Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Interesting psych effects

My growing obsession with psychology :)

1. Hawthorne effect : Because the subjects know they are being studied and the experimenter is interested in their response, their response gets modified.
Coined at Hawthorne Works (a factory) where at a study of worker's productivity vs. the level of illumination got it all wrong as the motivation actually was coming through the attention the workers were getting and not the light.

2. Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect : Named after the famous mythological sculptor, , who fell in love with a female statue he had carved out of ivory after it became human from his wishes.
In psychology, "greater the expectation from you, better you perform". In a Rosenthal-Jacobson study, when some teachers were falsely told that many of their students had high IQs, in some time, the case became so.

3. Golem Effect : Sort of opposite of Pygmalion effect. When lower expectation are placed on you, you perform poorer. According to Jewish mythology, the golem -a clay creature - was originally created to protect the Jews of Prague; however, over time, the golem grew more and more corrupt to the point of spiraling violently out of control and had to be destroyed.

4. Placebo effect : (Latin for "I shall please") A medicine that in truth does nothing but shows great improvement in patients who believe it works. Widely known and practiced in medical as well as psychological science. Nocebo effect (Latin : "I shall harm") is just the opposite : A patient who disbelieves in a treatment may experience a worsening of symptoms.

5. Pratfall effect : The attractiveness of a competent person increases when he commits a blunder, while that of incompetent further decreases when he commits one. So wonderfully true :)

6. Spotlight effect : The tendency to think that more people watch you and notice something about you than they really do.

7. Butterfly Effect: Yes, just like the movie "The butterfly effect" :) The butterfly effect serves as a metaphor for life in a chaotic world. Specifically, it suggests that small events can have very large consequences. This is a relatively new approach as it was once believed that small events produced small effects and large events produced large effects. Chaos theory, however, changed this view and now the butterfly effect suggests that little things, like a bird flapping its wings over China today, can have big effects, like causing a hurricane in America next week.

8. Bystander Effect: A social phenomenon in which a person (or persons) are less likely to offer help to another person (or persons) when there are more people around who can also provide assistance. Many people believe that, when there is an emergency and lots of people are present, the people in need are more likely to get assistance. However, this is not the case.So what helps, is pointing at someone and asking him/her to help.

9. Othello Effect : The notion of the Othello Effect stems from Paul Ekman and occurs in an interrogation or Q&A type situation. A person who is actually truthful may feel nervous, anxious, or generally worried that he will not be believed by the other person (for example, a police officer). In this situation, the person may exhibit fear which may appear to be just like the type of nervous behavior a liar may exhibit when they are afraid of being caught. So, the innocent person may be perceived as being untruthful because of their behavior that simply resulted from being nervous about being perceived as untruthful...it's quite the catch 22, isn't it? The role model here is Shakespeare's Iago, insidiously, malevolently and falsely poisoning Othello's mind against his faithful wife Desdemona. These are the lies people fear and resent the most, statements that will not only deceive them but also trick them into foolish or ruinous courses of behavior.

10. Primacy Effect: This is the tendency for the first items presented in a series to be remembered better or more easily, or for them to be more influential than those presented later in the series. Also note that more likelihood to remember words at the end of the list more than words in the middle is called the Recency effect.

11.  Spillover Effect: Spillover Effect refers to the tendency of one person's emotion to affect how other people around them feel. For example, the teacher received a phone call that his wife was pregnant with a much-awaited baby. He goes into class happy and excited, and although he doesn't tell his class about the good news, his good mood rubs off on his students and they feel happy as well.

12. Matthew effect :
"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath."
—Matthew 25:29, King James Version.
 In sociology, it means " the rich get richer, the poor get poorer".

13. Framing effect : Depending on how you frame the choices (even the same one but in different formats), the decision varies depending on if you focus on gain/loss.Example : 80% fat free or 20% fatty?? Easy to decide :)

14. Boomerang effect : If during the study, the subject feels that his freedom is threatened in some way, he will show "reactance" by choosing forbidden/wrong alternatives.

In social marketing, the boomerang effect occurs as a result of attempted attitude change. If someone makes a strong attempt to change a prospect's attitude toward a subject, the prospect will counter with an equally strong response, even if, prior to the confrontation, the prospect held a weak attitude toward the subject.

15. Halo effect : A cognitive bias in which our judgments of a person’s character can be influenced by our overall impression of them. Coined by psychologist Edward Thorndike and since then, several researchers have studied the halo effect in relation to attractiveness, and its bearing on the judicial and educational systems. 

16. Lake Wobegon effect : Named after a fictional town in the U.S. state of Minnesota, made famous by a radio show the "News from Lake Wobegon" characterized as "the little town that time forgot, and the decades cannot improve," and as the town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." The Lake Wobegon effect, also known as Illusory superiority cognitive bias, is a natural human tendency to overestimate one's capabilities..


No comments:

Post a Comment