Why Psychology is Not Just Common Sense
Mind-myth 3: Psychology it not just common sense, but do psychologists go too far in denying similarities? In this post I poke some holes in the standard arguments and consider the connections between psychology and common sense.
If you want to see a psychologist's head explode, tell them psychology is just common sense. It's not that surprising as it's like saying that they've been wasting their time all these years and needn't have bothered studying all that claptrap in the textbooks. While psychology is, of course, more than common sense, there is certainly an intersection between the two, and anyone denying it should have their head examined.
Because psychologists are so sensitive when told their discipline is nothing more than self-evident, they've often gone out of their way to prove how different psychology is from common sense, sometimes with disastrous results.
Two straw men
An oft-cited argument against common sense pits two common sayings against each other. For example, how is it possible to reconcile, 'birds of a feather flock together', with 'opposites attract'. Clearly these are mutually incompatible, it is argued, so common sense is (apparently) proved wrong. Psychology to the rescue!
Common sense is something much more subtle than just hackneyed old sayings.But the problem with this argument is pretty fundamental: it assumes that these well-known sayings are a good proxy for common sense. In reality, they're not. Common sense is something much more subtle than just hackneyed old sayings. Rather it is our intuitive sense of the way people think and behave based on all we know, both consciously and unconsciously. Assuming common sense is just cliche is doing it a disservice.
The second argument you'll get about the problem with common sense refers to a study carried out by Houston (1985). Houston asked 50 random people in a local park 25 questions about psychology. The questions had all the psychological jargon removed so that they were easily understood, but the psychological principles remained. He found that out of 25 questions, 16 were answered correctly more often than would be expected by chance.
So, what's your interpretation of this finding? Does that support the idea that psychology is just common sense or not?
Well, it can just as easily be interpreted both ways. The fact that people score above chance means they have some intuitive understanding of psychology's findings. On the other hand the fact that people don't score 100% shows that people don't know everything. Perhaps even this is just common sense!
Counter-intuitive findings
No, rather than attacking common sense, psychologists are much better off defending their science by explaining the multitude of counter-intuitive findings. This blog is filled with them. Start with, say, choice blindness, and work on from there. These types of findings are the best evidence for how much more psychology is than just common sense.
Ultimately what really sets psychology apart from common sense is the scientific method.Ultimately what really sets psychology apart from common sense is the scientific method. Psychology tests common sense ideas about people (along with some nonsensical ideas) to try and find out the truth. Sometimes common sense is proved right, other times not.
But, again, let's not be too down on common sense. While psychologists are usually sensitive and therefore defensive about the role common sense plays, they don't need to be: in fact common sense is very important to them. The reason for that lies at the interface between psychology and common sense.
Crossing boundaries
Academic psychologists are generally pretty coy about the role common sense plays in coming up with ideas for their research. They will talk about theory and hypotheses a lot, without really acknowledging that they just had a hunch.
...many experiments don't return common sense answers...What most people would call common sense plays a huge part in the early phases of psychological research. When psychologists first consider a new area of research, there's little else to go on other than guesswork or common sense.
And sometimes the results are exactly as we would expect and so common sense becomes science.
Of course many experiments don't return common sense answers and often these are the most fascinating. They can reveal the most to us about what it means to be human as well as setting up a whole line of further studies to try and hunt the answer down.
When common sense is proved wrong, though, this begs the question of how, and whether, psychological knowledge can creep across the line to become common sense. Perhaps once psychological findings become well-known, people incorporate them into their intuitive thoughts and behaviour.
People, such as myself, who are interested in disseminating psychological research, would hope the answer is yes. Wouldn't it be fantastic if just understanding Milgram's experiment on conformity really did allow us to avoid it's more depressing consequences?
This may be far-fetched but it doesn't hurt to consider the interaction between common sense and psychology. After all what used to be 'just' psychology, can become 'common sense' and similarly what used to be 'just' common sense can become psychology. Each should inform the other.
But, please, don't try to tell a psychologist that psychology is just common sense. It's safer for all concerned.
» Find out if any other mind-myths catch you out.
[Image credit: birdbath]
Reference
Houston, J. (1985). Untutored lay knowledge of the principles of psychology: do we know anything they don't?, Psychological reports, 57(2), 567-570.
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I'm a sociologist (symbolic interaction and cultural sociology), and this seems to be analogous to some problems we have in sociology. I think of every single intro class I've taught, and in everyone I've had students who thought sociolgoy would be 'easy' because they already knew about their own society.
Sociology is huge and fractured (the supreme postmodern discipline), but from my position within it, I'd say this is like the distinction between "folk theory" and "social theory" that many of us make. All people develop theories about how and why their society/culture works as it does; this enables them to successfully navigate their social interactions. When their folk theories are "wrong", it's because they don't work in that particular social setting. Often, folk theories can be correct in a more scientific sense as well, but it isn't their function to be scientifically true—their function is to enable the individual and group to successfully interact.
This seems to map onto your notion of "common sense", or what I would call "folk psychology". Of course people have an experiential understanding of their own psychologies, or at least of the psychology as it manifests in their cultural setting. And of course it's wrong (or counter-intuitive) some of the time. The purpose of a folk psychology is to, again, enable the individual to explain and/or understand herself and others, and to be able to interact with them successfully.
I'm not sure why this would cause psychologists to become defensive or their heads to explode. This is part of the fun puzzle of studying in the social sciences writ large, isn't it? Why do our brains develop "good enough" theories, but not factually correct ones? Why do factually incorrect theories "work" for people who hold them? Why does scientific inquiry require us to suspend our own folk theories (folk social theory, folk psychology, folk biology, and folk physics) in order to do our work? This is all, for me, one of the funnest parts of doing the work I do.
Hi Bkyu, thanks for your comment: very interesting to read a parallel viewpoint.
BTW, yes - common sense = folk psychology. Just trying to avoid the jargon.
Well said, Jeremy. Psychology, like sociology and linguistics, suffers too much from lay people assuming that they know how it's done because they have feelings, or social interactions, or can speak.
Not to say that there is no value in hunches - after all, the first thing you have to do is think of a good hypothesis worth testing. A lot of bad hypotheses are (ideally) rejected right out of the gate, and I think a lot of that is fairly intuitive. Although whether that's "blind" intuition or an innate sense honed through study and practice, I don't know...
I think the biggest problem with the common-sense approach actually arises from two separate difficulties: one is our inability to understand our own thought processes, as you've covered recently; the other is our tendency to assume that everyone thinks the same way that we do. How easy is it, when you hear some psychological tidbit that matches your own personality perfectly, to say, "that's just common sense?"
Well said, Will. I was going to post my own comment and after reading your succinct post, I decided you put it much better.
Very good article. I do think that many of the misperceptions that you describe could be reduced to common sense with sufficient education, but that sufficient education is not common.
I am not just picking at semantics because of the name of my own blog, but (like you) I want to understand the true essence of that phrase.
Psychologists, like all specialists, would obviously disagree that their profession is just common sense. But the difference is that, whereas people don't usually claim that electronics or architecture is common sense, they do think that they understand psychology because so much of normal conversation IS pop psychology. Why did he do that? What did she really mean? That's everyday talk.
The key difference is that the common person suggests a specific answer to a particular case, the psychologist looks for a general pattern that is applicable to other situations, i.e. being useful instead of inane, making behaviour into science.
Interesting...this reminds me of an answer a herpetologist gave when asked about the efficacy of various home remedies for snake bite. He said that, seeing as how most people (at least in North America) don't die from a snake bite, even if their bite is not treated in any way, almost anything people think to do will seem to work - as long as what they do in and of itself is not deadly, of course.
I think that is what may be at work with 'common sense' psychology. The average person will overcome the need for 'psychological treatment', eventually, quite regardless of whether they actually receive professional care or not. So, like snake bite, any 'common sense' theory about psychology will seem to work. And, of course, no belief is more firmly held than one confirmed by experience.
The problem is that common sense as most people see it, isn't that common anymore. Enter hindsight bias. When people hear about counter-intuitive studies like Milgram's, they say something like "Oh yeah that makes sense." However, I doubt that many would have guessed the outcome. Zimbardo's prison study comes to mind, in which even the experimenter never even imagined the shocking results.
Very well given, Patty. Once you know the outcome you certainly think it's "logical", but I guess that's because psychology often deals with everyday problems. Whereas you cannot say it's logical that time and space form a continuum, because it's not something you would be thinking on the bus, you can very well THINK you know outcomes of human behaviour.