Everything is psychological

By: Lulu Dlamini

Everything you think you choose for yourself may not be entirely your own choice. You’ve probably heard the term “everything is psychological” before. It sounds simple, but defining it is the tricky part. Simply, it means that what we are brought up to think, feel, understand, and interpret in ways that are psychologically influenced. This can be both good and bad, and it plays out in even the simplest parts of our lives. 

Psychology is a broad field, as it touches on everything from emotions, buildings, TV, food, and even the reasons we are the way we are. We are made up of psychological experiences that shape our personalities and influence our values, beliefs, and morals. There is a term that Gen-Z uses to describe instances that aren’t as serious as we think they are, and that is “it’s not that deep”, when in fact it is. Every point that I am about to make is a domino effect of stories that we can talk about for hours, but my main premise is that we must understand that each instance behind every action has an intention, and that intention is psychological.

Psychology is embedded in everything we do. Image sourced from Anfal Zeenat (LinkedIn).

Take shopping centres, restaurants, and stores, for example. In restaurants, the tempo of the music can affect how fast or slow people take to finish a meal. The way that food aisles are arranged in grocery stores influences you to buy more items than you need. This is called cross merchandising. The way that there aren't structures like Virgin Active or Paddle courts around predominantly poor black neighbourhoods in South Africa, but they always have bars that sell alcohol, says a lot about the structural psychology that can suggest quite a few things deeply rooted in racism. 

When it comes to the production of certain goods and the mentality of marketing, psychology is used. Large companies know that the only way their product will sell is if someone socially influential can market their brand. A simpler example would be the concept of an algorithm, what you have created for yourself, and what that system was able to track based on your interest. Ever found yourself thinking of a song and automatically hearing it as soon as you open an application you are constantly on? We cannot live without involving psychology in our lives, or else there wouldn’t be schools, jobs, shops, money, cars and homes. It is important for you to understand that everything around you has been carefully thought out and implemented, so whatever original thought you thought you had isn’t necessarily influenced by you but by others. 

Store layouts and environments are designed to influence customer behaviour. Image sourced from mendezmendezart.

The point that I am trying to make is that allowing yourself to not be influenced by society is inevitable, but at least acknowledging it sets you apart. Understanding that this is how we work makes you aware that this is the only way to work. We can’t really change the fact that information surrounds us through psychology. Our reliance on it makes us function; it is how we evolve and become better. It is all about certain elements and factors that contribute to those experiences. The only thing that limits us is the way we think, and once humanity has its hook on how we think, it doesn’t let go of it.  What we wear, eat, do, and what we feel, let us ponder over things we need to let go of. It distracts us because psychologically, psychology can.

The systems, societies and schools’ base existence purely on their psychology. The only way one can come up with a business is if they ask themselves what people need and think about, and from that, they make them crave the urge to buy what they have to sell. We cannot make sense of the world without psychology, so we make everything about it. We are always thinking, and with enough thought comes action; that action turns into whatever it is we want it to be. Computers need to have a central processing unit, amongst other things, to turn an input into an output, so do we. Psychology is our internal processor, helping us interpret and respond to the world. We can deny the entire premise, but it doesn’t make it less real. Psychology is not just a part of life; it is embedded in everything. 

Article edited by: Olwethu Mthethwa