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Myths of Popular Psychology

Myths of Popular Psychology. How to Think Critically and Myth Bust. Is it a myth or it is a fact?. Opposites Attract We only use 10% of our brains. Mozart makes infants smarter. Low self-esteem indicates future psychological problems Full moons trigger wacky behavior.

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Myths of Popular Psychology

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  1. Myths of Popular Psychology How to Think Critically and Myth Bust

  2. Is it a myth or it is a fact? • Opposites Attract • We only use 10% of our brains. • Mozart makes infants smarter. • Low self-esteem indicates future psychological problems • Full moons trigger wacky behavior. • The insanity defense works and is used frequently. • Don’t hold in your anger. Express it.

  3. Why do we believe it? Misconceptions come from all over the place.

  4. We hear it a lot. 1. Word of mouth: Catchy phrases repeated often begin to sound believable. Examples: • There’s safety in numbers. (Latane & Nida, 1981) • Opposites Attract

  5. Are you safer in a crowd? Bystander Effect • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac Bystander effect: social-psychological phenomenon that individual people do not help a victim if others are around. wilmerpsych.blogspot.com

  6. Do opposites attract? • No, we seek out people similar to us in both attitude and personality (Univ of Iowa study)- Similarity-attraction effect (SAE) • Evolutionary psychologists may disagree – gene research at University of Parana in Brazil – we are attracted to those with different immunity genes from our own

  7. Easy is good & we like facts that say we are right. 2. We like easy answers & quick fixes. 3. Selective perception & memory Some events are more memorable than others because they confirm what we already think (belief bias) Ex. full moons  unusual behaviors like crime, suicide, and psychiatric hospital admissions (Rotton & Kelly, 1985) • Simple answers are appealing... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnMkHB0vNCE

  8. We like to know the cause. Correlation suggests a relationship between two things - NOT cause/effect 4. We think correlation means causation. Just because there is a relationship between two things…doesn’t mean one causes the other. Examples: Playing video games and poor grades OR TV/fast food with obesity rates

  9. We see it a lot & it is partly true. • Reasoning by representativeness: • We tend to group things as similar when they appear together often…using the representative heuristic • Exaggeration of a kernel of truth: • Some myths are believable because they contain a little bit of truth…so we buy the whole thing. • Example: Men and women communicate in different ways. (Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, 1992) A heuristic: a mental short cut or “rule of thumb”

  10. We listen to the media. Misleading film and media portrayals:Media bombards us with misleading and false images and representations of “real life”. Are people with mental illness more violent?

  11. How to Myth Bust… • Be aware of the common sources of error and misconceptions. • Question what you’ve been told. • Think scientifically – analyze evidence from a variety of reputable sources.

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