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Overview

An old wives’ tale says you shouldn’t wear a red shirt around a bull, as it will provoke the animal to attack. While this may not be true in all cases, there is some evidence that your behavior toward someone wearing a red shirt could very well change.

In fact, you are constantly being affected by forces within and around you. You can be triggered to feel certain emotions because of names or labels, your memories can be manipulated based on what people call them, honesty increases with the presence of others watching you, and even in a crowded place, if someone needs help they will get less assistance.

In this summary, you will learn how the letters in your name can influence your life and why hitchhikers should wear red. You will also discover that naturally occurring sedatives are bright pink and female lap dancers earn more money when they’re ovulating.

The author is interested in the subtle things that shape people’s behavior. She cites examples of how certain factors can influence human minds, including prison cells with a pink hue and initials.

Big Idea #1: Your name influences the life you lead by triggering strong mental associations in others.

Since the Second World War, there have been few Adolfs.

Many parents avoid giving their children names that have negative associations. For example, “Adolf” has a strong association with right-wing dictatorship.

Besides concepts, we also associate names with demographic information. For example, most people would presume that Dorothy is a white female, Fernanda is Hispanic, and Aaliyah is black. Studies have even revealed a strong relationship between a mother’s education and the names she chooses for her children.

Not only do names influence our lives, but they can also affect how we think and act.

A study showed that people with white names get more callbacks than those with black names. The applications were equally strong, but the applicants had different racial backgrounds. This indicates discrimination and could shape how life unfolds for someone based on their name.

We know that our names affect how others see us, but do they also influence our own behavior? Absolutely.

People are more likely to donate money if their name begins with the same letter as the cause they’re donating to. For instance, people who have a K in their name donated 150% of what they normally would after Hurricane Katrina damaged New Orleans.

Big Idea #2: The labels we use shape what we see, bias our judgments and create false memories.

We give labels to things and people all the time. These labels affect how we view the world. For example, we put a label on something that’s black or white, rich or poor.

Language affects how we perceive things. For example, our language has words for different colors, which means that we can see shades of color more accurately than people who don’t have those words in their languages.

Research has shown that the Russian language is better than English in describing certain colors. In one experiment, Russians were able to distinguish between two shades of blue more easily because their language has distinct labels for these shades.

Not only that, labels can bias our judgments.

Another study gave two choices of three faces. The subjects were asked to choose which one was darker in tone, but the tones were actually identical. People still chose the face with a label that described its race as being darker than others. This indicates that people are unable to judge skin color accurately when it’s labeled by race, regardless of actual tone.

Finally, we know that language can even create false memories. In one study, researchers showed a video of two cars colliding to two groups of subjects. One group was told by the researchers that the cars had smashed into each other while the other group was not given any information about what happened in the video. The first group remembered seeing shattered glass when they recalled details from the video but those who were not given any information remembered much more accurately than those who were told something different. Clearly, words can influence our memory and therefore should be used carefully.