The human brain hides within itself a whole number of secrets and limitations about which we no very little. Here are 20 surprising facts to let you know more about how your mind works.
1. We all experience something called ’Inattentional blindness’
Watch the video below. You need to count the number of times which the people in the white t-shirts pass the ball between each other. Watch this video BEFORE you read further below.
This is a great example of what’s called inattentional blindness. This refers to the idea that we often become ’blind’ to the various things that are happening right in front of us if we are concentrating on one particular task. In this case, a person dressed in a gorilla costume walks into the middle of the group of people, stops for a second, then walks of the other side of the camera. Many people who watch the video for the first time don’t notice the man in the gorilla costume at all, because they’re concentrating intently on counting the number of times the ball is passed between the players in white. Moreover, those who already know about the gorilla often stop paying attention to other details in the video — for example, what colour the curtains are behind the group, or the fact that one of the people in black leaves the scene.
2. We can only remember 3-4 things simultaneously
There is a concept in psychology known as ’The magical number seven, plus or minus two’, according to which an individual cannot keep more than 5-9 pieces of information in their head simultaneously. A large amount of the information stored in your short-term memory stays there fore just 20-30 seconds and then disappears, unless we read or tell ourselves it again and again. Although the majority of people can remember around seven numbers for a short period, it’s extremely difficult for just about anyone to remember ten or more. The latest research suggests that most people are able to keep only around three to four pieces of information in their head at any one time. A good example: think about when you’ve tried to memorise a telephone number: the chances are you broke it down into blocks of three or four numbers to help you remember it.
3. We find it difficult to perceive a combination of red and blue colours
Although this combination is used in a large number of national flags, humans find it difficult to visually perceive these colours when they’re placed next to each other. This happens because of the visual effect known as chromostereopsis, which is when certain colours appear to ’stick out’ or ’sink’ against the background of another colour. Staring at these colour combinations (red and blue; red and green) can irritate and tire out your eyes.
4. We perceive things differently to how we interpret them
According to research carried out by Cambridge University, ’It’s not ipmtaonrt waht odrer the lteters aepapr in a wrod. Olny the frsit and lsat lteters hvae to be in the rghit palce.’ Even if other letters in a word are mixed up, you can still read the sentence without any trouble. This happens because the human brain doesn’t pay attention to every letter when reading something, but to the word as a whole. It constantly processes (that is, reworks) information from the sensory organs. How you interpret information (the meaning of the word) as a rule will be different to how from how you see perceive it (mixed up letters).
5. We can only concentrate properly on something for around 10 minutes
Even if you’re at a meeting or a lecture, you’re interested in the subject and the speaker is expressing his or herself in an engaging way, you won’t be able to concentrate on what’s going on very well for more than 7-10 minutes. After this point, your attention begins to wander and you really need to take a break in order to maintain your interest in the subject being discussed.
6. The ability to delay satisfaction appears in childhood
The ability to delay one’s need for the immediate satisfaction of their desires and wishes first appeared when they were very young. This helps a child to study at school, as well as cope with stress and disappointment.
7. We daydream for at least 30% of the time
Do you often have your head in the clouds? According to psychologists, we all love to daydream, so much so that we do it, as a minimum, for around 30% of the time we’re awake. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Research suggests that people who daydream are more inventive and are better able to solve various problems.
8. A habit takes around 66 days to form on average
The more complicated the behaviour which we want to engage in, the longer it will take us to turn it into a habit. It’s said that it takes about 1.5 times longer to inculcate the habit of regularly doing sport than it does to make yourself regularly eat fruit. But the good news is that even if you forget to do your chose activity for a day or two, it doesn’t affect the amount of time it will take you to make a habit of it (although, of course, too many missed days will slow down the process).
9. We overestimate what the strength of our reaction will be to future events
We aren’t very good at predicting the future. More precisely, very often we overestimate what the strength of our reaction will be to future events, be it positive or negative. Research shows that people often believe a major positive event, such as marriage, will make them a whole lot happier than in fact turns out to be the case. At the same time, we often predict that a negative event such as losing our job or an accident will have a much worse effect on our lives than it often does in reality.
10. We blame other people rather than circumstances (or the circumstances instead of ourselves)
Remember that time when you were kept waiting by someone when you had an important meeting to attend? The chances are you attributed their lateness to their lack of responsibility and disorganisation. But at other times when it was you who was late, you blamed circumstances (traffic jams, for example). In psychology this is called ’the fundamental error of attribution’ – the inclination to explain the behaviour of others according to their qualities as a person, and explain your own in terms of external factors (expressed in such phrases which you tell yourself like ’I didn’t have a choice’; ’I was lucky’). Even though we can become aware of our inclination to make unfair judgements of this kind, we still continue along the same path. This characteristic is ingrained in everyone from childhood.
11. The number of real friends we are able to have is ultimately limited
Even if you can boast of having several thousand friends on Facebook, the reality is that you have a whole lot less real friends. Psychologists and anthropologists argue that the maximum number of close relationships which a person can sustain is around 50 to 150.
12. We cannot avoid paying attention to food, sex and danger
Have you ever wondered why traffic always slows when people are driving by an accident? Well, it’s not really these people’s fault; you and everybody else can’t resist looking at scenes of danger. All of us have an ancient part of the brain which is responsible for ensuring your survival, and it’s constantly asking: ’Can I eat this? Can I have sex with it? Can it kill me?’ These are the main three things all of us are programmed to think about. This is evolution staring you in the face: without food the organism dies; without sex we die out; and if we’re killed then the other two points don’t really matter anymore!
13. We know how to do things we’ve never done before
Imagine that you’d never seen an iPad, but someone gave you one and suggested you read a book on it. Even before you turn it on, you’ll have ideas about what the book will look like on the screen, how the iPad functions and how you’ll go about using it. In other words, you already have a mental model of reading the book on a tablet computer, even if you’ve never done it. It will probably differ in places from the mental model which a person with experience of reading electronic books will have, and the person who knows what an iPad is. These mental models are grounded in an incomplete set of facts, past experience and intuitive thinking.
14. We always want more choices than we can cope with
If you go into any supermarket, you will see a huge selection of food products — this is supposedly because, as we often hear, ’people need to have many different choices’ available to them. In one piece of research carried out at a supermarket, customers were presented with six different kinds of jam, and them 24 different kinds. Although people stopped most often at the counter with 24 different kinds, they bought one or other jam more at the one with only six. The reason for this is simple: despite the fact it always seems that we want more, our brain can only cope with a small number of ideas/pieces of information at any one time.
15. We’re happier when we’re busy with something
Imagine you’re at the airport and you need to go get your luggage. It takes you around 12 minutes to get to the luggage area. When you get to the conveyor belt, you grab your suitcase immediately. Now imagine a slightly different course of events: it takes you two minutes to get to the baggage area, and you end up having to wait for your suitcase for ten minutes. Although in both cases the entire process took up 12 minutes of your time, it’s only in the second case that you would, probably, get annoyed. If a person has no reason to be active, he decides not to do anything. And although this helps us save energy, having nothing to do also makes us feel impatient and unhappy.
16. We take most decisions subconsciously
Although we like to think that we are thoroughly in control of what we are doing, research suggests that everyday decisions are in fact taken at a subconscious level, and that there’s a reason for this. Every second, our brains are assaulted by more than 11 million individual pieces of information, and because we simply can’t check all of of this, our subconscious takes many decisions as a result of this information.
17. Our memories change
We often perceive that our memories are like movies which we can play in our heads. We think they’re preserved as perfectly as a video clip on a computer, to be watched again and again. This is not in fact the case. Every time you return to a past event in your mind, you change what you remember, because the nerve endings in your brain are activated slightly differently each time. This is due to the influence of both more recent events which have happened in the time since you last recalled something as well as the desire to fill in the gaps in your memory.
18. We can’t do several things at once
If you think that you’re great at doing several things at once, then you’re mistaken. Research suggests that all of us struggle, in fact, to do two or three things at any one time. Of course, we can for example walk and talk at the same time, but the fact is that your brain is concentrating most of all on the task it sees here as a priority. We can’t really think about two things at the same time.
19. The clearest memories we have are often incorrect
Memories of dramatic, thrilling or disturbing events are called ’flashbacks’ by psychologists. Many people know this, but what they don’t realise is that, interestingly, these flashbacks are often full of mistakes. In one piece of research, people were asked to recall where they were and what they were doing at the time of the 9/11 attacks. They were asked twice — the first time not long after these events, the second time three years later. This particular investigation found that 90% of the recollections provided three years after differed from those given not long after 9/11. This phenomenon is caused by the presence of strong emotions, which can distort your memory.
20. Our brains are just as active during sleep as they are when we’re awake
When you’re sleeping and dreaming, your brain is busy processing and organising all of the information you’ve fed it during the previous day. It creates associations between the information its received and decides what to remember and what to forget about. You probably remember being told to ’get enough sleep’ the night before an exam or important event or appointment. These are wise words — if you want to be able to recall all that you’ve taken in later on, it’s best to go to sleep straight after you’ve receive the information in question. This will give your brain the time to put everything in its right place in your mind.
Source: factroom
