Much of our lives are spent in groups with other people: we form groups to socialise, earn money, play sport, make music, even to change the world. But although groups are diverse, many of the psychological processes involved are remarkably similar. Here are 10 insightful studies that give a flavour of what has been discovered about the dynamics of group psychology.
Classic psychology studies show just how little access we have to the workings of our own minds. Ever wondered where your opinions come from, how you manage to be creative, or how you solve problems? Well, don't bother. Psychology studies examining these areas and more have found that while we're good at inventing plausible explanations, these explanations are frequently completely made-up.
Key aspects of meditation are increasingly become adopted into well-researched mainstream cognitive therapies. Essentially, it's Buddhist mindfulness meditation, repackaged to make it sound more palatable to a wider audience, and often included alongside more traditional approaches.
...a group of researchers, noting that music therapy has already been shown to reduce pain, improve sleep quality, and improve mood in cancer patients undergoing therapy and multiple sclerosis patients, wondered if music might alleviate depression as well. It does. They took 56 depressed subjects, had them listen to Beethoven's 3d and 5th piano sonatas for 15 minutes twice a week in a clean, otherwise quiet room -- and saw their depression scores on the standard Beck Depression Scale go up significantly. [I'm sure he means down - otherwise their depression is worsening!]
We all know that humans are natural born conformers - we copy each other's dress sense, ways of talking and attitudes, often without a second thought. But exactly how far does this conformity go? Do you think it is possible you would deny unambiguous information from your own senses just to conform with other people?
In reality people show a number of predictable biases when estimating other people's behaviour and its causes. And these biases help to show exactly why we need psychology experiments and why we can't rely on our intuitions about the behaviour of others.
People will interpret the same information in radically different ways to support their own views of the world. When deciding our view on a contentious point, we conveniently forget what jars with our own theory and remember everything that fits.
