12/6/2023 0 Comments Subliminal persuasion quizlet![]() As a consequence, they often depart college incapable of distinguishing the wheat from the chaff in popular psychology. Yet because so much of popular psychology consists of myths and urban legends, such as most people use only 10 percent of their brains, expressing anger is usually better than holding it in, opposites attract in interpersonal relationships, high self-esteem is necessary for psychological health, people with schizophrenia have more than one personality, among a plethora of others, many students probably emerge from psychology courses with the same misconceptions with which they entered. Indeed, for many beginning students, “psychology” is virtually synonymous with popular psychology. Students often learn about such topics from various popular psychology sources that they seek out in everyday life, such as magazine articles, Internet sites, and television programs. Although many students find these skills to be “dry” or even deadly dull when presented in the abstract, they often enjoy acquiring these skills in the context of lively and controversial topics (e.g., extrasensory perception) that stimulate their interest. Moreover, by addressing these topics, instructors can capitalize on a valuable opportunity to impart critical thinking skills, such as distinguishing correlation from causation and recognizing the need for control groups, by challenging students’ misconceptions regarding popular psychology. Similarly, students may not grasp fully the concept of scientific thinking without an understanding of pseudoscientific beliefs, namely those that at first blush appear scientific but are not. For example, we cannot grasp fully the concept of “cold” unless we have experienced heat. ![]() So why should we teach psychology students to distinguish science from pseudoscience? As personality theorist George Kelly (1955) noted, an effective understanding of a construct requires an appreciation of both of its poles. After all, there is already more than enough to cover in psychology courses, so why tack on material of doubtful scientific status? Furthermore, some instructors may fear that by devoting attention to questionable claims they will end up sending students the unintended message that these claims are scientifically credible.īenefits of Teaching Students to Distinguish Science from Pseudoscience Moreover, many introductory psychology textbooks barely mention these topics. Yet many introductory psychology instructors accord minimal attention to potentially pseudoscientific topics in their courses, perhaps because they believe that these topics are of, at best, marginal relevance to psychological science. ![]() Nevertheless, what is troubling about these claims is the glaring discrepancy between many individuals’ beliefs in them and the meager scientific evidence on their behalf. Of course, because some of these claims may eventually be shown to contain a core of truth, we should not dismiss them out of hand. Moreover, our students are often fascinated by dubious claims on the fringes of scientific knowledge: extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, channeling, out-of-body experiences, subliminal persuasion, astrology, biorhythms, “truth serum,” the lunar lunacy effect, hypnotic age regression, multiple personality disorder, alien abduction reports, handwriting analysis, rebirthing therapy, and untested herbal remedies for depression, to name but a few. There’s a good reason: much of the popular psychology “knowledge” that our students bring to their classes consists of scant more than pseudoscience. If you’re like most introductory psychology instructors, these sorts of questions probably sound awfully familiar. ![]() But how come you’ve never said a word about sensory-motor integration therapy? My mother, who’s an occupational therapist, tells me that it’s a miracle cure for attention-deficit disorder.” Fleikenzugle, you keep talking about schools of psychotherapy, like psychoanalysis, behavior therapy, and client-centered therapy. But when are you going to discuss the research showing that playing Mozart to infants increases their I.Q. Glopelstein, you’ve taught us a lot about intelligence in your course. “Professor Schlockenmeister, I know that we have to learn about visual perception in your course, but aren’t we going to learn anything about extrasensory perception? My high school psychology teacher told us that there was really good scientific evidence for it.” Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.Psychological Science in the Public Interest.Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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