While typically accompanying something rather shocking, wait, what moments can actually benefit a person, as surprising information is believed to enhance one’s memory, consequently helping them learn.
According to Scientific American, novelty within a familiar context allows a person to store a certain event in their memory more easily, thanks to the brain part known as the ‘novelty detector’.
Located in the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex, for those well familiar with what’s happening inside our heads, the said ‘novelty detector’ is the hippocampus—one of the most significant brain regions in regards to discovering, processing, and storing sensory information.
The reason why the hippocampus is called the ‘novelty detector’ is because it is activated more by new stimuli than by something one is already familiar with.
Scientific American continued to explain that the hippocampus compares new information with already stored knowledge, and if the information doesn’t match—meaning that there’s something new and likely surprising—it releases a pulse of dopamine into one’s system.
After traveling through different parts of the brain, it connects to the hippocampus again and triggers release of more dopamine, creating a feedback mechanism known as the hippocampal-SN/VTA loop, which can help people memorize and learn things more easily.
Our memory—and consequently, our ability to learn—are not the only aspects that tend to be affected by unexpected wait, what moments. In a Ted Talk back in 2019, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Southern Oregon University, as well as an expert in life-changing events, Dr. Michael A. Rousell, PhD, suggested that surprises can change our beliefs, too.
Professor Rousell started his Ted Talk with an example; he asked the audience to imagine themselves standing in traffic, when they see the car next to them start to hover all of a sudden. “You’d be surprised,” he said, adding that in such an instance, one’s eyes might open wide and their jaw might drop; they are likely to experience a burst of dopamine and instantly stop what they were thinking or doing.
“And then you instantly form a new belief—cars can hover,” the expert continued, and pointed out that people don’t form such a belief intentionally; it happens to them and there’s nothing they can do to undo it.
Dr. Rousell pointed out that as surprising as hovering cars are, they might make for interesting dinner conversation, but not much more. However, surprises in regards to the beliefs a person holds about themselves can be defining and formative in their life, which means they can be used strategically to intentionally enrich someone else’s life.
One way to do it, according to the professor, is to trigger surprise by suggesting that something one considers a weakness is actually an asset: astonishing someone in such a way hijacks their attention and forces the person on the receiving end to try to make sense of the information, and consequently form a positive belief about themselves.
While the surprising pictures on this list might not make people change their personal beliefs for the better, online content in general can lift up their spirits or positively influence their well-being.
Studies suggest that as long as people are mindful about it, routine social media use—logging in to respond to content shared by others, for instance—is positively linked with one’s social well-being, positive mental health, and self-rated health.
A survey carried out by Sky Media found that around one third of people—in Britain, at least—turn to social media for their daily dose of positivity, spending roughly two hours a day seeking it. According to the survey’s results, animal content tends to leave them smiling the most, followed by posts depicting random acts of kindness.