The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously perceive small samples from random distributions to have significant “streaks” or “clusters”, caused by a human tendency to under-predict the amount of variability likely to appear in a small sample of random or semi-random data due to chance. Gilovich, an early author on the subject, argues the effect occurs […]
Monthly Archives: March 2014
Denomination effect
The denomination effect is a theoretical form of cognitive bias relating to currency, whereby people are less likely to spend larger bills than their equivalent value in smaller bills. It was proposed by Priya Raghubir and Joydeep Srivastava in their 2009 paper “Denomination Effect”. In an experiment conducted by Raghubir and Srivastava, university students were […]
Distinction bias
Distinction bias, a concept of decision theory, is the tendency to view two options as more distinctive when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately. The concept was advanced by Hsee and Zhang as an explanation for differences in evaluations of options between joint evaluation mode and separate evaluation mode (2004). Evaluation mode is […]
Duration neglect
Duration neglect is the psychological observation that people’s judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences. Multiple experiments have found that these judgments tend to be affected by two factors: the peak (when the experience was the most painful) and how quickly the pain diminishes. If it […]
Endowment effect
In behavioral economics, the endowment effect (also known as divestiture aversion) is the hypothesis that people ascribe more value to things merely because they own them. This is illustrated by the observation that people will tend to pay more to retain something they own than to obtain something owned by someone else—even when there is no […]
Zeigarnik effect
In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect (less common: Ovsiankina-Effect) states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Zeigarnik first studied the phenomenon after her professor, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, noticed that a waiter had better recollections of still unpaid orders. However, after the completion of the task – after everyone had paid […]
Four-stage protocol
The four-stage protocol is essential in covert hypnosis and it will be the foundation to every technique that you apply. This procedure helps you to induce any hypnotic trance, and without doing it properly, it’s almost impossible to make anything else in the latter stages of covert hypnosis work. You must begin learning these four […]
Emotional triggers
Emotional triggers can be seen as post-hypnotic suggestions that can be created by a hypnotist. The environment may have already triggered the subject’s emotions, but other trigger elements can be things such as hearing a song or smelling a perfume that holds a deep connection to the subject. Implant A Hypnotic Trigger First of all, to […]
Refocus Attention
When you’ve learned how to plant seeds in the back of someone’s mind where it grows by itself, you can make it even more powerful by tackling the ‘guardian’ of their mind so that the seeds sink in unconsciously and grow completely without of the subject’s awareness. This principle (access state principles) is actually quite simple. It requires […]
Redirect Resistance
So in the law of the reverse effect, you’ve hijacked someone’s ability to resist your suggestions. However, this does create a few difficulties for the subject, one being self-esteem. You’re unconsciously telling the subject: “I’m the powerful hypnotist, you’re the weak subject.” It creates a poor psychological frame and people need to feel that they have control […]