This article speaks on 20 things I’ve learnt about human behavior. My name is Temple Obike and all my life i have genuinely been interested in observing human behavioral patterns. Human beings do not just act but have underlying first and second layers of reasoning behind most of their actions.
In my young career as a psychotherapist and counselor, i have been blessed to have worked with over 300 clients from various ethnicities, religious backgrounds, societal class, sexual orientations and with diverse belief systems. The more i speak to them, the more i learn about human behavior. These lessons are purely from my experiential point of reason and in no way forms a general opinion on the point mentioned. Here are 20 things I’ve learnt over the years about humans;
20 THINGS I HAVE LEARNT ABOUT HUMAN BEHAVIOR
1 Humans love choice because it gives them an illusion of control but once a purchase decision comes with too many options, people will simply not buy anything. Too many choices affect the ability of many people to confidently part ways with their cash.This is especially for my business people out there. Give customers too many options, service offerings, solutions etc. (usually 4 and above), you stand a higher risk of loosing that customer.
2 Telling a lie requires 5 times the mental effort required to tell a truth. Lying takes more mental space because even though they are lying, they always need to remember what the truth really is.
3 Risk-taking behavior is not a thing that has a life-wide relevance. For instance, your dare-devil male friend who could drive from Lagos to Abuja all night and alone between 9pm – 6am might be scared of his boss.
4 People who seek out advice from other people end up influencing the person they are asking for advice. This is a great point for pastors, lawyers, therapists, counselors, teachers or other individuals who are in positions where they offer advice to others. Never forget the professional conducts of your practice and only become personal or cite personal examples IF it positively helps the overall case at hand. There is a level of openness required to genuinely assist a fellow human and whatever you open up to has the ability to influence you if they know how.
5 Women often times argue with people they actually care for and less arguments occur when there is little or no existent care. Fella’s please note, arguments aren’t always an invitation to a fight, it’s sometimes an invitation to solve a problem.
6 Visibility and Immorality are Inversely proportional. Simply put, the lower the odds of getting caught, the higher the chances of indulging in immoral acts like vouyerism, murder, envy, theft, rape etc. All immoral acts require less visibility to be perpetrated.
7. Again on morality, i discovered that our habits and general behavior have profound effect on our morality. For instance, a man who hates hard-work will naturally gravitate to anything else that will bring in resources without work even if it’s crime. On the reverse, a woman who receives gifts from externals without it being payment for a “legitimate” service rendered will most likely plunge into deeper levels of immorality if that is what it requires to sustain the “gifting” events. The habits and behavior we develop as human beings affect our moral state and marriage, a loving relationship or religion does not change those. It only changes when the human being involved decides to change. This is for the amazing soft-work boys, slay-mama’s, sisters & queens. No judgement, just stating the obvious.
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8 As twisted as it sounds, one of the ways of getting the attention you desire from someone is simply by ignoring them. The human response when faced with attention withdrawal is to fight it’s way back to regain the attention. This is especially true in scenarios where the mind believes that attention was withdrawn without any logical reason. This usually happens in both sexes. Something that’s hinged on a “coquettish” trait.
Coquette – This is a romantic give-and-take that can reduce the most heroic individual (usually men) into an insecure shell of their former self.
9 Amidst a group of individuals displaying any form of emotion/activity (weeping,entertaining, laughing, jubilating etc), human beings usually tend to concentrate more on the person within that group whom they feel closest to. This is simply because the human psychology by nature loves predictability and familiarity. Only the psychologically secure human will venture and pry.
10 Most human beings consider themselves great judges of character but 95% of humans will ALWAYS trust an ATTRACTIVE and HONEST appearance more than SINCERITY. No matter how long it takes before they trust, humans most times trust attractiveness and honest appearances over real sincerity. The down side to basing your trust on attractiveness and honest appearance is that most humans spend all their lives cultivating a persona that fits perfectly into their social everyday life while suppressing their real “Shadow” self.
11 Human beings who are prone to ANGER are usually more susceptible to COVET something that belongs to someone else. The same passion it takes to become a go-getter is rooted somewhere between envy and anger (see my post on this topic). For many people who may not have discovered how to positively turn envy into a positive motivating force, their envy develops into anger which could morph into anything else like hatred, murder, defamation, black-mail etc.
12 Intimacy of any kind is loved by the human brain. This is simply because human psychology interprets physical and emotional intimacy as a form of validation. Validation that makes the human in question feel, wanted, desired, loved etc. So we notice that for individuals who were deprived of emotional intimacy by their parents, they either go to an extreme where they deny their need for intimacy by manifesting overt strictness, masculinity and prudish tendencies. Others on the reverse side become walking emotional wrecking trains ready to jump into the arms of the next available person who promises intimacy. Relationships work when intimately balanced individuals come together.
https://templeobike.com/2020/05/28/navigating-partner-bi-sexuality/