A Taste of Everyday Psychology, by Zhu Tong

Contents

1. How the mind makes its way through the world
   1. Suggestion: words, gestures, and expressions can influence attitudes and behavior.
   2. Organizing information may help it stay in memory.
   3. Drawing on several senses can support learning and recall.
   4. Selective recall: enjoyable or interesting experiences may stand out.
   5. Explaining a point of view can help you understand it.
   6. Comparison makes similarities and differences easier to notice.
   7. Gestalt: we perceive patterns that go beyond the individual parts.
   8. Functional fixedness makes it hard to imagine unfamiliar uses for an object.
   9. Illusion of control: people can overestimate their influence over chance events.
   10. Incubation: a break can help when a problem has you stuck.
2. Knowing what drives your choices
   1. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the idea that other needs come into focus once some have been met.
   2. The difficulty of choosing when there are many options.
   3. How an established role or expectation can be hard to let go of.
   4. How the level of arousal can affect performance.
   5. How the strength of a starting stimulus affects whether a change stands out.
   6. Self-justification and the difficulty of seeing our own faults.
   7. What happens to feelings of shame when people no longer expect respect.
   8. The Diderot effect: one new possession can prompt a series of further purchases.
   9. The sunk-cost effect: a past investment can make it hard to walk away.
   10. How taking on a role can affect the way you identify with it.
   11. The Veblen effect: for some goods, a high price can itself be part of the appeal.
   12. Expectancy and value: why it can be hard to put effort into a task that feels pointless.
   13. The two-clocks analogy: competing standards or authorities can cause confusion.
   14. Why some people wait until a deadline is close to start.
3. How emotions work
   1. Reactance: pressure can make a person want to resist.
   2. Why prolonged exposure to an intense stimulus may lead people to avoid it.
   3. Sour grapes and sweet lemons: making light of what you did not get and valuing what you did.
   4. Compensation: looking for another source of satisfaction when something is out of reach.
   5. Patterns and fluctuations in mood.
   6. The book’s discussion of expressing emotions and well-being at work.
   7. How a period of intense arousal can give way to relief.
   8. The cycle of retaliation.
   9. The author’s discussion of responses to threats and extreme distress.
   10. The relationship between mood and health.
   11. How psychological factors can contribute to fatigue.
   12. How sleep, rest, and diet can affect mood.
   13. The relationship between physical activity and how we feel.
   14. Possible connections between weather and mood.
   15. How colors can affect impressions and feelings.
   16. How different music can change the way a listener feels.
4. What happens between people
   1. How appearance can shape a first impression.
   2. Self-disclosure and the development of trust.
   3. The appeal of people who are similar to us.
   4. The appeal of people whose strengths complement ours.
   5. Reciprocal liking: we often warm to people who seem to like us.
   6. How a sense of being on the same side can make it easier to cooperate.
   7. The pratfall effect: an occasional mistake may make a capable person seem more approachable.
   8. How repeated encounters can build familiarity.
   9. Reciprocity: the impulse to return a favor.
   10. Why too much attention or generosity may create distance.
   11. How mood can affect willingness to help.
   12. What gestures and posture can communicate beyond the words being said.
   13. How people sometimes mirror each other’s movements in conversation.
   14. How the order of criticism and praise can affect how it is received.
   15. How we can project our own interests and assumptions onto other people.
   16. The effect of making an unexpected request.
   17. Foot in the door: agreeing to a small request can make a later one easier to accept.
   18. How a choice between concrete alternatives can make a negotiation easier.
   19. How a small concession can help a negotiation move forward.
   20. The possible advantage of meeting or competing on familiar ground.
   21. When it can be persuasive to acknowledge both strengths and weaknesses.
   22. How emotional and reasoned appeals can work on different timescales.
5. Understanding what happens in groups
   1. The place of competition and cooperation in group behavior.
   2. Why people imitate someone they admire.
   3. The pressure to go along with the majority.
   4. The weight people give to perceived authority.
   5. Expectations that come with social roles.
   6. Adjusting as you move between different roles.
   7. Social facilitation and inhibition: an audience may help with familiar tasks and hinder difficult ones.
   8. What motivates the pursuit of greater power.
   9. How information can change as it passes from person to person.
   10. Group polarization: discussion can push an existing tendency toward a more extreme position.
   11. Social contagion and the way feelings and actions can spread.
   12. Diffusion of responsibility when no individual is clearly accountable.
   13. The broken windows theory and its account of visible neglect.
   14. Why people sometimes follow trends to avoid being left out.
   15. The Matthew effect: how an early advantage can lead to further advantages.