Top 10 Cool Psychological Research Findings

Posted Dec 20, 2017

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In the world of behavioral science, where I live, psychological researchers implement studies in
an effort to better understand the nature of behavior. As a result of well-designed psychological
research over the years, many novel findings with all kinds of implications have been documented
by psychological researchers. Here is a list of 10 cool psychological research findings—findings
that you might find surprising—findings that can help you better understand the people in your
world. Note that this is in David Letterman Top-Ten-List format, to make it more fun!

10. Human emotional expression shows extraordinary constancy across human

populations (i.e., a smile is a smile wherever you go). In groundbreaking research on the
nature of human emotional expression, Ekman and Friesen (1986) found that the facial
expressions that correspond to such basic emotions as happiness, sadness, anger, surprise,
disgust, and fear are remarkably similar across the world. From remote nomadic folks in the
South Pacific to the fancy people sipping high-end tea on Park Avenue in Manhattan, the basics of
how we express emotions are the same.

9. You have more in common with a typical pigeon than you might realize. In some
of the most important research ever done on the nature of behavior—across a storied career, B. F.
Skinner (1953) made the case that the processes that underlie learning, such as operant and
classical conditioning, are remarkably similar across species of animals—from dogs to goldfish to
pigeons to rats to humans.

8. The more you pay someone for doing a menial task, the less he or she will like it.
In a classic set of studies on the concept of cognitive dissonance, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
found that people who (a) engaged in menial tasks for no good apparent reason, (b) told another
student that they liked the tasks, and were then (c) paid $1 for doing so reported liking the tasks
much more than did participants who were in the same study but who were paid $20 for their
work. When people are poorly compensated for unpleasant work, they are more likely to convince
themselves that they actually enjoyed the work so as to reduce their own levels of cognitive
dissonance.

7. Regular people (like you and I) are quite capable of obeying a stranger to the
point of killing another human being. In a series of studies on the psychology of obedience
to authority, Stanley Milgram documented, without question, that, under certain conditions, a
large majority of normal adults are capable of killing someone else—especially if they are being
directed to do so by some credible-seeming authority figure and if the context as framed as “for
the good of science” (Milgram, 1963).

6. Emotional intelligence often matters more than does cognitive intelligence when it
comes to success in life. We place a premium on the importance of intelligence and on
markers of academic aptitude. In fact, in several behavioral and life domains, based on a large
body of research, success is better predicted by emotional intelligence than by cognitive
intelligence (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).

5. About ⅓ of homicides in North America today have something to do with

infidelity. While we may think that humans are all civilized and have somehow emerged to be
above our base evolutionary origins, it’s just not true! In an analysis of thousands of North
American homicides, Daly and Wilson (1982) found that approximately ⅓ of homicides in recent
North American history are best conceptualized as reactions to infidelity.

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4. People are more giving to others when the room smells nice. In a study on
volunteerism, Liljenquist et al. (2010) had participants either (a) sit in a room that had not been
cleaned recently or (b) sit in a room that was recently cleaned and sprayed with a nice-smelling
spray cleaner. They were offered the opportunity to take literature for Habitat for Humanity. The
participants in the nice-smelling room were more likely to take the literature and to report that
they would volunteer for the organization.

3. People’s reports of why they do what they do are often completely incorrect. In a
description of a series of study, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) found that while people have no
problem providing justifications for their actions, they are, quite often, actually totally unaware of
the real causes of their behavior. For instance, participants who watched a movie that was
accompanied by a constant loud noise from the hallway liked the movie much less than did
participants who watched the same movie without the loud noise. When asked why they didn’t
like the movie, not a single person in the loud-noise condition mentioned the loud noise.

2. Personality barely shapes what we do. Research on the power of personality in predicting
behavior has found that, on average, our personality traits tend to account for only about 9% of
our behavior—at most (Mischel, 1968).

1. We are not as helpful as we think we are! A large majority of seminar students connected
with an Ivy League university who are slated to give a lecture on the story of the Good Samaritan
in the Bible will step right over a person in need if they are running late to deliver the lecture
(Darley & Batson, 1973). Think about that!

Bottom Line

If you know an armchair psychologist who thinks that he or she knows all the answers when it
comes to people and that the work done by researchers in this field is a waste of time, you might
want to forward this list to that person. As demonstrated by this Top Ten List, psychological
research is, well, really cool and it regularly leads to new and often-unexpected insights into what
it means to be human.