7 Experiments to Understand Why You Behave the Way You Do

[Music] why do you behave the way you do that kind of sounds like your parents right or maybe just my parents you probably think you're in charge of how you act but are you in a never-ending quest to understand the mystery of the human mind psychologists have conducted loads of experiments and their findings may have you questioning if you're really in control of your actions at all for instance number one the conformity experiment would you ever give a wrong answer when you know the right one seems unlikely since we can all be kind of stubborn when it comes to being right but it turns out there might be a situation where you would Solomon Asch his experiment from the 1960s demonstrates this it involved ordinary unsuspecting people and actors who pretended to be ordinary participants they were all placed in a room together and asked to look at two pictures one of them showed three lines of different lengths and the other a single line their task was to tell which line from the first picture was as long as the line in the second picture the answer was always obvious the actors were instructed to give only wrong answers and surprisingly 75% of the ordinary participants went along with the rest of the group however when they were tested individually 98% of them gave the correct answer when they asked the participants why they gave the wrong answer the first time most of them confessed that they agreed with the rest of the group because they didn't want to face ridicule Simon Nash went further with his experiments and decided to find out if people would go along with the groups obviously nonsensical behavior this experiment was even shown on an episode of the TV show candid camera an unsuspecting man entered an elevator and then it was filled with more people who all stood oddly facing the back wall talk about awkward at first the man was really confused but then eventually turned around to this confirmed even more that our decisions are greatly influenced by those our found us this is a good reminder that the group isn't always smarter or better informed are you brave enough to go against the crowd number two the smoke-filled room imagine you're sitting in a room and smoke starts to billow out of a vent in the wall you'd probably do something about that right well I wouldn't be so sure in another famous experiment from the 1960s carried out by John Darley and Bibb latane of Columbia University students were invited to discuss the problems of city life which was just a cover before the discussion they were asked to fill in some questionnaires in a waiting room first while they were doing that fix smoke began to enter the room through a small vent in the wall when the students were alone in the room three-fourths of them left to find someone to tell because well you know where there's smoke there's usually fire however when they were together with other people who were instructed not to react to the smoke nine out of ten students silently kept filling out the forms they thought it must be okay since other people didn't seem to care or be worried even if it could have meant danger this experiment supports the idea that people would even act against their best interest just to fit in because standing out from the crowd is just too scary do you agree let me know down in the comments number three teens without technology in this digital world it's hard to imagine a day without devices how long do you think you can go without touching your phone Hey the time when you're asleep doesn't count think you could make it for eight hours Russian psychologist Katarina murashova conducted an experiment in 2011 to see if a group of teens aged 12 to 18 could stay away from all gadgets TV video games and internet for eight hours they were instructed to spend this time on their own doing whatever they want as long as it had nothing to do with technology out of the sixty eight teens only three of them passed the test those who gave up later reported feeling extremely anxious or super bored so they just went back to surfing the net or playing video games the heroic three that succeeded decided to indulge in their favorite hobbies none of them seem bothered by the absence of tech entertainment later the psychologist repeated the experiment with 49 participants aged 11 to 20 but this time they were allowed to choose one person a friend relative or their boyfriend or girlfriend to spend the eight hours with 13 participants managed to find something to do for the whole period of time with their chosen partner one of the pair's even built a kennel for a dog neither of them owned the ones who didn't make it stop the experiment because they wanted to engage in their usual activities like watching a movie together or playing a video game and they felt the urge to check their social media hmm I wonder who I'd choose as a partner for such a task yeah probably my bed number for violinist in the subway an unusual experiment was carried out by the Washington Post in 2011 they asked Joshua Bell who in case you don't know is a grammy-winning musician to play the violin at a subway station in DC dressed like an ordinary street performer he played one of the most intricate pieces ever written on a violin that's worth are you ready for this 3.5 million dollars I bet the acoustics in the station made that sound amazing but the passers-by didn't seem all that impressed only six people stopped and stayed to enjoy the music everyone else just rushed by never giving the time to appreciate the brilliant performance as this undercover street musician Joshua Bell collected 32 bucks but just two days before the experiment he had a show that sold out at a huge theater in Boston where seats cost an average of $100 I think this is a good reminder to slow down and pay attention to the beauty that can show up for us in unexpected places especially when it's free v piano stairs do you usually take the stairs or the escalator yeah the less physical exhausting is usually the top choice but what if the stairs got a little fun makeover huh what experiment shows that when given a choice between easy and fun were more likely to choose fun in 2009 Volkswagen sponsored a social campaign in Stockholm Sweden to find out if a bit of fun can inspire people to change their behavior they transformed a stairway next to an escalator into a giant working keyboard as you walk up or down each step played a note like a piano the experiment showed 66% more people than normal chose to take the stairs proving that making things fun can help more people make healthier choices this idea was soon adopted in some other big cities like Oakland Melbourne Milan and Istanbul okay so when are they gonna bring it to my town 6 the nudge theory deep down inside we all know what's best for us yep we just can't break our bad habits perhaps all we need is something to come along and give us a little push in the right direction The Economist Richard thaller noticed this when he had a dinner party with friends while waiting for the food to be ready they decided to munch on a large bowl of cashews when half of it was gone he hid the ball in the kitchen pantry so they wouldn't ruin their appetites and waste lines completely surprisingly the other guests thanked him for doing that that inspired thaller to come up with the nudge theory basically it suggests that people tend to gravitate toward positive decisions when they're subtly promoted not when they're strictly advised this theory is proven to be true whenever it's been tested no matter the situation for example authorities at the Amsterdam Airport put small fly shaped stickers in the urinals for men to have something to aim at this resulted in much cleaner public restrooms because well there was 80% less spillage in another case one u.s. grocery store put green arrows on the floor that led visitors to the fresh produce section that little nudge had 9 out of 10 people follow them resulting in more fruits and veggies being purchased number seven the white bear experiment can you stop yourself from thinking about something in particular one psychologist ran a series of tests to see what would happen if someone tried in 1987 Daniel Wagner asked participants in his study to do only one thing not think about white bears for five minutes if they visualized a polar bear they had to ring a bell to register the thought well the more people try to refrain from thinking about white bears the more they rang that Bell in fact those who try to not think about white bears actually ended up thinking about them more than other test subjects who were intentionally trying to imagine a polar bear now try not to think about that so which experiment impressed you the most let me know in the comments if you learned something new today then give this video a like and share it with a friend but hey don't go anywhere just yet we have over 2,000 cool videos for you to check out all you have to do is pick the left or right video click on it and enjoy stay on the bright side of life

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 445,451

Rating: 4.895977 out of 5

Keywords: your personality, personality types, personality traits, character, psychology, psychological tips, be yourself, teenagers, teenage problems, psychological experiments, psychological tricks, cell phone addiction, internet addiction, unusual experiments, conformity experiment, nudge theory, human nature, human psychology, crowd psychology, mass psychology

Id: VpZnQnIJRQM

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019