The 10 most important psychological effects

One of the efforts of research in Psychology has been to understand what are the distortions of perception and thought that lead us to behave as we do. The idea is that by understanding the "psychological circuits" that condition our way of perceiving the world, we will be able to better understand the human mind.

That is why, for decades, psychologists have studied a number of psychological effects; curious phenomena capable of being studied in laboratory conditions and in which biases and strange patterns of perception that occur in almost all people are reflected. In this article we will see which are the most important.

• Related article: "Müller-Lyer illusion: what it is and why it occurs"

The main psychological effects

These are various psychological and perceptual phenomena that show that, beneath the apparent order that exists in the human mind, strange mechanisms are hidden and that at certain moments they can behave in a counterintuitive.

1. Dunning-Kruger effect

This is one of the most consistent and robust psychological effects among those found in the different research on human behavior, as it appears again and again in most experiments carried out on this matter. Consists in

the tendency to overestimate our abilities and level of competence in what we are not good at, and in the tendency to undervalue ourselves a little in what we are really good at.

• You may be interested: "Dunning-Kruger effect; the less we know, the smarter we think we are

2. Stroop effect

The Stroop effect has to do with a process of interference between the senses, in which the textual component of a concept is mixed with a sensation. It appears when, under certain conditions, we read aloud and quickly the name of a color, whose word is written in a different color: in these cases, it is very likely that instead of reading what the text says, we will mention the name of the color to which we have been sensually exposed, and not textually.

3. Lake Wobegon effect

This is one of the cognitive biases that have to do with the assessments we make about ourselves; that is, it is related to our self-concept and our self-esteem. Specifically, it is a tendency to believe that we are more skilled or virtuous people than the average and that, at the same time, if we show any sign of weakness or imperfection, this is due to circumstances external to ourselves, which have not allowed us to behave or be the way that we really define.

4. Cocktail party effect

Attention management has been for decades one of the topics in which Psychology has put more interest, and the cocktail party effect gives us an idea of ​​why, since it is very curious and at the same time common.

It is the psychological phenomenon that occurs when, automatically and involuntarily, our mind selects a sound that is mixed with background noise (or ambient noise) and that is relevant for us. For example, if we are at a party full of people and among the noise of people talking we hear our name, spontaneously we will be able to "isolate" that word from the rest and react to it, probably turning on that direction.

Thus, the cocktail party effect occurs between the border between the conscious and the unconscious, since it takes place before we decide direct our attention to a specific conversation, and "hands" us a sound that has been selected by some mental process alien to our own Will.

• You may be interested: "Cocktail party effect: a phenomenon of auditory perception"

5. McCollough effect

The McCollough effect is a phenomenon of perception belonging to the world of optical illusions based on afterimages, which means that they show us the way in which cells in the retina adapt to visual stimuli prior and affect the way we see things that we expose ourselves to right after.

In order for it to occur, we first fix our gaze on a series of parallel lines of red and green, and then we are exposed to a similar pattern of parallel lines, but this time without color, of black on White. This will make us perceive this stimulus mixed with the previous one, causing both to affect each other, creating an optical illusion.

6. Kappa effect

The kappa effect is the psychological phenomenon whereby, if enough time passes between being exposed to one stimulus and exposing ourselves to the next, we tend to believe that this period is longer than normal, while if this period is short enough, the opposite occurs: we have the feeling that less time has passed than actually has passed between one and the other stimulus. That is, this psychological effect shows us the existence of thresholds that affect our perception of time.

7. Ben Franklin effect

The Ben Franklin effect reveals a mental process related to cognitive dissonance: If we do a favor to a person, in successive periods we are more likely to do him a favor again than if we had received a favor from that person. This is believed to occur as a way to justify our past action: we assume that it is natural to make small sacrifices for that person regardless of whether they are rewarded.

• Related article: "Cognitive dissonance: the theory that explains self-deception"

8. Forer effect

The forer effect consists of the tendency to feel identified with deliberately abstract descriptions of a specific person, even when objectively there is nothing in them that indicates the degree of specificity necessary to know whose talking. It is believed that the success of tarot and divination is based on this distortion of the mind, which can occur in almost anyone under the right conditions.

9. Halo effect

The halo effect consists of a tendency to positively evaluate a person or entity in general based on an assessment of one of their qualities in particular. For example, it is common for famous people to be, for the simple fact of having that attribute (popularity and presence in the media), admired and valued very positively.

That is, the halo effect leads to exaggerated value judgments that are based on the lack of information of the person or entity as a whole, starting from the fact of looking at one of its characteristics that are visible and easy to verify.

10. Von Restorff effect

The Von Restorff effect describes the general pattern whereby when faced with a homogeneous set of stimuli, we tend to remember more those that depart from the general norm. For example, if we see a group of generally tall people, we will more easily remember the one that is significantly short.

This is one of the most exploited psychological effects in the advertising world, where they are often used images and metaphors that quickly express the idea that what is offered is different from what the competence.

Bibliographic references:

• Broadbent, D.E. (1954). The role of auditory localization in attention and memory span. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 47 (3): 191–196.
• Bronkhorst, A.W. (2015). The cocktail-party problem revisited: early processing and selection of multi-talker speech. Atten Percept Psychophys. 77 (5): p. 1465-87.
• Fabiani, M. & Donchin, E. (1995). Encoding Processes and Memory Organization: A Model of the von Restorff Effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology; 21(1): 224-240.
• Nelson, D.L.; Reed, U.S.; Walling, J.R. (1976). Pictorial superiority effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory. 2 (5): 523–528.
• Ramachandran, V. and Zeve, M. (2017). Synesthesia and McCollough Effect. i-Perception, 8 (3), 201-211.
• Svenson, O. (1981). Are we all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers? Acta Psychologica, 47, 143-48.