The Skeptics Society Skeptic magazine. Top Ten Mythsof Popular Psychology. Virtually every day, the news media, television shows, films, and Internet bombard us with claims regarding a host of psychological topics psychics, out of body experiences, recovered memories, and lie detection, to name a few. Even a casual stroll through our neighborhood bookstore reveals dozens of self help, relationship, recovery, and addiction books that serve up generous portions of advice for steering our paths along lifes rocky road. Yet many popular psychology sources are rife with misconceptions. Indeed, in todays fast paced world of information overload, misinformation about psychology is at least as widespread as accurate information. Psychology Of The Hero Soul Pdf ViewerIssuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Publisher of academic books and electronic media publishing for general interest and in a wide variety of fields. Movie scripts, Movie screenplays Original Unproduced Scripts. A showcase of original scripts from the hottest writers on the net. A hero masculine or heroine feminine is a person or main character of a literary work who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity. In this weeks eSkeptic, we present an excerpt from 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Nature, by Scott O. We are Excited to Give You FREE Access to the Entire Attract Your Soulmate Now Series for Two Full Days From Friday, November 4th at 9am Pacific Time. Self help gurus, television talk show hosts, and self proclaimed mental health experts routinely dispense psychological advice that is a bewildering mix of truths, half truths, and outright falsehoods. Without a dependable tour guide for sorting out psychological myth from reality, were at risk for becoming lost in a jungle of psychomythology. In our new book, 5. Great Myths of Popular Psychology Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Nature, we examine in depth 5. Here, pace David Letterman, we present in no particular order our own candidates for the top 1. Myth 1 We Only Use 1. Brains. Whenever those of us who study the brain venture outside the Ivory Tower to give public lectures, one of the questions were most likely to encounter is, Is it true that we only use 1. The look of disappointment that usually follows when we respond, Sorry, Im afraid not, suggests that the 1. In one study, when asked About what percentage of their potential brain power do you think most people use, a third of psychology majors answered 1. Remarkably, one survey revealed that even 6 of neuroscientists agreed with this claimThe pop psychology industry has played a big role in keeping this myth alive. For example, in his book, How to be Twice as Smart, Scott Witt wrote that If youre like most people, youre using only ten percent of your brainpower. 3. There are several reasons to doubt that 9. At a mere 23 of our body weight, our brain consumes over 2. Its implausible that evolution would have permitted the squandering of resources on a scale necessary to build and maintain such a massively underutilized organ. Moreover, losing far less than 9. Likewise, electrical stimulation of sites in the brain during neurosurgery has failed to uncover any silent areas. How did the 1. One clue leads back about a century to psychologist William James, who once wrote that he doubted that average persons achieve more than about 1. Although James talked in terms of underdeveloped potential, a slew of positive thinking gurus transformed 1. In addition, in calling a huge percentage of the human brain silent cortex, early investigators may have fostered the mistaken impression that what scientists now call association cortex which is vitally important for language and abstract thinking had no function. In a similar vein, early researchers admissions that they didnt know what 9. Finally, although one frequently hears claims that Albert Einstein once explained his own brilliance by reference to 1. Myth 2 Its Better to Express Anger Than to Hold it in. If youre like most people, you believe that releasing anger is healthier than bottling it up. In one survey, 6. A host of films stoke the idea that we can tame our anger by letting off steam or getting things off our chest. In the 2. Anger Management, after the meek hero Adam Sandler is falsely accused of air rage on a flight, a judge orders him to attend an anger management group run by Dr. Buddy Rydell Jack Nicholson. At Rydells suggestion, Sandlers character plays dodgeball with schoolchildren and throws golf clubs. Dr. Rydells advice echoes the counsel of many self help authors. John Lee suggested that rather than holding in poisonous anger, its better to Punch a pillow or a punching bag. 7 Some psychotherapies encourage clients to scream or throw balls against walls when they become angry. Proponents of primal scream therapy believe that psychologically troubled adults must release the emotional pain produced by infant trauma by discharging it, often by yelling at the top of their lungs. Yet more than 4. 0 years of research reveals that expressing anger directly toward another person or indirectly toward an object actually turns up the heat on aggression. In an early study, people who pounded nails after someone insulted them were more critical of that person. Moreover, playing aggressive sports like football results in increases in aggression,1. Manhunt, in which participants rate bloody assassinations on a 5 point scale, is associated with heightened aggression. Research suggests that expressing anger is helpful only when its accompanied by constructive problem solving designed to address the source of the anger. Why is this myth so popularIn all likelihood, people often mistakenly attribute the fact that they feel better after they express anger to catharsis, rather than to the fact that anger usually subsides on its own after awhile. Myth 3 Low Self Esteem is a Major Cause of Psychological Problems. Many popular psychologists have long maintained that low self esteem is a prime culprit in generating unhealthy behaviors, including violence, depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. From Norman Vincent Peales 1. The Power of Positive Thinking onward, self help books proclaiming the virtues of self esteem have become regular fixtures in bookstores. In his best seller, The Six Pillars of Self Esteem, Nathaniel Branden insisted that one cannot think of a single psychological problem from anxiety and depression, to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation that is not traceable to the problem of low self esteem. 1. The self esteem movement has found its way into mainstream educational practices. Some athletic leagues award trophies to all schoolchildren to avoid making losing competitors feel inferior. One elementary school in California prohibited children from playing tag because the children werent feeling good about it. 1. Moreover, the Internet is chock full of educational products intended to boost childrens self esteem. One book, Self Esteem Games, contains 3. But theres a fly in the ointment Research shows that low self esteem isnt strongly associated with poor mental health. In a comprehensive review, Roy Baumeister and his colleagues canvassed over 1. They found that self esteem is minimally related to interpersonal success, and not consistently related to alcohol or drug abuse. Moreover, they discovered that although self esteem is positively associated with school performance, better school performance appears to contribute to high self esteem rather than the other way around. Perhaps most surprising of all, they found that low self esteem is neither necessary nor sufficient for depression. 2. Myth 4 Human Memory Works like a Video Camera. Despite the sometimes all too obvious failings of everyday memory, surveys show that many people believe that their memories operate very much like videotape recorders. About 3. 6 of us believe that our brains preserve perfect records of everything weve experienced. In one survey of undergraduates, 2. Even most psychotherapists agree that memories are fixed more or less permanently in the mind.