Why We Experience the Verbatim Effect

• Humorous information receives increased attention during the perception stage.
• Improved encoding. Our brain gives preferential treatment to humorous information when it comes to storing it in our memory.
• The use of humor serves as a distraction from negative emotions, such as anger or anxiety, that people might experience when processing certain information.
• Reading or viewing something humorous has a positive and energizing effect.
• Adding humor to the information that you are presenting can make it more interesting to others.

The use of positive, nonaggressive humor is associated with 

• improved learning outcomes, 
• a relaxed learning environment, 
• better student evaluations, 
• an increased motivation to learn, 
• improved information recall, 
• an increased degree of student satisfaction throughout the learning process.

The use of negative or aggressive humor, especially if aimed at particular students, will produce the opposite effect.

• The bandwagon effect can influence people’s political choices.
• It can influence consumers’ decisions regarding which products to buy.
• It can influence users’ decisions regarding how to rate stories or comments.
• It can influence investors’ financial choices.
• It can influence doctors’ medical decisions.
• It can influence organizations’ implementation of new technologies.

It serves as a mental shortcut that people instinctively use in order to make a decision quickly.

Specifically, bandwagon cues, which are signs that other people believe something or are doing something, can trigger the thought that “if other people like this, then I should too”.

• Belief in a just world can serve as motivation for making long-term efforts.
• Belief in a just world can serve as a coping mechanism for everyday struggles.
• Belief in a just world can help people cope with existential issues, by providing them with a sense of purpose.
• Belief in a just world can help people feel in control, because they believe their future will be determined by their actions.

• Various background factors, such as religion and ethnicity, can affect the likelihood that people will display just-world beliefs, and the degree to which they will display them.
• Various situational factors can also affect the degree to which people believe in a just world. For example, being in a good mood reduces people’s tendency to blame innocent victims, while being in a bad mood increases this tendency.

It can generally be said to affect people on two scales:

• Individual scale. It causes people to mistakenly assume that there is intra-group competition for a certain resource, between them and other members.
• Group scale. It causes people to mistakenly assume that there is inter-group competition for a certain resource, between their group and other groups.

• People sometimes view membership in social groups as being zero-sum: belonging to one social group excludes you from being a member of a different group.
• People sometimes view gender hierarchies in the workplace as being zero-sum, which can cause them to be more opposed to gender-fair policies.
• People sometimes believe that there is an inherent zero-sum competition between different ethnic groups, which can cause them to develop negative attitudes towards immigrants.
• People sometimes view racism as a zero-sum game, meaning that they believe that a decrease in racism against one group will be balanced by an increase in racism toward other groups.

• When you are giving a public talk, you assume that your nervousness is more apparent to others than is actually the case.
• You overestimate the amount of work that you contributed to a group project.
• You might believe that your colleagues all share your political beliefs and social values.
• You might remember yourself as having been the key player in a past event, despite the fact that you only played a relatively minor role in it.

It occurs primarily due to the fact that we tend to naturally examine and remember events primarily through our personal point of view.

Even when we realize that we should adjust our perspective to see things through other people’s eyes, we tend to anchor this new perspective to our own, and we often fail to adjust from our original viewpoint enough to properly assess how other people feel.

If we learn facts while we are doing something, we will be able to recall them better, when we are doing that same thing again.

You can use this information to your advantage: for instance, try chewing a particular gum while studying.

Research has shown that we often underestimate the amount of time that has passed from long ago, and overestimate the amount of time that has passed since more recent events.

• Get a good night's sleep or take a power nap after learning something new, to help retain and retrieve memories better. Sleep deprivation and acquisition of too much information will not help you save those memories.
• Get moving, to improve the flow of oxygen-rich blood in your brain and to trigger neuron growth and new connections in the brain - critical for memory.
• Improve your diet. Fats from food can build up the brain, resulting to poor blood flow.

Any system or device designed to aid memory:

• patterns of letters or words (common mnemonics)
• ideas (memory palace)
• associations (chunking)

Since we spend the majority of the time experiencing things from our own perspective, we struggle to imagine the perspective of others.

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that makes it difficult for people to account for the fact that other people’s thoughts, beliefs, and views are different from their own.

You need to be conscious of the fact that people have different levels of knowledge than you.

• Ask for feedback from the people you are communicating with, in order to confirm that they understand what you are saying.
• Make sure that you explain the technical terms and concepts that you use as you are using it.

The typical explanation is that our brains take shortcuts to save energy:

• Statements presented in as easy-to-read color are judged as more likely to be true.
• Aphorisms that rhyme (like “what sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals") seem more accurate than non-rhyming versions.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. ”