6 Fascinating Theories from the Field of Psychology

The Elaboration Likelihood Model is a theory that seeks to explain why people are persuaded to change their views about certain topics.

The primary concept of this theory lies in understanding the function of elaboration. Whenever elaboration reaches a higher level, people are more apt to think things over carefully than with lower levels of elaboration, where they might decide quicker with less thought.

It states that minds can be changed through greater elaboration, but the real challenge is if they are motivated to listen.

His hypothesis simply stated that when people were exposed to something regularly, they would eventually come to like that thing. Zajonc emphasized that people didn’t even need a positive outcome or reward about an object — only its mere exposure was enough.

During the 1920s, a Russian psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik noticed something while sitting in a Vietnamese diner. She observed that waiters could easily remember those orders for customers who had not received and paid for their food. Yet, after the food was served and the check was paid, the waiters couldn’t seem to remember anything about the orders.

This resulted in a series of studies that proved that we remember stuff more if it is unfinished.

The Recency Effect was discussed in a 1962 paper by a psychologist named Bennet Murdock. Murdock discovered that the probability of a remembered word was dependent upon where it was positioned in the list. He learned that the list’s first few words were remembered pretty well, which is called the Primacy Effect.

After this, the likelihood of remembering the word dropped drastically — yet it increased again for the last eight words on the list. In the end, the last few words on the list had the highest likelihood of being remembered — giving birth to the Recency Effect.

Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that standardized tests were inadequate in assessing a child’s learning readiness. While a certain amount of knowledge is naturally gained from exposure and maturity, other knowledge depends on the social interaction with a teacher or mentor.

Vygotsky contended that these zones provide students with the best chance of mastering new knowledge. Thus, a student’s learning process should always take place within these proximal development zones.