A study performed by social psychologists in 1995 showed that participants awarded bronze medals were happier than competitors that finished with silver medals.  They were happy just to medal, while second place finishers were disappointed they didn’t win.

Thus, I refer to those who receive the bronze medal as “participants,” and those who get the silver medal as “competitors.”  I bet the fourth place person is less happy than every one though.  Except for the second to last place finisher.  I would rather get dead last than second to last.  At least if you are second to last, you can say that you are the first winner.

The Ouija Board “works” due to the Ideomotor Effect, where your brain tricks your muscles into doing whatever your brain wants to happen.

It’s like how my brain tricks my muscles into opening the fridge when I’m hungry.

It is wrong to assume that your first answer is more likely the better answer.  60 studies consistently showed that going with your initial response or answer is not a good strategy if you start second guessing yourself.  Typically, people who changed their answers more when they were unsure scored higher.

Apparently thinking with your brain is better than going with your gut.  Wild.

The Tetris Effect occurs when a person who devotes such a great amount of time or attention to a single task that it begins to overshadow their thoughts and activities.

People who play Tetris for prolonged amounts of time often find themselves thinking about how shapes in the real world would fit together.

I’d be scared if it was called the Call of Duty Effect, where people think about how to snipe you as they watch you from the coffee shop across the street.

What does a blind person’s dreams look like?  Studies have revealed that the deciding factor in whether a blind person has visual dreams is the the length of time the individual has been blind.  If the person had the ability to see, but then was blinded after the age of seven, the person will often “see” things in dreams.  If the person was born blind, or blinded between the critical ages of 5 and 7, they will not have visual dreams; however, they often will have dreams with vivid sounds and smells.  It sounds like a blind person’s nightmare would be quite terrifying. I haven’t been sleeping very well recently, I keep having the recurring dream where I smell a serial killer.

Or perhaps: the dream where I go to school and it smells like I forgot my pants.

Psychiatrists are called shrinks as a result of a comparison made between psychiatrists and head-shrinkers.  Back in the good old days, head-shrinkers were the tribal members who shrunk the heads of their enemies after killing them.  I guess both a psychiatrist and a head-shrinker screw with your head, in a way.  It’s just that one tries to help you, and the other one kills you and physically shrinks your severed head.  But, I mean, I guess I see where they’re coming from…

Synesthesia (in Greek, the joining of the senses) is a phenomenon in which activation of one sensory reaction involuntarily causes another.  I actually have this.  In my case, when I hear music, I often perceive a color as well.  I have iTunes playlists categorized by color.  There are various types of synesthesia, such as seeing letters or numbers as colors, some people can even taste sounds or colors. I also remember when I was a kid that certain street signs affected my mood.  But it could also be possible that my mom was dosing my juice boxes with LSD.