It’s easy to underestimate how remarkably different our psychological experiences can be. “Psychological outliers” may be much more common than you think because there are so many ways a person can be an outlier. If you are a psychological outlier in some way, you may assume others are more similar than they really are (much the way that synesthetes, who experience a combination of different sensory inputs in their brains, often grow up believing that everyone has synesthesia). That means you may be a psychological outlier in some way without knowing it!
If you’re not an outlier, you may never guess that someone’s internal experience could be so vastly different. Even if 5% of people have an experience, and it causes very different internal experiences than you have but doesn’t manifest in an apparent difference in behavior, you might not notice the difference exists. So these “outliers” don’t necessarily have to be rare to escape your notice.
Here are a few real examples of some of the most extraordinarily different psychological experiences I’m aware of:
(1) Some can control things about themselves that people don’t normally view humans as being in control of (e.g., can choose to quickly lower their heart rate, or can choose to suddenly make themselves feel happier if they want) vs. those who aren’t in control of things that people normally think we all control (e.g., they feel as though they are literally unable to take action in certain types of situations regardless of how bad the consequences of inaction are, or they can’t stop thinking about a certain thing no matter how much they want to)
(2) Some view themselves as truly special, capable of world-changing things that no one else is, or existing for a singular and unique purpose, vs. people who view themselves as inherently inferior to others or fundamentally not deserving of love
(3) Some lack any desire for friendship and have no negative feelings about long periods of solitude vs. those who prefer to spend literally every hour of their waking time around others.
(4) Some control their physical condition primarily by treating their body as a chemical machine and consciously varying the inputs (e.g., caffeine, certain foods, nicotine, marijuana, alcohol, microdoses, modafinil, Adderall) vs. those who purposely avoid any substance that causes significant changes in their physical condition.
(5) Some have virtually no awareness of the facial expressions they are making vs. those who are aware of their facial expression at all times in social settings
(6) Some never experience a specific emotional state (e.g., they have little idea what a “depressive” state means because they’ve never experienced one, or they have never had an experience of awe) vs. people who experience specific emotions at a higher frequency or intensity than is typical (e.g., they find humor in almost everything)
(7) Some have almost no awareness of social dynamics (e.g., who is trying to suck up to whom and who is trying to signal what) vs. people who observe social dynamics just as they would a person’s hair color
(8) Some have almost no ability to change how they feel emotionally by changing their cognitive beliefs about a thing vs. can actually “snap” their emotions into alignment immediately using their cognitive beliefs when the two are out of sync
(9) Some view coincidences and strange occurrences as being deeply meaningful and fundamentally non-random vs. those who view most of their existence as being driven by unavoidable but totally meaningless chance
(10) Some have extremely limited abilities to guess what emotion another person is feeling in a given situation vs. those who constantly are aware of the emotional states of the other people in the room
(11) Some have learned that it is bad when another person is very unhappy and want to help, but experience essentially no emotion about it vs. those who viscerally experience pain when they see (or even hear of) someone else who is very unhappy, and can’t imagine what it would be like to not feel compelled to help
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