- [Narrator] The human
brain is a mysterious thing
that can be affected by
things in unexpected ways.
Every day we're subtly
influenced by things
we aren't even aware of.
The following ten examples demonstrate
how you can use knowledge of certain
psychological principles
to control situations
to your advantage, be it socially,
professionally, or academically.
- Amazing!
- [Narrator] Number ten!
Throw them off their game.
If you're playing a sport or a game,
and your opponent is doing spectacularly,
there's a way to throw them off without
them even realizing it.
Ask them about their technique.
Asking them how exactly they're doing
as well as they're doing,
takes them out of the zone,
and back into their own head,
and anyone who has ever been in the zone
can tell you that your head
is not where you want to be.
Truly hitting your stride in a game is all
about concisely not considering all the
things you theoretically
know and practiced,
and just effortlessly
putting them into action.
Humans have two kinds of memory,
Implicit memory and explicit memory.
Implicit memory is long term
and doesn't require conscious thought.
This is where you want to be for games.
Explicit memory is what you're causing
them to fall back into.
It causes conscious recall.
Number nine.
Don't over-negotiate.
Negotiating deals is a mixture of art
and science that some
people seem to excel at
and others just stumble through.
One way to help your
cause is to stop talking
after you've stated your position.
Unnecessary words make your position
seem weaker by making it look like
you don't even understand it yourself.
Over explaining can also make
you appear less confident
and is just as common for people
to talk to much when they're nervous
as it is to completely shut up.
Basically after you've given them
what they need to know about your offer,
everything you say after that
isn't doing you any favors.
Number eight.
Eye contact.
Figuring out just how much eye contact
you're supposed to make in a
conversation can be awkward.
Especially for the sorts of people
who might not be huge fans
of having conversations
with pepole they don't
know in the first place.
Dale Carnegie, the author
of the famous book,
How to Win Friends and Influence People,
offered this solution.
Look into someone's eyes long enough
to tell what color they
are before you look away.
This feels like a natural
and conversational
amount of eye contact to make.
A similar trick is to imagine a triangle
that connects the other
person's eyes and mouth
and shift your gaze
between the three points
every five to ten seconds.
This will make you appear interested
in the conversation, even if you'd rather
be playing video games
or eating a sandwich.
Number seven.
Remember names.
Whenever you meet someone
that you'll meet again
or even if there's just a chance
that you'll meet them again,
it's important to remember their name.
People are more likely to want to help you
if they feel valued by you.
And the start of making
someone feel valued,
is to remember their name.
This is because by not
remembering someone's name,
whether you intend to or not,
you're telling them
they're just one of many.
For example, every student in the class
knows the teacher's name,
but the teacher may not remember
the name of every student.
This is because each student
has only one teacher.
But the teacher has many students.
So by remembering someone's name,
you're showing them that they're
the only person that
fills that role for you.
Number six.
Chew gum for tests.
Provided that your loud chewing noises
doesn't cause your classmates
to physically attack you.
Scientists have discovered that
chewing gum right before a test,
could improve your score.
The chewing motion improves the flow
of blood to the head which
can help your memory.
While the affects last only a few minutes,
researchers believe that
it could prove useful.
In the study, students
who chewed gum immediately
before the test recalled 25-50% more
than the students who didn't chew gum,
and the students who
chewed gum during the test.
Researchers have called the phenomena,
Mastication-induced arousal,
and say that the affects are
similar to those of mild exercise.
Unfortunately, chewing gum doesn't burn
as many calories as going for a jog.
Number five.
Foot in the door.
This infamous psychological
marketing method,
known as the foot in the door technique,
operates on the principle that
people are more likely
to agree to something big
if you can first get them
to agree to something small.
Social scientists call it
successive approximations.
If you can land a small yes,
you're going to have a better chance
of getting a big yes.
To study this idea,
psychologists in California called women
and asked them if they would be willing
to answer a few questions about
the household products that they use.
A few days later, they called again,
this time asking if they
could send five or six men
into the house to go through
cupboards and storage places
as part of a two hour enumeration
of household products.
The women who were called previously,
were twice as likely to agree to this
second request than were the women
who had not been called previously.
So the next time you need a favor,
consider starting small.
Number four.
Asking questions.
Talking to other human beings
can be difficult for some human beings.
It can seem like a daunting task
and it can be almost
physically painful to sit
through an awkward silence.
The best way to naturally
start conversations
and maintain them so you can avoid
dying of terminal awkwardness,
is simply to ask questions.
Many people's favorite topic
of conversation is themselves,
and questions allow them to take
the conversation in that direction.
This is how interviews can
last for hours and hours,
because nobody knows anything
better than themselves.
Number three.
First dates.
While many people think that
the ideal place for a first date
is a movie theater or a coffee shop,
signs can suggest that you would be
better off taking your
date on a roller coaster.
Known as the misattribution of arousal,
this psychological idea describes
the process wherein people unconsciously
mistake what is actually
causing them to feel excited.
The roller coaster is what's actually
making your dates head
flood with endorphins
and their blood stream with adrenaline,
but they just might think
that it's actually you.
And interesting test done on this idea
had men cross either a suspension bridge
or a normal sturdy bridge to get
to the woman on the other side,
who asked them some questions and
gave them her personal phone number
they could call if they had
questions about the study.
A greater percentage of the men who
had gone across the suspension
bridge called the women.
A result that the researchers attributed
to the misattribution of arousal
Number two.
Smiling.
Smiling it turns out can be a
powerful psychological tool.
While everyone knows that people
smile when they are happy,
few people know that smiling can
also cause you to feel happy.
In a study investigating this,
subjects were told to either
raise their cheeks, meaning smile,
or contract their eyebrows, meaning frown,
when they were presented
with certain images.
Subjects found the images that they
viewed while smiling to be more pleasant
than the ones they viewed
while they were frowning.
So if you're trying to cheer yourself up,
smile, and you'll be more likely
to smile without having
to force it pretty soon.
Interestingly, people are also less
likely to get mad if they can see their
own angry face in the mirror.
People tend to underestimate the
affects of their physical
body on their mental state.
Number one.
Because.
At a library, researchers cut in front
of people who were in line to
use a photocopy machine,
not because they were really busy,
but for science.
They would then ask the person they cut,
either, "Excuse me, I have five pages
may I use the xerox machine."
"Excuse me, I have five pages.
May I use the xerox machine,
because I'm in a rush."
Or, "Excuse me, I have five
pages. May I use the xerox
machine because I have to make copies?"
The first question, "May I"
only got people to let
them cut 60% of the time.
However the second and third options,
the "because" questions,
got people to let them cut in line
over 90% of the time.
The third question isn't
even a real reason.
"Because I have to make copies"
Well everyone who uses a photocopy machine
has to make copies.
The person who was cut in line on
obviously had to make copies.
The word because has a unique affect
on the human mind and should be considered
the next time you're asking
someone for something.
Similarly people are more likely
to help you if you prase
your request as an offer.
"Would you like to help me?"
as opposed to "Please help me."
These ten seemingly simple things
were lurking under your nose
and infiltrating your
brain your whole life
without you even realizing it.
Have you realized any of these tricks
working on you?
Will you be using them
to influence others?
Let me know in the
comment section down below
because I want to know.
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