10 Mind-Myths: Do Any of These Catch You Out?
Think our attitudes predict our behaviours? Think we only use 10% of our brains? Think blind people's other senses are more acute? Think again.
[Click the titles for the full posts]
- Seriously, Would You Admit to Only Using 10% of Your Brain?
It's a nice thought that we might have spare capacity, but there's no evidence for it. - Blind People's Other Senses Not More Acute
Blind people might learn to use their other senses better, but they are no more acute. - Why Psychology is Not Just Common Sense
If you want to see a psychologist's head explode, tell them psychology is just common sense. - The Attitude-Behaviour Gap: Why We Say One Thing But Do The Opposite
Even when people are doing their best to tell the truth, there's still only a small relationship between people's attitudes and their behaviours. - Newborns Don't Bond Immediately with their Mothers
Infants don't care who looks after them for the first three months, so long as someone does. - 50% of College Students Think We See Like Superman, Despite Perception Course
Our eyes are only receptors, we don't see by sending out rays. But even after being told the truth, people still revert almost immediately to the myth that we see like Superman. - Two Brains for the Price of One?
The famous left-brain/right-brain split in functioning isn't nearly as dramatic as you've been led to believe. - Graphology: Connections Between Handwriting and Personality are Illusory
It really seems like handwriting should tell us something about personality - but it doesn't. - The Mind Cannot Beat Cancer
If only it could. Psychological interventions can, however, help people deal with the disease. - Is a Bigger Brain Really Better?
It's the old, old story: it's not how big it is, it's what you do with it.
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Labels: Mind-Myths
Graphology: Connections Between Handwriting and Personality are Illusory
Mind-myth 8: At first glance the myth that our personalities might be hidden in our handwriting is attractive. The way each of us writes is so personal, apparently in just the same way our personalities are so individual. Handwriting is also a mode of personal expression, a creative act we have been developing our whole lives.
Sure, people can guess the author's gender from a handwriting sample about 60% to 70% of the time, bearing in mind that 50% is pure chance. People also perform better than chance at guessing an author's socioeconomic status from their handwriting. But can you really read any deep psychological truths into a person's handwriting?
Maybe people who have fast handwriting are impulsive? Maybe untidy handwriting means depression? Graphologists (not to be confused with forensic document examiners) have gone much further, though, in interpreting handwriting. They have made all sorts of claims, including that graphology can help you:
- Select your perfect marriage partner.
- Find out whether your partner is cheating on you.
- Identify which potential employees will become violent on the job.
- Decide which applicants for a loan are credit-worthy.
Impressive claims, no? Let's check them out...
Putting graphology to the test
Geoffrey Dean has reviewed two hundred different studies into whether graphology can tell us anything about personality (Dean, 1992). Adding up the effect of each of these studies showed that graphology has a combined power of about...wait for it...zero. Well, not quite zero but still very, very small - so small as to be insignificant.
The respectability of graphology within the scientific community has now been all but wiped out.That's not to say that some of the plentiful studies on graphology don't find more positive results, some of them do, even though they're usually still small. But unsurprisingly these studies are published by graphologists themselves in sources that cannot be considered reputable. For example they paid for it to be published.
Of the studies that are published in peer-reviewed journals that use rigorous scientific methodologies, hardly any show an effect. As a result the respectability of graphology within the scientific community has now been all but wiped out.
Using graphology in personnel selection
Of course the simple fact that empirical studies show it has no validity hasn't stopped graphologists continuing to make all sorts of claims for their 'science'.
Barry Beyerstein, who was well-known as an investigator of questionable psychological techniques and products, points out that claims about the validity of graphology are potentially damaging. Beyerstein (2007) explains how he was once told by a graphologist that he had been sexually molested by his parents and that he had a drug problem. Needless to say neither of these 'interpretations' were true.
Perhaps one of the most widespread, and potentially damaging uses, is in recruitment. It is thought between 5% and 10% of businesses in both the US and the UK use graphology as part of the recruitment process.
Graphology has exactly the same validity in personnel selection as astrology, i.e. noneIn other parts of the world the figure is even higher. Astonishingly between 38% and 93% of businesses in France use graphology - probably because one of graphology's pioneers, Jean Hyppolyte Michon, was French. Still, it's difficult to know exactly how many companies still use it because many deny it, despite probably using it (Bradley, 2005).
They're right to keep it secret: it's embarrassing.
A recent review of the literature on the use of graphology specifically in recruitment was carried out by the British Psychological Society. They found that graphology has exactly the same validity in personnel selection as astrology, i.e. none.
Accepting the evidence
We have to bow to the sheer weight of evidence against graphology.The reason people tend not to think too critically about graphology is probably because it seems so intuitive. Indeed studies have shown that people know how to change their handwriting so as to affect other people's impression of them (Loewenthal, 1975). In other words we seem to share some beliefs in common about what certain features of handwriting signify although these connections are merely illusory.
Despite the intuitive nature of the connections between handwriting and personality, we have to bow to the sheer weight of evidence against graphology. And this evidence keeps telling us that it doesn't work. Consequently people who believe in graphology should rightly be treated with the same suspicion as those who believe in astrology. Humour them if you wish, educate them if you can, but don't take them seriously.
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References
Beyerstein, B. L. (2007). Graphology - a total write-off. In: S. D. Sala (Ed.). Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bradley, N. (2005). Users of Graphology. Graphology, the Journal of the British Academy of Graphology.(January) 69, 55-57.
Dean, G. (1992). The bottom line: effect size. In: B. L. Beyerstein, D. F. Beyerstein (Eds.). The write stuff: evaluations of graphology - the study of handwriting analysis. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Loewenthal, K. (1975). Handwriting and self-presentation. Journal of Social Psychology, 96, 267-270.
Labels: Mind-Myths
The Attitude-Behaviour Gap: Why We Say One Thing But Do The Opposite
Mind-myth 4: It's only natural to think a person's attitudes and behaviours are directly related. If someone says, while truly believing it, that they're not a racist, you'd expect them to behave consistently with that statement. Despite this, psychologists have found that the link between a person's attitudes and their behaviours is not always that strong. In fact people have a nasty habit of saying one thing then doing the opposite, even with the best of intentions.
You see it all the time. People say they're worried about global warming and yet they drive around in a big gas guzzler. They say that money isn't their God, yet they work all the hours. They say they want to be fit but they don't do any exercise.
The discovery of the extent of people's blatant hypocrisy goes back to 1930s America and the work of a Stanford sociology professor, Richard LaPiere. In the early 30s he was on a tour across California with some close friends who happened to be Chinese. LaPiere was worried that they would encounter problems finding welcoming restaurants and hotels because of his Chinese friends.
Out of the 128 restaurants and hotels they visited, all but one served them courteously.At that time in the US there had been lots of stories in the media about how prejudiced people were against Chinese people. LaPiere and his friends were, therefore, pleasantly surprised to find that out of the 128 restaurants and hotels they visited, all but one served them courteously. Nowadays the fact that one place refused to serve them would rightly be considered an outrage - but those were different times.
So it sounds like a happy ending: perhaps the papers had just exaggerated people's negative attitudes towards Chinese people? But when LaPiere got home he started to wonder why there was such a gap between what the newspapers were reporting about people's attitudes and their actual behaviour. To check this out he decided to send out a questionnaire to the restaurants and hotels they had visited along with other similar places in the area (LaPiere, 1934).
The questionnaire asked the owners about their attitudes, with the most important question being: "Will you accept members of the Chinese race in your establishment?" The answers they could give were:
- Yes.
- No.
- Depends upon the circumstances.
Incredibly 90% of respondents answered, no, they wouldn't accept members of the Chinese race into their establishments.Incredibly 90% of respondents answered, no, they wouldn't accept members of the Chinese race into their establishments. Imagine LaPiere's surprise when he looked at the results. People genuinely did say one thing and do the complete reverse. They didn't even select 'it depends'. What on Earth was going on?
LaPiere himself argued that the problem lay in the questionnaire. The questions themselves cannot represent reality in all its confusing glory. What probably happened when people were asked if they accept Chinese people was that they conjured up a highly prejudiced view of the Chinese which bore little relation with what they were presented with in reality.
Here was a polite, well-dressed, well-off couple in the company of a Stanford University professor. Not the rude, job-stealing, yobbish stereotype they had in mind when they answered the questionnaire.
This study has actually been subsequently criticised for all sorts of reasons. Nevertheless its main finding - that people don't do what they say they will in many situations - has been backed up by countless later studies, although in more sophisticated fashion. The question is: why?
It all depends on how you ask the questions.Many psychologists effectively agree with LaPiere that it all depends on how you ask the questions and what stereotypes people are currently imagining when they give their answers. In some ways an attitude is like a snapshot of the prejudices the respondent has available to memory just at the moment they are questioned.
This has led to a whole raft of studies and theories searching for connections between people's attitudes and their behaviour. Many a lengthy tome has been dedicated to explaining the divergence. Some of the factors that have been found important are:
- Social norms.
- Accessibility of the attitude.
- Perceived control over behaviour.
Despite these findings, the picture is extremely complicated and frustratingly inconclusive. Perhaps as a result interest in this area has been waning amongst psychologists. The exact way in which people's attitudes and behaviour are connected remains a mystery. All we can say with certainty is that people are frequently extremely inconsistent.
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Reference
LaPiere, R. T. (1934). Attitudes vs. Actions. Social Forces, 13(2), 230-237.
Labels: Mind-Myths
The Mind Cannot Beat Cancer
The headline result of the Stanford study, published in 1989 seemed impressive. Women with metastatic breast cancer who took part in a support programme lived twice as long as the control group (Spiegel et al. 1989). Both groups were, of course, also receiving normal medical care for cancer.
It was the control group who had made the treatment look effective.Later examination of the results, though, revealed telling problems, which Barry Beyerstein and colleagues point out (Beyerstein et al., 2007). The major question-mark was over the control group, who were much more short-lived than would normally be expected. It turned out that the group who had taken part in the support programme had survived for about the average time: it was the control group who had made the treatment look effective.
The UCLA study, published in 1996, also appeared to have impressive results. They found that in melanoma patients, 92% of those given a social support intervention were still alive after 5 years, compared to only 72% of those who weren't (Fawzy et al., 1993).
Closer inspection, though, revealed that this study might have been afflicted by the same problem as the Stanford study. It was the control group whose five-year survival rate was poorer than normal. The survival rate of those given the social support intervention was about average.
So, do it again...
Following these studies many other researchers tested the effects of psychological programmes on cancer patient survival. The results were generally much less clear-cut than the Stanford and UCLA studies. Indeed many found psychological interventions had no effect.
Most now accept that (unfortunately) psychological programmes have little or no direct effect on cancer survival rates.Eventually some of these studies were critically analysed together. This review covered data from 1,062 cancer patients who had taken part in 8 different studies (Edelman, Craig & Kidman, 2000). The results failed to show that psychological interventions made any difference to cancer survival whatsoever.
As a result of these, and other studies with negative findings, most researchers in this area have returned to assessing how psychological interventions are useful in helping people cope with their disease and adhere to their medical treatment plans. Most now accept that (unfortunately) psychological programmes have little or no direct effect on cancer survival rates.
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References
Beyerstein, B. L., Sampson, W. I., Stojanovic, Z., Handel, J. (2007) Can mind conquer cancer? In: S. D. Sala (Ed.). Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Edelman, S., Craig, A., & Kidman, A. D. (2000). Can psychotherapy increase the survival time of cancer patients? J Psychosom Res, 49(2), 149-56.
Fawzy, F. I., Fawzy, N. W., Hyun, C. S., Elashoff, R., Guthrie, D., Fahey, J. L., et al. (1993). Malignant melanoma. Effects of an early structured psychiatric intervention, coping, and affective state on recurrence and survival 6 years later. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50(9), 681-689.
Spiegel, D., Bloom, J., Kraemer, H., & Gottheil, E. (1989). Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer. Lancet, 8668, 888-891.
Labels: Mind-Myths
Is a Bigger Brain Really Better?
To check your estimate you decide to open up your friend's head to take a peek inside. When you do, you're mighty surprised to find a brain about three times larger than you were expecting. "Aha," you say, "This is where our amazing capacity for language, emotion, social organisation and creativity comes from."
This argument soon breaks down when you try chatting to an elephant.Naturally, then, it's an attractive idea that the bigger the brain, the more able the animal. This argument soon breaks down, though, when you try chatting to an elephant - an animal with a brain three times the size of ours. OK, you might say, it doesn't work across species, but maybe it works within species.
Well, now trouble is not far away, and here's two reasons why:
- Men's brains are generally bigger than women's, on average by 100 grams (say about 7% bigger).
- Different races have different head sizes with Asian children averaging the largest at birth followed by White children, leaving Black babies with the smallest heads.
So you see the kind of dangerous, shark-infested waters we're now swimming in? This is no longer just science, it's political; with claims to the answer potentially being seen as both sexist and racist.
This is why I'm more than a little relieved to report the view of neuroscientist Dr David P. Carey who has reviewed the research in this area and finds little evidence for the claim that bigger brains mean greater abilities (Carey, 2007). He argues that the evidence from neuroimaging, behavioural genetics and comparative cognition is largely unconvincing:
"I have little confidence that looking at a sophisticated twenty-first century brain scan (in any number of impossibly sophisticated ways) of a collaborator, competitor or any old conspecific [other human] is going to tell me anything meaningful at all about their capabilities to perform in any cognitive way, psychometric or not." (Carey, 2007, p. 119).
Intelligence sceptics
A second layer of scepticism about the brain size/intelligence connection is captured by an old joke that goes like this:
Q: What is intelligence?
A: Whatever intelligence tests measure.
The joke expresses a scepticism many harbour towards measures of intelligence. Does intelligence really tell us anything useful about a person, or does it just tell us how good they are at taking intelligence tests?
The jury is very much out on this point. The originators and manufacturers of intelligence tests will tell you they are good predictors of people's real-world performance, while many others are not so sure. In fact, you'll likely hear equally strong answers from equally well-qualified people that are completely contradictory.
It's not how big it is...
The default position should be a high level of scepticism about any claims for a relationship between brain size and ability. This is because:
- The connection between brain size and intelligence is largely unproven, and;
- The relationship between measures of intelligence and real-world functioning and behaviour is highly contentious.
So, there you have, confirmation of the oldest defence in the book: it's not how big it is, it's what you do with it.
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Reference
Carey, D. P. (2007). Is bigger really better? The search for brain size and intelligence in the twenty-first century. In: S. D. Sala (Ed.). Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Labels: Mind-Myths
Two Brains for the Price of One?
Left side language
The biggest grain of truth is that our verbal powers are concentrated in the left side of our brains. It was Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry who, in the 1960s, first showed that the left hemisphere is specialised for language (Corballis, 2007). He was studying patients suffering from crippling epileptic fits who had decided to undergo surgery to try and relieve their symptoms.
The surgery cut the bundle of white matter - the corpus callosum - that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Along with successfully treating their epilepsy, these 'split-brain' patients exhibited some strange new symptoms.
Sperry found that after the surgery patients were unable to name objects with the, now disconnected, right side of their brains. Their left-brains, however, seemed to have retained this ability. This lead him to propose that the left hemisphere is specialised for language.
But this specialisation didn't mean the right hemisphere had no language powers at all. Further experiments suggested the right hemisphere could indeed still process language, just to a lesser degree. For example, patients were able to point to the written names of objects which were presented to their right-brain, although they found themselves unable to say the word.
Right side?
Not long after the left-brain language discovery, researchers began to wonder about the right hemisphere's special skills. Sure enough the right hemisphere seemed to perform better in some tasks:
- Mentally rotating shapes.
- Identification of melodies.
- Detecting facial emotions.
This seems to correspond well with the myth, after all right-brains are spatial, emotional and creative, aren't they? Well, yes, but the actual differences found in these experiments are relatively small, especially when compared to the specialisation of the left hemisphere in language.
To completely lose a particular mental faculty, a person normally needs to suffer damage to a particular area in both the left and right hemispheres.In a classic paper published in the journal Neurology, renowned neuropsychologist Brenda Milner points out that while there are many measurable functional differences between the left and the right-brain, there are actually many more similarities between the two hemispheres (Milner, 1971). Perhaps the clearest evidence of this is from studies of brain damage. To completely lose a particular mental faculty, a person normally needs to suffer damage to a particular area in both the left and right hemispheres.
Research continues apace into the functional differences between our right and left hemispheres. But while findings about lateralisation continue to point out surprising new differences about our hemispheric twins, the overall message remains the same: apart from language these differences are generally small. Even in language, to perform at our best, we need both sides of our brain working together.
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References
Corballis, M. C. (2007) The dual-brain myth. In: S. D. Sala (Ed.). Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Milner, B. (1971). Interhemispheric differences in the localization of psychological processes in man, Neurology, 8, 299-321.
Labels: Mind-Myths
50% of College Students Think We See Like Superman, Despite Perception Course
Mind-myth 6: Here's a quick question for you about human vision. Compare these four very short descriptions of how we see, and decide which you think is true:
- Rays of energy coming into our eyes allow us to see.
- Rays first coming into the eyes then going back out again allow us to see.
- Rays first going out of the eyes then coming back in allow us to see.
- Rays simultaneously going out and coming back into the eyes allow us to see.
For some of you this question will be elementary: it's one of the most basic scientific findings about the way our eyes work and is covered in introductory perception classes. Others may not be sure of the answer, but don't worry you're not alone, not by a long shot.
Of course there's a big clue in the title of this post. Answers 2, 3 & 4 all contain the idea that our vision is akin to Superman's X-ray vision or the character 'Cyclops' from X-Men, as both can send out beams of energy from their eyes. In fact us mere mortals do nothing of the sort. Quite the reverse.
Our eyes pick up rays coming from the sun, or some other light source, that have been reflected off objects in our environment into our eyes. What allows us to see is one-way traffic: into the eyes only. We don't send any rays outwards (although technically some light is reflected from our eyes, but this isn't produced by our eyes or important in vision).
The correct answer is 1.
The roots of the misconception
...people's looks can literally meet in mid-airThe roots of the idea that we see by firing rays out of our eyes goes back way past Superman and X-Men. Famous Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget was perhaps the first to notice that children have strange misconceptions about vision, including the idea that we see by sending out rays; and that, as a result, people's looks can literally meet in mid-air (Piaget, 1974).
It's not just children, though; it seems the idea has been popular with great minds for some time. Greek philosopher Empedocles is often credited with it, and the concept has also been endorsed by other Greek favourites like Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy.
How many people actually hold this misconception?
Unlike many other misconceptions and myths in psychology, this one has been extensively tested in a series of experiments. As a result we have a pretty good idea how many people believe it and how easy it might be to dispel this myth.
To find out, Professor Gerald Winer and colleagues asked participants how vision worked in a number of different ways (Winer et al., 2002). It was presented verbally, with static images as well as using animation. Presenting the information in different ways was designed to try and counter any biases produced by the question's format.
The results were startling.The results were startling. Between 41% and 67% of participants, depending on the exact way the question was asked, thought that the eye sent out some kind of ray or beam in order for us to see.
That's not the startling bit.
The startling bit is that the participants in the experiment were college students who, just a few weeks before, had taken an introductory psychology class on perception. As part of this class students had been explicitly told on a number of occasions how people see. Yet, despite this, around half the students clearly hadn't internalised the knowledge.
If you think that it's just college students who entertain this misconception about vision, then think again. Winer and colleagues have tested people of different ages and got comparable results (although older people are more likely to get it right). They've even tried giving people hints about the correct answer by asking them to imagine they were looking at a light bulb. Despite this big clue, one third of participants still thought that rays came out of their eyes to bounce off the light bulb.
Still blind to the truth
Students were reading the information and then, apparently, completely ignoring it.For one thing it shows the difficulty in overturning people's ingrained beliefs about science. Virginia Gregg and colleagues tested the effect of education even more explicitly by asking students to read passages from textbooks directly before taking the test about how we see (Gregg et al., 2001).
Still no dice: it made virtually no difference. Students were reading the information and then, apparently, completely ignoring it.
Actually we shouldn't be surprised by this. A fair amount of research has already been carried out into tackling misconceptions in science. It turns out that people are remarkably resistant to changing their beliefs. Immediately after being told the correct concept clearly enough they may get it right, but only for a short time. Soon after it will often spring right back to their original, incorrect belief.
This doesn't bode at all well for overturning this misconception about vision, or any of the others I'm covering in this series.
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References
Gregg, V. R., Winer, G. A., Cottrell, J. E., Hedman, K. E., & Fournier, J. S. (2001). The persistence of a misconception about vision after educational interventions. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 8, 622-626.
Piaget, J. (1974). Understanding causality. New York: Norton.
Winer, G. A., Cottrell, J. E., Gregg, V., Fournier, J. S., & Bica, L. A. (2002). Fundamentally misunderstanding visual perception: adults belief in visual emissions, American Psychologist, 57(6-7), 417-24.
Labels: Mind-Myths
Newborns Don't Bond Immediately with their Mothers
The reality is, though, that babies don't have much of a clue what's going on right after birth. Although mother (and father) are likely to very quickly form close attachments to their offspring, from the baby's perspective it takes longer, much longer.
In fact it usually takes infants until they're about 2 or 3 months old before they show a strong preference for a particular caregiver. While a baby is primed for social interaction soon after birth, its abilities are pretty limited. Here's the timeline (from Simpson, 1999):
- After 16 hours babies prefer the sound of human language to other noises (at least they start making rhythmic body movements which psychologists assume means they're excited). But they don't show any preference for particular voices.
- After 2 days babies can tell the difference between their mothers' faces and that of a stranger, but they still appear to show no preference.
- After 3 days babies clearly prefer human voices, especially their mother's.
- After 3-5 weeks babies become especially interested in faces, and particularly in their mother's eyes.
Overall, though, the preference for the mother (or other caregiver) is usually fairly weak at first. Real communication from the baby's perspective probably doesn't begin until they're about 3 or 4 months old. At around that time they start to initiate social contact with their mothers. Only between about 3 and 7 months of age do babies start to show a strong preference for members of their own family.
Roots of the misconception
This misconception that babies become attached to their mothers very quickly may stem from the study of other animals. Famously ducks and geese will 'imprint on' and follow around the first thing they see after they hatch. Konrad Lorenz, a pioneer in ethology (animal psychology) found that newly born geese would imprint on him, then try to follow him everywhere, as though he were their mother.
Babies are much more fickle and probably wouldn't follow you anywhere, even if they could.
...this so-called critical period turns out not to be that critical at all.The misconception might also stem from a confusion with research from the 1970s that found there was a critical 'sensitive period' shortly after birth that was particularly important for bonding between mother and baby. Again, this research refers to the mother's bonding with the baby and not vica versa. Also, as later researchers have pointed out, this so-called critical period turns out not to be that critical at all.
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Reference
Simpson, J. A. (2002). Attachment theory in modern evolutionary context. In: J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver, (Eds.). Handbook of attachment: theory, research, and clinical applications. The Guilford Press.
Labels: Mind-Myths
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.
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[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.
Labels: Mind-Myths
Blind People's Other Senses Not More Acute
Mind-myth 2: studies show that the blind's other senses are not more acute, but they can learn some amazing skills to compensate, like echolocation.
It's an oft-repeated idea that blind people's other senses compensate for their lack of sight. Like the idea that we only use 10% of our brains, it is probably repeated because its rosy optimism seems harmless. In fact it's a myth with a kernel of truth.
To shoot this myth down we need to make an important distinction. There is a difference between having better hearing, and using auditory information more effectively, which some blind people do to an extraordinary degree. This difference is at the root of the myth. Let's have a look at what the studies have found.
Smelling
Studies have compared the threshold at which blind and sighted young people can identify smells. Rosenbluth, Grossman and Kaitz (2000), for example, found no difference in this, nor in blinded and sighted children's ability to identify the different smells they were exposed to. The blind children did, however, give a wider range of labels to the smells, suggesting they paid more attention to smells.
Hearing
The spatial hearing abilities of blind and sighted individuals were examined by Ashmead et al. (1998). They tested how well participants were able to tell the direction a sound was coming from. In this test the blind children did perform better, but only marginally so. Again, this suggests blind children are making better use of their sense of hearing, not that their sense of hearing is ramped up to compensate for lack of sight.
Touching
Perhaps, though, despite not having superior olfactory or auditory powers, blind children have a better sense of touch? Morrongiello et al. (1994) tested this by giving blind and (blindfolded) sighted children different types of objects to identify. Some objects were miniature versions of large objects, like a bicycle, while other objects were oversized versions of small objects, such as a big key.
In fact both groups got the same number of objects correct, had problems with the same objects and seemed to use the same strategies to identify the objects. A study on older children did, however, find evidence that by the age of 13 blind children had developed superior tactile strategies than sighted children (D'Angiulli, Kennedy & Heller, 1998).
Other senses?
Of course smelling, hearing and feeling are not the only human senses. There is also taste along with less-famous but no less vital senses like thermoception (temperature), equilibrioception (balance) and proprioception (body awareness). I haven't been able to find studies on these but I'd be willing to bet the findings would be the same as for hearing, feeling and smelling.
So strictly speaking the myth is just that, blind people's other senses don't compensate for their lack of sight. But, while blind people don't have a more acute sense of smell, taste or touch, they can use these senses more effectively.
Learning echolocation
Using echolocation is one of the most striking demonstrations of the way in which people can make more effective use of their sense of hearing. Dan Kish is the Director of World Access for the Blind and this inspiring short film explains how he uses echolocation to safely ride a bicycle on the public roads, just by clicking his tongue. This is absolutely fantastic!
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References
Ashmead, D. H., Wall, R. S., Ebinger, K. A., Eaton, S. B., Snook-Hill, M. M., & Yang, X. (1998). Spatial hearing in children with visual disabilities., Perception, 27(1), 105-22.
D'Angiulli, A., Kennedy, J. M., & Heller, M. A. (1998). Blind children recognizing tactile pictures respond like sighted children given guidance in exploration, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 39, 187-190.
Rosenbluth, R., Grossman, E. S., & Kaitz, M. (2000). Performance of early-blind and sighted children on olfactory tasks, Perception, 29(1), 101-110.
Morrongiello, B. A., Humphrey, G. K., Timney, B., Choi, J., & Rocca, P. T. (1994). Tactual object exploration and recognition in blind and sighted children., Perception, 23(7), 833-48.
Labels: Mind-Myths
Seriously, Would You Admit to Only Using 10% of Your Brain?
Mind-myth 1: Like many of the myths now seemingly fuelled by New Agers hoping to unlock the untapped, hidden forces that will unleash previously unimagined human potential, the 10% myth is a slippery customer.
Just when all the evidence has been marshalled against its original incarnation, showing that, yes, actually we do physically use all our brains, it turns out 'human potential' can't be measured empirically. Apparently the unused 90% is hidden below the surface, out of sight and almost out of mind. Which is convenient.
Let's start at the start.
The idea that we only use 10% of our brains is probably such an enduring myth because it's comforting to think we have spare capacity. The 'unused' 90% could take up the slack after brain injury or offer the possibility for miraculous self-improvement. This flexible factoid has been used not only to sell products to enhance our brain's performance, but also by psychics like Yuri Geller to explain mystical cutlery bending powers.
Boring, tedious, but unavoidable facts
Unfortunately there's four good reasons it's almost certainly false (Beyerstein, 1999):
- If we only use 10% of our brains then damage to some parts of our brains should have no effect on us. As any neurologist will tell you, this is patently not true.
- From an evolutionary perspective it is highly unlikely we developed a resource-guzzling organ, of which we only use 10%.
- Brain imaging such as CAT, PET and fMRI shows that even while asleep there aren't any areas of our brain that completely 'switch off'.
- Parts of the body that aren't used soon shrivel and die. Same goes for the brain. Any neurons we weren't using would soon shrivel and die.
The structure of the brain and its metabolic processes have also been carefully examined, along with the diseases that afflict it. None of this work has suggested there is a hidden 90% that we're not using. Unfortunately.
Anyone who still maintains we only use 10% of our brains after this fusillade of fact has to come up with a counter-argument for each one of these. Actually, you might argue that imaging technology is rubbish or the neurons are only working at 10% capacity, but refuting all four, taken together? Now that's tricky.
Mythical roots
The roots of this myth are very difficult to discern, probably because there are so many different, diffuse stories about its origin. One probably apocryphal story is that Einstein once explained his brilliance - compared to the rest of us mere mortals - by saying he actually used more than 10% of his brain (Wanjek, 2003). Despite probably being based on a misquote, the repeating of this story can't have hurt the myth's power.
Perhaps some of the earliest roots of the myth come from work by physiologists in the 1870s. They routinely applied electrical currents to the brain to see which muscles moved. They found that large parts of the human brain could be zapped without any corresponding bodily twitching. This led them to dub parts of the brain 'silent'. But they didn't mean silent in the sense of inactive, just that it didn't make any muscles move. Of course this didn't stop the phrase being misinterpreted.
The actual confirmed first written sightings of this myth, though, is in a 1940s advert for the book Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (Wanjek, 2003, p.21):
"What's holding you back? Just one fact -- one scientific fact. That is all. Because, as Science says, you are using only one-tenth of your real brain-power!"
Whatever its provenance, the 10% myth is certainly a slippery customer. The reason is two-pronged: first, it's impossible to prove something doesn't exist and second, people like to believe it. If I say I've seen a Pegasus, or visited Mars, or that all our brains have huge untapped potential, you can't definitively prove me wrong. That's why, despite a few good solid blows to the head, this myth refuses to go down.
Perhaps putting it the other way around might deliver the knock-out blow. Instead of talking about the 90% of untapped potential, just ask people why they only use 10% of their brains. Would anyone seriously admit to that? I, for one, am working at maximum capacity. Well, most of the time anyway...
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[Image credit: Clint M Chilcott]
References
Beyerstein, B. L. (1999). Pseudoscience and the brain: tuners and tonics for aspiring superhumans. In: S. Della Sala (Ed.). Mind myths: Exploring popular assumptions about the mind and brain. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Wanjek, C. (2003). Bad medicine: misconceptions and misuses revealed, from distance healing to vitamin o. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Labels: Mind-Myths