Human Psychology

1961 - 1970

1961. Never mislead yourself by the price assigned to the stuff you want to buy! For example, you have come to buy a shirt and confused between 2 of those. By asking the shopkeeper you came to know that one shirt is of 600 and the other one is of 1500. The price difference is because of the material of shirts as told by the shopkeeper. When you touch and try to differentiate those you will automatically like the material of expensive one! But the catch here is that there is no such thing like good or bad material, and maybe two materials will be same. The shopkeepers play this trick so that you will try to bargain that 1500 priced shirt. And they will happily give you that shirt at 800. This trick works 99% of the time.

1962. Next time you go for a shopping don't ask the price of that stuff directly. For example if you like a pair of shoes, ask the price of neighbouring pairs and then by giving a disinterested face ask the price of your liked one. By this you can play your psychological trick on the shopkeeper because the shopkeeper will try to assign more price on initial pairs thinking that you like them and would spend big on them!! This trick helps 90% of the times.

1963. Most of us are probably unaware of the fact that we can’t read in our dreams. This is because of the fact that the part of our brain which is responsible for reading text does not co-operate with the part of the brain which is responsible for dreaming while we are asleep. So our brain cannot decrypt the information given by the combination of those letters. So when we see something written in texts in our dreams it is likely to appear blurred and we can’t remember it later.

1964. This is the reason why Christopher Nolan’s epic film Inception does not contain a single scene of the characters reading any texts on paper or anywhere while they were in dreams. Pretty amazing, right?

1965. 90% of people between 10–29 years of age sleep with their phones.

1966. Fear can feel good—if we’re not really in danger.

1967. If you look into a stranger's eyes, you can actually fall in love.

1968. We want more choices, but choose better with fewer options.

1969. Have you ever wondered why so many companies like YouTube and Spotify are always offering you free trials to their premium services?

Picture this:

You're listening to your favorite playlist on Spotify while doing your work. You've been working for half an hour straight. You're in the zone.

Suddenly a pesky ad for Spotify premium comes on, in the middle of your Playlist, completely ruining your flow of concentration.

The ad offers you a 3 month free trial to Spotify premium.

Unlimited skips, the ability to download music and best of all: NO ADS.

That last part sounds particularly appealing. Up until this point you've just been tolerating the ads. It hasn't been the worst and you've gotten used to it, but it sure would be nice to go 3 months without it.

You really don't need premium, but hey, it's free right? You can just cancel your subscription before the free trial ends.

So you get the free trial.

And for the next 3 months you enjoy splendid high quality downloadable music with unlimited skips and NO ADS to interrupt your flow of focus.

It's amazing.

Life is good.

But the free trial is about to expire.

Oh no! You can't live without your downloaded ad-free music! You can't go back to the old days of not getting to play the song you wanted! Or listening to pesky advertisements!

So what do you do?

You succumb.

You pay the monthly fee and renew your premium subscription.

And the marketing team at Spotify HQ cheer as the numbers of the premium members increases.

You've just fallen prey to a very powerful psychological trick.

Loss aversion.

1970. It plays on the human fact that:

You're more afraid of losing something you already have than you are of not gaining something you don't have.

You could've survived just fine without Spotify premium BEFORE you tried it. But once you did, you didn't want to lose it.

This trick is everywhere ranging from companies offering free trials to parents disciplining their children.

It's been proven to be more effective to threaten to TAKE something away from your child, than it is to say you're not going to GIVE them something.

So parents, instead of offering your child a Playstation or new phone for doing something, get them that device and then threaten to take it away if they don't do that thing.

And next time you see a free trial to something, remember they're probably pulling the same trick on you.