Narcissism and narcissistic personalities.




Like a lot people, you’ve most likely have encountered a few people who are narcissistic individuals. You know the type – the person who is typically described as vain and self-absorbed. They come across as someone that thinks they are extremely important and expect everyone else to be aware of how important they are to the point of obnoxiousness.


Though many people can be selfish and every so often be a little vain, some individuals take it to extreme levels. When these traits and other traits similar to it are a persons defining characteristics they often cause a damaging effect on themselves and anyone who is a part of their life – these traits usually signal a mental health condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder or for short Narcissism. 



As with all disorders, the degree of severity can vary quite a lot. They can’t admit being wrong and are hypersensitive to anything that resembles criticism. They want to control how other people see them and can presented in any number of ways. “Narcissists come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees,” says Dr. Samuel Lopes DeVictoria, “He/she may look, by appearance, intimidating and scary to the average person. He could also play the “nice guy/person” whom everyone likes. 

1. Lies and Exaggerations
Narcissists are likely to create lies and exaggerations which is usually about themselves and even about others, and have the tendency of putting others down to make themselves seem better by comparison. Though narcissists often try to make themselves seem superior and “special” by either bragging (directly or indirectly), taking credit for things they shouldn't be taking credit for, and other forms of self-aggrandizing behavior, narcissists tend to focus on making others feel inferior through criticism, and intimidation. Narcissists are are often proficient at distorting facts, character assassinations, and intimidation to boost their self-worth and maintain an image.

2. Rarely Admit Flaws and Are Highly Aggressive When Criticized
Many narcissists can react poorly when called up on their negative behavior. When challenged, the narcissist is likely to do one of a few things; fight,have a temper tantrum, make excuses, flat out denial, shift the blame elsewhere or just use passive aggression like the silent treatment or resentment. The Narcissist can resort to deflection by using criticisms against their to counter any that was made originally to them to either intimidate or oppress their victim. Some Narcissists view relationships as competitive rather than collaborative team based relationship where one has to be in control or on top of the other.

3. False Image Projection
Narcissists tend to project false images of themselves to the world, in order to hide their shortcomings and insecurities.They give themselves his “trophy complex" where they use people, objects, accomplishments to further feed into their exaggerated personas and self image, similar to self completion theory. Many narcissists like to view themselves as someone who is all-powerful and strong, with their opinion being the one that matters most regardless of who they actually are or what the situation is. In essence, narcissists want others to worship them, these external facades become pivotal parts of their false identity, replacing the real and more vulnerable self.

4. Manipulation and control
Narcissists have a tendency to make decisions for others bend to their own agenda. Narcissists may use people who are acquaintances or even people who are close to cover up any flaws and shortcomings. Narcissists are not above of using guilt, blame, and victim-hood as tactics to manipulate their victimsNarcissists conduct psychological manipulation toward individuals micromanaging and controlling relationships, including their victims how they should think, feel, and behave and they can often become critical, intimidating, and/or hostile toward those who displease them. 

While the narcissist manipulate to compensate for a desperate sense of deficiency (a lacking of self worth of who they really are), this psychological type have an inability or an unwillingness to actually relate to people  as human beings. They have a need to become “special” and “superior” by being less themselves and de-humanizing others.

Interpreting and Reading Body Language


What can be one of the greatest barriers some people have is the inability to detect physical social cues in conversations. Extroverts are usually more prone to develop this skill naturally through years of high exposure to new social interactions, while other more introverted personalities would need more guidance in this area. 

 Sometimes we over-complicate things because we’re oblivious to what for others appears to be so simple they aren’t even conscious of their ability to read these signals. On the other hand we are far more conscious of the words we use, how we control and arrange our words in a particular way to portray our thoughts and emotions in a given moment. 


The idea of body language is to simply have a better understanding of social interactions between yourself and others and to understand your surroundings and what is going on in the minds of the ones around you to the best of our ability.
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It definitely is worth your time to learn about body language, first of all because it's a fascinating topic and by learning body language you can instantly improve your interactions by having a better read on a person or a groups state of mind. Also by taking a new view on social interactions with more of a critical eye on why things the way they are can really change the way you see others and yourself. 

And when I speak about control or a critical eye, the way I see it, it's not about tricks or manipulations (although there are many), but about training your intuition to have a better read on an interaction so you can steer it to a better and more positive direction.

If you want to learn more about body language...






Donald Trumps speech style - what may have helped him win and influence the American nation.

Donald Trumps speech style


If you were asked the unlikely question of "Who is Donald Trump?" One of the possible answers you could give would be, "The President of the United states - and a controversial one at that." But what is most controversial about President Trump is how he addresses large crowds and responds to anything anyone says to him. It's unlike any President that's preceded him. Or any other politician for that matter. 

One of the reasons Donald Trump is so seemingly unique is due to his unorthodox speech style. From an objective stand point he uses very straight forward and simplistic language to get his points across - though not always coherent but it is very straight forward and much easier to absorb what he is saying for anyone who doesn't often keep up with a lot of politics or do not fully understand it.   

Some also say he speaks with brutal open honesty which has helped him win his Presidency while others say he has little composure and low impulse control which can may often attribute to his need to use aggressive language when put on the defensive or just simply disagrees with whoever he is against. What we'll speak about is what aspects of his speech style has helped win over the people of America and ultimately influence the nation to win his Presidency.


His simple outspoken conversational style.
It's no secret that Donald Trump doesn't seem to come across as someone with a sophisticated and large vocabulary when comparing to other politicians and if anything his way of speaking since being in the political arena comes across as even surprisingly simplistic. Coupled with him often just speaking his mind and not seeming to be as measured with his words like other politicians this in itself has made him stand out tremendously because he just doesn't seem to want to fit the mold of how a politician would typically act and behave like and this build a sense of intrigue whilst at the same time being easy listen to due to his seemingly small vocabulary.

He frequently uses quick punchy phrases which really makes anything he says easy to comprehend and remember. Similar to how advertising campaigns use mottos to keep their brands memorable and easy to associate with. For example Kit Kat – “Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat” or KFC – “Finger Lickin’ Good”.

 Some of Donald Trumps own memorable phrases:

 "I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively"

 "We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating - let’s say China - in a trade deal? I beat China all the time. All the time"

 "Rocket man is on a suicide mission."

 Incoherence and confusion
Due Trump's speech style being so unorthodox and disruptive, this means that the audience is forced to pay more attention to making sense of his of what he is saying. And because of this that means that the listeners are more likely to be influenced and persuaded. Though this isn't fool proof but effective nonetheless.

 The majority of Trump sentences are essentially sentence fragments where two or more unrelated thoughts are thrown into one confusing sentence. Words are arranged in a way that not everyone can grasp, even if you have a good command of the English language. (“There is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself, and the Russians, zero”). - quoted from President Trump himself.
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The use of repetition.

Our brains are excellent pattern-seekers and because repetition breeds familiarity we tend become accustomed to what we are regularly exposed to - be it a song we hear on every other radio station or a movie trailer we see on every other television channel or maybe it's a slogan we may often hear such as "Red Bull - it gives you wings." This can be described as the mere exposure effect which is written in more detail here.

George Lakoff, a graduate professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California – Berkeley, explained that the brain is made of a vast amount of interconnected neurons that form circuits similar to a network, and these carry out every single word or thought we have. When these circuits are activated by words or the things we see, they become stronger, and if repeatedly activated, they can become permanent. To be put simply - by repeating something to someone you are training them to think a certain way.

In Trumps case he punctuates his speeches with repetition. It helps to bring his point across without the risk of his messages being forgotten and can also serve as a way to keep his messages memorable. Also it’s also a delaying tactic, giving him time to think of the next thing he needs to say. 

 Some of Donald Trumps own repetitive phrases:

“That’s wrong. They were wrong. It’s The New York Times, they’re always wrong. They were wrong.”  

 "I went to an Ivy League school. I'm highly educated. I know words. I have the best words, I have the best, but there is no better word than stupid. Right?"

 "(on fellow candidates) All of 'em are weak, they're just weak. Some of them are fine people. But they are weak."


Book Review: The Lucifer Effect How Good People Turn Evil.

The Lucifer Effect, a New York Best Selling book written by research psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo  highlights an uncomfortable but honest observation regarding human nature: That even the most seemingly ordinary, up-right and good person can become a perpetrator of evil. When we're trying to understand behavior that is destructive, irrational and malicious we often direct our focus primarily onto innate characteristics or personality traits which would have lead to such behavior, while ignoring any circumstantial factors which would have shaped such behaviors. Similar to the Fundamental Attribution Error which you can read more about here.

 What Zimbardo hypothesized is that it is possible for external situations and systems to become key influences of  change in behavior and that they can often override a persons morals and values and be a corruptive force in extreme circumstances. The analogy of Lucifer within this book was that he was God’s favorite angel, but due to Lucifers fall from grace when he challenged God’s omnipotent authority, Lucifer was transformed into the forever recognized symbol of evil, Satan. This is the idea of people turning from good to evil.

In The Lucifer Effect, the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 is the ideal starting point for Zimbardo as he recalls from first person accounts on how the events of the experiment unfolded. He describes how he and the other researchers set up a simulated prison in the basement of one of Stanford University's academic buildings and then selected 24 students to participate and play the roles of both prisoners and guards. The students he said were chosen from a larger group of 70 volunteers and were chosen specifically because they had no criminal background, had no psychological issues or medical conditions. The student volunteers agreed to participate during a one to two-week period in exchange for $15 a day.

 Lasting only a premature six days due to the experiment having to be stopped early Zimbardo describes in gripping detail how the students began to sink deeper and deeper into their roles and how they as guards became abusive, and the prisoners begin to show more signs of extreme stress and anxiety as their time in the experiment went on. While the prisoners and guards were free to interact in any way they pleased, the interactions became hostile and malicious. The guards began to behave in ways that were aggressive and abusive toward the prisoners while the prisoners became passive, depressed and show signs of anxiety.



He writes that even the researchers themselves began to lose grip of the situation and lose sight of their objective whilst potentially leaving the students open to psychological damage. Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden, repetitively overlooked the hostile behavior of the jail guards until graduate student Christina Maslach voiced her concerns as to the conditions in the simulated prison and the morality of continuing the experiment. Zimbardo aptly draws out every bit of emotion and drama involved in the experiment in 1971, which keeps the  reader in awe every step of the way. The Lucifer Effect is brilliantly written, intriguing, and keeps you emotionally engaged throughout reading it. In reference to the end of the experiment Zimbardo beautifully quotes in his book "Only a few people were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency; obviously, I was not among that noble class,"

 The book doesn't stop there.

 In the remainder of The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo goes to show how important the concept of the Stanford Prison Experiment is and extrapolates that to some of the more horrifying real world events in recent times, such as the abuse at the hands of agents of the US at Abu Ghraib, the genocide in Rwanda and the rape of Nanking. He discusses how the insidious and corrosive effect of power often leads to the creation of a corrupt system corrupting the people involved.

 The prison study of Abu Ghraib in Iraq is used as an example. Zimbardo became thoroughly involved in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib when he was asked to be an expert witness for Sergeant Ivan Frederick, one of the accused who inevitably stood trial for alleged prisoner abuses. Through his research into what transpired at the Abu Ghraib prison, Zimbardo was able to gain insight into what it was like for the soldiers who spent long weeks working shifts within a military prison, and although the accused was eventually sentenced to eight years hard time in another military prison, Zimbardo was able to document the failures in leadership that led to many of the abuses and states that the military system itself was the leading proponent and should be to blame for the conditions in which such atrocities could take place.

 In conclusion, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Much of the book has much of a darker sombre feel to it compared to other books due to the descriptions of how ordinary good people can perform evil acts. The final chapters of The Lucifer Effect offers us a lighter tone reminding us that some people are able to resist situational influence and can have an unbending resolve against peer pressure and systemic evil. Zimbardo gives examples of such unique individuals which include Christina Maslach, the graduate student who spoke up to Zimbardo to end the Stanford Prison Experiment, and Private Joe Darby, the soldier who blew the whistle on the atrocities that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison.
If you want to learn more about The Lucifer Effect and read other book reviews about it...

Our sleep cycle and the different stages of sleep.

The study of human behavior
So what happens to we're asleep? Despite the fact that we spend a good portion of our lives fast asleep (around a third), most of us aren’t really aware of the fact that we experience different stages of sleep and different times of the night. Sleep is a vastly complicated science, and a typical night of sleep consists of just five sleep stages. Though sleep can also be divided into two broader stages, non-rapid eye movement (NREM), and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. 

 The vast majority of our sleep (around 75 to 80 per cent) is NREM; during NREM sleep, dreams tend to be more abstract and quite vague, whereas during REM sleep dreams are more detailed and emotionally charged. During a nights sleep, every 90 to 110 minutes you cycle through five different stages of sleep, often experiencing anything between three to five dreams each night. 

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Stage One: Within a few minutes of falling asleep your breathing gradually becomes more steady and the heart rate begins to slow down. Your brain produces what are called alpha and theta waves (alpha waves are involved in relaxing you while theta waves are involved in your emotional experience) and your eye movements slow down. This stage of sleep is fairly brief, lasting up to seven minutes. This is where you are in light sleep stage, meaning that you’re somewhat conscious and can be woken easily. 

 Stage Two: During this stage your muscle activity decreases further and your awareness of the outside world begins to fade away. As a sleeper you would not likely be conscious enough to notice any outside stimuli. During this stage, which is still also fairly light, the brain produces sudden increases in brain wave frequency known as sleep spindles (sleep spindles are bursts of brain activity visible on an EEG monitor). Shortly after your brain waves begin to slow down.

Stage Three: Deep, slow brain waves known as Delta Waves begin to emerge during this stage (Delta waves are associated with relaxation and healing). This stage transitions you from a light sleep to a deep sleep.

 Stage Four: This is a deep sleep that lasts for roughly 30 minutes producing more delta waves. Your body begins to perform restorative functions such as tissue and muscle growth, energy restoration and memory consolidation where your brain files away any new information.

Stage Five: Most dreaming occurs during this stage known as REM. REM sleep is defined by the eye movement, increased respiration rate and an in increase brain activity. REM sleep is also referred to as paradoxical sleep because, while the brain and other systems in your become more active, your muscles become more relaxed to the point of paralysis. Dreaming occurs due to an increase in brain activity, though your voluntary muscles become paralyzed. Voluntary muscles are the muscles you can consciously move such as moving your arms and legs or tensing your abdominals. Involuntary muscles are the muscles you do not have conscious control over such as your heart or your inner gut. Muscle paralysis during this stage of sleep is a function to prevent you acting out your dreams whilst you're sleeping.

10 Quick And Interesting Facts About Body Language

As you may know body language is more complex than it seems at first glance. This is because reading body language has so many nuances and subtleties you have to account for such as context, culture, mood, level of comfort, baseline behavior etc. The list can go on. For example a country and its culture can have a wide range of facial expressions, body movements, and hand gestures that can signal particular emotions and feelings but go from one country to another and those same gestures and expressions can get lost in translation.

Take a look at these 10 quick and interesting facts about body language and see if you learn something new. Because body language is often nuanced and subtle with wide variations of expression you'll always learn something new. There are also experts who professionally study and research in reading body language, and even they can’t always read and interpret body language correctly. It just goes to show how complex human beings can be! We hope you enjoy this list of interesting body language facts.

The psychology of body languiage
1. Amazingly woman have a wider range of peripheral vision which allows her to look at a man’s body from head to toe without even getting noticed. A male’s peripheral vision on the other hand is not as good. This is why a man would typically move his gaze up and down a woman’s body which is very obvious and can wind up with the man getting caught.

2. Britain, similar to a lot of Northern Europe and the Far East, is labelled as a “non-contact” culture where there is little physical contact in their daily interactions. The Middle East, Latin America, and Southern Europe are considered “high contact cultures” where physical touch is a part of everyday socializing.

3. Covering the eyes or "eye blocking" such as prolonged blinking, lowering the eyes for a longer than usual period are all powerful signals that portray confusion, disbelief or disagreement.

4. Custom officers often notice that passengers who point their feet toward the exit while talking to the officer to make their custom’s declaration are more likely to be hiding something they should have declared in the first place.

5. Research shows that whatever we’re feeling first shows up in our body before entering our conscious minds microseconds later.

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6. Kissing and romantic touch releases Oxytocin in the brain. It is a hormone that strengthens the emotional bond between the two people.

7. Similar to how a dog will expose its throat to show submission or surrender, humans use their palms to show that they are harmless and not threatening.

8. It has been noted that in stores thieves will try to hide their physical presence by restricting their motions by hindering their head exposure by raising the shoulders and at times lowering the head. Otherwise most people walk around the store with their arms quite free and active and their posture upright.

9. Squinting is a motion that can be very brief, just fraction of a second, but it can often signal negative thoughts or emotions. We tend to squint when we are angry or when we hear sounds, or music or even voices we don’t like.

10. Even when a person is standing still, a person’s body is always telling a story.

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The Pygmalion Effect - The Psychology of Having High Expectations

First named by the psychologist Robert Rosenthal; The Pygmalion Effect is where the someone who is in a position of leadership has expectations of someone to perform a task well and can encourage them to actually meet those high expectations and display higher levels of performance compared to if there wasn't any expectations at all. Conceptually it is similar to having Confirmation Bias where expected behaviors are shaped creating an expected outcome.

 The study of human behaviorAn example of the The Pygmalion Effect is in an office setting where Supervisor A is considerably favorable to one of his office workers and has high expectations him to do well in any task that is given to him. This office worker in response thrives under his supervisors leadership and does his utmost to live up to his high expectations. It motivated him to work harder and to do his best. 

Then then another supervisor comes along, Supervisor B. Things changed when Supervisor B replaced Supervisor A. Supervisor B did not think so highly of this favorable office worker. In fact, it would be safe to say he didn't think very highly of him whatsoever. Eventually Supervisor B's low expectations became a reality. The office worker made mistakes and didn't seem to have the same pride in his work he did when Supervisor A was in charge, his mind went blank whenever he was asked questions, his confidence evaporated along with his motivation. His performance suffered in Supervisor B's presence.

 What seemed to have happened was the office workers good performance was encouraged by Supervisor A's high expectations and because he worked well Supervisor A would praise him on his good work which would spur this office worker to keep perform well again. And this would cycle over again and again. The opposite would happen with Supervisor B would have little to no expectations of the office workers performance causing him to behave accordingly, having a similar cycle.

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Psychologist Robert Rosenthal performed a study which proved that if teachers were led to expect a higher level of performance from students, then these students performance would improve accordingly.

  A selection of students in a California school in the 1960s were given a disguised IQ test. The teachers were told at the start of the study that some of their students could be expected to be "intellectual bloomers" that year, performing better than expected compared to the other classmates. The bloomers' names were revealed only to the teachers. At the end of the study, all students were again tested with the same IQ-test used at the start of the study. 

 True enough the experimental group the "intellectual bloomers" performed higher than the other students keeping in mind that they were chosen at random. The conclusion of the study was that the teachers may have without realizing that they had given the supposed academic bloomers more personal interactions, more positive feedback, approval, and other positive gestures, such as nods and smiling as a result of having higher expectations. On the other hand, teachers would may have paid less attention to low-expectancy students, seat them farther away from teachers in the classroom, and offer less reading and learning contributing to a poorer learning experience. 

The power of the Pygmalion effect, can be used for better or for worse in the classroom, in the workplace, in the military, and elsewhere.



Sibling Relationship Psychology


The study of human behavior
Out of all the relationships throughout our lives whether it's a friendship, parent/child relationship or a romantic relationship one of the most unique and powerful bonds we may have is the relationships with our siblings. Our siblings are usually the ones that we share our life journey's with from a young age all the way across to our adult years and during that journey you experience the ups and downs, family woes, jealousy and hostility towards each other, competitiveness, joint responsibilities and most of all the joys of being part of a family unit.

Jeffrey Kluger a science writer and author of the book The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal about Us speaks in this video about not only the common characteristics and behaviours of individual siblings in a given family but he also talks about how parental influences effect how siblings develop and interact to gain attention by cultivating their individual roles within the family household. A particularly interesting segment of the talk is where he speaks about parents and sibling favouritism, he briefly speaks about how opposite gender resemblance is a common factor when parents have a favourite child whether the parents know this or not; for instance the hard headed father may favour the no nonsense daughter because he see's a little of himself within her or the soft speaking mother may favour the quietly spoken son because of their similarities. Kluger describes it as a sense of reproductive narcissism from the parent to their favourite. This is a very profound talk from a very good speaker who cites some of the studies based on the topic of sibling bonds, it  generally is a topic which would likely relate to most people, a great talk and very interesting overall.





Understanding introverts

The study of human behavior
Normally misunderstood, introverts generally are lower energy and conservative than their extravert counterparts, but because western society often favours the extravert for their gregarious nature and their outwardly focused approach to life and the people within it introverts often get looked over and even worse misunderstood. As written previously in this post regarding introverts sometimes being introverted can be misconstrued as shy, reserved, even unsociable but in actual fact it is just a lower energy way of interacting with their given environment and they are energised by lower energy activities such as reading, socializing with a smaller group of close friends and long walks.

Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking speaks in this video below in depth about introversion and their inner strengths and characteristics as well as how some environmental factors such as businesses, classrooms and even group think have their part to play when utilising an introvert personality. She also talks about her own personal experiences on being an introvert and how it affects her, a truly illuminating video from a speaker who clearly has had a lot of experience and done a good level of research on this subject.  




Fundamental attribution error

When an incident or an event occurs (whether negative or positive) the tendency to place a significant amount of blame on a persons personality or characteristics rather than situational factors is quite a common one. This is because we tend to focus more on the person involved by assuming that a person is responsible due to their personality/characteristics and not the conditions around them that they could not have had control over in the first place. This phenomena is what you call the fundamental attribution error.

An example of fundamental attribution error is when you see someone driving and swerving and crashing into a tree, automatically you would think ''what is this person doing?!'' or ''this person is actually crazy?!'' but the real reason for the accident was not because of the person directly but because a pedestrian ran into the road and so to avoid hitting the pedestrian the driver hit the brakes whilst steering round them where their tyres slipped over a wet patch on the road causing the crash. As an observer watching the whole thing take place you would most likely blame the person driving for being reckless if you had not have known what contributed to the crash. The truth is that these multiple factors such as the surprise pedestrian, the wet patch in the road, etc, would have caused the crash regardless of who was behind the wheel, so it wouldn't have just taken a reckless personality to crash the car in this scenario.


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 A second example of the fundamental attribution error is when you ask a stranger for directions but they give you a seemingly snarky response or they're simply rude to you. Naturally you would peg this person as rude and having a bad personality, but looking past their initial first impression they may have had a bad day putting them in a foul mood or they've just received some devastatingly bad news and you were the first person they have come into contact with since receiving this news. They acted the way they did not because of their natural personality (most people are generally polite to strangers) but their circumstances made them act they way they did, in this case it was just having a bad day which was the cause.

The study of human behaviorThough there hasn't been one widely accepted causal reason for the fundamental attribution error there has been several theories which have been associated with being a root cause for why people are quicker to blame character traits for their circumstances rather than situational factors. One of the reasons is due to culture; for instance western cultures where people who are more individualistic tend to emphasize the individual over situational factors so they are  

more prone to fundamental attribution error as opposed to people from non-western cultures who tend to emphasize context and situational factors over the individual so they are less prone to the error. A study conducted by social psychologists Michael W. Morris and Kaiping Peng where they tested the hypothesis of a bias toward individual autonomy in American western culture while in there was a bias toward collective or contextual factors in Chinese eastern culture, in the experiment the participants where they were asked to watch an animated cartoon of swimming fish where one fish deviates from several other fish. In the experiment the animation was designed so that it was ambiguous whether the fish was a coordinated group influencing the behaviour of the lone fish or the lone fish acted on its own preference. Over several studies with different sets of participants both Morris and Peng confirmed their hypothesis with the western participants believing the fish acting on its own accord while most of the eastern participants believed the fish acted due to other factors outside of the individual fish.

The just world hypothesis is another possible reason for the fundamental attribution error where people have the belief that people get what they deserve whether good or bad, so if someone finds themselves in a car crash then most people believe that the person involved must have had it coming to them, conversely if someone has won a new car then most people would believe that they deserve it. In either case the just world hypothesis suggests that people in general believe that people get what they deserve. Social psychologist Melvin Lerner conducted an experiment where a group of participants watched a video of a subject complete a set of tasks where when they got a task wrong they would receive an electric shock. The subject pretended to get an electric shock of course. Lerner found that the participants had a low opinion of the subject saying that the subject deserved it and berated their appearance and character. Lerner concluded that the sight of the subject suffering ''electric shocks'' or their general misfortune motivated the participants to devalue the subject to bring about a more appropriate fit between their fate and their characteristics.





Group perceptions

When we observe or first encounter a group we inevitably have an opinion of them, we use all available and necessary information to create a mental picture of that group, and the information we use will be all relative to who we are individually, our experiences and their general impression. As we know opinions and impressions of a group don't always stick and they can and do change the more information we receive about a given group thus changing how we may respond to them whether they're negative or positive. This post will be discussing two aspects of group perceptions; one theory will be regarding how the observer and the observed perceive group decisions and the other will be regarding how groups perceive other groups in relation to themselves.

Group Attribution Error
Studied by social psychologist Professor Scott T. Allison in 1985 the group attribution theory comes in two layers, where a group that makes a decision for a course of action the members within the group believe that the decision outcome was a result of group effort following group norms while on the other hand an observer watching the same group will attribute the decision outcomes as a result of the roles of each individual member of the group having their part to play with the decision making.

The study of human behaviorFor example when a group of advertisers come together to make the decision for the type of advertising campaign they want to use and they all agree on the models they will use, the colour scheme, fonts etc and go ahead and create and their campaign. After their efforts the advertising campaign they all worked on turned out to be a failure due to not getting the kind of response they were looking for. In reflection the members of the group would attribute their failure as a result of the decisions made by the group as a whole while to the contrary an observer such  

as their manager would attribute their decision failures to certain individuals within the group. In other words group members usually believe that their actions are driven by the group as a whole while the observer believes the groups actions are driven mainly by individual personalities within the group. 

In-group bias
The idea that we favour people that we perceive as part of our group is quite a common one. As a result of this we act positively towards the people within our group while anyone who isn't associated with our group are seen as outsiders and therefore are tainted in a less than positive light. This creates an us versus them mentality and can of course be the root of any larger scale animosities such as rival gang fights, racial tensions and hostilities between whole nations.

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A common and smaller scale form of the in-group bias phenomenon can often be found in team sports such as football. Where if you support one football team you automatically assign positive attributes to the team you support and also view anyone else who supports the same team to be associated with your in-group and assign them with similarly positive attributes. Also this means that because you're a supporter of one team this would paint other teams and their supporters as outsiders or potential rivals, and this can result in the your team using such behaviours such as team chants/rituals talking about the other teams shortcomings to feel a sense of superiority over them and even using mockery all resulting in further reinforcing your preference to your own team. Contrary to the idea that being involved in a group depends on an automatic conflict to an outside group this in fact is strictly not the case though it can be a common theme. Marilynn Brewer Professor of psychology at Ohio State University in 2007 stated that people join groups to feel security and a sense of belonging and these qualities are in no relation to having a sense of conflict with other groups what so ever. 




The Stroop Effect.

The phenomenon The Stroop Effect first discovered by American psychologist John Ridley Stroop is where the brains reaction time slows down when processing conflicting information. This happens because of interference or the use of incompatible functions in the brain causing the decreased reaction time within the brain.

This phenomenon is usually studied with a stroop test where a researcher first takes note of how long a participant takes to say the name of a colour printed in black or grey ink. For example if they see the word ''yellow'' printed in either black or grey ink then they would say ''yellow''. Then secondly the researcher takes note of how long it takes the participant to say the name of another name of a colour but this time it would be printed in another colour that's not consistent with the word itself. For example if the word is green and it is printed in orange  then they would have to say ''green'' and not what colour it is printed in. Usually the second part of this test is much trickier and many people makes mistakes because they are presented with conflicting information.

The study of human behavior
An example of a Stroop test


Uses of the Stroop test
The Stroop test has been used to measure a variety of things in regards to people. Researchers have used the Stroop test to measure...

- How well a persons selective attention is

- How well a person can multi-task (similar to the previous point)

- Tests for disorders such as schizophrenia, ADHD, ADD etc

-  Brain activity to see what areas of the brain are functioning in respects to focus and attention.

- Colour recognition

- How well a persons brains processing speed is


Variations of the Stroop effect
There are other variants to the Stroop test all producing a similar effect such as...

Emotional Stroop tests
Another variant of the Stroop test is where a researcher may show a participant a card with a negative word such as sad, hurt or unlucky mixed in with other neutral words such look, press or write. Again the words are coloured and the researcher takes note of if the participant says the negative words faster or slower than the neutral words. It has been shown that depressed participants are more likely to say the colour of a negative word slower than they would if it was a neutral word.

Warped words

This produces the same effect much like the original Stroop effect where the words again are the names of colours and are presented in an unusual way printed in mismatching colours. The participants are asked to name the colour of the word presented but because the words are printed in an unusual way and are incongruent with the colours they are typed in this slows down the brains reaction and processing time making it difficult to complete the task as easily and straight forward as they normally would.

Reverse Stroop tests

Again similar to the original Stroop test but the participant is presented with a black square with the name of a colour printed in the middle but it is printed with in a colour inconsistent with the printed word, for example the word blue will be printed in red. The black square will have four smaller squares in each corner and each of the smaller squares would be a different colour. The researchers would ask the participants to point to one of the smaller squares that is the same colour as the printed word in the middle, for example they would point at the red box because the word printed is in red but unsurprisingly enough participant do actually get this wrong. The effects of this test is very similar if not the same as the original Stroop test causing slower reaction and processing time.

The Zeigarnik Effect: The need for closure.

First identified by gestalt psychologist Kevin Lewin, the zeigarnik effect is where we tend to remember incomplete tasks more often than tasks that are completed. This effect was first discovered in 1927 when Kevin Lewin sitting in a restaurant in Vienna noticed that waiters only remembered orders while they were in the process of being served thus incomplete, and when they were completed they later had little recollection of the orders they previously carried out if any recollection at all. This resulted in Kevins Lewin's student Bluma Zeigarnik theorizing that unfinished business or an incomplete task created ''psychic tension'' within us, and this tension can drive us to seek closure in regards to either unfinished business or an incomplete task.

The need for closure
The human mind is motivated to seek closure, where something is perceived to be unfinished the memory seems to hold onto it until it is resolved. A classic example would come from television soaps where an episode of your favourite television show would build up to its eventual climax after a long running storyline and you would literally be hanging at the edge of your seat, then the words TO BE CONTINUED would appear on your television screen right when you were really getting hooked. This can be quite annoying, but funnily enough it is near guaranteed that you will be thinking about it throughout the week until the showing of the next episode, and as a result you will tune in to watch it to find out what happened thus seeking and gaining closure.

Breakups
The study of human behaviorAnother example where most people can experience a lack of closure is at the ending of a relationship, this may be because of a lack of communication from one or both parties involved where you don't or cannot find a real reason as to why things didn't work out, this results in you asking yourself a lot of questions in regards to the relationship which can lead to obsessive overthinking making it hard to let go after the break up. But if the relationship ended amicably with both parties getting everything off of their chest and out in the open and reaching an understanding from both sides then usually this lessens the tension that normally creeps up during a break up because any lingering questions would have been answered giving you less to think about afterwards.

Procrastination
The Zeigarnik effect also suggests that our need for closure can also be an aid against procrastination. For instance by simply starting a project or a task preferably at an easier point you are more likely to finish the remainder of the task, this is because by not completing what you started your mind keeps drifting back and thinking about the incomplete task creating that psychic tension giving you a strong desire to finish it. And of course by starting at a smaller easier point of the task and laddering your way up to the harder parts it makes it seem that much more accessible rather than having to deal with a monumentally difficult task right off the bat.   


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Research
After her professor Kevin Lewin noticed the waiters increased recollection of incomplete or unpaid orders at the restaurant in Vennia as previously described, psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik decided to test out the theory regarding this incident. She asked roughly 20 or so participants to perform some simple tasks such as solving puzzles and stringing beads. Some of the participants were able to complete the tasks while some of the others were interrupted half way through completing their tasks. Afterwards Bluma asked the participants which of the tasks they remembered doing, according to her results people are twice as likely to remember a task that has been interrupted than a task which has been fully completed. Lastly, interestingly enough nearly 90% of the participants that were interrupted during their task carried on with their puzzle anyway without encouragement.


Self completion theory

When a person attempts to define themselves whether it is a physician, footballer, mathematician, rock climber etc. they engage in behaviours which relate to the identity they are trying to cultivate and when any of these behaviours receive some sort of negative feedback they feel an incompleteness in regards to their identity  motivating them to redeem themselves by trying harder on any subsequent task related to the self identity which previously received negative feedback so they can feel that sense of completeness again.

This is because people have an innate drive to build and maintain their own self image, and when a significant part of their self image is threatened they have are driven to seek external validation or recognition of some kind to prove to themselves and to others that they are who they think they are or at least trying to portray so that significant part of their self image remains intact. For example, if a chef receives criticism for their food from a colleague they may engage in activities which compensate for their perceived failure and improve their self image such as buying more expensive cooking equipment or they may engage in behaviours which attempt to make them feel better about their recent failure such as cooking a dish they are known to be good at, even the use of verbal statements which reinforce their self image as a good chef such as ''I have made many successful dishes in the past'' helps to make them feel complete in regards to their bruised identity. What has just been described is self completion theory.


Examples of self completion theory

Performance
When someone is in a field, profession or social group that they regard as integral to their identity how they perform in regards to where they are in experience and how they perceive others to expect them to perform generally gives them a sense of duty to maintain that level of competence consistently, but negative feedback towards their work can cause them to work harder on any tasks after the negative feedback has been received so they can regain and maintain their sense of credibility.

Verbal statements
A person who's sense of identity is threatened may have the desire to verbalise their credibility to feel validated. For instance if someone questioned a mechanic's ability to fix a car properly that same mechanic may later feel the need to verbalise how much experience that he or she has with cars or they may even state who has praised them on their work in the past. Another example is if someone's ability to be helpful is threatened they may later become more verbalised on how much they are helpful in general and may also talk about who they have helped people previously.


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Materialism
Another way a person may find a way to validate themselves when their sense of identity is threatened or seemingly uncertain is through material positions. Similar to the last two points is when someone is questioned on an element of their identity such as how masculine they are, the person in question may acquire possessions which are typically associated with being masculine such as a watch, car, gym equipment etc. or they may be questioned on their career as musician where to compensate they may buy books, cd's, video's all which are related to music thus strengthening their sense of identity. 


Status symbols
Self completion theory suggests that when an individual feels insecure but well established regarding their status or profession they may make an effort to display symbols signalling their status. This may be because they do not feel that they are respected or at least recognized for who are so they feel the need to display these symbols to change other peoples perceptions and how they act towards them which will make them feel more respected as a result reinforcing the concept of their own status.


Research
The study of human behaviorSocial psychologists Joachim C. Brunstein and Peter M. Golwilltzer conducted an experiment in 1996 regarding how perceived failures in committed identity related goals effected subsequent performance and behaviour where they had a group of students that were learning and committed to being physicians as their profession/identity which were involved in an experiment where they were split into two groups according to two conditions: the identity relevant condition and the non-relevant condition. The experiment had two phases. The first phase was a social competence task which the students were asked to complete a series of multiple choice questions. The students were each asked to read a brief outline of social problems followed by four suggested solutions where they had to choose one solution to move on to the next question. In the identity relevant condition the participants were asked a series of problems related to which physicians typically encounter in their line of work and in the non-relevant condition the participants were asked a series of problems which people come across from day to day. Feedback was manipulated in this task to either no feedback at all or a series of predominantly negative feedback so that the researchers can measure their performance in the second phase based on the feedback initially received.

The second phase was a mental concentration test where the participants in the non-relevant test condition were told upon completing the test that it was to measure and compare the concentration between various age groups while the participants in the profession relevant test condition were told that concentration on a given task was an important characteristic in becoming a qualified physician. 

The results were that the participants that were in the identity relevant condition that received negative feedback on the first phase performed better in the second phase than the participants who completed the same test in the non-relevant condition who also received negative feedback, the participants who received no feedback at all in the identity relevant test condition and the participants in the non-relevant condition who also received no feedback. The participants in the identity relevant condition which were exposed to failure reported higher levels of motivation and felt more involved than the other participants which suggests that they felt highly motivated to compensate for their failure in their identity related task making them work harder on the second phase of the experiment to prove that they are competent physicians.