Social Psychology

  Reverse psychology is a manipulation technique that involves getting people to do things by prompting them to do the opposite. Reverse psychology can take various forms, such as forbidding the target behavior, questioning the person’s ability to perform the target behavior, and encouraging the opposite of the target behavior. For example, a parent might …

Read moreReverse Psychology: Getting People to Do Things By Asking for the Opposite

  A double standard is a principle or policy that is applied in a different manner to similar things, without proper justification. Essentially, this means that a double standard occurs when two or more things, such as individuals or groups, are treated differently, when they should be treated the same way. For example, a double …

Read moreDouble Standards: What They Are and How to Respond to Them

  The fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias that causes people to underestimate the influence of environment-based situational factors on people’s behavior, and to overestimate the influence of personality-based dispositional factors. Essentially, this means that the fundamental attribution error causes people to assume that other people’s actions are less affected by their environment than they …

Read moreThe Fundamental Attribution Error: When People Underestimate Situational Factors

  Virtue signaling is the act of speaking or behaving in a way that’s meant to demonstrate one’s good moral values. For example, if a person widely proclaims on social media that they strongly support a certain cause, just because they want to show others how caring they are, that person is virtue signaling. Virtue …

Read moreVirtue Signaling: When People Try to Show Their Goodness

  The fear of missing out (FOMO) is the concern that people experience with regard to the possibility that they’re missing out or will miss out on rewarding opportunities. People most commonly experience FOMO when it comes to rewarding opportunities that other people, and especially those in your close social circle, are a part of. …

Read moreFOMO: How to Overcome the Fear of Missing Out

  An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process where a certain stance gains increasing prominence in public discourse, which increases its availability to people and which therefore makes them more likely to believe it and spread it further. For example, an availability cascade could occur in a situation where a news story triggers a wave …

Read moreThe Availability Cascade: How Information Spreads on a Large Scale

  The just-world hypothesis is a cognitive bias that causes people to assume that people’s actions always lead to fair consequences, meaning that those who do good are eventually rewarded, while those who do evil are eventually punished. For example, the just-world hypothesis could cause someone to assume that if someone else experienced a tragic …

Read moreThe Just-World Hypothesis: On the Belief that Everyone Gets What They Deserve

  The zero-sum bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to mistakenly view certain situations as being zero-sum, meaning that they incorrectly believe that one party’s gains are directly balanced by other parties’ losses. For example, the zero-sum bias can cause people to think that there is competition for a resource that they feel …

Read moreThe Zero-Sum Bias: When People Think that Everything is a Competition

  The false-consensus effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate the degree to which their beliefs, values, characteristics, and behaviors are shared by others. Essentially, this means that the false consensus effect leads people to assume that others think and act in the same way that they do, even when that isn’t the case. For …

Read moreThe False Consensus Effect: Why People Assume that Everyone Agrees with Them

  The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that causes people to fail to account for the fact that others don’t know the same things that they do. Essentially, this means that people who are more knowledgeable than others in some domain often struggle to take this difference in knowledge into account. The curse …

Read moreThe Curse of Knowledge: What It Is and How to Account for It