Misconceptions about Psychology Aren't Always What They Seem

Abstract

These nine often researched misconceptions appear to be candidates for qualification or at least a caution in interpretation.Studies showing .that beginning psychology students enter the classroom with misconceptions about the subject matter can only confirm what most teachers of psychology already know (e.g., Brown, 1983;Vaughan, 1977). What is perhaps surprising, or at least disconcerting, is evidence that the introductory course is not very successful at dispelling the misconceptions (Lamal, 1978;Gutman, 1979;McKeachie, 1960;Vaughan, 1977). Belief in misconceptions, measured by truelfalse tests, declines by only about 6% as a function of taking the introductory course. Not unexpectedly, the decline appears to depend to some extent on the ability of ,the student, with AIB students dismissing more misconceptions during the course than DIF students (Gutman, 1979) A large part of the subject matter of introductory psychology probably challenges few preconceived notions. Much of it in fact bolls down to vocabulary development (Brown, 1983) Textbook assignments, workbook exercises, andlor summary class coverage should probably sufflce for most of the material, at least for the motivated student. Pr~mary among the areas that would seem to deserve speclal rnstruct~onal effort in the classroom are those that challenge preconceived notlons. and that reslst modlficatlon (Vauahan. 1977). Proceedlng, therefore, on the assumption that-l m~ght do well to spend more of my time In class analyzing and systematically destroying the erroneous assumptions of lay psychology, I set to work constructing a set of lecture notes des~gned to dispel a number of wrdely shared m~sconceptions Some of the m~sconcept~ons were taken from the work of others (Lamal, 1979, Panek, 1982, Vaughan, 1977, some were derlved from my own data (Brown, 1983).What I soon discovered was that some of the bel~efs are not entlrely false Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. The lay observer of bekav~or 1s not Insensate. Moreover, the behav~or of humans and other an~mals IS so unbel~evably complex, and the flndlngs of psycholog~sts so fraught wlth qualrf~cat~ons, that simple truelfalse statements about psychology must be v~ewed wlth susplclon Gardner and Hund (1983) asked a group of psychology professors to evaluate the falslty of a set of m~sconcept~ons and found that the overall med~an ratlng corresponded to "mostly false," not "completely false " For several of the mlsconceptlons, the med~an ratlngs approached the ratlng corresponding to "partly false and partly true " S~milarly, Lamal (1979) asked several psychology instructors to evaluate a set of mlsconceptlons and found that nine of the statements were rated as true by at least one instructor Thls certainly doesn't mean that the majonty of bel~efs labeled as "m~sconcept~ons" In the lrterature are In fact true. It does mean, however, that the instructor should be careful when attempting to correct student misbeliefs. Many of the misbeliefs should not be dismissed out of hand, but be presented in such a w...

On Misconceptions About Behavior Analysis Among University Students and Teachers

“…This could be a problem, as knowledge in different scientific areas evolves quickly and therefore may not be captured in textbooks (Buskist, Miller, Ecott, & Critchfield, 1999). However, Brown (1984) and Barnett (1986) have pointed out that because psychology is so complex, simple statements are sometimes difficult to compose. For example, Lamal (1979) found that instructors disagreed with several of the questions.…”

Naïve Psychological Science: The Prevalence, Strength, and Sources of Misconceptions

“…In addition to the ambiguity inherent in asking students to assess simple true/false statements about complex psychological issues, previous studies on psychological misconceptions have mostly speculated on the sources of misconceptions and have recommended that research assess the sources of misconceptions (Barnett, 1986;Brown, 1984;Griggs & Ransdell, 1987;Higbee & Clay, 1998;McCutcheon, 1991;Panek, 1982;Ruble, 1986;Vaughn , 1977). Only the source of prior belief in the 10% myth has been investigated to any great extent (Higbee & Clay, 1998).…”

Ambiguous Psychological Misconceptions

“…Sometimes the qu~estions used in these studies are ambiguous. Brown (1984) examined nine of the questions used in tests to identify misconceptions and found that the "correct" answers were misleading. Brown concluded that because the find--ings of psychology are complex, they frequently cannot be summarized in simple, objective statements.…”