Drunk Tank Pink summary

“Black,” “white,” “rich,” “poor.” We are constantly giving labels to the things and people that fill our everyday lives. But how do these labels affect us?

Most importantly, labels shape the way we view the world.

Try to close your eyes and visualize the swastika. For most people in the West, this simple composition of straight lines triggers purely negative feelings.

This illustrates the power of symbols in influencing people and generating strong reactions.

In 1970, a 13-year-old girl called Genie was rescued from parents who had forced her to spend her whole life immobilized and in complete isolation.

Her condition?

We all eat, drink, breathe and (strive to) reproduce. And when this has been fulfilled, we also want to be assured that we have safety and love.

According to the psychologist Abraham Maslow, these are our most basic needs, and they guide our actions far more than we think.

From chess clubs to global regions, the cultures we are part of influence the way we perceive the world.

This was demonstrated in an experiment where Chinese and American students were shown different photos with a central object against a background. Later, they were shown another series of photographs and asked whether they had seen the central objects before. The Chinese students had a harder time remembering whether they had seen the central objects before, when the objects were presented against new backgrounds, while the Americans had no difficulty with this task.

Do some colors affect you in certain ways? Does blue make you think of clear skies and put you more at ease?

The colors in our surroundings have been shown to actually affect us physically.

Whether you live in a city or on a farm, your physical location and surroundings can affect you powerfully. Depending on whether you’re in a place that’s quiet, noisy, empty or packed, your thoughts, feelings, and behavior will change.

One of the dimensions that guides our actions is the crowdedness of our surroundings.

Be it sunshine, rain, sleet or snow, every time we leave our home, we expose ourselves to the weather. So the weather shapes every moment we spend outdoors, and this has some serious consequences for our behavior.

One of these consequences is aggression.