The world of psychology is filled with studies that have been wrong, false and downright fraudulent. You’ve probably heard of the Standford Prison Experiment or the Stanley Milgram ‘shock’ experiment where participants were to apply electric shocks. Both experiments were bullshit. Are some more famous, or should I say infamous, examples?
The Marshmallow Test
Toddlers were given the choice of either one marshmallow now, or more than one marshmallow if they waited. This was supposed to illustrate self-control. In fact it was measurement of risk assessment.
The kids were being smart. They were judging the adults and assessing whether the adults were trustworthy. In other words, why go through the agony of waiting when there is no guarantee that the adult will follow through on their promise?
Kitty Genovese
In March 1964, a 28-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked and killed outside her apartment building in Queens, New York.
This resulted in the New York Times running an article saying that her neighbours watched everything and did nothing.
This became the basis of the “Bystander Effect.”
The problem? The story was bullshit. Her neighbours did try and help. The New York Times ran the story the way they did to push sales.
Left Brain vs Right Brain
If you’re left brained then you’re organised, analytical and good at math. If you’re right brained then you’re artistic, emotional and creative. Or so the story goes.
fMRI machines proved it to be complete bullshit. You use both sides of your brain whether doing calculus or painting a masterpiece.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
There’s a good chance that you had to take one of these as part of a job interview. And you guessed it, it’s complete bullshit.
MBTI was based on the work of Carl Jung who said that people had “general cognitive tendencies”. The problem? According to Jung himself these were just rough theoretical observations, not strict classifications.
MBTI took this and created an either/or system where you were either a thinker or a feeler, or an introvert or an extrovert. In fact no one is 100 per cent introvert and zero per cent Extrovert or 100 per cent thinker and zero per cent feeler.
It also had terrible ‘test-retest reliability’. So if you took the test one day and took it again five weeks later, there’s a good chance you’d get a different result.
Positive Affirmations
If you’re like me you already know these are complete bullshit.
The problem is if you tell yourself that you are say a Scrabble master, your brain does a fact check and if it finds you suck at Scrabble it says ‘No you’re not.’ In fact a study found that people with low self-esteem who used positive affirmations actually felt worse, more anxious and more depressed.
It’s kind of like standing in front of a mirror and saying ‘I am smart and focused and successful.’ Your brain says ‘If that’s true why are you having to stand in front of mirror and tell yourself all this bullshit, genius?’
Can positive affirmations actually work? The answer believe it or not is yes, by turning them into questions.
For instance instead of telling yourself ‘I am a Scrabble master’ you say ‘OK, I suck at Scrabble. How can I become a Scrabble master?’ But this involves, you know, actual work.
Toxic Positivity
There’s two parts to this.
The first part is if someone says don’t think of pink elephant your brain instantly thinks of a pink elephant (Damn you brain: you never do what you’re told). Basically the more you try and force yourself to be positive when things are bad, the more your brain focuses on the bad stuff.
The second part is how you react when shit happens. Positive toxicity says, ‘It’s all cool, bruh. Smoke some weed. Hit the gym.’ The problem here is that you still feel like shit but now you feel guilty for still feeling like shit.
The correct thing to do is what’s called emotional validation. Instead of saying ‘It’s cool, bruh,’ you say ‘That sucks, bro. If I was you I’d be feeling exactly the same way, bro.’
What is true?
The Big Five Personality Traits
Instead of placing you in either/or boxes, this model places you in five continuous spectra:
• Openness to Experience (Curiosity vs Routine)
• Conscientiousness (Discipline vs Spontaneity)
• Extraversion (Social energy vs Solitude)
• Agreeableness (Cooperation vs Competitiveness)
• Neuroticism/Emotional Stability (Stress reactivity vs Calm)
Unlike MBTI, this has proved to be highly reliable.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
This is where you put you yourself in difficult situations until you train your nervous system to relax. This has been proven to be highly effective in treating anxiety, depression and phobias.
Neuroplasticity
The brain is not a hard drive that stores memories. It is a physical ‘muscle’. So when you learn, for example, a new language the brain physically changes by building new synaptic connections.
Neuroplasticity shows that you can build new pathways that bypass the old negative pathways. The catch is that is slow and difficult and hard work. Kind of like breaking both legs and having to learn to walk again.
This is also where psychedelic-assisted therapy comes in.
Drugs like psilocybin and MDMA have been shown to temporarily reopen the ‘critical period’ when your brain is hyper-plastic and you absorb everything like sponge.
The catch is that the drug is not the cure. The work is when the drugs wear off but the critical period is still open. Although much more effective, the patient still has to do the work.
But anyway, if Labour wins the election don’t worry about it. Keep your chin up. Look in the mirror and say ‘I can get through anything!’ Go out and exercise that right brain of yours by painting a smiling painting of Chippy. And, if you see someone getting beaten up by some gang members, it’s OK to do nothing because that’s what everyone else would do.
