Ten myths about psychology. All of them debunked.

Video: TED – Ideas Worth Spreading

Translation: Fernando Gonçalves. Review: Ruy Lopes Pereira

Ben Ambridge is a professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool, England. He specializes in research on language development in children and is the author of the best-selling book Psy-Q, in which he introduces readers to some of the most significant recent discoveries in the field of psychology related to the use of interactive techniques, games, puzzles, and tests.

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Full translation of Ben Ambridge's lecture:

You know about IQ, your intelligence quotient, but what about your psychological IQ? How much do you know about what motivates you, and can you predict the behavior of others or even your own? How much of what you think you know about psychology is wrong? Let's find out by reviewing the 10 biggest myths of psychology.

You've probably heard that when it comes to the mind, it's as if men are from Mars and women are from Venus. What is the real difference between them? To find out, let's look at something in which men and women differ and put some psychological differences between them on the same scale. Something in which men and women differ is the distance they throw a ball. Observing the results of men, we see what we call a normal distribution curve. Some manage to throw the ball very far, others not so much, most reach an average distance. Women have the same distribution curve, but there is a big difference. In general, the average man throws the ball farther than 98% of all women. Let's then look at some psychological differences between the sexes when placed on the same standardized scale.

Psychologists say that men are better at spatial perception, reading maps, for example. And it's true. Let's see how big that difference is. It's minimal: the lines are so close that they almost overlap. In fact, the average woman performs better than 33% of men, and, of course, if it were 50%, both sexes would be exactly equal. It's worth noting that this difference and the next one I'm going to show are the biggest psychological differences between the sexes ever discovered in psychology. Let's move on to the next one. Psychologists say that women are better at language and grammar. This is performance on a standardized grammar test. We see the women. We see the men. Women continue to perform better on average, but the lines are so close that 33% of men are better than the average woman, and, again, if it were 50%, this would represent equality between the sexes. So it's not quite a case of Mars versus Venus. It's more a case of Mars versus Snickers: basically they're the same, but one has more nuts than the other. I'm not going to say which one.

Okay, now that we've warmed up, I'm going to analyze you with the famous Rorschach test. You might see two bears, two people, or something like that, I don't know. But what are they doing? Raise your hand if you think they're saying "Hi." Almost no one. That's fine. If you think they're greeting each other, that's fine. And if they're fighting? A few people over there. If you think they're saying "Hi" or greeting each other, that means you're friendly people. If you think they're fighting, then you're mean and aggressive people. You're either cordial or aggressive, basically. And this one here? When I count to three, say what you see. One, two, three. (Screams from the audience) I heard hamster. Who said hamster? Very worrying. A guy over there said hamster. Well, you should have seen some kind of two-legged animal here and its mirror image there. If you didn't see it, then it means you have difficulty processing complex situations when there's a lot going on.

Except, of course, that this means nothing. The Rorschach test has no validity whatsoever for diagnosing people's personalities and is no longer used by psychologists today. In fact, a recent study found that when attempting to diagnose personality through the Rorschach test, schizophrenia was detected in at least one-sixth of apparently healthy participants.

So if you didn't do well on that one, maybe you're not a visual learner. Let's do another test to find out. When you're baking a cake, do you prefer... raise your hand... a recipe book with pictures? Yes. Some people... To have a friend tell you what to do? Or to try and see if you get it right? Some people over there. Okay, if you said A, it means you're a visual learner, you learn best when information is presented visually. If you said B, then you're an auditory learner, you learn best when information is presented through sound. And if you said C, it means you're a kinesthetic learner, you learn best when you have to use your hands.

However, as you might be imagining, this doesn't mean anything, since it's all just a myth. Learning styles are false; there's no scientific evidence to support them. We know this because in rigorously controlled experimental studies, when students receive learning material in both their preferred style and an opposite style, it makes no difference to the amount of information they retain. And if you think about it a little, it becomes obvious that it's true. It's obvious that the best presentation format doesn't depend on you, but on what you're trying to learn. Would you learn to drive a car just by listening to someone tell you what to do, without a kinesthetic experience? Would you solve equations that someone is telling you without writing them down? Would you study for an architecture exam through dance, since you're a kinesthetic learner? No. You need to associate what needs to be learned with the presentation format, not with yourselves.

I know that many of you are straight-A students and that you will soon have your test results. And if you don't achieve the expected result, don't blame your learning style, but something you might consider blaming is your genes. This relates to a recent study from University College London that found that 58% of the variation between different students and their test results is due to genetic factors. This seems quite concrete, so how can we prove it? Well, when we want to understand the contributions related to genes and environment, what we can do is a study with twins. Identical twins share 100% of their environment and 100% of their genes, however, non-identical twins share 100% of their environment, but like any siblings, they only share 50% of their genes. So, by comparing the similarity between the test results of identical and fraternal twins and doing some calculations, we can get an idea of ​​how much variation and performance is due to the environment and how much is related to genes. We see that 58% is related to genes. This is not to diminish the hard work that you and your teachers do. If you don't achieve the expected results on tests, you can always blame your parents or, at least, their genes.

One thing you shouldn't blame is which side of the brain is dominant because, again, that's a myth. The myth says that the left side of the brain is logical, good with equations, and the right side is more creative, better with music. But, again, that's a myth because almost everything you do involves an interaction between the two sides, even something as common as a simple conversation. Perhaps one of the reasons this myth has survived is that there's a grain of truth in it. One version of the myth is that left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people, which even makes sense, since the brain controls the opposite side. So in left-handed people, the right side of the brain is slightly more active than the left side, and the idea is that the right side is more creative. It's not absolutely true that left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people. The fact is that ambidextrous people, or those who use both hands for different tasks, are more creative than other people because being ambidextrous means having both sides of the brain interacting a lot with each other, which seems to be related to the creation of flexible thinking. The myth of the creative left-hander comes from the fact that being ambidextrous is more common among left-handed people than right-handed people. This is the only certainty regarding creative left-handers, nothing more than that.

Another myth you've probably heard is that we only use 10% of our brains. Again, this is a myth. Almost everything we do, even the simplest things, uses almost our entire brain.

It's certainly true that most of us don't use our brainpower as we should. So what can we do to stimulate our brainpower? Perhaps we should listen to some Mozart. Have you heard of the Mozart effect? ​​The idea is that listening to Mozart makes you smarter and improves your performance on IQ tests. Again, what's interesting about this myth is that although it's just a myth, it's partly true. The original study found that participants who listened to Mozart for a few minutes performed better on a subsequent IQ test than participants who simply remained silent. But a subsequent study took some people who liked Mozart and another group of people who were fans of Stephen King's horror books. They then played music or told stories. Those who preferred Mozart to the stories had an improved IQ when listening to Mozart but not to the stories, but those who preferred the stories to Mozart had an improved IQ when listening to Stephen King's stories than when listening to Mozart. The fact is that listening to something you enjoy stimulates you a little and temporarily improves your IQ for certain tasks. There is no proof that listening to Mozart or reading Stephen King will make you smarter in the long run.

Another version of the Mozart myth is that listening to him makes you smarter and healthier. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to hold true for someone who listened to Mozart almost every day—Mozart himself, who suffered from gonorrhea, smallpox, arthritis, and what most believe killed him, syphilis. This suggests that Mozart should have been more cautious in choosing his sexual partners. But how do we choose a partner?

A myth sometimes spread by sociologists claims that our preferences are a product of our culture, that they are culturally specific. But the data doesn't confirm this. A famous study surveyed 37 different cultures around the world, from Americans to Zulus, about what they sought in a partner. And, in practically every culture, men are more focused on physical attraction than women, and also in every culture, women value ambition and earning power more than men. In all cultures, men preferred women younger than themselves; on average, I think it was 2,66 years. And also in all cultures, women preferred men older than themselves, an average of 3,42 years. That's why we have here: "Everyone needs a Sugar Daddy."

Shifting from trying to find a partner, let's try to score a basket in basketball, a goal in soccer, in any sport. The myth speaks of athletes with a "good hand," as Americans would say, or in "good form," as we say in England, when they simply don't miss, like this guy here. It turns out that if you analyze the pattern of misses and hits statistically, most of the time it's random. The brain creates patterns of randomness. If you flip a coin, you'll get random heads and tails, and since the brain likes to see non-existent patterns, we see these results, assign meanings to them, and say, "Yeah, he's in form today." However, you would get the same result if you flipped randomly.

However, the only exception is penalty kicks. A recent study on penalty kicks in football shows that players representing countries with a poor record in penalties, such as England, tend to be quicker to kick than those from countries with a good record and, as suspected, they are more prone to missing.

This raises the question of whether there is any way to improve people's performance. And something you might consider doing is punishing people for their mistakes and seeing if that improves them. This idea that the effect of punishment can improve performance was what everyone thought was being tested in Milgram's learning and punishment experiment, which is well-known to psychology students. Participants were instructed to administer what they believed to be fatal electric shocks to another colleague when they got a question wrong, simply because someone in a white coat told them to do so.

But this story is a myth for three reasons. First and most importantly, the lab coat wasn't white, but gray. Second, the participants were warned before the study and reminded every time they raised a question that although the shocks were painful, they weren't fatal and therefore wouldn't cause any harm. And finally, the participants didn't administer the shocks just because someone in a lab coat told them to. When interviewed after the study, all participants stated that they believed the learning-and-punishment study served a scientific purpose that would bring lasting gains to science, despite the momentary discomfort caused to everyone.

Okay, I've been talking for about 12 minutes, and you've probably been sitting there listening, analyzing my speech and body language, trying to figure out whether to take what I'm saying seriously, whether I'm telling the truth or lying, but you probably failed. Even though you might think you can catch a liar by their body language and speech patterns, numerous psychological tests have shown over the years that all of us, including police officers and detectives, have the same chance of detecting a liar by their body language and speech patterns. Interestingly, there is one exception: people searching on TV for missing relatives. It's quite easy to tell when relatives are missing and when they've been killed by those searching for them. Those pretending to search tend to tremble, look away, and make mistakes in their speech, while those genuinely searching show hope that the person will return and avoid aggressive language. So they would say, "Taken from us," instead of "murdered."

It's almost time to finish this lecture, but before I do, I'll briefly address the most pervasive myth in psychology: The myth that psychology is merely a collection of interesting theories, all of which say something useful and have something to offer. What I hope to have shown in the last few minutes is that this is not true. We need to evaluate psychological theories by observing what predictions they make—whether listening to Mozart makes you smarter, whether you learn better by having information presented in your preferred way, or whatever—these are predictions that can be empirically tested, and the only way to progress is to test them against data in rigorously controlled studies. Only in this way can we hope to discover which of these theories are well-founded, and which, like the ones I've shared with you today, are myths.

Thank you.