I asked 7 top psychologists to tell me what blows their mind — here are their answers

gabeandchry/Flickr

In May, I flew to Chicago for the Psychological Science convention.

If you're at all inclined to nerd out over the study of human behavior (nope, not me), the convention is one of the coolest places you'll ever find yourself.

Dozens of top psychologists were there to present their findings on topics including happiness and well-being, memory, and goal pursuit.

Around the same time, my colleague Melia Robinson of Tech Insider was visiting Stanford University, asking students to tell her something that would blow her mind. And I thought: Who knows more about the mind than an entire convention of psychologists?

I caught up with a few of them and asked each one to tell me about a piece of research that completely blows their mind.

Here's are the findings that make psychologists do a double-take:

1. Simply walking through first class on a plane can make economy passengers really, really angry

Susan Fiske, a professor at Princeton University, cited a study that was published in May 2016.

Researchers found that fliers who were reminded of social inequality were more likely to get angry and start "air-rage" incidents, becoming abusive or unruly toward crew members and other passengers.

Specifically, air-rage incidents in the economy class were nearly four times more common in planes with a first-class cabin. And those incidents were more than twice as common in planes that required passengers to board from the front, meaning everyone had to walk through the first-class cabin.

Bottom line: No one likes being reminded that other people are getting better treatment than they are, especially after they've shelled out a hefty sum for a flight.

2. When it comes to addiction, it may be mostly in your head

Roy Baumeister, a professor at Florida State University, recently learned about some intriguing research on addiction.

For a 2010 study, researchers measured cigarette cravings among flight attendants who smoked, on both long and short flights. (Smoking is prohibited on flights.)

Results showed that flight length had no significant effect on craving levels. And interestingly, cravings were stronger at the end of the short flights than they were at the end of the long flights.

These findings suggest that people start craving cigarettes when they know they're about to have one — not when they haven't had one in a while.

3. Your motivation to achieve your goals depends on thoughts you aren't even aware of

Gabriele Oettingen, a professor at New York University and the University of Hamburg, pointed to her work on a process called "mental contrasting," or "WOOP."

An alternative to positive thinking, WOOP involves thinking about your goal, the best possible outcome, the personal obstacles that stand in the way, and a plan for getting around them.

Oettingen and her colleagues have found that WOOP works by affecting our nonconscious processes, which in turn influence our conscious decisions.

For example, in one clever 2014 study, researchers had college students go through the WOOP process for a social goal, like finding a girlfriend. Then those students took a reaction-time test that measured how quickly they connected words related to their present reality and their desired future. (The words were presented quickly, so the students couldn't have consciously made the connection.)

Finally, the students indicated how motivated they were to achieve their goal.

Results showed that the students who had completed the WOOP process were more motivated to achieve their goal than students who hadn't gone through the WOOP process. And that was largely because the WOOP-ers saw the future and reality as more closely linked.