10 SOURCES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MYTHS

Building your MYTHBUSTING toolkit

Building Your Mythbusting Kit

WE MUST:

#1: Become aware of the sources of error

#2: Learn to compensate for them

Building our Defenses to Psychomythology!

• 10 ways we can be fooled

• Thinking scientifically requires us to become AWARE of these sources of error, then we can compensate for them!

• Result: YOU are a better consumer of psychological information!

#1: Word-of-Mouth• Many myths are spread from generation to generation.

Example: Urban legends

• August 15, 2013: An angel disguised as a priest, saves a critically injured 19-year-old girl, then vanishes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jmlx5C7w24

Rev. Patrick Dowling

• Don’t confuse familiarity with accuracy!

#2: Desire for Quick & Easy Answers

• Want to do better in school? Find a romantic partner? Get enough sleep? Get in shape?

• Quick, easy, and painless fixes are what we are drawn to!

Example: Fad (trendy) Diets

HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) Diet

Illegal hormone + 500 calories a day diet

What’s wrong with this?!?!

Why would someone lose weight?

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

#3: Selective Perception & Memory

Expectations (bias) Interpretations of world

Do we actually see the world PRECISELY AS IT IS?

We focus on “hits” and forget the “misses”

Are full moons associated with more admissions to psychiatric hospitals?

(Lune is French for moon…LOON…LUNATIC)

“Lunar Effect”• Why do police officers and mental health workers observe

this effect in the course of their work?• Do they ONLY remember the “hits” and forget the “misses?”

Contributes to Belief: • Confirmation bias – look for only for evidence of support

(confirm) our belief systems.• Illusory correlation – perceive a relationship from a few

cases.

Psychiatric Hospital Admissions

No Psychiatric Hospital Admissions

Full Moon A B

No Full Moon C D

#4: Inferring Causation from Correlation

• Co – relation• Look at 2 variables and see if they go together• If one variable is present, what’s the likelihood the other is

there too?

Examples:• Height & weight• Red hair & blue eyes• Sit closer to white board & better grades• Playing an instrument & increased intelligence

Correlation• We sometimes infer there is CAUSE & EFFECT at work

Example: SL Tribune, August 16, 2013

“Does soda pop make 5-year-olds aggressive?”• http://

www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56740546-78/soda-drinks-soft-behavior.html.csp

Could there be a 3rd variable that is actually leading to both? `

Example: Ice cream sales Murder rate • Watch out for the mint chocolate chip!!• Possible 3rd variable?

Correlation Does Not Mean Causation!

Example: History of physical abuse(A) increases one’s odds of becoming an aggressive adult (B) - “cycle of violence hypothesis”

• Cause and effect? Be cautious.• Could there be a 3rd variable that explains both A & B?• Genetic predisposition?• Does every abuse victim become abusive (What about

the misses?)

#5: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc• Latin for "after this, therefore, because of this." • In other words, because two events occurred in

succession, the former event caused the latter event.

A comes before B, so A MUST HAVE CAUSED B!

• Back to CORRELATION does not mean CAUSATION!

Example: A person becomes less depressed after taking a herbal remedy. It doesn’t mean the herbal remedy DID ANYTHING to reduce the depression!

The Placebo Effect• The belief that a treatment will work leads to an

improvement.

• Therapeutic touch

#6: Exposure to a Biased Sample• Biased means “nonrandom”

Example: If a person wants to find out what most Americans thought about gun control, a poll taken at an NRA meeting would be a biased sample.

Example: TV programs portray 75% of severely mentally ill individuals as violent (80% of Americans believe that mentally ill people are prone to violence)• Evidence? 90%+ NEVER COMMIT VIOLENT ACTS• Mental illness accounts for 3 – 5% of ALL violent crimes

(more likely to be victims)

#7: Reasoning by Representativeness

• We often evaluate the similarity between 2 things on the basis of their superficial resemblance to each other.

• Representativeness heuristic

• A heuristic is a “mental short cut”

Example:

Representative Heuristic• Can be useful! But sometimes it can lead us to a wrong

conclusion.

Examples: graphology (“handwriting analysis”) • Write your signature… • Exchange with partners …• Writers:

with widely spaced letters shows need for isolation.

whose sentences drift up are optimists.

with different slants are unpredictable.

with large capitals have big egos.

who cross their “t’s” with the bar above the stem are daydreamers.

with LARGE letters are outgoing.

Representativeness Heuristic

• Certain handwriting features bear a superficial resemblance to certain traits, so graphologists assume they go together!

“A similarity between the handwriting and the signature shows that the person we see outside is exactly the same person in the inside. Usually it shows honesty and high integrity.”

#8: Misleading Media Portrayals• Many psychological phenomena (ESPECIALLY mental

illness & treatment) is portrayed as being more sensational than they are.

Example: how is amnesia (memory loss) portrayed in film/TV? Can you think of examples?

*Profound amnesia is rare

*Head injuries don’t often cause OR cure amnesia

*Patients don’t have HUGE changes in personality

Accurate portrayal?

#9: Exaggeration of a Kernel of Truth

• Some myths aren’t entirely false…but an exaggeration!

• It’s probably true that a least a few differences in interests and personality traits between partners can “spice up” a relationship (could get BORING).

• But this doesn’t imply that opposite attract!

Example: “Men are from Mars,” “Women are from Venus”

Gender Differences• Gender stereotypes

• What does research say?

• Men & women differ slightly in their communication styles

Do women talk more than men? (20,000 to 7,000 words!!!)

Conversation tracking study: both men & women 16,000 words/day!

#10: Terminological Confusion• Some psychological terms can be confusing!

Example: Schizophrenia

What do you know about this illness?

Schizo: “to split”

Phrenia: “mental functions”

Mythbusting Toolkit• During the semester we will be investigating different

myths and discovering what the SCIENCE of psychology has to say!

• Goal: to become better consumers of psychological information!

• Assignment