Surprising psychological effects: Why classical music makes you smarter and more

The Birthday Number Effect. Want to figure out someone's hidden self-esteem quickly? Give them a list of jumbled numbers, including their birthday, and ask them to circle 2 numbers they like. People with high self-esteem circle their birthday numbers more. More psych insights:

Boomerang effect. Humans have a deep desire to maintain their agency. When someone aggressively pushes an idea or behavior, it boomerangs - people are likelier to do the opposite. Soft sells usually win...

The Catfish effect. In Norway, only one ship captain could bring back live sardines from the deep sea. They tasted better. Everyone else's sardines kept dying, had to be frozen. He kept his method a secret till the day he died. Only after did people figure it out...

The ship captain kept a catfish in the tank with the sardines. The sardines, avoiding their predator, kept swimming, and stayed alive. The Catfish Effect, then, is about the value of predators. A little scare goes a long way...

IKEA effect. Do not make it too easy for the consumers. When manufacturers made baking cakes simpler in the 1950s (just add water instead of egg & water), sales plummeted. Mothers wanted it to be a little hard. Meanwhile people like IKEA furniture because it makes them work.

Mozart effect. 36 college students performed better on cognitive tasks in a 1993 experiment after listening to Mozart. The researcher insists the IQ boost was temporary, but sometimes a temporary boost is all you need to nail that one interview...

Overjustification effect. One reason to do something is usually enough and adding a second reason paradoxically lowers the desire to act. This is "motivational crowding out" - women become less likely to donate blood when they're also paid for it

Ringelmann effect . Agro engineer Ringelmann set people up in teams to pull rope. He expected better productivity but the reverse happened. People felt lax in groups, didn't do their best, and productivity declined. This is also known as "social loafing."

Rebound effect. Benefits from new tech is usually less than expected because people adjust their behavior and go back to the previous equilibrium. When people got fuel-efficient cars, they just started driving around more. Fuel consumption rebounded back to previous levels.

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9 psychological effects you MUST know Introduction. The human mind is a complex, mysterious machine. But the machine h