens up the possibility of infant psychology research by studying the fixation time of infants. To know what is natural and what is acquired, it is necessary to study the first batch of babies. However, it is very difficult for babies to talk and not cooperate with adults. But the baby will look at what he is interested in for longer, so that we can know the baby's preferences.

Experiments show that human beings do have an innate facial aesthetic and shape preference. These innate preferences are finally explained by the historical process of biological evolution.

6 Sleep and dream

Rapid eye movement is related to dreaming. The first rapid eye movement occurred 90 minutes after falling asleep. Experiments show that everyone dreams (even if someone claims not to remember dreaming). I go through about three or four sleep cycles every night, and REM takes up more and more time. There is a rebound phenomenon after REM deprivation, which shows that REM is essential. The same conclusion is also true in animal experiments. Drugs will limit REM sleep, which will lead to REM rebound after stopping taking drugs, and even wake up and dream during the day.

Revelation: Sleep is necessary for people, and dreams are also necessary.

7 cheng

Why is this table called a table? How is the concept formed? An ostrich is a kind of bird, but it is unlikely to be something that flashes in our minds when we see the word bird.

For every abstract concept (such as a bird), there is always a typical representative in our mind (such as a parrot and a sparrow), and this representative is closely related to the surrounding environment where we grew up.

For example, red, children living in mountainous areas may think of pink flowers, while children born in war often think of blood red.

8 hypnosis

Hypnosis has a long history. Where does its mysterious and powerful power come from? Psychological research shows that hypnosis may be nothing more than acting. One is willing to direct, the other is willing to accept hints and put himself into the play just to cooperate with each other! So being hypnotized easily means that he is a good actor, and a good actor is only good at being hypnotized in a sense.

Behaviorism: Pavlov's Saliva Dog

There is an unconditional reflex, that is, a direct response to a stimulus, such as seeing food drooling. Through neutral irrelevant stimuli, such as ringtones, and unconditional stimuli (food) repeatedly appear at the same time, and then the food is removed, the dog directly reflects (drools) the ringtones of neutral stimuli. The saliva caused by Bell is a conditioned reflex. Conditioned reflex can be widely used in teaching, acrophobia and so on.

10 poor little Albert (died at the age of six)

Typical conditioned reflex. Little Albert used to like mice very much, but after touching them, the experimenters always played harsh and uncomfortable sounds (such experiments were allowed in wartime! )。 Later, many times, little Albert established a conditioned reflex to the mouse, and he was afraid when he saw it.

1 1 operable conditional action (or reflection)

For example, Xiaoming cleaned the house, and his mother rewarded a candy afterwards. So Xiao Ming cleaned more actively under the reward of sugar. This is the function of operant conditioning, and it is also the basis for behaviorists to explain learning and behavior, which is widely used in education and learning.

People's behavior is encouraged or suppressed by rewards and punishments, so learn to do some things and avoid others. Behaviorism famous saying: You give me a group of children, and I train you to be the mason, technician, professor and artist you want.

Now research shows that behaviorism can explain learning well, but its basic assumption is wrong. Individual genes and their subjective initiative also play an important role relative to rewards and punishments.

12 attack behavior

Will simply watching attack programs or playing attack games increase children's aggression? Yes! Human instinct-imitation plays an important role.

Enlightenment: As role models for children, parents and teachers play a key role in children's words and deeds.

13 what you think is what you get: self-realization of expectations

Experiments show that teachers' expectations of some students will lead to the tendency that the results are consistent with expectations. One of the sources of social prejudice and unfairness is that wrong or biased expectations cause unfair treatment and lead to the realization of expectations. Common expectations, such as: this person doesn't look like a good person, this child must be naughty (or stupid), he must not love me so much, and my father is overbearing!

Revelation: Don't label people, especially those you love. Once you start doing this, you will notice that the tags are implemented one by one.

14 where are you smart? How smart are you?

Please think about it: what is intelligence? How to evaluate and measure a person's intelligence? What does the IQ test score reflect? How many kinds of independent intelligence do people have? At present, the monistic intelligence theory has been extended to the multiple intelligence theory, which better explains the intelligence structure. People have many different intellectual functions. For example, different parts of the brain perform different functions, and these functions are often independent. For example, people with a serious lack of IQ may be very talented in some way.

15 map in mind: mouse maze

Humans determine the most convenient shortcut to a place through the map in their hearts. Labyrinth experiments show that the mouse is not only trying to make mistakes, but also building a map of the whole maze in his mind, directly building the geographical relationship between any two places, rather than specific paths, thus being more efficient and making fewer mistakes.

16 memory

Memory is vague, not specific, changeable, susceptible to suggestion and modification, and untrustworthy! Even the wording of the question itself will lead to the modification of memory, and the memories recalled by hypnosis are often newly implanted and imagined. The witness's testimony is not necessarily reliable!

The discovery of love

what is love ? Does the baby like his mother because of food, or is love a new demand independent of other survival needs? Freud's psychoanalysis believes that children's oral needs determine their dependence on their mothers, while behaviorism believes that children's dependence on their mothers is the result of breast-feeding and caring behavior. In psychoanalysis and behaviorism, love is an accessory of instinct or other survival needs.

But the classic experiment of orangutan and rhesus monkey shows that love (which is manifested in the close contact with soft objects in the experiment) is an independent demand as strong as hunger and thirst! The experiment found "love" independently, and found that love itself (intimate contact and sense of security) did not originate from other basic needs, and found that love was one of the basic needs.

Revelation: For people, the psychological needs of love are no less than the needs of material survival. Hug, soft contact and intimate relationship have great influence on people's health.

18 does what the eye sees exist?

People's ability is acquired through learning (software), but at the same time it also needs the maturity of corresponding physiological organs (hardware). For example, if the baby is around 1 year old and the muscle strength is large enough, it is possible to learn to walk through training.

Is the permanence of an object (for example, is a person still hiding under the bed) acquired through learning? Still a natural ability! Piaget (the boss of stage learning theory) observed his three children and found that the permanence of objects was gradually formed in multiple stages! At first, babies don't chase anything that moves out of sight, then they learn to track objects without uncovering them when they are hidden, and then they learn to look for them, thus establishing the permanence of objects.

19 What is your moral character?

Judge your morality and your moral stage through moral dilemma. Dad, your sister could have used the money she earned in the summer vacation to travel, but she broke her word and wanted it all. My sister earned 1000, so she lied that she only earned 200, and the remaining 800 was going to travel. My sister told you before she left. Should I keep it a secret? Can save 100 people, and sacrifice an innocent person. Can you do it? The poor man stole the only medicine that could save his wife, but it was extremely expensive, was it wrong?

Kohlberg's six-stage theory of moral development: 65,438+0 fear of punishment, 2 satisfaction and trust in the same return, 4 conscience and respect for law and order, 5 compliance with the law while seeking correction, 6 compliance with internal self-morality, that is, conscience, and disregard for external laws and rules.

20 your control

Your control over yourself is also your control over your own destiny. When you feel that you have lost the choice and control of most events in your life (such as the elderly), you will feel more negative, decadent and unhealthy, and you will be at greater risk of getting sick.

Application: Give yourself and the elderly enough choice and control, arrange the comfort of the elderly, and give the elderly the right to choose independently.

2 1 sexual behavior

The United States first set up an investigation report on sexual behavior in the 1950s. With the advent of the era of sexual liberation, Mazquez and Johnson conducted a large-scale direct measurement experiment on sexual behavior. The biggest difficulty comes from finding the theme. At first, the research object was 1 1 prostitute, and later it was found that it was not difficult to find a large number of other representative research objects. The secrets of four stages of sex (excitement, duration, climax and fading), orgasm, sexual behavior differences, misunderstanding between men and women and many other sexual knowledge have been revealed, and sex has gradually become an open topic.

I can read your face: facial expressions.

What are the human characteristics of being independent of the nation-state and social background, but being the same language for human beings? Facial expression! Although gestures, language and traffic habits are all related to a specific social background, facial expressions are universal! You can quickly and accurately read their expressions from strange faces in other countries, and human beings are much happier to recognize angry expressions! Why is the expression the same and not influenced by social background? In other words, facial expressions are born, engraved in genes and the result of long-term human evolution.

In addition, eyebrows can significantly affect the recognition difficulty more than eyes. So if you want to disguise, shaving your eyebrows is a good way.

23 Life changes and stress

Stress, such as extreme joy (marriage), sadness (widowhood) or nervousness (words), is an emotional change that feels stressed. The stress adaptation scale can be used to measure people's stress response. The initial scale had more than 40 stress events, and the subjects scored according to the adjustment difficulty needed for adaptation. For example, the experimental results show that "spouse death, divorce, separation and imprisonment" are the biggest stress events. The score of stress scale is positively correlated with health and disease (10% is significantly correlated).

Revelation: Mental health has a great influence on physical health. Keep a good attitude while exercising.

24 cognitive dissonance

Festinger's cognitive dissonance refers to the inconsistency caused by the difference between cognition and behavior, such as being forced to express ideas contrary to his true opinions under pressure or reward.

Contrary to intuition, the greater the external influence, the smaller the psychological barrier, and the less likely it is to change the original point of view, and vice versa. In the experiment, after completing an extremely boring task, the subjects asked the newcomers to show the fun of the game. The subjects were divided into two groups, one group was given $20, and the other group was given 1 dollar. The results showed that the subjects who gave $65,438 +0 were more likely to change their original cognition that the experiment was boring and were more willing to accept similar experiments next time.

The weaker the external cause of behavior contrary to cognition, the greater the internal cause and the more serious the obstacle, and the more likely it is to change the original cognition to alleviate it.

A typical case in which people coordinate their self-knowledge in life to avoid cognitive dissonance: children who are often rewarded or praised by materials often don't like things so much, and he thinks that he only does it because of rewards (so praise should be used with caution); If a person invests in something because he likes it, once he is given a salary or reward, his enthusiasm will decrease; Paid medicine (or books) is more effective than non-paid medicine, because he will feel that the money is well spent; Things that have experienced many obstacles and difficulties are bound to be more cherished, so lovers set up various obstacles for each other; People generally only pay attention to the evidence consistent with their own cognition and automatically ignore the opposite clues; Giving newcomers a lesson in joining a group will make them love the group more and think that their hard work has not been in vain.

Can you control your own destiny?

What are the constant personality characteristics of people? People can be divided into internal control and external control according to whether they can control their own destiny and attribute events to themselves or luck, internal cause or external cause.

This personality trait is relatively stable. Internal control personality is more positive, ambitious, confident and stable, while external control personality is more negative, more obedient and more willing to take risks.

Internal Control Personally, I think self-discipline is the key. Internal control may be transformed into external control under great uncontrollable pressure, and external control may be transformed into internal control after learning and confidence enhancement.

26 male femininity or hermaphroditism

Are you male or female (biological gender), male or female (social gender). In the past, people's gender identity was one-dimensional, and masculinity and femininity were at the two ends of the same latitude. People who were more masculine were considered less feminine.

Male behavioral characteristics such as ambition, independence and physical fitness, female characteristics such as elegance, sensitivity, soft voice, love, loveliness and compassion.

However, Bem abandoned the single gender model and created androgyny, which proved that men and women are two independent dimensions, not two segments of the same dimension. An extremely feminine person can also be extremely masculine. For example, a stable and strong man can also be very caring and sensitive.

Therefore, to describe a person's social gender, we need to score from two dimensions: masculine and feminine (the scoring range is 1-7). For example, my gender score is about (positive, negative) =(4.0, 3.5).

Enlightenment: The concept of androgyny breaks the stereotype and social expectation of men and women, and points out that androgyny is more popular and loved because of its higher masculinity and femininity. For example, elegant and independent modern women and masculine and compassionate men.

Race with the heart

Type A personality: strong internal drive, enterprising spirit, sense of urgency, like competition and have deadline pressure, while type B personality, on the other hand, is content with the status quo and doesn't like competition.

Experiments show that personality characteristics are related to a person's health, such as the probability of dying of heart disease. Personality characteristics Type A personality is more likely to die of fatty liver and heart disease.

Revelation: My wife has a type A personality, and I have a type B personality.

28 individuals and groups

External forces such as social culture have a far-reaching impact on people. How to define and consider the influence of culture? Individualism and collectivism culture are an important and lasting social force, which profoundly affects a person's thoughts and actions.

Collectivism culture: individuals are more subordinate to collective interests. Such as China and other country with a long history.

Individualism culture: emphasizes personal happiness and achievement, and the group has little influence on it. If necessary, individuals would rather give up becoming members of the group at any time than succumb to the will of the group. Countries with many immigrants and great changes, such as Europe and America.

Difference: Individual culture is subjective and independent, but it is easy to feel lonely. Collective culture cares more about group goals and enjoys social support and satisfactory interpersonal relationships. For example, heart disease is higher in individual culture.

Enlightenment: individual culture and collective culture have their own advantages and disadvantages. A society can be between individual culture and collective culture, or mixed with individual culture and collective culture. Perhaps the best culture is independent and harmonious, paying attention to individual interests and obeying collective interests to some extent.

Who is crazy here?

Researchers and students entered a mental hospital disguised as lunatics, and psychiatrists could not tell them apart. What is even more frightening is that once they go in, any of their remarks and behaviors are explained by the psychology of mental patients. Even if they admit that they are sick, it won't help, and they are forced to pretend to take medicine and then pour it into the toilet!

Later, the hospital leaders knew that some researchers had infiltrated the mental hospital, but they mistook a group of mental patients for pretenders! So a long-term debate about the ability of psychiatrists, the correct diagnosis of mental illness and the effectiveness of psychotherapy began!

30 defense

Psychoanalysis of defense mechanism was put forward by the daughter of the famous Freud. Defense mechanisms include: repression (squeezing out consciousness into unconsciousness), regression (for example, young people retreat to children's behavior patterns in order to avoid the crisis of providing for the aged), projection (projecting their own desires on others), reverse action (releasing real repressed desires through opposite actions) and sublimation (expressing impermissible desires in a socially acceptable way). Defense mechanism is very common in daily life, and it can be seen from yourself or others from time to time.

3 1 learned depression

Martin Senegman found that depression is acquired through learning through learning experiments on dogs! When you find that you no longer have the ability to change a certain aspect of your life, and any decision you make can no longer change and affect the result, you "learn" to give up trying! You "generalize" the experience of failure to other aspects, even in the face of things that can be controlled, you still give up on yourself and no longer think it is necessary to try. So depression, or "learned helplessness" came into being! You let yourself be slaughtered and give up hope of escape!

It's ironic to think about it. When I realized the powerful power of death in junior high school, I felt invincible helplessness. I know that death is an absolute reality that can't be controlled and changed at all, so I gradually give up the right to control everything else! A lovelorn youth may no longer believe that he can keep the person he loves the most, so he will no longer be involved in a new relationship. A child who grew up in a failed family environment may not believe that he has the ability to build a happy family in the future.

Therefore, learning from experience is not necessarily progress, and what you learn may also be depression. A failed experience may require many successes to restore the original confidence.

Crowding leads to abnormal behavior

In the experiment of mice, mice were put into four interconnected cages to ensure adequate food. At first, when the number was small, the social behavior of mice was normal. When the number of breeding doubled, it was observed that the two strongest males occupied the cages at both ends, each with eight or nine females as companions, and stood at the door to attack all the males who dared to enter. In addition, dozens of male rats crowded in the middle two cages showed several typical abnormal behaviors: some rats were white and fat, but they lost their sexual desire as if they were freed from everything; some rats bit other tails crazily; some rats were called prickly heads, actively looking for female rats, breaking the rules and refusing to wait or even eat similar cubs, while female rats gradually lost the ability to build nests and transfer young rats. At the end of the experiment, a large number of female rats died of various complications!

Revelation: High-density crowded environment will lead to abnormal behavior. Individuals who abide by social norms are aggressive, decadent and numb under the pressure of space. It is controversial to what extent this experiment is extended to people.

Lenovo: Everything seems peaceful and peaceful in peacetime. However, once the environment deteriorates, such as wars and epidemics. People are placed in a crowded or panic social atmosphere, personality and evil begin to take turns, and the actions of the bottom and the top appear all kinds of abnormal appearances!

How to choose a psychotherapist?

Statistical reports point out that all kinds of psychotherapy are effective (that is, better than no treatment), but they are not strong, and there is no significant advantage or disadvantage between them. Nowadays, psychotherapists often combine various psychotherapy to achieve better results! Moreover, some psychotherapy is especially suitable for certain psychological diseases, such as behaviorism desensitization therapy for phobia.

Revelation: Every theory of mind is like a blind man touching an elephant, which may only reflect part of the truth. Only a variety of combinations can be better explained and solved!

Fear reduction and desensitization therapy

Behavioral desensitization therapy has been proved to be quite effective in treating phobias, such as acrophobia, fear of snakes or spiders and other animals. Phobia, simply put, is an unnecessary, uncontrollable and irrational fear behavior.

The acquisition of phobia is often related to related terrible experiences. Take acrophobia as an example. The patient may have fallen from a tree when he was a child. So the patient established the conditioned reflex of falling from a height and learned to stay away from the height and balcony window sill.

There are two keys to desensitization therapy. One is to relive similar events (generally, let patients fantasize about situations that are more frightening, and then gradually upgrade the danger of imaginary situations, which is roughly divided into ten levels according to the patient's personal reflection), but no injury has occurred, thus relieving the conditioned fear reflex; Secondly, because of the incompatibility between relaxation and nervousness, a person can only be in one of them at a certain moment. When the therapist imagines a dangerous high-altitude scene, he will ask the patient to keep relaxed and take a deep breath. After more than ten courses of treatment, the general patients basically eliminated their fear of plateau.

Revelation: I have obvious acrophobia. I can't get close to the balcony or get stiff and uncomfortable. It seems that I graduated from high school, and the specific reason is unknown. Maybe I can make myself insensitive.

Project the real you.

The brain always tends to give and supplement what it sees with concrete meaning. Freud believed that we can project our own consciousness and personality by identifying and explaining ambiguous ink. However, due to the instability (reliability) and accidental randomness (validity) of the explanation, ink experiment is generally only used to help understand the patient's personality, not as a standard for treating diseases.

Lenovo: I remember staring at mosquito nets and clouds when I was a child. I can see tigers, people, rabbits and flowers later. You will never see what you have never seen or are not interested in!

Make up a story

Similar to the ink experiment, TNT experiment was designed. By presenting a photo to the subjects (there are many explanations for simulating ambiguity), let them use their imagination and make up a story to explain the expressions, behaviors or events of the characters in the photo. It's a bit like reading a picture and telling a story! Infer your subconscious, inner emotional conflicts and past experiences through the stories you tell.

Revelation: What you say reflects yourself!

one's deeds do not square with one's promises

Are the oral report and questionnaire results valid? Can people's attitudes or ideas about hypothetical situations reflect people's behavior in real situations? That is: Are words and deeds consistent?

Research shows that the less familiar he is with a prospect, the more inconsistent his attitude towards it when it really happens. For example, do you hate a Japanese neighbor or classmate or do you want to make friends? How long will you be happy after winning the lottery?

Based on the inherent cognitive prejudice and stereotype of celebrities towards the Japanese in the past, we may think that we are unwilling to make friends with the Japanese. But experiments show that when real scenes happen, we will treat real living individuals like others, and the inherent prejudice will be replaced by vivid individual images!

Revelation: We really don't know how we will react in a strange scene! The imaginary attitude is not reliable! Therefore, people should learn by action, not by imagination and inherent prejudice! If you don't move, you will never know your true reactions and feelings.

38 the power of conformity

Experiments show that people in society tend to follow the crowd, and often give up their original views after knowing that they are inconsistent with the public's views and attitudes, even though they think the public's views are ridiculous and stupid.

Countries with collectivist culture, such as China and Japan, are more conformity than individualism. Conformity can be used to explain many social phenomena, such as the emergence of trends and the absurd behavior of war.

Will you lend a helping hand?

Someone attacked another person with a knife in broad daylight. Will you lend a helping hand? If someone had a heart attack on the way, would you call a doctor?

This is a social phenomenon caused by a woman killing in the street. So many witnesses did not lend a helping hand during the long-term crime, which led to the tragedy! This triggered an explosive debate: Is everyone numb?

The simulation of similar scenes in the laboratory reproduces this conclusion, but no one will lend a helping hand if there are more viewers! When there is only one witness, it is most likely to help!

The psychological explanation for this is: 1 witnesses have many and scattered responsibilities, and they feel that there will always be others. 2. The guilt disappears. 3. Lack of information communication (the audience lacks communication).

40 unconditional obedience

In order to find out the root of the Nazi's brutal cleansing of Jews in World War II, psychologists launched an experimental study. In order to be universal, the study recruited subjects from all walks of life. Unfortunately, the results show that in certain situations, an individual will yield to authority, and even if he thinks this behavior is wrong and makes him feel uncomfortable, he will still tend to carry out orders! This is the terrible power of the situation!

Revelation: The same people may be Nazis in Germany in World War II, or they may be typical law-abiding citizens in peacetime. Social occasions often determine your behavior!