Top 10 Psychological Laws Parents Should Know

Children are not good at teaching, and they can't listen to what they say; what if their academic performance is not good and they have no enthusiasm?

In view of the difficult problems in education, parents may wish to learn more psychology and master some practical educational psychological skills.

The following psychological laws, many of which are conclusions drawn from experiments, have a certain degree of credibility and can be tried.

Psychological Law One: The Rosenthal Effect

Rosenthal, a famous American psychologist, once did such an experiment:

He randomly divided a group of mice into two groups: Group A and Group B, and told the keepers in Group A that the rats in this group were very intelligent; at the same time, he told the breeders in Group B that the mice in his group were of average intelligence.

A few months later, the professor tested the mice in both groups to cross the maze and found that the mice in group A were really smarter than the mice in group B, and they were able to get out of the maze and find food first.

So Professor Rosenthal was inspired, and he wondered if this effect could also happen to people.

He came to a regular middle school, walked casually through a class, and then circled a few names on the student list and told their teacher that the students were very high and intelligent.

After a while, the professor came to the middle school again, and the miracle happened again, and the few students he had selected were now really the top of the class.

Why is this happening? It is the magic of "hinting" that comes into play.

【Comment】How high your expectations are, how big your child's future results will be.

Everyone in life will receive psychological cues of one kind or another, some of which are positive or some of which are negative.

The mother is the person the child trusts and relies on the most, and at the same time the person who exerts psychological cues.

If it is a long-term negative and bad psychological cue, it will affect the child's emotions, and even affect its mental health.

On the contrary, if teachers and parents have high hopes and positive affirmations for their children, nourish their children's hearts through expectant eyes, praiseful smiles, and motivating language, so that children have more self-esteem, self-love, self-confidence, and self-improvement, then how high your expectations are, how big will the child's future achievements be!

Psychological law two: the over-limit effect

The famous American writer Mark Twain once listened to a priest's speech at a church.

Initially, he felt that the pastor spoke well, touched people, and was ready to donate.

After 10 minutes, before the pastor had finished speaking, he became impatient and decided to donate only some change.

After another 10 minutes, the pastor had not finished speaking, so he decided not to donate a penny.

When the pastor finally finished his lengthy speech and began to collect donations, Mark Twain, out of anger, not only did not donate money, but also stole 2 yuan from the plate.

This psychological phenomenon of excessive stimulation, excessive strength and prolonged action that causes psychological impatience or resistance is called the "over-limit effect".

【Comments】Don't hold on to your child's mistakes.

The overrun effect often occurs in family education and school education.

For example, when a child makes a mistake, the parent will repeat the same criticism of one thing once, twice, three times, or even four or five times, making the child go from guilt and uneasiness to impatience and even disgust.

When you are "forced to be anxious", there will be a "I prefer this" rebellious psychology and behavior.

It can be seen that teachers and parents cannot criticize children beyond the limit, and children should "make a mistake once and criticize only once."

If you have to criticize again, it should not be simply repeated, but a different angle and another way of saying it. In this way, the child will not feel that the same mistakes are "held on", and the boredom and rebellious psychology will also be reduced.

Psychological Law Three: The Desi Effect

The psychologist Desi once told such a parable:

A group of children frolicked in front of an old man's house, screaming for days. A few days passed, and the old man could not bear it.

So he came out and gave each child 10 cents and said to them, "You guys made it very lively, I think I'm a lot younger, and I'm thankful for the money." ”

The kids were happy and still came the next day, frolicking as always. The old man came out again and gave each child 5 cents. 5 cents is ok, the child is still happy to go.

On the third day, the old man only gave 2 cents to each child, and the children were furious, "Only 2 cents a day, do you know how hard we work!" They swore to the old man that they would never play for him again!

In this parable, the old man's method is simple, he turns the children's internal motivation to "play for their own pleasure" into an external motivation to "play for the sake of getting cents", and he manipulates the external factor of the cents, so he also manipulates the children's behavior.

【Comments】Parents should be cautious about rewarding their children with materials, improper rewards will weaken their children's motivation.

The Desi effect is evident from time to time in life.

For example, parents often say to their children: "If you score 100 points this time, you will be rewarded with 100 yuan", "If you can get into the top 5, you will be rewarded with a new toy" and so on.

Parents may not have thought that it is this improper reward mechanism that will reduce their children's interest in learning little by little.

In terms of learning, parents should guide their children to set lofty ideals, enhance their children's feelings and interest in learning, increase their motivation for learning itself, and help children harvest the joy of learning.

Parents' rewards can be helpful for learning, such as books, learning tools, and some rewards that are not related to learning are best not.

Psychological law four: the south wind effect

The "South Wind" effect, also known as the "warm" effect, stems from a fable written by the French writer La Fontaine:

The north wind and the south wind are more powerful than the power to see who can take off the coat of the pedestrian.

The north wind first came with a cold wind, cold and bone-chilling, and as a result, pedestrians wrapped their coats tightly in order to resist the invasion of the north wind.

The south wind blows slowly, and suddenly the wind and the sun are beautiful, and the pedestrians feel that the spring is warm, and then unbutton, and then take off the coat, and the south wind wins.

The reason why the south wind in the story can achieve its purpose is because it conforms to the inner needs of people. This psychological response that inspires self-reflection and self-satisfaction is the "South Wind Effect."

【Comments】With a little more "human touch" praise, the child's performance will be better.

From this, we can know that it is not advisable to use "sticks" and "intimidation" and other "north wind" education methods in family education.

The implementation of warm education, more "humane" praise, and the cultivation of children's self-consciousness can achieve the effect of doubling the results with half the effort.

Psychological law five: the barrel effect

The "barrel" effect means that a barrel with an uneven mouth does not contain water, not the longest plank on the barrel, but the shortest plank on the barrel.

【Comments】 Take more time and let the children "learn from each other's strengths".

The comprehensive score of a child's subject is like a large wooden barrel, and the score of each subject is an indispensable wooden board that makes up this large wooden barrel.

The stable formation of a child's good academic performance cannot rely on the prominence of the results of certain subjects, but should depend on its overall condition, especially on some of its weak links.

Therefore, when it is found that there are deficiencies in some subjects of the child, the child should be reminded in time to spend more time on this subject to "learn from each other's strengths".

Psychological Law Six: The Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne factory outside Chicago is a factory that manufactures telephone exchanges, with relatively complete entertainment facilities, medical systems and pension systems, but workers are still indignant and the production situation is not ideal.

Later, psychology experts specially conducted a test on it, that is, in two years, the experts talked to workers individually for more than 20,000 times, stipulating that in the process of talking, we should patiently listen to the various opinions and dissatisfaction of workers on the factory.

The talk experiment yielded unexpected results: the Hawthorne plant's output had increased dramatically.

【Comments】 Let the child speak freely about his dissatisfaction and confusion.

Children inevitably have confusion or dissatisfaction in the process of learning and growing up, but they cannot be fully expressed.

As a mother, we should try to squeeze out time to talk to our children, and in the process of talking, we must patiently guide our children to speak freely, express their confusion in life and learning, and express their dissatisfaction with parents, schools, teachers, classmates, etc.

After the child has "spoken", there will be a kind of venting satisfaction, and they will feel relaxed and comfortable. In this way, they will work harder in their studies and will be more confident in life!

Psychological law seven: increase and decrease effect

The "increase and decrease" effect in interpersonal communication refers to the fact that anyone wants the other person's likes for them to "increase" rather than "decrease".

For example, many salesmen have captured people's psychology, always grabbing a small pile and adding it to the weighing plate little by little when weighing the goods to the customer, rather than grabbing a large pile and putting it in the weighing plate and then taking it out little by little.

【Comments】To evaluate children, you may wish to "first degrade and then praise".

When we evaluate our children, it is inevitable to tell their shortcomings and strengths, and often adopt the method of "first praise and then depreciation". In fact, this is a very undesirable evaluation method.

When evaluating children, we may wish to use the "increase and decrease effect", such as first saying some small problems that do not harm the child's dignity, and then giving appropriate praise...

Psychological Law Eight: The Butterfly Effect

According to research, the weak air current brought by a butterfly occasionally flapping its wings in the southern hemisphere, due to the mixture of various other factors, will turn into a tornado sweeping across Texas in the United States in a few weeks!

Disorderologists call this phenomenon the "butterfly effect" and have theorized that a very small cause, after a certain period of time and the participation of other factors, can develop into a very large and complex influence.

【Comments】There is no small matter in educating children.

The "butterfly effect" tells us that educating children is no small matter. The expression of a sentence, the handling of one thing, correct and appropriate, may affect the child's life; wrong and arbitrary may delay the child's life.

Psychological Law Nine: The Labeling Effect

During World War II, the United States was undermanned, and the war did require a group of soldiers.

So the United States decided to organize prisoners in prisons to fight on the front lines. To this end, the United States has sent several psychologists to conduct pre-war training and mobilization of prisoners and accompany them to the front line.

During the training, the psychologists did not preach too much to them, but placed special emphasis on the prisoners writing a letter to their dearest person every week.

The content of the letter was uniformly drafted by psychologists, describing how the prisoners' performance in prison had improved and how they had been reformed.

The experts asked the prisoners to scribble carefully and send them to their dearest ones.

Three months later, the prisoners went to the front, and the experts asked the prisoners to write letters to their loved ones about how they obeyed the command and how brave they were.

As a result, the prisoners performed no less on the battlefield than the regular army, obeying the command and fighting bravely in battle, as they said in their letters.

Later, psychologists called this phenomenon the "labeling effect", which is also called the suggestive effect in psychology.

【Comments】Don't always call children "stupid".

This psychological law plays an extremely important role in education. For example, if we keep yelling at the child "stupid", "pig's head", "how stupid", "can't even do such a simple problem", etc., over time, the child may really become what we call "stupid".

Therefore, teachers and parents must quit laughing and shaming, blaming and complaining, threatening and intimidating language, use more motivational language, and label children more positively.

Psychological Law Ten: The Threshold Effect

There is often a phenomenon in daily life: when you ask for help from others, if you put forward higher requirements at the beginning, it is easy to be rejected; and if you first make smaller requests, others agree and then increase the weight of the demands, it is easier to achieve the goal, this phenomenon is called the "threshold effect" by psychologists.

【Comments】Praise and motivation have skills.

In education, we can also use the "threshold effect". For example, first put forward lower requirements for children, wait for them to do what they are required, give affirmations, praises and even rewards, and then gradually increase the requirements, so that children are willing to work hard endlessly.