What you believe is true and what is actually true may not be the same thing, and this can lead us to projection bias. When you’re working on an important project or just working with others, it’s important to understand other people are different from ourselves. If we are focused…
We all suffer from biases in our own thinking, but the backfire effect is one of the most counterintuitive. What Is the Backfire Effect? Most of us tend to question our beliefs when we find evidence which doesn’t agree with them. The natural response to differing information is to adjust…
Luckily, the majority of us have free speech, but what about freedom of thought? Surely we own our thoughts? There is nothing that can influence them? I mean, we are not living in some dystopian future where we have to monitor what we think. And as far as I’m aware,…
Mental blocks are stressful and sometimes painful things to experience and quite hard to overcome. When you have a mental block, your own brain is preventing the recall of memories or your ability to understand something. Remember your school days. Did you ever feel like no matter how many times…
You may have heard there will be an election in the UK before Christmas. Now, don’t worry, this article is not about politics. I’m not about to start banging on about which political party you should vote for. I bring up the election because it highlighted a situation I hadn’t…
Overgeneralization is a common way of thinking which is rarely referred to by its real name but is done by almost everyone. Most of us do it at least a little. But some of us allow ourselves to dive so deep into overgeneralizing almost everything that our mental health is…
Toxic positivity is a fairly new phenomenon. It has appeared almost directly as a result of the “good life” social media image and the rise of mental health awareness. In theory, more awareness and concern for mental health is a great thing. We've worked so hard to achieve global concern,…
If you have a hard time understanding the actions of others, you may be suffering from the hot-cold empathy gap. Psychologists are constantly trying to understand human behavior. However, it can be almost impossible to predict how an individual will act in a given situation. We can even struggle to…
