Five Fascinating Facts about Human Nature That Will Blow Your Mind
We are not as independent in thought as we like to think we are, the likelihood of success in our relationships is heavily affected by population size
Human nature is a fascinating subject because it helps us understand just why we all do the things that we do and act the way we do. Here are five fascinating facts about human nature.
We are not as independent in thought as we all like to think we are, at least not when it comes to the actions we take
Have you ever wondered why cities can appear such cold-hearted places? There is a well-documented phenomenon in psychology called social proof which explains it. Basically, we are social creatures, which means we work with a group mentality, and when we are in a group — unless there is definitive evidence of what action we should take — we look to the group for advice on what action we should take.
Here is how this operates in practice, if one person sees another in need, nearly one hundred percent of the time they will help that person. But if two or more people who do not know each other see another in need, which is a frequent occurrence in cities, unless it is absolutely certain that that person needs aid, rather than helping that person, more often than not they will discreetly look at each other and see what each other is doing, and because neither are doing anything, they will not help the person.
The reason we do this is that instinctually we think that if the person needed help, the other person would be helping, but because the other person is not helping, we assume the person in need does not need help. So, the reason cities can seem such cold-hearted places is because — due to the fact that there are so many people — our instinctual desire to operate with a group mentality works against us i.e. we instinctually follow the crowd because we assume the crowd knows best.
This is why if you’re ever in danger or in need of help, but it is not crystal clear, and there are lots of people around, your best hope is to look at one person and ask them directly for help. It’s amazing how when you do this, everyone else suddenly starts helping.
The more we invest in something, the harder it is for us to back out if we have made a mistake
If we invest heavily in something, we tend to hold on even when all evidence says that we should not. In fact, the more evidence that comes along proving that we have got it wrong, the harder we resist because we have sacrificed so much in our belief that we are right, we are unable to consciously accept that we have got it wrong.
That means the odds of getting a person to accept that they are wrong or have made a mistake is based upon just how much investment that person has put into their belief. The more they have sacrificed, the harder it will be to get them to acknowledge their mistake.
This is why people who invest large sums of money into bad investments so frequently end up losing it all, because even though all the evidence told them long ago that they should have just cut their losses and gotten out, they couldn’t cope with how much they would lose by cutting their losses and so they instead held on.
On a side note, this is also how people get trapped in cults. The cults persuade people to invest so much that once a person has committed to entering one, they can’t bear to give up their belief as doing so would mean having to acknowledge how much they have lost as a result of joining.
That means learning how to cut your losses, no matter how big they are, is one of the best skills any person can learn, as it gives you the power to get out before you lose everything.
If we make a statement public, more often than not no matter what it is we will act consistently with it
There is something in psychology called the consistency principle and it is one of the most powerful principles in human nature. The way it works is if we make a statement publicly, even if what we say goes against our beliefs, we will change our beliefs so that we act consistently with it. That means our words can literally change who we are even if we don’t believe in our words when we speak them.
This is a tactic often used by salespeople to coerce people into buying things, it is also used by interrogators. For example, one of the best tactics for getting a person to admit the truth is to get them to first admit that they are truthful people who have honour and integrity. People who make such statements are more likely to be truthful and all because their minds will instinctually want to act consistently with the statement that they have made i.e. there is a logic for why people swear on a bible in court.
Intelligence officials also use the consistency principle to get people to swap sides. For example, imagine that you doubt the power of the consistency principle that I am talking about, all I would need to do to get you to buy into it would be to admit that there may be some merit to it, and get you to admit to that fact publicly. Your own mind would then do the rest.
The Chinese used this tactic on American soldiers during the Korean War, they got the American soldiers to willingly admit that the US was not perfect, it didn’t seem like a big deal to the soldiers which is why they conceded the point. After all, what is the harm in such a simple admission? Nothing is perfect, right?
That’s the trick, because through that simple admission — which would be spread around the prison camps — along with gentle requests to elaborate on it, the Chinese managed to turn the majority of US soldiers that they had in captivity into weapons of propaganda against the US. Complicit weapons of propaganda at that. Even when the soldiers returned home, they were all found to have far more tolerant views of communism than they used to have, and far lesser views of the US.
Yep, that means be careful of what you say in public, and be especially careful of people who try to get you to say things in public, it truly does have the power to change who you are.
The majority of relationships fail these days because of the way we enter them
In the past, we entered relationships with the mindset of looking for reasons for why the relationship was right for us. We did this because we knew that the relationship was for life, so it would be extremely foolish to question it, better to look for the positives. Now, because we can leave relationships, we enter relationships with the mindset of working out whether the relationship is right for us.
There may not seem much difference in that way of thinking, but there is. If we enter a relationship with the mindset of looking for reasons for why it is right for us, we will find those reasons and we will continue to find those reasons for the duration of the relationship. Meaning we will enter the relationship with a mindset that is designed to make it last.
However, when we enter a relationship with the mindset of working out whether it is right for us or not, whereas we do look for reasons for why it may be right for us, we inevitably also always look for all the reasons for why it may not be right for us. Because we do this, and continually do it throughout our entire relationship, the majority of the time we will eventually find a reason strong enough to end the relationship.
So, if you want a long-lasting relationship, the best way to find one is to enter any relationship with the mindset of looking for why it is right for you, not whether it is right for you, because doing so will incentivise you from the beginning to always focus on making the relationship work rather than looking for reasons for why it should end.
We are all biological procreation machines, and so the majority of our cultures and societal practices — especially around relationships — are defined by the instinctually set optimum childbirth rate
The effects of population size on the childbirth rate and the likely success of relationships, arguably, can be seen clearly when looking at people who live in the city and people who live in rural communities. There are lots of people in cities, and people in cities tend to have fewer children. Fewer people live in rural communities, and people in rural communities tend to have more children. They also tend to have happier and longer-lasting marriages, with a much smaller divorce rate.
The common belief for why this is is that the city lifestyle doesn’t favour having children and makes relationships hard, mainly because of working hours and an abundance of temptation. Whereas there will be some truth in this, it doesn’t hold up as strongly as it first seems mainly because people in rural communities, farming communities especially, tend to work longer hours and in many cases more intense jobs than city folk, yet they still tend to have lots of children and have more successful relationships while city folk do not. So, what gives?
When we have lots of resources and lots of space, we instinctually want to increase our numbers, when we have scant resources and no space, we instinctually want to reduce our numbers, when we are at equilibrium, we instinctually want to keep our numbers static.
For example, in a world where we need lots of pregnancies for the human race survive, we will do everything possible to create a world where there are as many pregnancies as possible, think the old world; and in a world where we need to limit the number of pregnancies for the human race to survive, so in a world of overpopulation, we will do everything possible to try to limit the number pregnancies, think the new world i.e. modern city life.
That means our cultures and societal practices, especially in regard to relationships and the roles of men and women, are completely entwined to the number of pregnancies we need for the human race, or rather more specifically our tribes, to continue surviving.
That also means that how men and women feel about each other, and how well they get along, is also largely defined by the required pregnancy rate i.e. the fewer children we need the more likely men and women are to reject each other so as to keep the population size down, the more we need, the more likely they are to love each other so as to increase it.
Rather crazily, that means men and women don’t consciously decide per se how to feel about each other, what decides how men and women feel about each other, and especially how tolerant they are of each other, are our instinctual feelings over how many pregnancies are needed for our tribes to reach the optimum population size for the environments that we are living in.
In cities, because there are so many people, our instincts tell us we need to reduce our numbers. In rural communities, because there are far fewer people, our instincts tell us we need to increase our numbers. That’s why people who live in cities have a higher divorce rate, lower relationship satisfaction, and fewer children than their rural counterparts.
That’s also why, rather ironically, the best way to improve your chances of having a successful relationship is not reading dating advice, it’s not signing up to a dating app, it’s not even becoming better at picking who to date, it’s moving to a place where there are lots of resources but not many people. When you do that, you put yourself in a world where your relationship instincts start working for you rather than against you.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
Three Mind-Blowing Ways Overpopulation May Be Wreaking Havoc with Our Relationships
Seven Fascinating Science Facts That Will Blow Your Mind
Six Psychological Reasons Why The Majority Of Modern Relationships Fail
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