50 Psychology Facts Everyone Needs To Know

1. Research has found that good relationships are more important to a long life than exercise.
2. Your brain does more creative work when you’re tired.
3. Falling in love has a similar neurological effect as getting high on cocaine.
4. Optimistic beliefs about the future can protect people from physical and mental illness.
5. Holding hands with someone you love can alleviate physical pain as well as stress and fear.
6. Volunteers are significantly more satisfied with their lives than non-volunteers.
7. The risk of both catching a cold or the flu and of having a particularly severe form of the infection drop if you exercise moderately.
8. The placebo effect is getting more powerful over time. As medical technology improves, our faith in medicine becomes stronger.
9. People who view TV crime shows consistently overestimate the frequency of crime in the real world.
10. People with low self-esteem tend to “try” and humiliate others.
11. Seeing others positively reveals our positive traits, seeing others negatively reveals our negative traits.
12. Opposites don’t attract. You’re more likely to be attracted someone who looks and thinks the same as you do.
13. Memories get distorted over time. The average human has at least one false piece of memory.
14. Around 80% of human talk in groups, is complaining.
15. We seem to ignore the ones who adore us & pay more attention to those who ignore us.
16. Depression is the result of over thinking. The mind creates problems that didn’t even exist.
17. Being with happy people makes you happier.
18. Convincing yourself you slept well tricks your brain into thinking it did.
19. Smart people underestimate themselves, and ignorant people think they’re brilliant.
20. When you remember a past event, you are remembering the last time you remembered it.
21. You can’t multi-task
22. You want more choices and information than you can process
23. The ability to delay gratification or not starts young
24. Your unconscious knows first
25. You are hard-wired for imitation and empathy
26. Our “strong tie” group size is 150 people
27. Bite-sized chunks of info are best
28. People assume it’s you, not the situation
29. Even the illusion of progress is motivating
30. Your mind wanders 30% of the time
31. Your most vivid memories are wrong
32. The more uncertain you are, the more you dig in and defend your ideas
33. Your mind “rewrites” monotonous speech of boring people to make it sound more interesting.
34. Your favorite song is probably your favorite because you associate it with an emotional event in your life.
35. The type of music, you listen to affects the way you perceive the world.
36. Romantic love is biochemically indistinguishable from having a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
37. Phobias may be memories passed down through generations in DNA, according to a new research.
38. Researchers are debating on adding Internet addiction to the list of mental disorders.
39. The brain treats rejection like physical pain.
40. 68% of the people suffer from Phantom Vibration Syndrome, the feeling that one’s phone is vibrating when it’s not.
41. The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s.
42. Religious practices, like prayer and attending services, is associated with lower levels of psychological distress.
43. No one born blind has ever developed schizophrenia.
44. Your decisions are more rational when thought in another language.
45. Human behavioral studies suggest that a person who loses their cell phone experiences a panic similar to a near death experience.
46. A hug longer than twenty seconds will release chemicals into your body that make you trust the person you’re hugging.
47. People are more honest when physically tired. This is why people confess things during late night conversations.
48. Chocolate discharges the same chemical into your body that is produced when you start falling in love.
49. Happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise are the six emotions that are universally expressed.
50. People tend to be happier when they are kept busy, as this prevents them from thinking about the negative things in life.

The important thing to remember when reading a list like this is that you should be paying attention to how you feel. Your inner guide will keep you moving towards a happier life if you let it.