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Read about and understand the various psychological phenomena you observe in your day-to-day life. Get answers to common curiosities about everyday behavior. Understanding the root causes of your behaviors and those of others will greatly improve your understanding of human psychology. No human behavior, however small, is insignificant.
You may already be familiar with the ‘freeze response’ to stress. Usually, the normal stress response is the fight-or-flight response. If you can fight with the source of your threat/stress, you’ll fight. If you can’t, you’ll try to escape (flight). These are basic survival responses present in all animals. The freeze response occurs when you …
Masochism means enjoying physical pain. We often hear about masochism in the context of deviant sexual behavior. A sexual masochist is someone who gets sexually aroused by pain. There’s also a term for someone who enjoys non-physical, non-sexual pain- a psychological masochist. Psychological/mental/emotional masochism is when a person derives pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment from psychological …
Key Differences Overstimulation Overstimulation, also known as sensory overload, occurs when the sensory system receives too much information from the environment. Here, the sheer quantity of information matters more than its intensity. More often than not, overstimulation occurs when your sensory system receives low-to-moderate intensity information from multiple sources. However, a single source of sensory …
Being obsessed with someone involves devoting a lot of resources to that person. Be it mental, emotional, financial, or temporal resources. You can’t stop thinking about them. You stalk them on the internet and/or in real life. You crave their attention and yearn to talk to them. You keep talking about them to your friends. …
Does the idea of showering create excitement or resistance in you? If you resist showering, you’re not alone. People may avoid showering for several reasons broadly classified as psychological and non-psychological. Non-psychological reasons for not showering include: This article will focus on the psychological reasons for not showering. If you skip showering every once in …
Scrolling media is not a recent phenomenon, as many would think. Scrolling behavior appeared when remote controls for TVs were invented. Before that, people had to get up and physically change the TV channel. I remember when my dad used to scroll channels on the TV, constantly pressing the button on his remote control, and …
Psychologist Erik Erikson discussed the stages of psychosocial development that each person goes through. At each stage, specific needs must be met. If those needs aren’t met, a person gets psychologically ‘stuck’ or arrested in that stage. According to Erikson, unresolved developmental tasks leave a life-long residue of emotional immaturity. As a result, many people’s …
Criticism is a massive deal for humans. We have a strong desire for approval and acceptance from others- to belong to our tribe. For most of our evolutionary history, living in close-knit tribes increased the odds of survival. The more valuable you are to your tribe, the more acceptance, status, and approval you get. The …
Survival is a top priority for the brain. You feel physiological and psychological stress when you encounter a survival-threatening or traumatic situation. When you’ve dealt with the threat, the stress fades, and you return to psychological and psychological balance. However, when a stressful event is high-impact or low-impact but continuous, it’s hard for the mind …
It’s common to see two people getting stuck in an argument where one of them says something like: “Answer my question! You’re deflecting!” When humans ask questions, they expect a straightforward answer. They don’t want you beating around the bush because it means extra and unnecessary cognitive processing. While some can handle the meandering, others …