Human behavior is not always reasonable. Sometimes, human beings behave in a really odd manner, but the growing body of research is revealing more and more hidden causes behind people’s behaviors.

Here are 20 interesting facts about human behavior, based on studies:

1. People with high levels of testosterone gain pleasure from the anger of others.

2. People with low self-esteem tend to humiliate others. A study showed that the subjects who were told that the results of their IQ test were poor expressed more national and religious prejudices than those who reported higher results.

3. People sincerely believe that their negative opinions about others are truthful and have no connection with them and their self-confidence. In fact, humiliating others helps them restore their own self-esteem.

4. The behavior of people is affected by bodily sensations. For example, there is a strong association between heaviness and such features as “importance” and “seriousness”. A person is assessed as more serious and sustained if their CV was applied in a heavy folder, and vice versa.

5. Similarly, the feeling of rigidity and hardness makes people inflexible. People sitting on hard chairs were more uncompromising in the negotiations. The sensation of a rough surface causes in people a sense of the complexity of human relationships, and cold is tightly connected with the feeling of loneliness.

6. People tend to commit immoral acts or do not fulfill someone’s request for help if no effort is needed and they do not have to refuse a person directly.

7. However, more people behave “as expected” if they have to take a moral decision in front of someone.

8. Lying requires a lot of mental effort. A person who is lying has to keep in mind two things at the same time – the lie, or what they are saying, and the truth, or what they are trying to hide. As a result, a liar uses simple sentences and finds it more difficult to cope with mental tasks.

9. When people are being watched, they behave better. And the illusion of being watched works, too. It was enough to hang a picture of human eyes in a self-service cafe so that more people began to collect their dishes.

10. Behavior affects morality. People who lied, betrayed someone, or committed other immoral acts begin to perceive what is good or bad in another way.

11. An attractive and honest appearance can easily be misleading. People tend to trust appearance more than sincerity.

12. Appearance plays an important role even when voting during elections. The maturity and physical attractiveness of politicians were most important for voters’ choice (unconsciously, of course).

13. More successful and rich people are considered to be more intelligent and wise, and vice versa. Often, people tend to think that those who are successful or those who suffer deserve it. In psychology, this weird human behavior is known as the Halo effect.

14. A happier person is not the one who has a lot of money but the one who has more than their neighbor does. People constantly compare themselves with others and feel satisfied if they are superior or luckier in some respect.

15. Anger increases the possessiveness tendencies in people. People make more efforts to obtain an object that is associated with angry faces.

16. The more complex the decision to be taken is, the more people tend to leave things as they are. If the store has too much diversity of products and people cannot immediately find out which of them is better, most probably, they will leave without buying anything.

17. When people feel they have no control over what is happening, they tend to see non-existent patterns in unrelated pictures and believe in conspiracy theories.

18. People regret quick decisions, even if the results are satisfying. Not the actual time allotted for the decision matters, but the feeling that the time was enough.

19. Not all risks are the same. The same person can fearlessly jump with a parachute but be afraid of their boss. Or to train tigers but feel embarrassed when talking to a pretty woman.

20. Boredom has a bright side. Bored people are often looking for ways to do good things as common entertainment bores them and does not bring meaning to their lives.

As you can see, sometimes, human behavior has some pretty unexpected causes behind it.