6. Your Brain Is Hardwired To Believe Everyone Is Looking At YouOh God, everybody's staring at you. What did you do? Do you have something on your face? Have you suddenly become deaf to the sound of your own farting? Oh holy shit, are you farting right now, you need to go, you need to "Where is he going? Did I fart? Oh holy shit, am I farting right now? I need to go, I need to "
If you relate to that scenario, know that all the attention on you is probably in your head.iphone 5c replacement screen Science has shown that our brains are hardwired to assume that people are staring at us, even if they're just kind of vaguely looking in our direction. Researchers at the University of Sydney did a study in which they had volunteers look at photographs of faces to determine which way they were looking.
And that's not even the biggest dick move your paranoid brain pulls on you. It turns out that even when people are looking in your direction, your self conscious mind misinterprets their expression. In another study, researchers showed the participants video clips of faces displaying either emotional or neutral expressions. When asked to describe how they thought the people in the images were feeling, people who rated highly for anxiety tended to report more emotion in neutral faces."Ohmygod, he's gonna bite me on the face!"
But even if everybody is staring at you, all the time, judging you with their eyes, you shouldn't panic because .
5. You Need Eyes On You To Change Yourself For The BetterSay you're an introvert who wants to be more outgoing. (You? the Cracked reader? Say it ain't so!) The best way to actually achieve this isn't to believe in yourself that's some hippy dippy PSA crap it's to trick other people into believing that you're already more outgoing than you actually are. Science has shown that if people have an opinion about you, then your actual personality will often change to reflect that.
Researchers asked a group of participants to sit down and record two interviews on camera. In one, they were instructed to answer a set of questions about themselves as an introvert, and in the other, to answer the same questions as an extrovert. They were then told that a person sitting outside in the waiting area would be coming in next to view one of those tapes, but they didn't know which one until the recording was finished."Don't worry, this isn't a sex thing. We can almost guarantee it."
At the end of the session, they sent each of the participants outside to sit next to the person who would be viewing the tape, then watched to see how they interacted.iphone 5c replacement screen What they discovered was that, regardless of how outgoing the test subject actually was, they sat closer to the person and were more sociable with them if they believed that they were about to watch the extrovert tape. And the opposite was true if they thought they were going to watch the one where the subject mumbled into their lap the whole time. Add all that nonsense up, and it means, for any change in your personality to stick, you need to be accountable to other people. Change doesn't come from within, it comes from the burning, expectant gaze of the people around you.
4. Talking To Strangers Is More Rewarding Than You ThinkThe first conversation with a stranger is always a bunch of pointless warbling over trivial bullshit, right? Oh, how do you feel about the weather? Sure are some sports, huh? Cars make traffic, right, buddy? Well, science got curious about how rewarding conversations with strangers actually are, versus the existential dread that many of us feel about the possibility that the cab driver is going to tell us his opinions. Over a series of studies, subjects were made to have a conversation with either a complete stranger or their romantic partner. Surprisingly, the interactions with the stranger were much more rewarding than any of the participants expected."Hmmm . keep those names for the 'Signs Of Divorce' study next week. Just in case."
Later, scientists ambushed commuters on trains and buses, forcing them to choose between connecting with a random stranger or sitting alone. Everyone expected the 'sit alone' option to be more enjoyable. But those brave souls who decided to stop brutally crushing candy and talk to somebody ended up rating the experience much more favorably than those who kept to themselves.
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"It's so nice to be able to vent to someone about how annoying those scientists are!"
So actually, you should totally talk to strangers whenever you can. If we've told you once, we've told you a thousand times: Your mother is full of shit.
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