6 Hobbies that make you better at Psychology

Cognition Today

Social Hobbies reveal deeper layers of people's personalities, thoughts, and emotions. The hobby also creates a shared safe space to express, so going deep into a hobby with someone else teaches the psychology of people in everyday life.

Aditya Shukla Psychologist, Author

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Making Music

When people learn music and make it together, they reveal their thought processes, likes and dislikes, and how they compose. People also get into music for emotional reasons, which they are happy to share with other musicians.

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What you learn: Depth of thinking

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Sports

Playing a sport casually or competitively together as a team shows you how people develop trust. Sports also shows you have people perform under physical stress and that reveals how they handle emotions.

2

What you learn: Trust and belongingness

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Gaming

Gaming allows people to project their personality into the characters they play. Essentially their values, their wishes, their fantasies.  E.g., someone choose strength characters vs. agility characters, they choose a specific appearance for their avatar, etc.

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What you learn: Personality

WHY you should learn a skill even when you don't need it.

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Language learning

Learning a language through a school means many different students learn language as a baby. This usually brings out people's interests, hobbies, culture, etc.

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What you learn: Personality and Preferences

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Photography

Photography separates how people think about the world and how people see the world. It changes perspectives and brings attention to different things about people, just because there is a lens in between.

5

What you learn: Body language

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Cooking

Sharing food, making food, exploring food, talking about food, etc. taps into a very basic human emotion of wanting to make people happy. And because making food can be a messy intimate act, it makes people comfortable to share intimate information. 

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What you learn: Intimacy