Psychology

Once we form a belief, we may give more attention to facts that support it than to facts that challenge it.

A habit is a behavior that becomes easier to repeat with little conscious thought.

After many difficult choices, people sometimes feel tired or reach for an easy option.

We tend to imagine memory as a recording, a faithful video stored away and replayed on demand.

People often feel an urge to return a favor.

When we judge an unknown quantity, the mind reaches for a starting point and adjusts from there.

When several people witness an emergency, a particular individual may be less likely to help than if they were alone.

Imagine you have paid for a ticket to a film.

Before a test, students may try to learn a large amount in one long session.

In a medical trial, some participants may receive a real treatment while others receive a convincing imitation with no active drug.

A learner studies a new word list for two hours on one night.

After a day of learning, the brain remains active during sleep.

An emergency happens in a crowded place.

A placebo is a comparison treatment without the specific active treatment being tested.

In a well-known experiment, viewers watch two teams passing basketballs and count the passes made by one team.

Memory is often compared with a recording that can be replayed unchanged.

Cognitive dissonance is discomfort associated with a conflict between beliefs, or between a belief and an action.

A child already enjoys drawing.

When a stranger cuts in front of you in traffic, you may think the driver is selfish before asking whether a lane is closing.

In 2015, the Open Science Collaboration reported attempts to repeat one hundred studies from three psychology journals.

Try to hold a phone number, a shopping list, and a friend's question in your head at the same time.

You meet someone and remember that she is a nurse and has just moved here.

At a crowded party, you may follow one voice while other conversations become background noise.

Imagine two passengers collecting their bags after a flight.

On her first week at a large office, Lina passed dozens of unfamiliar faces.

Two museum visits last the same amount of time.

A team schedules two weeks to redesign a website.

Imagine stopping halfway through a letter.

Imagine that after a neighborhood meeting, Elena supports turning a parking space into a bench and assumes most residents agree.

A learner reads that a seed first sends a root downward and then grows a shoot upward.

A café offers four lunch combinations on one board and forty separate items on another.

People sometimes expect outcomes that are more favorable than the evidence supports: finishing sooner than comparable projects, avoiding setbacks, or succeeding at a difficult change.

After reading a short lesson, a student can reread it or close the page and try to recall the main points.

A coach tells one team, “Eight of every ten players completed the course.”

A community hall has an old fan that makes a soft hum.

During field observations, people often write the name of an object as soon as they recognize it: oak leaf, sparrow, storm cloud.

A fox pauses beside a path and looks toward a hiker.

Reading a set of instructions can make an idea feel familiar.

Read an unfamiliar claim once, and it may feel awkward.

An answer can feel familiar without being easy to recall.

During conversation, a person's hands may carry information that speech leaves vague.

At a swap table, a mug may seem worth little until it is placed in your hand and called yours.

Tap the same three-beat pattern several times: long, short, short; long, short, short.

Two volunteers are sorting unfamiliar hardware during a phone call.

A feeling can arrive before its name.

A student learns a speech in a quiet bedroom, then forgets a line on a bright stage.

An improvement can feel enormous.

A painter looks up and discovers that two hours have passed.

In an unfamiliar café, you suddenly feel this moment has happened before.

Maya’s phone buzzes during study.

A question can create a space between what we know and what we want to know.

A student awaiting exam results may predict, “If I fail, I will feel terrible for months.”

A class must sort five hundred donated books.

During a meeting, Priya thinks the new schedule is obviously helpful.