15 Fascinating Psychology Experiments That Show How Amazing and Stupid Brains Are

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Eric Lund
Jan 2, 2019 11:00 AM EST

Your brain is capable of amazing things like calculating complex equations and experiencing empathy. That said, it is also afraid of the color red, can be tricked into thinking it's drunk, and would rather experience pain than boredom.

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  • 01
    Text - 7 hours ago Sunny_Roller 6.4k points If people have the upper hand they will put others down to keep it. An experiment told a class of kids that having blue eyes meant you were smarter, achieved more etc. All of a sudden kids with blue eyes formed their own groups. Things like bullying and exclusion of other eye colours started too. They repeated the experiment with different eye colours in different classes, all with the same results.
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  • 02
    Text - 10 hours ago S palebluedot1988 42.2k points Hedonic Adaptation. Put simply, a person who had just won the lottery and another person who had just been paralysed took a survey to measure their life contentment. Obviously it was high and low, respectively. However, they both took the same survey a year later and both scored similarly The point being that regardless what happens to you in life, good or bad, you will always adapt and spend most of your life feeling "neutral."
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  • 03
    Text - edited 58 minutes ago3 swedishyeetballs 37.8k points 6 hours ago Mice were put on two sides of a wall with a door in. Only the right mouse could open the door. Slowly, they filled the left mouse's room with water and eventually when right mouse saw them in danger, they opened the door. However, mice that had previously been on he left side and were now on the right (mice who had previously been "wetted") opened the door considerably faster because they knew how unpleasant it was to be in
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  • 04
    Text - memesandreams 6.3k points 7 hours ago Aron and Dutton (1974) Misattribution of arousal. Men who had just walked across bridge (either ready or unsteady) were approached by a female psychology student, posing to do a project on the effects of exposure to scenic attractions on creative expression. The men to complete a questionnaire and write a short dramatic story about a picture she provided and gave them her phone number if they had more questions. Men who walked across the shaky bridge
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  • 05
    Text - 10 hours ago MarmosetSweat 24.0k points Split brain studies. One example: by providing differing information to each hemisphere of the brain in split brain individuals (those with a severed corpus callosum, meaning there's no communication between the two hemispheres) they found that people would actually physically grab their own hand with their other hand they saw it making a "mistake". Basically each side of the brain controls one side of your body, and in split brain people you can ac
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  • 06
    Text - AverageJames23 5.8k points 7 hours ago Not a psychologist, but the one where given a choice between sitting down doing nothing and shocking oneself, people tend to choose the shock. Ergo, we would choose pain over boredom.
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  • 07
    Text - edited 1 hour ago ndphillips 3.5k points 6 hours ago There was an experiment to measure the dopamine (ie happiness) hit your brain takes when eating something you're craving. The dopamine builds with the anticipation and peaks right as you take the first bite. Then, after the first moment it's in your mouth, the dopamine levels begin to decrease. This showed that many times we are desiring (edited to show the distinction made by poster below:) "the attainment of the thing more than the th
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  • 08
    Text - edited 5 hours ago gerik_sinovercos 23.9k points 7 hours ago Solomon Asch's experiment on conformity. He set up a test wherein he would show 3 lines of different lengths to 5 or 6 individuals (I forgot the exact number) who had to state which line was the longest of the 3. The thing is, only the last individual is the participant and the others are actors paid to answer in a specific manner. For the first few questions, they choose the correct answer, but later on they start choosing the
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  • 09
    Text - laprycon 7.0k points 8 hours ago The Rosenthal Effect: The prejudice and expectations you have towards a student/contestant/etc. highly dictates his performance in the long run. Look it up (aka Pygmalion Effect)
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  • 10
    Text - IGotSatan 4.1k points 6 hours ago edited 50 minutes ago The influence of the colour red in sports: Judges were shown a video of a Tae Kwon Do match and awarded more points to the red competitor (versus the blue competitor). When the colours were digitally reversed, judges awarded more points to the other, now red, competitor. Edit: Since there's a lot more interest than I expected, here's some more info: Red may be a signal of dominance as reddened skin is associated with higher testoster
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  • 11
    Text - Extrasherman 24.1k points 6 hours ago One time I participated in a paid research experiment. I was basically tricked into thinking I was drunk. I was placed in a room with 2 other people and we were instructed to drink vodka with cranberry juice over a period of time while we socialized. After we drank I was placed in a room where I had to read some flashing words on a computer. I felt pretty drunk at this point. When the researcher came back into the room he gave me my car keys and said
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  • 12
    Text - KingJRY23 16.4k points 8 hours edited 6 hours ago Research on cognitive dissonance. Basically, the idea is that when we have two contradictory beliefs, we unconsciously adjust one to make it compatible with the other. For example, in one experiment, participants that were paid less to do a boring task found the task to be more interesting than those that were paid more. We unconsciously reason like this: if I didn't do it for the money, then I must've done it because it is interesting. Ou
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  • 13
    Text - poopellar 11.5k points 8 hours ago I don't know the name of it but apparently two people become closer if they survive through something together. Not even actual 'surviving death' scenarios but anything that has you on your toes and heart racing, like a roller coaster.
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  • 14
    Text - zangor 2.7k points 7 hours ago edited 4 hours ago Just the general psychological phenomenon of Loss Aversion. In cognitive psychology and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it is better to not lose $5 than to find $5
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  • 15
    Text - Avylx 7.2k points 7 hours ago Wegner and his white bears. Essentially, people who were instructed to not think about a white bear, found themselves thinking about it more than those actively trying to think about one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic process theory
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