5 Non-Obvious Tricks Your Brain Tricks Us With - Self-development

The human brain is capable of incredible things, but our minds often play with us, distorting the perception of reality. Feeling, memory, feelings, thinking, how much can we trust ourselves when it comes to the work of our brain? How does he deceive us?

1. Replaces memories

It may seem to us that memory is a kind of storehouse of memories that, like diaries, photographs in albums or videos, are stored on shelves until we need them. When the need arises, we seek out the record and revise it. Influenced by such a metaphor, we tend to trust our memory and are ready to argue about anything, proving that everything was exactly as we remember.

In fact, a picture that is extremely distorted by the peculiarities of our perception is initially recorded in memory. Moreover, every time we turn to a memory, our brain reconstructs and completes it. That is, we remember not at all what it was in reality. And not even the very first saved "picture", but the last version of our memory. Consciousness illuminates different details each time, therefore, depending on the emotional and physical state, something becomes more convex, and something is erased. Chances are good that your especially favorite memories are very different from what they actually were.

2. Makes you fall in love

Sometimes our brains can make us fall in love with a completely inappropriate person. A man and a woman, having experienced a tickling situation in the company of each other, for example, a ride on a roller coaster or rafting on a rough river, may feel attracted to each other. With short-term stress, we experience fear, a certain set of hormones and neurotransmitters are released, which are designed to induce us to take action. In the body, this is felt as general arousal, which can easily be mistaken for a love interest if an attractive person is nearby. The sense of danger literally pushes us towards each other. This can explain why good girls choose hooligans, and men, saving a beautiful woman in trouble, end up falling in love with her.

3. Hides reality

Even if we closely monitor what is happening around us, we may not notice the changes. To do this, you just need to divert our attention to something else for a second. We can literally miss the change. In a famous experiment with a door, which was conducted on the Harvard University campus by researchers Simon and Levin, one of the experimenters asked a passer-by to show the way to the main building on a map. When the subject was fond of looking at the map, two workers carried the door between him and the experimenter. At this time, the place of the researcher was occupied by his colleague, who, after the workers left, continued to communicate with the passer-by as if nothing had happened. About half of the subjects did not notice the substitution. Later this experiment was repeated many times, with the same result. Even when researchers in completely different clothes, of different heights, ages and sex changed places, there were passers-by who did not notice the change. This phenomenon is called change blindness.

4. Confuses plans

We tend to be overly optimistic about the time it takes to solve a problem. Even if we already have experience, we lay in less time than it took last time. This is called a planning error. Researchers offer different explanations for this phenomenon. This may be due to the fact that we do not remember exactly how long it took to solve such a problem in the past. According to another version, the planning error occurs due to the fact that we want to make a better impression on others and rely on our strengths, ignoring our weaknesses. There is a version that we take into account only the best scenario, believe that the delays were caused by external interference, which this time we can prevent, and wishful thinking.

5. Interferes with objectivity

We love to be right. We tend to be eager to support opinions that match our understanding of the situation, and have a hard time agreeing with our opponent's arguments, no matter how reasonable they may be. We select, interpret, and remember facts that support our point of view, and ignore anything that might shake it. This cognitive bias is called Confirmation Bias. Unfortunately, it is not at all harmless, since, for example, it promotes the rooting of negative judgments, which can subsequently lead to depression. A person with unstable self-esteem may believe that he is not worthy of attention, and, meticulously studying the reaction of others, will find more and more confirmation of his conjectures. Due to confirmation bias, many mistakes are made in scientific research (for example,inappropriate experimental results are swept aside, unpopular research is inhibited by senior colleagues) and a polarization of society occurs (for example, Democrats and Republicans in the United States, racial, religious divisions, anti- and anti-vaccinators, supporters and opponents of masks in public places).