21 checked facts

Learning

Everything on this site about learning — each one naming the study behind it.

You remember information best when it relates to you.
The self-reference effect demonstrates that humans have superior recall for information processed in relation to their…
You assume you understand everyday objects better than you do.
The illusion of explanatory depth reveals that people believe they understand complex systems until asked to explain t…
Your brain is programmed to ignore the middle.
The serial position effect was first identified and described by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885.…
You lose the ability to teach once you learn.
The curse of knowledge describes the inability to imagine that other people do not know what you know.…
You retain information better when you create it yourself.
Information generated through your own effort is remembered better than information read or heard passively.…
You are most confident when you know the least.
The 1999 study found that individuals performing in the lowest quartiles of certain tasks significantly overestimate t…
Rewards can turn your favorite hobby into a chore.
Extrinsic incentives often reduce the intrinsic motivation you initially felt for an activity.…
You remember information best when you connect it to yourself.
The self-reference effect is the tendency for people to encode information differently when it is related to themselve…
You cannot imagine a world where you do not know this.
Once you possess information, you find it nearly impossible to simulate the mindset of someone who lacks it.…
You learn more by studying in intervals than in blocks.
The spacing effect, first studied systematically by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885, demonstrates that information is retai…
You remember facts better if you explain them yourself.
The generation effect demonstrates that information is better retained when you produce it from your own mind.…
You remember things better when they relate to you.
A 1977 study found people recall adjectives significantly better when they judge them against their own traits.…
You rewrite your history to appear prescient.
A 1975 study revealed that after an event occurred, participants significantly overestimated how likely they were to h…
You only remember the beginning and the end.
Ebbinghaus (1885) identified the serial position effect, but the explanation attributing it to the interaction between…
You remember information better if you create it yourself.
A 1978 study demonstrated that participants remembered words better when they generated them rather than simply readin…
You find it impossible to ignore what you know.
In Elizabeth Newton's 1990 study, tappers were unable to predict how difficult it would be for listeners to identify a…
Your recall improves when you return to your original mood.
A 1981 study showed that participants remembered information better if they were in the same emotional state during re…
You notice things more frequently after learning about them.
The frequency illusion occurs when a new piece of information you recently learned suddenly seems to appear everywhere…
You rewrite your own history to match current outcomes.
People consistently misremember their past predictions as being more accurate than they actually were.…
If it sounds familiar, you assume it is true.
A 2015 study found that statements were rated as more accurate if they had been heard previously, even when the source…
You find it impossible to remember what it is like to be ignorant.
A 1989 study found that better-informed agents cannot accurately anticipate the judgments and market valuations of les…