7 Dark Psychology Facts
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The following are 7 surprising psychology facts, some are dark, and most people can’t comprehend the average human is capable of such evil.
- Situational elements are responsible for more “evil” behaviour than dispositional elements.
Much research has been done on anti-social behaviour or “evil” intention: Anti-social behaviour results from situational factors over dispositional ones. Therefore, discussing environmental factors that enable evil behaviour is more truthful than gossiping over “bad people” (Zimbardo, 2007).
- Cheating is the cause of a third of all murders.
Infidelity was responsible for thousands of homicides in two of the most populated cities in North America. About one-third of all homicides were connected to cheating. (Daly & Wilson, 1982).
- Many can murder an innocent person if an authority figure asks them to.
Through his research on obedience to authority, Stanley Milgram discovered a surprising psychological fact that a considerable number of typical Americans might engage in behaviour that leads to murdering an innocent man just because an authority figure asked them to do so (Milgram, 1963).
- Basic facial expressions of emotions cut across all cultures of the globe.
The way people comprehend and express emotional facial expressions differ by almost 0% among all groups of humans that have ever been studied (Ekman & Friesen, 1986).
- Paying others for their work lowers motivation to do a good job is an exciting psychology fact.
Older research on cognitive dissonance has shown that under various situations, if someone is paid to do a job, the person then recognizes that they’re only doing the job for the money. Consequently, their motivation goes down dramatically for doing the job itself (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959).
- The five essential personality traits depict all people across the globe.
Researching the essential personality traits has shown many differences from human to human. However studies discovered the same essential personality traits—open-mindedness, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability— which are described by how individuals vary from one another worldwide to show another interesting psychological fact (Schmitt et al., 2007).
- Anxiety has an essential role in human functioning.
Generally, people like to think of anxiety as only problematic and that it needs to be reduced. However, anxiety acts similar to a Darwinian adaptation, which leads to benefits like succeeding in all types of tasks. Therefore, a reasonable amount of concern can be a good thing (Nesse & Williams, 1994).
