If a person buys an empty cage and puts it at home, then after a period of time, he will usually buy another bird to keep in this cage instead of throwing it away, that is to say, the person is alienated by the cage and becomes a captive of the cage. This is the birdcage effect.
1907, psychologist James retired from Harvard University, along with his good friend physicist Carlson.
One day, two people made a bet. James said, "I will definitely let you have a bird soon." Carlson disagreed: "I don't believe it! Because I never thought about raising a bird. " A few days later, on Carlson's birthday, James gave a gift-an exquisite birdcage. Carlson smiled: "I just think this is a beautiful handicraft." Don't bother. Since then, whenever guests visit and see the empty birdcage beside the table, they almost always ask, "Professor, when did your bird die?" Carlson had to explain to the guests again and again: "I have never had a bird." However, this kind of answer often brings confusion and some distrust to the guests. In desperation, Professor Carlson had to buy a bird. James's "birdcage effect" worked.
"birdcage effect", also called "birdcage logic", is a very interesting psychological phenomenon. It reveals a rule: if you hang a beautiful birdcage in your room, in a few days, there will be the following results: either throw away the birdcage or put a bird in it. The two must be one of them.
Similar to the "birdcage effect", there is also a psychological law called "empty vase effect". Once, a girl's boyfriend sent her a bunch of beautiful flowers. She was in the seventh heaven of rapture. In order to put this bunch of flowers, she brought a crystal vase specially As a result, in order to keep the vase empty, her boyfriend sent her flowers every few days. This is a sweet application of the birdcage effect.
The "birdcage effect" can also be understood as the relationship between form and content in essence, that is, after the form is set in advance, the corresponding content is filled on the basis of people's conventional thinking. It contains at least two psychological phenomena:
One is habitual psychology, which is the so-called mindset. It refers to the relatively stable and stereotyped thinking route, mode, procedure and mode formed by people in repeated use according to accumulated experience and existing thinking laws. In other words, when people see a certain situation, they will naturally form an inevitable subjective judgment related to the situation. In people's minds, birdcages are only used to raise birds. Where there is a birdcage, there must be a bird. People don't understand and accept Carlson's exceptional way of thinking, that is, "treat it as a beautiful handicraft", so there are doubts, doubts and distrust again and again.
Second, it is herd mentality. It is said that in social life, due to the influence of external group behavior, individuals show their own perception, judgment and understanding in line with public opinion or the behavior of the majority. People's incomprehension and distrust have strong psychological pressure, forcing individuals to act along the public's thinking line and value judgment. Professor Carlson, with great personality, finally could not bear the curiosity and confusion from almost every guest, but succumbed to this psychological pressure and lost the gamble.
As a kind of thinking logic, "birdcage effect" often limits people's imagination, fetters people's creativity and forms a rigid and old-fashioned thinking mode.
In real life, people with ulterior motives always use this psychological phenomenon to create deformed "birdcages" for people to prepare all kinds of birds for; Or simply turn others into the birds they need, use them and play with them. And the list goes on.