There was a great Greek scholar named Socrates. One day, he led several disciples to a wheat field. This is a mature season, and the fields are full of heavy ears of wheat. Socrates said to his disciples, "Go and pick the biggest ear of wheat in the wheat field. Only allowed to enter, not to return. I will wait for you at the end of the wheat field. "

After understanding the teacher's requirements, the disciples went into the wheat field one after another.

The fields are full of barley ears, which is the biggest? The disciples walked forward with their heads buried. Look at this and shake your head; Look at that and shake your head. They always think that the biggest ear of wheat is still ahead. What about you? Although the disciples also tried to pick a few ears, they were not satisfied and threw them away. They always think that there are still many opportunities, and there is no need to make a decision too early.

The disciples walked on with their heads down for a long time, picking and choosing carefully.

Suddenly, everyone heard Socrates' old Hong Zhong voice: "You have come to the end." At this time, the empty-handed disciple woke up like a dream.

Socrates said to his disciples, "There must be an ear that is the biggest in this wheat field, but you may not meet it;" Even if we meet, we may not be able to make an accurate judgment. So you just picked the biggest ear. "

Socrates' disciples listened to the teacher and realized this truth: a person's life seems to be walking in a wheat field, looking for the biggest ear. Some people saw the full grain of "wheat ear" and took it off without losing time; Others look around and miss the opportunity again and again. Of course, the pursuit should be the greatest, but it is true to hold the ears of wheat in front of you in your hand.

Some stories in psychology

broken window effect

There is a phenomenon in psychological research called "broken window effect", that is, if the window of a house is broken and no one repairs it, soon, other windows will be broken inexplicably; A wall, if some graffiti is not cleaned up, will soon be covered with messy and unsightly things. In a very clean place, people will be embarrassed to throw garbage, but once there is garbage on the ground, people will not hesitate to throw it and will not feel ashamed. This is really a strange phenomenon.

Psychologists study this "tipping point" How dirty the ground is, people will think it anyway. No matter how dirty it is. How bad the situation is, people will give up and let it rot.

If there is a bag of garbage on the ground at the corner of Taipei street before the garbage landing, within two hours, that place will be piled up into a garbage mountain. Every time I see this situation, I think of an ancient saying: "Don't do it with small evils". I don't think a little bad thing matters, but after you start doing it, it will change your mentality and make you dare to commit crimes in the future.

Anything bad will not change if it is not stopped at first, just like a small gap on the river bank, which can collapse and cause millions of times of losses.

Crime is actually the result of disorder. New york really robbed everywhere in the 1980s, killing people every day, and being afraid to walk in the street in broad daylight. Not to mention the subway, the carriage is a mess, full of dirty words. Sitting in the subway, everyone is in danger. Although I was not robbed, a professor was beaten with a sap in broad daylight and became blind. Since then, his research career has ended, which made me afraid to go to new york for meetings alone for many years. Recently, the appearance and reputation of new york have improved a lot, which surprised me. A city that has declined can come back to life and become better.

So, when I went out for a meeting and met a criminologist, I immediately asked him for advice. It turns out that new york City used the broken window effect theory in the past books, which first improved the criminal environment to make it difficult for people to commit crimes, and then slowly arrested criminals and thieves to restore order.

At that time, although this practice was called "going slow" and "the ship was sinking and the deck was still being washed", new york started with keeping the subway cars clean, handcuffed those who didn't buy tickets and rode on the platform continuously, and publicly declared the government's determination to rectify it, which proved to be very effective.

The police found that people really don't commit crimes in clean places. They also found that people who evade tickets are very rewarding, because one out of every seven people who evade tickets is wanted, and one out of every 20 people carries weapons. Therefore, the police are willing to seriously grasp the evasion of tickets, so that gangsters dare not evade tickets and dare not go out with weapons, so as not to lose more. In this way, new york will start from the smallest and easiest place, break the criminal chain, and make this vicious circle impossible to continue.

Recently, I was very happy to see that Taipei began to plant flowers in the streets and alleys. This is how Holland started. I hope that the city appearance of Taipei will soon be like that of Europe, "Spring City is full of flowers".

Decentralization of responsibilities

1March, 964 13 At 3: 20 pm, in front of an apartment on the outskirts of new york, a young woman named Juno Bibi was assassinated on her way home from work in a bar. When she cried out in despair, "Someone is going to kill someone! Help! Help! " Residents nearby heard the shouts, turned on the lights and opened the window, and the murderer escaped. Everything calmed down and the murderer came back to commit the crime. When she shouted again, the nearby residents turned on the lights again and the murderer ran away again. When she thought she had nothing to do and went back to her home to go upstairs, the murderer appeared in front of her again and killed her on the stairs. In the process, although she shouted for help, at least 38 people in her neighbors went to the window to watch, but no one came to save her, or even called the police. This incident caused a sensation in new york society, and also attracted the attention and thinking of social psychologists. People call this phenomenon the responsibility of many bystanders spreading from bankruptcy.

Psychologists have conducted a lot of experiments and investigations on the causes of the spread of responsibility, and the results show that this phenomenon can be said to be not only people's apathy, but also the increasingly decadent morality. Because on different occasions, people's aid behavior is really different. When a person encounters an emergency, if he is the only one who can help, he will clearly realize his responsibility and give help to the victims. If he feels guilty from destruction, it will cost him a high psychological price. If there are many people present, the responsibility of helping those who ask for help will be shared by everyone, resulting in scattered responsibilities. Everyone shares little responsibility, and bystanders may not even realize their own responsibility, thus creating a psychology of "I don't save, others save" and causing a situation of "collective indifference". How to break this situation is an important topic that psychologists are studying.

Parkinson's law

Northgood Parkinson, a famous British historian, wrote a book called Parkinson's Law through long-term investigation and research. In his book, he explained the reasons and consequences of the expansion of institutional personnel: an incompetent official may have three ways out. The first is to apply for resignation and give your seat to someone who has the ability; The second is to let a capable person help him with his work; The third is to appoint two people lower than themselves as assistants. This first way is absolutely impossible, because many rights will be lost; You can't go the second way, because that capable person will become your opponent; It seems that only the third way is the most suitable. So, two mediocre assistants share his work, and he gives orders from above. They will not pose a threat to their rights. Since both assistants are incompetent, find yourself two incompetent assistants from top to bottom. By analogy, a leadership system is formed, which is bloated, overstaffed, wrangling with each other and inefficient.

Swimming effect

Keep your eyes fixed and stare at a fixed light spot on the screen in front of you. After a while, you will find that your eyes are floating. This moving phenomenon of fixed light spot is called "swimming effect" and "automatic movement phenomenon". This phenomenon is because there is no reference object in the background, which makes it impossible to determine whether it is stable. But the mechanism of this phenomenon has not been well explained so far.

Primary effect

There is a story that a journalism graduate is eager to find a job. One day, he went to a newspaper and said to the editor-in-chief, "Do you need an editor?"

"No need!"

"What about the reporter?"

"No need!"

"What about the compositor and proofreader?"

"No, we don't have any vacancies now."

"So, you must need this thing." Then he took out a delicate little sign from his briefcase, which said, "Full, temporarily unemployed". The editor-in-chief looked at the sign, smiled and nodded, and said, "If you like, you can work in our advertising department." The college student expressed his wit and optimism through his own brand, which left a good "first impression" on the editor-in-chief, aroused his great interest and won him a satisfactory job. The subtle effect of this "first impression" is called the first cause effect in psychology.

The first cause effect means that people's impressions based on initial information are not easy to change, and even affect the interpretation of new information obtained later. Experiments have proved that first impressions are hard to change. Therefore, in the process of daily communication, especially the first communication with others, we must pay attention to leaving a good impression on others. To do this, we should first pay attention to gfd-in general, people are willing to contact and associate with clean and tidy people. Secondly, pay attention to manners, be humorous, talk with Kan Kan, be neither supercilious nor supercilious, and behave gracefully, which will definitely leave an unforgettable impression on people. The first cause effect plays a very subtle role in interpersonal communication. As long as it can be accurately grasped, it will certainly create a good interpersonal atmosphere for the cause.

Learned helplessness experiment

Learned helplessness was first discovered by Auvermeer and Seligman, and then widely discussed in animal and human studies. In short, many experiments show that after training, dogs can jump over obstacles or engage in other behaviors to escape the electric shock applied to them by experimenters. However, if the dog has been subjected to unpredictable (I don't know when it will come) and uncontrollable electric shock before (for example, the interruption of the electric shock does not depend on the dog's behavior), when the dog has a chance to escape from the electric shock later, it will become impossible to escape. Moreover, dogs will also show other defects, such as feeling depressed and depressed, reducing initiative and so on.

Dogs behave this way because they learned to feel helpless in the early stage of the experiment. In other words, they realize that no matter what they do, they can't control the termination of the electric shock. In each experiment, the termination of electric shock is under the control of the experimenter, and the dog will realize that he has no ability to change this external control, thus learning a sense of helplessness.

Witness's memory

Witnesses, in our understanding, are usually people who provide some objective evidence, that is, people who truthfully tell what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. However, psychological research has proved that the testimony provided by many witnesses is inaccurate or personal, with personal views and consciousness.

Surprisingly, the confidence of witnesses in their testimony does not determine the accuracy of their testimony. Psychologists Pfeiffer and Hollins decided to do further research on this conclusion. In order to see if there is anything special in the witness's testimony, they compared the witness's memory with general knowledge.

They showed the participants a short film about a kidnapped girl. The next day, the subjects were asked to answer some questions about the video content, and were asked to express their confidence in their answers, and then they were given a recognition memory test. Next, in the same way, the content is common sense questions selected from encyclopedias and popular books.

As before, Pfeiffer and Hollins also found that those who have confidence in their answers are actually no better than those who have no confidence in their answers, but this is not the case for general knowledge. People with high confidence recall the results much better than people with low confidence.

People are aware of their strengths and weaknesses in common sense. Therefore, they tend to modify their test results on the confidence scale. Common sense is a database shared by individuals. It has a recognized correct answer, and subjects can measure it themselves. For example, people will know whether they are better or worse than others in sports. However, the witnessed events are not affected by this self-knowledge. For example, on the whole, they are less likely to know that they are better or worse at remembering participants' hair colors than others.

Rosenthal effect

American psychologist Rosenthal and others did a famous experiment in 1968. They went to a primary school, and selected three classes of children from grade one to grade six for a serious "test to predict future development". Then the experimenter informed the teacher of the list of students who thought they had "excellent development possibilities". In fact, this list is not determined according to the test results, but is randomly selected. It hints at teachers with "authoritative lies", thus arousing teachers' expectations of the students on the list. Eight months later, the results of the intelligence test found that the students on the list generally improved their grades, and the teachers also gave them good moral evaluation. This experiment has achieved miraculous results. People call this phenomenon that students can make the progress expected by teachers through the subtle influence on students' psychology "Rosenthal effect", which is also commonly known as pygmalion effect (Pygmalion was the king of Cyprus in ancient Greek mythology, and he took a fancy to a girl's statue, and his desire finally turned the statue into a real person, and the two fell in love and combined).

Educational practice also shows that if teachers love some students, they will have high expectations. After a period of time, students will feel the care, love and encouragement of teachers. Often treat teachers, study and their own behavior with a positive attitude, students will be more self-respecting, confident, self-loving and self-reliant, thus inducing positive passion. These students tend to make progress that teachers expect. On the contrary, those students who are ignored and discriminated by teachers will feel the teacher's "eccentricity" from the teacher's words, behaviors and expressions over time, and will also treat the teacher and their own learning with a negative attitude, ignoring or refusing to listen to the teacher's requirements; These students tend to get worse every day, and finally become social undesirable elements. Although there are exceptions, this is the general trend, and it also sounded the alarm for teachers.

False consensus deviation (false consensus deviation)

We usually think that our hobbies are the same as most people. If you like playing computer games, you may overestimate the number of people who like computer games. You usually overestimate the number of people who vote for your favorite classmates, overestimate your prestige and leadership in the group, and so on. Your tendency to overestimate the number of people with the same characteristics as your behavior and attitude is called "false empathy bias". Some factors will affect the intensity of your false empathy bias:

(1) When external attribution is stronger than internal attribution;

(2) When the current behavior or event is very important to someone;

(3) When you are very sure or firmly believe in your point of view;

(4) When your status or normal life and study are threatened;

(5) Talking about some positive qualities or personalities;

(6) When you treat others as similar to yourself;

Gas experiment

People will inevitably encounter unpleasant things in their lives. If they can't tolerate it, they will be emotional for a while, and even go on the rampage and lose their temper, which will seriously endanger their health.

Recently, some American psychologists did an experiment. They injected substances contained in the blood of angry people into mice and observed their reaction. At first, these mice were slow-witted, had no appetite and didn't want to eat all day. A few days later, the mouse died silently. Elma, an American physiologist, did an experiment not long ago. He collected the "qi and water" of people in different situations, that is, the "qi and water" exhaled by people when they are sad, regretful, angry and calm. The result proves once again that anger does great harm to human body. He put the "gas and water" exhaled in peace into the relevant test water for precipitation, which was colorless, clear and transparent. When he is sad, his breath is white after precipitation, and when he is angry, his breath is protein after precipitation. Inject the mouse with "water of anger", and after a few minutes, the mouse dies. From this, Elma analyzed: Being angry (10 minutes) will consume a lot of human energy, no less than participating in the 3000-meter race; When angry, the physiological reaction is very intense, and secretion is more complicated and toxic than any emotional one.

Therefore, it is difficult for people who are easily angry to live a long and healthy life. Many people are actually "angry". It can be seen that when a person loses his temper or sulks, it will produce a series of changes and reactions to human physiology, causing harm to all parts of the human body and even endangering life. Anger and anger will hurt the lungs: anger will inevitably lead to accelerated heartbeat and arrhythmia, which will attack the heart by evil spirits and induce palpitations and heartache; Shortness of breath, bad breath, chest tightness, lung distension, cough and asthma. Injury to the spleen and stomach: when angry, there will be extreme anxiety and spleen injury; The stomach feels full and does not think about diet, which affects the digestive function of the stomach for a long time. Injury to kidney and liver: Anger and anger can cause kidney qi obstruction, decreased adrenal secretion, pallor, general weakness, cold limbs, urethral obstruction or incontinence, disharmony between liver and gallbladder, and pain in liver area. Brain injury and absence: when people are angry, their mental state is abnormal, which makes them highly nervous and unconscious. Under this bad psychological state and strong negative emotions, the "insular cortex" in the brain is stimulated, which will change the brain's long-term control over the heart, affect myocardial function, and cause sudden ventricular fibrillation, arrhythmia, and even cardiac arrest and death. It can be seen that anger will lead to the imbalance of respiratory system, circulatory system, digestive system, endocrine system and nervous system, which will bring great harm.

For the sake of your health, you should learn the art of getting rid of anger, such as restraint, humor and tolerance.

Prison role simulation experiment

In order to study the influence of human and environmental factors on individuals, psychologist zimbardo (1972) designed a simulated prison experiment, which was conducted in the basement of the psychology department of Stanford University. Participants are male volunteers. Half of them were randomly assigned as "guards" and the other half were assigned as "prisoners". The experimenter gave them uniforms and whistles and trained them to implement a set of "prison" rules. The other half played the role of "prisoner". They put on inferior prison clothes and were locked in their cells. All participants, including the experimenter, entered the experiment completely in just one day. The guards began to become very rude and hostile, and they also thought of various ways to torture and punish prisoners. The prisoners stepped down one after another, either becoming indifferent or actively resisting. In zimbardo's words, it is "confusion between reality and illusion, confusion between role-playing and self-identity". Although the experiment was originally designed to last for two weeks, it had to be stopped early. "Because what we see is frightening. Most people have indeed become' prisoners' and' guards', and it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between role-playing and true self. "

This controversial simulation experiment shows that a simple hypothetical role can quickly enter the personal social reality and gain self-identity, and they can't know their true identity from the roles they play.

heterosexual effect

Ms. Li is the public relations manager of a company. She has a wide network of contacts and will win when she leaves school, which has made great contributions to the company. The company was in short supply of raw materials. ministry of materials and equipment's comrades ran around, but they hit a wall again and again, while Li Nvtu went out to contact, and the problem was solved soon. The company's capital turnover is seriously out of balance, and it is in urgent need of loans, making the general manager like an ant on hot bricks. It is also Ms. Li, who is travel-stained and travels between banks, and actually borrows millions of yuan. Therefore, Ms. Li is highly valued by the leaders, and her salary and bonus have increased. Someone tried to sum up the secret of Ms. Li's success, and found that besides her sober mind, quick eloquence, rich knowledge and experience, and flexible attitude towards people, her dignified appearance also has a great relationship with her elegant appearance.

In daily life, we can often see that male shop assistants are more enthusiastic than male customers when receiving female customers, and people are generally more polite to female help seekers than male help seekers. The main reason for the success of the above-mentioned Li Nvtu is that today's society is still a society dominated by men, and most of them have to deal with men when they go out to work, so women come forward smoothly. This is the so-called "heterosexual effect" in psychology. This phenomenon is based on the attraction of opposites. People are generally interested in heterosexual sex, especially those with attractive appearance and decent manners. This is no exception for women, but it is not so obvious for men. Sometimes in order to attract the attention of the opposite sex, men especially like to show themselves in front of women, which is also the "opposite sex effect" at work.

Big fool theory

You are willing to pay a high price for something regardless of its true value, even if it is worthless, because you expect a bigger fool to buy it from you at a higher price.

At present, there are a group of people in the university who make a living by earning class fees. Because the limited salary is not enough to make ends meet, we can only rely on lip service instead of subsidizing our families by attending classes everywhere. As a derivative of public universities, there are many colleges that do not support full-time teachers, so there is a part-time market. No matter what major they study, those people dare to speak any class anyway. It is not unusual for people who study veterinary medicine to talk about international trade. Speaking of fun, he will say that the biggest challenges China will encounter after China's entry into WTO are mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease.

This scene reminds me of Sir Keynes. During the period of 1908~ 19 14, he also taught various courses: economic principles, monetary theory, corporate finance, securities investment ... His evaluation was: "Selling the machine of economics by the hour." Keynes's motivation for earning class fees is to avoid the trouble of money in the future. As Tao Yuanming said, he is free and dedicated to academic research, rather than hunching over for five buckets of rice. However, it is said that vomiting blood can't save much money just by earning class fees. Keynes finally understood this truth, so in August 2009, he borrowed thousands of pounds for forward foreign exchange speculation. In just four months, he earned more than 1000 pounds, which was equivalent to his income of 10 years at that time. Speculators often have this experience: at the beginning, there was no danger, and money inexplicably entered their pockets, but when they were on cloud nine, they should not have fallen into the abyss. Three months later, Keynes lost all his profits and borrowed the principal. Gamblers often have the mentality of winning and losing from the gambling table. Seven months later, Keynes set foot in cotton futures trading, gambled wildly and achieved great success. Stimulated by this, he made various futures. If it's not enough, go to the stock market. In more than ten years, he not only earned a lot of money, but by the time 1937 washed his hands, he had accumulated huge wealth that he could not enjoy all his life. Different from ordinary gamblers, he left a gambling classic with strong explanatory power-The Biggest Fool Theory, which can be regarded as a by-product of his speculative activities.

I guess Keynes took part in the newspaper beauty contest and won the prize. Otherwise, he can't use such an example: choose the most beautiful face from 100 photos and choose the prize. Of course, the final decision on which face is the most beautiful is the highest number of votes. How should you vote? The correct way is not to choose the face you really think is beautiful, but to guess who most people will choose and vote for her, even if she is ugly. In other words, speculation is based on speculation on public psychology. The same is true of futures and securities gambling. For example, you don't know the true value of a stock, but why do you spend 20 yuan on it? Because you expect someone to buy from you at a higher price. Malkiel summed up Keynes's view as the biggest idiot theory: You are willing to pay a high price for something, even if it is worthless, because you expect a bigger idiot to buy it from you at a higher price. The key to speculation is to judge that there is a bigger fool than yourself. As long as you are not the biggest fool, it is a matter of winning more and winning less. If you can't find a bigger fool who is willing to buy from you at a higher price, then you are the biggest fool.

I think the biggest idiot theory can best explain the speculative frenzy in Chinese and foreign history. 1593, a professor of botany from Vienna went to teach in Leiden, the Netherlands. He brought tulips, a plant grown in Turkey that the Dutch had never seen before. Unexpectedly, the Dutch were fascinated by it, so the professor decided that he could make a lot of money, and his price was so high that the Dutch had to steal it. Late one night, a thief broke in and stole all the tulip bulbs brought by the professor and sold them at a much lower price than the professor. In this way, tulips were planted in the gardens of thousands of Dutch people. Later, tulips were attacked by mosaic disease, resulting in some contrasting stripes or "flames" on the petals. Dramatically, the sick tulip became a treasure, so the stranger the tulip bulb, the higher its price. So some people began to hoard sick tulips, and more people paid high prices to buy them from hoarders and sell them at higher prices. A myth of getting rich quickly began to spread. Nobles, farmers, mechanics, sailors, footmen, maids, window cleaners, laundry girls and so on are all involved. Everyone involved believes that there will be a bigger fool willing to buy tulips from him or her at a higher price. 1638, the biggest idiot appeared, and the tulip craze that lasted for five years ushered in the most tragic scene. Soon the price of tulip bulbs dropped to the price of onions.

There is an episode in the British stock market frenzy that began at 1720: an unknown person founded a fictitious company-"a company that runs a money-making industry". No one knew what this company was from beginning to end, but nearly a thousand investors scrambled to squeeze out the door when they subscribed. Not many people believe that it is really profitable, but expect more idiots to appear, prices will rise, and they will make their own money. Interestingly, Newton took part in this speculation and unfortunately became the biggest fool. He therefore lamented: "I can calculate the motion of celestial bodies, but it is really difficult to estimate the madness of people."

Don't treat speculators as the stupidity of people hundreds of years ago. People in this world are actually crazy: 1924, real estate speculation in Florida, USA; From March of 1928 to September of 1929, Wall Street went crazy in stock trading; Electronic fanaticism in 1960s; Joint venture frenzy and concept stock bubble; And the just-concluded Nasdaq farce-how to explain this madness? Malkiel said that Keynes would snicker at the places where economists would go after death.

Business card effect

A young job seeker was rejected by several companies and felt very depressed. Finally, he went to a company to apply for a job with a glimmer of hope. Before that, he inquired about the origin of the company boss. Through understanding, he found that the boss of this company had similar experiences with himself before, so he gained a treasure. When applying for a job, he talked to his boss about his job-hunting experience and his indignation at his talent. Sure enough, this sentence won the appreciation and sympathy of the boss, and he was finally hired as the business manager. This is the so-called business card effect. In other words, when two people communicate, if they first show the same attitude and values as the other person, they will make the other person feel that you have more similarities with him, thus quickly narrowing the psychological distance with you and being more willing to get close to you and form good interpersonal relationships. Here, the attitude and opinions expressed to each other consciously and purposefully are like a business card to introduce you to each other.

Proper use of "psychological business cards" can promote the establishment of interpersonal relationships as soon as possible, but to make "psychological business cards" play its due role, we must first be good at capturing each other's information, grasping the true attitude, looking for their positive and acceptable views, and "making" an effective "psychological business card". Secondly, find opportunities to "show" your "psychological business card" to the other party appropriately, so that you can achieve your goal. Mastering the applied art of "psychological business cards" is of great practical value for interpersonal communication and dealing with interpersonal relationships.