Psychology

My interest in psychology did not begin with textbooks.

It began with watching people.

How they behave in groups.
How they respond to incentives.
How they defer responsibility.
How they justify actions after the fact.

I’ve always been less interested in what people say they believe than in how they behave when something is at stake — money, safety, status, desire, fear. That’s where psychology stops being theoretical and becomes real.

Humans in Systems

The same patterns repeat everywhere.

In markets, people chase momentum and call it conviction.
In wars, they obey authority and call it duty.
In commerce, they respond to incentives and call it fairness.
In dating, they perform identities rather than reveal character.

For a long time, I assumed people acted primarily from values — that principles guided behaviour, and inconsistency was the exception. I often wondered why I didn’t quite fit in, why what people said mattered so much less than what they did.

I now understand that most behaviour is context-driven, not value-driven. People adapt to the system they are placed in, often without conscious awareness. Change the frame and the behaviour follows.

Even now, I would describe myself as a novice in fully grasping this. Human systems are complex, layered, and adaptive. The learning never really ends.

This isn’t cynicism.
It’s late-arriving clarity.

Markets as a Psychological Laboratory

Markets are often described as rational. They aren’t. They are emotional systems with prices attached.

One of the clearest examples is the long-observed weekend effect:

Fridays tend to be stronger.
Mondays tend to be weaker.

Nothing fundamental changes over a weekend. What changes is mood.

On Fridays, people feel relief. Risk tolerance rises. Optimism leaks into decisions and prices are bid up.
On Mondays, people return to obligation. Anxiety increases. Pessimism expresses itself through selling.

This is why the old adage exists: don’t sell stocks on a Monday.

People believe they are reacting to markets.
In reality, they are reacting to how it feels to re-enter the system.

Another example is even simpler.

Put a jacket in a shop window at 50% off and people feel urgency.
Put a stock at 50% off and no one touches it.

Same number. Opposite reaction.

Because humans don’t anchor value to price.
They anchor it to social confirmation.

Buying feels safe when others are buying.
Selling feels safe when others are selling.

Markets don’t punish ignorance.
They punish unexamined emotion.

Crowd Behaviour and Fashion

Markets behave like fashion cycles.

Assets become “interesting” only after they’ve already risen. By the time dinner-party conversation catches up, the risk has already transferred to late entrants. The crowd doesn’t buy value — it buys reassurance.

The same pattern appears in politics, culture, and morality:

Early adopters are mocked.
Mid adopters feel clever.
Late adopters feel righteous.
Dissenters are punished.

Then the cycle resets.

Once you see this, overshoots — financial or social — stop being surprising.

Intersexual Dynamics and the Mating Market

One of the most uncomfortable — and therefore revealing — areas of psychology is intersexual dynamics.

I’ve never been particularly good at playing what’s often called the mating game. I’m more inclined to observe it than perform it. But observation, over time, teaches you things whether you like it or not.

At a basic level, men and women respond to different evolutionary cues.

Men are strongly drawn to fertility signals — not abstract beauty, but specific markers of reproductive health. One of the clearest is how and where women store fat.

Fat distribution around the hips, thighs, and buttocks — a low waist-to-hip ratio — signals hormonal balance, fertility, and lower pregnancy risk. Men respond to this reflexively, often without being able to articulate why. This predates culture, fashion, and ideology.

Women, by contrast, are drawn to indicators of protection and provision — height, confidence, competence, resources, stability, and status.

This isn’t ideology.
It’s pattern.

Modern technology, particularly online dating, has made these patterns measurable rather than merely intuitive. The data is often uncomfortable, but remarkably consistent.

For example:

A man who is 5’2” is statistically required to earn hundreds of thousands more per year than a man who is 6’0” to achieve similar match rates on dating platforms.

Women are also surprisingly accurate at assessing a man’s relative wealth within seconds — not through conscious calculation, but through cues: posture, ease, dress, speech, decisiveness, and context.

I used to find this surprising. I no longer do.

If anything, I sometimes wish my younger self had known these statistics earlier — not because I would have liked them, but because they would have saved a great deal of confusion.

Understanding these dynamics doesn’t make relationships colder.
It makes them less mysterious.

And mystery, left unexplored, is where resentment grows.

Suggestibility and Influence

One of my close friends is a hypnotist.

Watching people willingly enter altered states of attention is revealing — not because hypnosis is mystical, but because it exposes an uncomfortable truth: most people are far more suggestible than they believe.

Tone matters.
Authority matters.
Repetition matters.
Framing matters.

The human mind does not resist influence by default. It cooperates with it — especially when doing so reduces anxiety or transfers responsibility.

Once you understand that, advertising, politics, and media stop feeling chaotic and start feeling patterned.

When It Crystallised

For me, this understanding crystallised during the COVID period.

What struck me most was not the medical debate, but the psychological uniformity. How quickly dissent became taboo. How readily judgement was deferred to institutions. How moral certainty replaced curiosity.

Fear reorganised behaviour almost overnight. Families fractured. Friendships cooled. Communities split — not along lines of care, but along lines of compliance and identity.

The critical divide wasn’t caution versus scepticism.
It was whether someone could tolerate difference without hostility.

Many could not.

Under pressure, large numbers of people prefer certainty over truth, and belonging over thought.

Media and Conditioning

This is one reason I almost never watch television.

Not out of superiority — but clarity.

Television does exactly what its name implies: it programs. Through repetition, emotional priming, narrative compression, and selective framing. It doesn’t tell you what to think outright; it tells you how to feel, and which reactions are acceptable.

I am selective instead. Long-form conversations. Carefully chosen sources. YouTube used intentionally, not passively.

Attention is not neutral. What you repeatedly expose yourself to reshapes you, whether you consent to it or not.

Turning the Lens Inward

Psychology, used properly, eventually turns inward.

Watching when I rationalise.
When I avoid discomfort.
When I project.
When I chase certainty instead of understanding.

The most useful psychological skill I’ve learned is self-observation.

Psychology is not about diagnosing others.
It’s about reducing self-deception.

Limits and Self-Honesty

I don’t claim immunity.

I’m certain I’ve been shaped — even programmed — in ways I don’t yet recognise. By culture. By reward systems. By fear. By repetition. Some of that conditioning may only become visible in hindsight, if at all.

No human stands outside influence. Anyone who believes they do is already deceiving themselves.

What is possible is awareness — partial, imperfect, ongoing.

The goal is not perfection.

It is attention.

Why Psychology Matters to Me

Psychology explains why systems fail, why markets overshoot, why bubbles form, and why people so often act against their own stated interests.

It explains why:

• propaganda works
• fear spreads faster than reason
• responsibility is so easily outsourced

Understanding these dynamics doesn’t make you immune — but it makes you less programmable.

That matters.

A Closing Thought

Most people are not malicious.

They are unexamined.

They want safety, belonging, and relief from uncertainty. If a system offers those convincingly enough, many will submit to it — even at the cost of autonomy.

My response is not contempt.

It is selectivity.

In what I watch.
Who I trust.
Where I place my attention.

Psychology, for me, is not about fixing others.

It is about staying awake.