Preface Chapter 1: Is psychology a science? “Psychology is an inferior kind of science” Reproducibility and the ‘replication crisis’ Highly controlled experimental conditions Clearly defined terminology Predictability and testability: the ‘theory crisis’ What should psychologists do? Psychology is a different kind of science Myths in psychology Chapter 2: Visual perception Myth: subliminal messages can motivate people’s behaviour without their awareness Myth: we generally detect changes in objects Myth: visual perception provides us with very rich and accurate information about the environment at a glance Myth: everyone agrees on the colour of a dress (or #theDress) Myth: most people are ‘face experts’ Why do we believe so many myths about visual perception? Chapter 3: Mysteries of memory Myth: “Memory is like a video camera” Myth: memories do not change over time: they are permanent Myth: repression and ‘return of the repressed’ are very common Myth: amnesic patients have forgotten their pasts Myth: the only function of (episodic) memory is to provide access to our past experiences Myth: forgetting is a bad thing Chapter 4: Thinking and cognition Myth: 10,000 hours of practice produce outstanding performance Myth: brain training improves your brain functioning and intelligence Myth: we only use 10% of our brains Myth: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon be much more intelligent than humans Myth: nudges are very effective at changing people’s behaviour Chapter 5: Intelligence Myth: there are multiple intelligences in the human mind Myth: it is important to match teaching methods to learning styles Myth: emotional intelligence is helpful in life Myth: IQ scores only measure how good someone is at taking intelligence tests Myth: intelligence does not depend on genetic factors Chapter 6: Personality Myth: high self-esteem is highly desirable (and low self-esteem very undesirable) Myth: situational factors overwhelm personality when predicting behaviour Myth: personality measures do not predict consequential outcomes (like health, wealth and divorce) well enough to be useful Myth: parenting practices are a major source of personality differences Myth: men are from Mars, women are from Venus (men and women have dramatically different personalities) Chapter 7: Social psychology Myth: Milgram proved that most people will obey immoral orders Myth: crowds typically panic in threatening situations Myth: Zimbardo proved that the power structure in prisons makes guards aggressive and violent Myth: individual differences in attitudes are mostly learned Myth: happiness is influenced most strongly by what happens to us Chapter 8: Mental disorders and their treatment Myth: mental illnesses are due almost entirely to people’s life experiences Myth: psychiatric diagnoses or labels stigmatise people Myth: The Rorschach Inkblot test is a very useful way of diagnosing most mental illnesses Myth: people with multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder) have more than one distinct personality Myth: most psychotherapy requires lying on a couch and recalling one’s childhood Myth: antidepressants are much more effective than psychotherapy for treating depression Chapter 9: Psychology and the law Myth: an eyewitness’s confidence is never a good predictor of their identification accuracy Myth: experts can nearly always identify the culprit from fingerprinting evidence Myth: DNA tests are almost infallible for identifying culprits Myth: the polygraph test is very good at detecting lying Myth: hypnosis enhances eyewitnesses’ memory Myth: Offender profiling is (very) useful in identifying culprits Chapter 10: How to become a mythbuster Why do people subscribe to myths? Distorted research: biased experimental design, reporting and interpretations of findings Biased textbook coverage Members of the public: confirmation bias or wishful thinking Members of the public: deficient thinking about intrinsically improbable beliefs Members of the public: mistaken extrapolation from limited personal experience Members of the public: plausible beliefs based on general knowledge (kernel of truth) Conclusions Chapter 11: Brave new world Experiments: the gold standard? Developing new methods Experimenter bias The jingle-jangle fallacies Granularity problem Scientific analysis: meta-analysis Scientific reporting Psychology as a cumulative science Conclusions References

• Psychology: emotions

• Memory

• General (US: Trade)

• Tertiary Education (US: College)

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