Week 11 - Psychology In The Media

Question 1

What are four reasons why we should try to understand public misperceptions

Answer 1

1. Psychologists can be prepared to counter perceptions (social and professional settings)
2. Counter objections from policy makers (could improve funding opportunities)
3. Understand human nature (objection to psychology is partly resistance to scientific approach to human behaviour)
4. Explain significance of findings (could improve funding opportunities)

Question 2

How does the public perceive psychology?

Answer 2

Participants included business people, mall shoppers and physical and biological scientists, Hope most negative views of psychology (approx 25% held negative views)
201 participants from US. 8.5% had neither “favourable” nor “somewhat favourable” views of psychology. 15.5% disagreed that psychology is a science.

But 83% believed that they had received sufficient training in psychology through their every day lives.

Question 3

Attitudes toward psychology relative to other disciplines.

Answer 3

Psychology was the lowest rated in importance by the general public, and its members being less expert than other fields. 27 of the spontaneous comments made by participants. 25 concerned psychology. 24 were clearly negative

Question 4

What are the six criticisms of psychology?

Answer 4

1. psychology is just common sense. (familiarity of psychological phenomenon may account for this)
2. Psychology doesn’t use scientific methods, so it isn’t a scientist. NOT TRUE
3. Psychology cannot yield meaningful generalisations because everyone is unique (lilienfeld states that some, if not all, the uniqueness we see in other may be irrelevant to the treatment)
4. Psychology doesn’t yield repeatable results (this is not limited to psychology)
5. Psychology cannot make precise predictions (psychology is probabilistic - scientists trade in probabilities not certainties, just like physics, the weather forecast, global warming)
6. Psychology is not useful to society

Question 5

Psychologys failure to police itself

Answer 5

unsupported practices are not common (eg 90% of US psychologists treating ex war veryerans don’t use recommended evidence based treatments)
Only 5% of self help books are scientifically tested
Dr. Phil makes claims that lack support. Psychology magazines are rarely written by psychologists.

Question 6

What is hindsight bias

Answer 6

People perceive outcomes as foreseeable once the outcome is known. Deep familiarity with psychological phenomenona contributes to this.

Question 7

What’s the illusion of understanding?

Answer 7

People regard psychological questions as easier to understand and explain than questions I’m hard sciences. (Children rated ‘hard science’ questions as harder despite them being similar in difficulty).
Questions framed in neuroscience terms are considered harder.

Question 8

What is greedy reductionism

Answer 8

Reducing a question to its simplistic form. Psychological explanations may be more “fuzzy” then neural explanations

Question 9

What’s the scientific impotence excuse?

Answer 9

First coined by Munro (2010)

When people beliefs are challenges by scientific evidence they dismiss the evidence.

Question 10

What has the media contributed to misconceptions in psychology?

Answer 10

Colour of the shoe, speed reading with the “right brain” rubbish. Can’t switch between brains stoopid 🙄

Question 11

Can fresh chocolate milk reduce concussion related measures?

Answer 11

Nope. Not only wasn’t this study published, it might have never been submitted for publication.
Significance level: .01?

Question 12

The source of the left brain right brain

Answer 12

Patient who couldn’t see left hand picture that flashed, but if he closed his eyes and drew with his left hand all of a sudden he could draw the left hand image that he saw with his right brain.