9 myths about psychology: debunked

How much of what you think about your brain is actually wrong? In this whistle-stop tour of dis-proved science, Ben Ambridge walks through nine popular ideas about psychology that have been proven wrong — and uncovers a few surprising truths about how our brains really work.

You've heard of your IQ,
your general intelligence,

but what's your Psy-Q?

How much do you know
about what makes you tick,

and how good are you
at predicting other people's behavior

or even your own?

And how much of what you think you know
about psychology is wrong?

Let's find out by counting down
the top myths of psychology.

You've probably heard it said
that when it comes to their psychology,

it's almost as if men are from Mars
and women are from Venus.

But how different
are men and women, really?

To find out, let's start
by looking at something

on which men and women really do differ

and plotting some psychological
gender differences on the same scale.

One thing men and women
do really differ on

is how far they can throw a ball.

So if we look at the data for men here,

we see what is called
a normal distribution curve.

A few men can throw a ball really far,
a few men, not far at all,

but most, a kind of average distance.

And women share
the same distribution as well,

but actually, there's
quite a big difference.

In fact, the average man
can throw a ball further

than about 98 percent of all women.

Now let's look at what some psychological
gender differences look like

on the same standardized scale.

Any psychologist will tell you

that men are better
at spatial awareness than women --

things like map-reading,
for example -- and it's true.

But let's have a look
at the size of this difference.

It's tiny; the lines are so close
together, they almost overlap.

In fact, the average woman is better
than 33 percent of all men,

and of course, if that was 50 percent,

then the two genders
would be exactly equal.

It's worth bearing in mind that this
difference and the next one I'll show you

are pretty much the biggest
psychological gender differences

ever discovered in psychology.

Here's the next one.

Any psychologist will tell you

that women are better
with language and grammar than men.

Here's performance
on the standardized grammar test.

There, the women. There go the men.

Again, yes, women are better on average,

but the lines are so close

that 33 percent of men
are better than the average woman.

And again, if it was 50 percent,

that would represent
complete gender equality.

So it's not really
a case of Mars and Venus.

It's more a case of, if anything,
Mars and Snickers:

basically the same, but one's maybe
slightly nuttier than the other.

When making a cake, do you prefer
to use a recipe book with pictures?

Yeah, a few people.

Have a friend talk you through?

Or have a go, making it up
as you go along?

Quite a few people there.

OK, so if you said A,

then this means
that you're a visual learner,

and you learn best when information
is presented in a visual style.

If you said B, it means
you're an auditory learner,

that you learn best when information
is presented to you in an auditory format.

And if you said C, it means
that you're a kinesthetic learner,

that you learn best when you get stuck in
and do things with your hands.

Except, of course,
as you've probably guessed,

that it doesn't, because
the whole thing is a complete myth.

Learning styles are made up and are not
supported by scientific evidence.

We know this because in tightly
controlled experimental studies

when learners are given material to learn,

either in their preferred style
or an opposite style,

it makes no difference at all
to the amount of information they retain.

And if you think about it
for just a second,

it's obvious that this has to be true.

It's obvious that the best presentation
format depends not on you,

but on what you're trying to learn.

Could you learn to drive a car,
for example, just by listening to someone

telling you what to do,

with no kinesthetic experience?

Could you solve simultaneous equations
by talking them through in your head,

without writing them down?

Could you revise for your architecture
exams using interpretive dance

if you're a kinesthetic learner?

No; what you need to do is match
the material to be learned

to the presentation format,

not you.

I know many of you are A-level students

that will have recently gotten
your GCSE results.

And if you didn't quite get
what you were hoping for,

then you can't really blame
your learning style.

But one thing that you might want
to think about blaming is your genes.

So what this is all about is that a recent
study at University College London

found that 58 percent of the variation
between different students

and their GCSE results

was down to genetic factors.

That sounds like a very precise figure.
So how can we tell?

Well, when we want to unpack
the relative contributions

of genes and the environment,

what we can do is a twin study.

Identical twins share
100 percent of their environment

and 100 percent of their genes,

whereas nonidentical twins
share 100 percent of their environment,

but just like any brother and sister,
share only 50 percent of their genes.

So by comparing how similar
GCSE results are in identical twins

versus nonidentical twins

and doing some clever math,

we can get an idea of how much variation
and performance is due to the environment,

and how much is due to genes.

And it turns out that it's about
58 percent due to genes.

This isn't to undermine the hard work
that you and your teachers here put in.

If you didn't quite get the GCSE results
that you were hoping for,

then you can always try
blaming your parents,

or at least their genes.

One thing that you shouldn't blame

is being a left-brained
or right-brained learner,

because again, this is a myth.

The myth here is that
the left brain is logical,

it's good with equations like this,

and the right brain is more creative,
so the right brain is better at music.

But again, this is a myth,

because nearly everything you do

involves nearly all parts
of your brain talking together,

even just the most mundane thing
like having a normal conversation.

However, perhaps one reason
why this myth has survived

is that there is
a slight grain of truth to it.

A related version of the myth is that
left-handed people are more creative

than right-handed people,

which kind of makes sense because
your brain controls the opposite hand.

So in left-handed people, the right side
of the brain is slightly more active

than the left side of the brain,

and the idea is the right-hand side
is more creative.

Now, it isn't true per se
that left-handed people are more creative

than right-handed people.

But what is true is that
ambidextrous people,

or people who use both hands
for different tasks,

are more creative thinkers
than one-handed people,

because being ambidextrous involves

having both sides of the brain
talk to each other a lot,

which seems to be involved
in creative and flexible thinking.

The myth of the creative left-hander
arises from the fact

that being ambidextrous
is more common amongst left-handers

than right-handers,

so a grain of truth in the idea
of the creative left-hander,

but not much.

A related myth that you've
probably heard of

is that we only use
10 percent of our brains.

This is, again, a complete myth.

Nearly everything that we do,
even the most mundane thing,

uses nearly all of our brains.

That said, it is of course true

that most of us don't use our brainpower
quite as well as we could.

So what could we do
to boost our brainpower?

Maybe we could listen
to a nice bit of Mozart.

Have you heard of the idea
of the Mozart effect?

The idea is that listening
to Mozart makes you smarter

and improves your performance on IQ tests.

Now again, what's interesting
about this myth

is that although it's basically a myth,
there is a grain of truth to it.

So the original study found that

participants who were played
Mozart music for a few minutes

did better on a subsequent IQ test

than participants who simply
sat in silence.

But a follow-up study recruited
some people who liked Mozart music

and then another group of people

who were fans of
the horror stories of Stephen King.

And they played the people
the music or the stories.

The people who preferred
Mozart music to the stories

got a bigger IQ boost
from the Mozart than the stories,

but the people who preferred
the stories to the Mozart music

got a bigger IQ boost
from listening to the Stephen King stories

than the Mozart music.

So the truth is that listening
to something that you enjoy

perks you up a bit
and gives you a temporary IQ boost

on a narrow range of tasks.

There's no suggestion that
listening to Mozart,

or indeed Stephen King stories,

is going to make you any smarter
in the long run.

Another version of the Mozart myth

is that listening to Mozart can make you
not only cleverer but healthier, too.

Unfortunately, this doesn't
seem to be true

of someone who listened
to the music of Mozart almost every day,

Mozart himself,

who suffered from gonorrhea,
smallpox, arthritis,

and, what most people think eventually
killed him in the end, syphilis.

This suggests that Mozart should have been
a bit more careful, perhaps,

when choosing his sexual partners.

But how do we choose a partner?

So a myth that I have to say
is sometimes spread a bit by sociologists

is that our preferences in a romantic
partner are a product of our culture,

that they're very culturally specific.

But in fact, the data don't back this up.

A famous study surveyed people from
[37] different cultures across the globe

from Americans to Zulus,

on what they look for in a partner.

And in every single culture
across the globe,

men placed more value
on physical attractiveness in a partner

than did women,

and in every single culture, too,

women placed more importance than did men
on ambition and high earning power.

In every culture, too,

men preferred women
who were younger than themselves,

an average of, I think it was 2.66 years.

And in every culture, too,

women preferred men
who were older than them,

so an average of 3.42 years,

which is why we've got here,
"Everybody needs a Sugar Daddy."

(Laughter)

So moving on from trying
to score with a partner

to trying to score in basketball
or football or whatever your sport is.

The myth here is that sportsmen go through
"hot hand" streaks, Americans call them,

or "purple patches,"
we sometimes say in England,

where they just can't miss,
like this guy here.

But in fact, what happens is that
if you analyze the pattern

of hits and misses statistically,

it turns out that it's
nearly always at random.

Your brain creates patterns
from the randomness.

If you toss a coin,

a streak of heads or tails is going
to come out somewhere in the randomness,

and because the brain likes to see
patterns where there are none,

we look at these streaks
and attribute meanings to them

and say, "Yeah he's really on form today,"

whereas actually you would
get the same pattern

if you were just getting
hits and misses at random.

An exception to this, however,
is penalty shootouts.

A recent study looking at
penalty shootouts in football

showed that players
who represent countries

with a very bad record
in penalty shootouts,

like, for example, England,

tend to be quicker to take their shots
than countries with a better record,

and presumably as a result,
they're more likely to miss.

Which raises the question

of if there's any way we could improve
people's performance.

And one thing you might think about doing

is punishing people for their misses
and seeing if that improves them.

This idea, the effect that punishment
can improve performance,

was what participants
thought they were testing

in Milgram's famous learning
and punishment experiment

that you've probably heard about
if you're a psychology student.

The story goes that participants
were prepared to give

what they believed to be fatal
electric shocks to a fellow participant

when they got a question wrong,

just because someone
in a white coat told them to.

But this story is a myth
for three reasons.

Firstly, and most crucially, the lab coat
wasn't white, it was, in fact, grey.

Secondly, the participants
were told before the study

and reminded any time
they raised a concern,

that although the shocks were painful,
they were not fatal

and indeed caused
no permanent damage whatsoever.

And thirdly, participants
didn't give the shocks

just because someone
in the coat told them to.

When they were interviewed
after the study,

all the participants said
that they firmly believed

that the learning and punishment study
served a worthy scientific purpose

which would have
enduring gains for science,

as opposed to the momentary, nonfatal
discomfort caused to the participants.

OK, so I've been talking
for about 12 minutes now,

and you've probably been
sitting there listening to me,

analyzing my speech patterns
and body language

and trying to work out if you should
take any notice of what I'm saying,

whether I'm telling the truth
or whether I'm lying.

But if so, you've probably
completely failed,

because although we all think
we can catch a liar

from their body language
and speech patterns,

hundreds of psychological tests
over the years have shown that all of us,

including police officers and detectives,

are basically at chance when it comes
to detecting lies from body language

and verbal patterns.

Interestingly, there is one exception:

TV appeals for missing relatives.

It's quite easy to predict
when the relatives are missing

and when the appealers have, in fact,
murdered the relatives themselves.

So hoax appealers are more likely
to shake their heads, to look away,

and to make errors in their speech,

whereas genuine appealers
are more likely to express hope

that the person will return safely

and to avoid brutal language.

So, for example, they might say
"taken from us" rather than "killed."

Speaking of which,
it's about time I killed this talk,

but before I do, I just want
to give you, in 30 seconds,

the overarching myth of psychology.

The myth is that psychology is just
a collection of interesting theories,

all of which say something useful
and all of which have something to offer.

What I hope to have shown you
in the past few minutes

is that this isn't true.

What we need to do is assess
psychological theories

by seeing what predictions they make,

whether that is that listening to Mozart
makes you smarter,

that you learn better when information is
presented in your preferred learning style

or whatever it is,

all of these are testable
empirical predictions,

and the only way we can make progress

is to test these predictions
against the data

in tightly controlled
experimental studies.

And it's only by doing so
that we can hope to discover

which of these theories
are well supported,

and which, like all the ones
I've told you about today, are myths.

Thank you.

(Applause)