10 SOURCES OF
PSYCHOLOGICAL MYTHS
Building Your MYTHBUSTING
Toolkit
Building Your Mythbusting Tool 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
Our expectations (bias)  Our 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?”
Psychiatric
Hospital
Admissions
No Psychiatric
Hospital
Admissions
Full Moon
A
B
No Full Moon
C
D
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.
#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?
• http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
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
Example: Sarah loves to listen to New Age music and
faithfully reads her horoscope each day. In her spare time,
she enjoys aromatherapy and attending a local spirituality
group.
Which is more likely?
A) Sarah is a holistic healer
B) Sarah is a school teacher
• We often evaluate the similarity between two things on the
basis of their superficial resemblance to each other.
• Representativeness heuristic
• A heuristic is a “mental short cut”
Write the following sentences in cursive
on the back of this page …
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Tell your good friends to seize the day!
Graphology Analysis:
• Letter Spacing
•
•
•
wide apart = need isolation
close together = very social person
Letters slant
left/right/straight/both?
•
•
•
•
left = pessimism
right = optimism
both = “maverick”
straight = “flexibility”
• Each sentence slanting up to the
right, down to the right, straight?
• Up = pessimism
• Down = optimism
• Straight = neutral
• Loops on g’s and y’s large and
circular or small/closed off
• Large/round = preoccupied with sex
• Crossing T’s whip-like or above the
vertical line?
• Whip = sadistic or practical joker?
• Not touching/above vertical like =
daydreamer
• Capital Letters
• Large = big egos
• Large = social and outgoing
http://www.handwritingpro.com/glossary.
html
Representative Heuristic
• Can be useful! But sometimes it can lead us to a wrong
conclusion.
Examples: graphology (“handwriting analysis”)
• Write your full signature…
• Exchange with people at your table…
• 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!
• Spaced out letters “represent” separation and isolation,
thus the person is isolated
#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 Portrayals
#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
• *Choose the correct number AND explain WHY in the space
provided.