Psychology

In the early 1900s, British colonial India faced a venomous problem: too many cobras slithering through the streets of Delhi. The British government, determined to reduce the cobra population, came up with what seemed like a brilliant solution-offer a bounty for every dead cobra brought in. Initially, the program worked. People killed cobras and collected their rewards. The cobra population appeared to decline. Success! Or so they thought. The Twist Enterprising locals quickly realized they could breed cobras specifically to kill them and collect the bounty. Why hunt dangerous snakes in the wild when you could farm them at home? ...

On January 28, 1986, millions of Americans watched the Space Shuttle Challenger lift off from Kennedy Space Center. Among the seven crew members was Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher chosen to be the first civilian in space. Students across America watched live from their classrooms, excited to see their teacher reach the stars. Seventy-three seconds into the flight, Challenger exploded. All seven crew members died instantly. The nation was devastated. ...

Two headlines compete for your attention: A: “Multifaceted approaches to ameliorating socioeconomic disparities” B: “Why poor people stay poor” Both convey similar ideas. But you clicked on B, didn’t you? Or at least your brain wanted to. This isn’t about intelligence or laziness. It’s about cognitive fluency-one of the most powerful forces determining which stories spread and which die in obscurity. What Is Cognitive Fluency? Cognitive fluency is the subjective ease with which our brains process information. ...

In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram placed an ad in a New Haven newspaper: “We will pay you $4.00 for one hour of your time.” Participants arrived at Yale’s psychology lab, believing they were taking part in a study about memory and learning. They were told they would be the “teacher.” Another participant (actually an actor) would be the “learner.” The teacher’s job: deliver electric shocks to the learner every time they answered a question incorrectly. ...

On November 4, 1970, a social worker in Arcadia, California encountered a girl who appeared to be six or seven years old. She wasn’t six. She was thirteen. She weighed 59 pounds. She couldn’t stand up straight. She couldn’t chew solid food. She couldn’t speak-not a word, not a sound beyond occasional whimpers. She’d been locked in a small room for nearly her entire life. Tied to a potty chair during the day, confined to a sleeping bag in a crib at night. No toys. No conversation. No human interaction beyond someone occasionally bringing food. ...

Dr. P. was a distinguished music teacher and singer who could tell you the exact interval between any two notes you played. He could identify a Brahms sonata from the first three measures. He could conduct a choir through complex harmonies without missing a beat. But he couldn’t recognize his wife’s face. Worse than that-when Dr. P. went to leave the neurologist’s office after his examination, he reached for his wife’s head and tried to lift it off her shoulders. ...

In December 1880, a 21-year-old woman in Vienna developed paralysis in three limbs, hallucinations, speech disturbances, and a cough with no physical cause. Doctors examined her thoroughly. There was no tumor, no infection, no injury, no disease they could identify. Yet she couldn’t move her right arm or legs. She had violent convulsions. She saw terrifying hallucinations. And for weeks at a time, she could only speak in English-having completely forgotten her native German. ...

At 3:15 AM on March 13, 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked outside her apartment building in Queens, New York. She screamed for help. The attack lasted over 30 minutes. According to The New York Times, 38 people witnessed the attack from their apartment windows. Not one called the police during the assault. Kitty Genovese died. The story shocked America. How could 38 people watch someone being murdered and do nothing? ...

A software engineer tries to explain their work at a dinner party: “So basically we’re implementing a microservices architecture using containerized deployments with an event-driven messaging pattern…” The eyes around the table glaze over. A doctor explains a diagnosis: “You have acute pharyngitis secondary to a streptococcal infection, so we’ll prescribe a beta-lactam antibiotic…” The patient nods, understanding nothing. An experienced teacher wonders why students don’t grasp concepts that seem obvious. ...

It’s 2 AM. You tell yourself “just one more episode” for the third time tonight. The show ended on a cliffhanger, and your brain refuses to let you sleep until you know what happens next. Or maybe you’re at work, supposedly focused on a spreadsheet, but part of your brain is still churning over that unfinished novel you put down this morning. Why do unfinished stories occupy so much mental real estate? The answer lies in a phenomenon discovered in a 1920s Berlin restaurant-and it might be the most powerful tool in a storyteller’s arsenal. ...