When it comes to psychology, it always starts with debunking rumors.
For example, a friend said that the company that just interviewed needs to be assigned a position according to the results of the "MBTI Personality Type Test", but is this thing really reliable?
The American drama "Criminal Psychology" and "Don't Lie to Me" have brought a series of criminal psychology to the fire, micro-expression research, lie detector, truth-telling agent... Looks really good high end.
In popular programs, psychologists are basically wizards, hypnosis, subconscious, manipulation of each other's brains... Freud slapped the door on the head, and the woman was hypnotized.
I bet every psychology student has heard the question, "Are you a student of psychology?" Come on, guess what I'm thinking."
The reason for this is that psychology is an extremely misunderstood industry.
In one article published in Front. In the article in Psychol., Dr. Scott Lilienfeld and colleagues, who come up with the psychological concept of "master debunker," come up with 50 psychological terms that are "misleading," "frequently abused," or "vaguely expressed."
Including the well-known "bystander effect", "fetishism", "antidepressant drugs"... We've picked 10 widely misunderstood classic concepts to see if you've been shot.
01
Love habit
misuse:
Many people think: I like to collect a lot of gadgets, then I belong to the "fetish".
A study of Japanese culture by psychologist Smith (2015) describes the contemporary Japanese youth's fanatical obsession with mobile phones as a "mobile phone fetish.".
We know what the author wants to say, but the term "Fetish" is inaccurate (unless, of course, those gadgets can be used to provoke sexual desire).
fact:
According to the DSM-5 definition, fetishism refers to a long-term, intense, sexual arousal of an inanimate object (e.g., shoes) or a non-reproductive human part (e.g., legs).
Termite
It is important to note that the DSM-5 clarifies that fetishism is a persistent act of sexual abnormality or perversion, that is, an individual's fascination with an object must awaken or stimulate sexual desire before it can be defined as a fetish. Therefore, the term "fetish" cannot be used to refer to general preferences or likings.
02
Love molecule "oxytocin"
Everyone has heard that "Oxytoxin" is the love hormone.
To a certain extent, it can indeed have a positive role in promoting our love, maternal care, attachment, sex, etc. The secretion of oxytocin helps us build trust early in a relationship. Develop positive feelings about your partner. That's why some people call it the "trust factor", and some scholars call it "intimate hormone".
However, oxytocin is not just about love. Psychologist Shen (2015) criticizes that all of these labels for "oxytocin" are too simplistic.
Image source: unsplash
Whether it's oxytocin or dopamine, all neurotransmitters don't have "one positive effect."
Studies have found that the secretion of oxytocin makes us more sensitive to all positive and negative social information.
For example, in 2014, psychologist Bethlehem et al. found that oxytocin can both stimulate trust in individuals in the same group and distrust among members of different groups.
Not only that, psychologists found in a study of aggressive traits that oxytocin increases the likelihood of domestic violence.
All in all, oxytocin is a complex hormone. It is highly correlated with all kinds of human behavior in life, and when it is labeled as too "positive", we naturally ignore its role in negative behavior.
03
"We're born xxx"
We are accustomed to equating innate with instinct, which leads to our frequent errors in the use of "hard-wired." For example, in 2006, psychologist Grabe & Kamhawi wrote in an article examining the differences between men and women that "men are more sensitive to negative news than women, and men seem to be 'instinctively' more "sensitive" to negative news."
As we often say, liking the new and hating the old is a male instinct, and women are inherently insecure and so on.
More explanations:
The word instinct is defined as an intelligence that is not controlled by self-consciousness. It needs to be universal in the species. For example, the phototropism of plants, the survival instinct of human beings. However, according to current research on neuroplasticity and cognitive neuroscience, apart from the physiological instinct of congenital reflexes (such as the knee jump reflex), there are currently no psychological abilities or personal preferences that belong to human instincts.
04
The pseudoscience behind personality type testing
Arizona State University's job evaluation brochure reads, "Mbti Personality Type Test Can Help You Find Better Jobs!"
Our attitudes toward the "personality type" test evolved from a boring fragmented time pastime to a hard-fought currency for social and even career choices.
Is it really a proven way of judging a person? Maybe it just makes us believe, "You're such a person, you should be looking for a partner like this, you should be doing this kind of work."
In 1921, the famous Swedish psychoanalyst Carl-Jung argued that the personality of an individual has a definite one-or relationship (e.g., extraversion vs. xeros). inclination). Recent studies, however, have shown that Jung's theory is not supported by any scientific empirical experience.
The philosopher Robert-Carroll was a harsh critic of personality type theory. He argues that human observation and understanding cannot rely on memory and clinical observation alone to draw conclusions, conjure up non-existent "types", and then distort observations to conform to preconceived notions.
Any test needs to measure reliability and validity. What is Reliability? It is whether each test can get the same result. There was once a secretary who was judged to be strongly thinking and intuitive when he first did the MBTI test, but the results of the second test showed emotional and emotional. Isabel Briggs Myers, the inventor of the MBTI personality type test, has been honest about how she can't guarantee that the MBTI test will consistently produce consistent results.
Inventor of the MBTI personality test: Elizabeth Mother and Daughter
And Jung also said in his later years that personality types are not static. These personal tendencies are constantly "rotating" over time. The word "spin" is used so well that we can carefully chew on the meaning behind it.
And what is the validity? Validity is whether the results obtained by this test are valid and can be used to predict important results. For example, as mentioned above, it will not help you find a better job. Validity, however, is based on reliability. If the results of each measurement are inconsistent, it is impossible to accurately predict anything.
05
Is the "lie detector" really useful?
We often see the FBI conducting "Lie detector tests" for prisoners in various American dramas. Yes, until now the FBI still uses the results of a lie detector to assess the likelihood that a suspect is lying.
But as early as 1985, Saxe wrote in a paper that the polygraph test was a misnomer. It doesn't "recognize" a lie, it just uses physiological indicators to infer whether you're lying or not.
The Lie detector test is actually called the Polygraph test. This instrument measures the awakening state of an individual's physiological arousal, such as heartbeat, blood pressure, pulse, skin resistance, and so on. It assumes that when people lie and fear that the lie will be discovered, there must be some abnormality of some physiological indicator.
However, experiments have shown that the error rate of the "lie detector" results is extremely high.
In 1980, Seattle police found five female bodies in Green River, near the southern suburbs. The search for the killer was particularly difficult due to the high degree of decomposition of the body and the lack of mature DNA technology at the time. After investigation, a man named Gary Ridgeway was found to be suspected of committing a major crime, so he was asked to come to the police station to undergo a lie detector test. But the results of several lie detector tests showed no abnormality, and the police rightfully let him go. The case was put on hold for nearly 20 years. It wasn't until 2001 that police formally arrested him based on DNA comparison results. When asked how he escaped the lie detector test, he said only eight words: relaxed and without any worries.
Image source: Bilibili
Moreover, psychologist Lykken (1998) found that the environment that may be interrogation itself can also create tension, and many truthful respondents will also show abnormal signals in the polygraph results.
06
"Truth-telling Agent" in Crime Movies
In the movie True Lies, Harry, played by Schwarzenegger, confesses his agent to his wife after being injected with a Truth serum.
Ant-Man 2
Truth-telling agents, as the name suggests, are substances that, when given intravenously, leave the brain in a relaxed state and prevent people from "lying." The so-called "truth-telling agent" is actually a barbiturates.
To this day, in some countries, judicial questioners injecting "truth-telling agents" into suspects in major cases to obtain information is still considered a legal means. But is the truth-telling agent a hypothetical drug invented by the screenwriter to advance the plot or is it really reliable and effective?
Research by psychologist Bimmerle (1993) points out that there is no evidence so far that this so-called "truth-telling agent" can expose people to more real information. On the contrary, studies have shown that photocositants are often highly correlated with false memory.
For example, field doctors found that a U.S. soldier who, after being injected with a "vomiting agent," told his experience of being forced to cut off his tonsils, only to find that both of his tonsils were intact.
Psychologist Piper (1993) also found that people can still lie even after being injected with "truth-telling agents." Psychologists who oppose the expression "truth-telling agent" say that the substance only lowers the reaction threshold of people, making people more relaxed and talkative, but what they say includes both truth and lies. Therefore, we believe that the credibility of the "truth-telling agent" is very low.
07
The cause of mental illness is a "chemical imbalance" in the brain?
People are more inclined to think of mental illness as just a "brain disease." For example, we would think that depression is caused by a deficiency of serotonin and that ADHD is caused by a deficiency of dopamine.
In a 2011 article, psychologist Whieler wrote that it is only the "chemical imbalance" in our brains that cause mental illness.
Indeed, there are countless such explanations. This concept is often mentioned by psychologists who emphasize biological basis. In fact, we've always been very sympathetic to this interpretation.
In fact, people would prefer to "believe" such a biological explanation, which is actually understandable. People are attracted to biological explanations because they seem more "scientific" than complex sociology or psychology. Family relationships, economic conditions, personality traits, these complex factors are difficult to accurately record and objectively study. But scanning the brain is intuitive, clear and easy.
For mental illness, we need to acknowledge the dual factors of biology and sociology, rather than just explaining it as a "brain disease" or attributing it to "chemicals" alone.
For example, a depressed person who did not get better after taking the drug wrote in his diary that taking the drug did make me "feel" good, but the effect was short-lived, because the drug did not teach me how to face real life difficulties, such as intimate relationships. Those problematic cognitive and coping strategies can also cause me to fall into negative emotions again.
Moreover, there is no evidence that there is an "ideal level" or "ideal ratio" of neurotransmitters in our brains. So the expression "imbalance" is simply nonsense.
08
Is "brainwashing" really that magical?
origin:
For a time, the term "brainwashing" originated in the United States in the 1970s.
At that time, various organizations with distinct cultural stances were emerging in the streets. And when each new cultural group wants to expand its size and have a certain voice in a short period of time, the leaders of the team will appear on the streets across the United States and use highly inflammatory speeches to encourage more young people to join. After joining, these youth associations unconditionally embraced the position of the organization, often accompanied by irrational behavior.
So they named this phenomenon "brainwashing."
In our common perception, brainwashing and persuasion are very different. Brainwashing is even more mysterious, like a kind of chronic hypnosis, which makes people lose independent judgment without knowing it, and also changes or affects other people's long-term perceptions of things.
But in fact, the power of "brainwashing" is not as "powerful" as everyone thinks. Studies have shown that these "brainwashers" do not have the superpower to control the minds of others, but are only skilled at using common means of persuasion.
In Brainwashing: How to Logically Persuade Others, some of the "brainwashing" methods mentioned by the author are just conventional means of persuasion, such as the use of public emotions, cults of personality, brand marketing, etc.
Image source: pinterest
There have also been many studies questioning whether "brainwashing" can have an impact on people's long-term perceptions (Melton, 1999).
For example, after the Korean War, 3,500 American soldiers imprisoned in North Korea, after a long period of "brainwashing" indoctrination of North Korean political ideas, firmly believed that the United States was absolutely responsible in this war. However, shortly after their return to the United States, less than 1 percent of the soldiers still supported North Korea's political stance.
09
Is the "bystander effect" likely to be fake?
In 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked with a knife by a man on her way home from a bar night shift.
She was stabbed several times and cried out for help, but the police arrived and died of excessive blood loss. Later, the police learned during the visit that the entire attack lasted 35 minutes, and a total of 38 people claimed to have heard Katie's shouts and witnessed the attack through the window, but only 1 person reported to the police. The incident shocked the citizens of New York and the American population as a whole.
In 1968, psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane explained the incident as a reduction in individuals' willingness to help because there were too many witnesses watching the event. Their experiments then supported their conclusion that the greater the number of spectators present, the less likely it was to be rescued.
So they named the phenomenon "Bystander apathy."
counterexample:
But Richard Philpot of Lancaster University in the UK suggests that the bystander effect is likely to be fake. Surveillance footage of violence in the Uk, India, South Africa and the Netherlands found that the likelihood of intervention increased with the increase in bystanders. In other words, "the more people are present, the more people will be willing to do something."
A 2008 study by psychologists Glassman and Hadad also found that when an emergency arises, most bystanders are not indifferent to the attitudes of victims. Instead, most bystanders are so concerned about the victim's safety that they may simply enter a state of physiological freezing.
Freezing is the third common psychological response outside of the Flight or fight response, which refers to the fact that when people face unexpected situations that exceed their ability to cope, they enter a state of short-term incapacitation due to high tension. And this "frozen" state also prolongs the reaction time of bystanders.
Therefore, simply attributing the bystander's response to unexpected situations to "indifference" or "inaction" may be an overly arbitrary conclusion.
10
Can "antidepressants" also treat other diseases?
Drugs such as tricyclics, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors are often referred to as antidepressants. But the labeling attribute of giving these drugs "antidepressants" is clearly misleading, because it may make people feel that it can only treat depression.
These drugs have been found to be equally effective in treating other emotional problems such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder and binge eating disorder.
There is also no evidence that these drugs are better at treating depression than other mood disorders.
These drugs are called antidepressants because the initial efficacy trials were conducted on people with depression. Psychologist Kramer (2011) also found that these drugs only had a significant effect on patients with severe depression and did not significantly help improve mild and moderate depression.
postscript:
Scott Lilienfeld and colleagues list 50 of these words in the original text. He himself is also famous for his career in a debunking book: "The 50 Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering People's Pervasive Misconceptions About Human Behavior", which interested friends can check out.
He believes that psychology has always been the hardest hit area of "misunderstanding". Many of the formulations of psychological "concepts" are seriously problematic because these theories have never been scientifically based. It's like a house in disrepair that needs to be renovated and remodeled.
However, the purpose of writing this article is not to attack these words or phrases as completely wrong. We just encourage a broad discussion of more technical terms and not to be kidnapped by "words".
Because, "If the name of a thing is inaccurate, then language cannot bring us the truth."
bibliography
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