Useful Concepts You Should Know (Part One)
Poise curates ten psychological and behavioural concepts—from the Gruen Effect to Permission Structures—drawn from social observation and cognitive research. The piece treats these ideas as tools for understanding everyday human behaviour and navigating one's own mind.
𝑼𝑺𝑬𝑭𝑼𝑳 𝑪𝑶𝑵𝑪𝑬𝑷𝑻𝑺 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑺𝑯𝑶𝑼𝑳𝑫 𝑲𝑵𝑶𝑾 (𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝑶𝒏𝒆)
We do not pride ourselves in knowledge we possess. We learn every day and mostly we are just sharing what we learn with you as we go. We found this interesting thread on twitter. We hope you enjoy learning these simple but life changing concepts as we did.
1. Gruen Effect: Ever notice how when you enter a large grocery store, common items like bread & milk are right at the back, and the journey there is labyrinthine? The layout is designed to confuse you, so you become lost, and end up impulse-buying items you don't need.
2. Procrastivity We often avoid work by doing something else that feels productive so we don't feel guilty. For example, endlessly researching productivity hacks instead of actually being productive. Beware that your brain can justify procrastination by disguising it as progress.
3. The Grey Rock Method: Reacting emotionally to trolls and other toxic people only gives them what they want—your time & energy—which encourages further trolling & abuse. As such, the best way to get them to stop is to become unresponsive to their provocations.
4. Solomon's Paradox: We're better at solving other people's problems than our own, because detachment yields objectivity. But Kross et al (2014) found viewing oneself in the 3rd person yields the same detachment, so when trying to help yourself, imagine you're helping a friend.
5. Zeigarnik Effect: Our brains are goal-focused, so we have better recall of unfinished tasks than finished ones. Exploit this by taking your breaks halfway through tasks. If you write, end the day mid-sentence so that when you return you'll find it easier to get rolling again.
6. Kurtosis Risk: "More people are killed by bees than terrorists, so why do we spend so much fighting terrorism?" The answer is that death rates =/= risk. The most a bee can do is kill a person. The most a terrorist can do is nuke a city. Current rates ignore future potential.
7. Howard Hughes Syndrome: Everyone always lies to the powerful, to curry favour or avoid punishment. Hearing nothing but flattery causes the most powerful people to develop the most distorted views of reality, and their vast influence means we all pay the price. h/t: @KPaxs
8. False Consensus Effect: We assume everyone is like us, so our beliefs about others are derived from our knowledge of ourselves. Predictions of others' behaviour often tell us more about the predictor, and accusations often tell us more about the accuser.
9. Deferred Happiness Syndrome The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death
10. Permission Structure: People don't want to change their minds for fear of looking stupid, so give them a way to change without looking stupid. E.g. instead of simply telling someone, they're wrong, tell them you thought like them but had your mind changed by new information.
Which is the one you needed to hear? For us it is No.10
Gotten from a Twitter thread made by @G_S_Bhogal
Published in mid-2022, this reflects a moment when explainers and concept-sharing were central to social media discourse. The piece sits in the space between personal development and cultural literacy, offering readers intellectual scaffolding for their own lived experience.
These concepts remain useful precisely because they name patterns most people recognize but lack language for. The frame—learning as you go, sharing openly—models intellectual humility. The final gesture (naming Permission Structures as the writer's own takeaway) is honest and human, refusing to position the list as mere information transfer.