Cognitive Psychology & Vedānta — मनोविज्ञान एवं वेदान्त
Forty paradoxes, biases and effects from experimental psychology, arranged by the Vedāntic function they illuminate. Each entry gives the finding's background and originator, its primary academic source, the corresponding Vedāntic principle with exact textual citation — and, in every case, an explicit note on where the analogy breaks down.
A note on method
Empirical psychology describes the behaviour of the antaḥkaraṇa under observation. Vedānta describes the sākṣī in whose light the antaḥkaraṇa is observed. The two therefore intersect only in the region of anātma-vicāra — the analysis of what the Self is not. An experiment can confirm that identification with the body is manipulable; it cannot establish aham brahmāsmi, because the pramāṇa for the latter is śruti together with anubhava, not measurement.
Every entry below is therefore offered as a dṛṣṭānta — an illustrative analogy for teaching — and never as proof. Each carries a “where it bends” note for exactly that reason. The recurring pattern is worth watching for: in most cases modern research establishes the anātmā half of the argument with precision, and is structurally silent on the ātmā half, because its method cannot reach a subject that never becomes an object.
Vedāntic interpretation throughout follows the teachings of Swami A. Parthasarathy. Sanskrit citations give chapter and verse; translations are given, not paraphrased. Where a popular concept lacks a single canonical originator, or where a famous study has since been qualified or failed replication, this is stated rather than passed over.
Why the correspondences stop where they do
The strongest entries here — Solomon's paradox, the rubber hand, the white bear, the bare room with the shock button, Kena against Dunning–Kruger — share one feature. Modern psychology has arrived, by measurement, at a description Vedānta arrived at by vicāra, and has stopped one step short of the conclusion. In each case the science establishes that the ego's self-report is unreliable, that identification is constructed, that objects do not yield lasting happiness. In no case does it reach the adhiṣṭhāna — because the instrument it uses is the very faculty under investigation.
Used carefully, that asymmetry does real pedagogical work: it lets a modern listener grant the diagnosis on evidence they already accept, at which point the Vedāntic prescription is being offered to a mind that has stopped resisting the premise. Used carelessly, the same material produces the familiar claim that “science has now proved Vedānta” — which is false, which weakens the tradition's actual epistemic claim, and which hands critics an easy target. Keep the pramāṇa boundaries explicit and the correspondences hold.