By Emily Bartelheim, Features Editor
On Wednesday morning, about one hundred students crammed themselves into the Lean Lecture Hall in Wishart Hall at The College of Wooster to hear Dr. Scot Lilienfeld give a lecture on the myths of popular psychology. The talk was organized by Wooster’s Psychology Club. Lilienfeld is a professor of psychology at Emory University, the recipient of the 1998 Award for Outstanding Career Contributions in Clinical Psychology and author of “50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology.”
Lilienfeld’s lecture focused on some of the main psychological misconceptions of today and their causes. His efforts were to prove and disprove these myths about psychology. A psychological misconception is defined as being contradicted by established scientific evidence.
Many people hold misconceptions about everyday psychology. The way Dr. Lilienfeld believes this can be overcome is to make people aware of these misconceptions by not only explaining evidence against the mistaken beliefs, but also evidence for them; otherwise people will remember the claim but forget its “negation tag,” whether it was true or false.
A few misconceptions Lilienfeld pointed out are as follows: 1. Opposites tend to attract in relationships. (Do opposites not also repel?) 2. Expressing pent-up anger reduces aggression. 3. Hypnotically enhanced memories are especially accurate. 4. Schizophrenics have multiple personalities (They have one personality that has been shattered). 5. Suicide risk decreases as depressed people improve (There is actually a small window during improvement where the risk rises).
Lilienfeld also pointed out peoples’ over-reliance on common sense. In fact, clinical psychologist Tamara Walpert pointed out, “much of science is ëuncommon sense.'” Many scientific findings, including those in psychology, violate our common sense intuitions.
A few of these psychological illusions involve that of explanatory depth.† Lilienfeld said, “We think we know how certain things work much better than we actually do.” He threw the audience the example of a toilet. If someone asks another how a toilet really works, the other person will pretend like he or she knows, because there is confusion between higher order and lower order mechanisms in the brain. Something that seems so simple as a toilet must be easily explained, right?
The remainder of Lilienfeld’s lecture covered the main sources of psychological misconceptions. The first of these sources is word of mouth. Because humans are such a social species, urban legends are easily passed on.
A few everyday mistaken beliefs that Lilienfeld pointed out were the following: 1. Napoleon was short (He was actually around 5’6″ or 5’7″ tall, average for that time). 2. Lemmings commit suicide (This notion was derived from the animal’s first appearance in a Disney movie). 3. Francis Scott Key wrote the music to the U.S. national anthem (He only wrote the lyrics; the music was an old Irish drinking song).
The second source for psychological misconceptions is the desire for easy answers and quick fixes. For example, fad diets; most people regain the weight they lose on these diets within a few years.
Selective attention and memory is also a source of psychological misconceptions. Lilienfeld focused on illusory correlation: perceiving a correlation/statistical association that is not actually there. An example is the “lunar lunacy effect” that some people believe in that supports the suspicion that more weird things happen during full moons. What these people don’t realize is that we simply don’t remember all the other weird things that happen every other day because we weren’t looking for it. Joint pain during rainy weather is also not true, as is the idea that Mozart’s music will make your baby smarter. What actually happens in these circumstances is a confusion between correlation and causation. Yes, it has been proven that the babies that listen to Mozart are, in fact, smarter, but that doesn’t mean they are smarter because of the music they listen to.
A fourth source for psychological misconceptions involves misleading film and media portrayals. For example, electroconvulsive psychological therapy was portrayed as extremely painful and brutal in the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” while on the contrary, it has been described as less stressful than a trip to the dentist. Similarly, the polygraph test, present in many movies, is only about 70 percent accurate; because of its film portrayals, people think it really works.
Lilienfeld concluded his talk by proposing the question, “Is debunking psychological myths a good idea?” While there are a few potential backfires that could take place, he believes that it is overall a good thing, as long as it’s gone about in the correct manner and support both for and against the misconceptions is provided to the believers.