1.2 Psychological Pseudoscience PDF

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1.2 Psychological Pseudoscience: Imposters of Science The Amazing Growth of Popular Psychology: Coinciding with the rapid expansion of the popular psychology industry is the enormous growth of treatments and products that claim to cure almost every imaginable psychological ailment. - There are well over 500 “brands” of psychotherapy, with new ones being added every year. Research shows that many of the treatments are helpful, where others remain untested. So we really do not know if they help or not. Some may even be harmful. What is Pseudoscience? An imposter of science is pseudoscience. Pseudoscience: a set of claims that seem scientific but isn’t. In particular, pseudoscience lacks the safeguard against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science. - We must be careful distinguishing between pseudoscience and metaphysical claims, which as we’ve seen are untestable and therefor lie outside the realm of science. - We can test pseudoscience claims, although the proponents of these claims often avoid subjecting them to rigorous examination. - Pseudoscience and otherwise questionable claims have increasingly altered the landscape of modern life. Warning Signs of Pseudoscience: Table 1.2 → Warning signs that can help us recognize Pseudoscience: Signs of Pseudoscience

Example

Exaggerated Claims

“Three simple steps will change your love life forever!”

Over Reliance on anecdotes

This woman practiced yoga daily for 3 weeks and hasn’t had a day of depression since.

Absence of connectivity to other research

Amazing new innovations in research have shown that eye massage results in reading speeds 10 times faster than average!

Lack of review by other scholars or replication by independent labs

Fifty studies by the company all show overwhelming success!

Lack of self - correction when contrary evidence is published

Although some scientists say that we use almost all of our brains, we’ve found a way to harness brain power previously undiscovered.

Meaningless “psychobabble” that uses Sine - wave filtered auditory stimulation is fancy scientific - sounding terms that don’t carefully designed to encourage maximal make sense. orbitofrontal dendritic development. Talk of “proof” instead of “evidence.”

Our new program is proven to reduce social anxiety by at least 50%!

Three of the most Crucial Warning Signs: 1. Overuse of ad hoc immunizing hypothesis: - is an escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect this theory from being disproved. 2. Lack of self Correction: - wrong scientific claims seem like a weakness of science, but it’s actually a strength. Wrong claims seem to be weeded out eventually, even though it often takes a while. In most pseudosciences, wrong claims never seem to go away, because their proponents fall prey to belief perseverance, clinging to them stubbornly, despite contrary evidence. 3. Over Reliance on Anecdotes: - “The plural of anecdote isn’t fact” - First hand evidence that’s based on subjective impressions. Pseudosciences tend to rely heavily on anecdotal evidence. Anecdotes: ~ Do not tell us anything about cause or effect. ~ Don’t tell us anything about how representative the cases are. ~ Anecdotes are also difficult to verify. ~ Most anecdotes are extremely difficult to interpret as evidence. “The clear message of history is that the anecdotal method delivers both wheat and chaff, but it does not enable us to tell which is which.” - Paul Meehl Why are we drawn to Pseudoscience? How our brains work → Our brains are predisposed to make order out of disorder and find sense in nonsense. This adaptive tendency can sometimes lead us astray because it can cause us to perceive meaningful patterns even when they’re not there. Mysteries of Psychological Science: Why do we perceive patterns even when they don’t exist?

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Our tendency to see patterns in meaningless data is so profound, we call it patternicity. Although patternicity can lead to errors, it probably stems from an evolutionarily adaptive tendency. Ex. You have a cheeseburger for lunch, and a few hours later you fall violently ill. You are most likely going to avoid eating cheeseburgers for awhile, whether your illness was linked to the burger or not. - No matter what, our brains seek out the basic evolutionary principle: “Better safe than sorry.” Psychomythology: The Hot Hand: Reality or Illusion? - Basketball players, coaches, and fans are fond of talking about the “hot hand.” Once a player has made 3 or 4 shots in a row, he’s “hot”, “on a roll”, “in the zone”. Other players around the player making all the shots typically get criticized for not passing the ball to “the guy on a roll”. Because of this, it seems that basketball players can go on streaks. But do they? - If the hot hand was real, the researchers should have found that the probability of a successful shot would increase after a basket has been made. That is, once a player makes a few shots in a row, he should be more likely to make another. Gilovich and his colleagues found that the likelihood of a made basket did not change whether the previous basket was a hit or miss. - In conclusion, the hot hand is an illusion. Finding comfort in our beliefs: Pseudoscience is motivational: We believe because we want to believe. Many pseudoscience claims such as astrology, may give us comfort because they seem to offer us a sense of control over an often unpredictable world. Whitson and Galinsky results may help us to explain why so many of us believe in astrology, ESP, and other belief systems that claim to foretell the future: they lend a sense of control over the uncontrollable. According to terror management theory, our awareness of our own inevitable death leaves many of us with an underlying sense of terror. We cope with these feelings of terror, advocates of this theory propose, by adopting cultural world views that reassure us that our lives possess a broader meaning and purpose - one that extends well beyond our vanishingly brief existence on this planet. Terror management theory: attempts to explain a type of defensive human thinking and behaviour that stems from an awareness and fear of death. Mortality Salience: the extent to which thoughts of death are foremost in our minds.

 n Antidote Against Pseudoscience Thinking Clearly: A

To avoid being seduced by the charms of pseudoscience, we must learn to avoid commonplace pitfalls in reasoning. Logical Fallacies: traps in thinking that can lead to mistaken conclusions. Ex. of logical fallacies →  rror of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the Emotional Reasoning Fallacy: E validity of a claim.  rror of assuming a claim is correct just because many people Bandwagon Fallacy: E believe it.  rror of framing a question as though we can answer it in only one of Either - or Fallacy: E two extreme ways.  rror of believing we are immune from errors in thinking that afflict other Not me Fallacy: E people.  rror of accepting a claim merely because an authority Appeal to Authority Fallacy: E figure endorses it.  rror of confusing the correctness of a belief with it’s origins or Genetic Fallacy: E genesis.  rror that assuming that a belief must be valid just Argument from Antiquity Fallacy: E because it’s been around for a long time.  rror of confusing the validity of an Argument from Adverse Consequences Fallacy: E idea with its potential real - world consequences.  rror of assuming a claim must be true because no one Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy: E has shown it to be false.  rror of interfering a moral judgement from a scientific fact. Naturalistic Fallacy: E  rror of drawing a conclusion on the basis of insufficient Hasty Generalization Fallacy: E evidence.  rror of basing a claim on the same claim reworded in Circular Reasoning Fallacy: E slightly different terms. Bias Blind Spot: demonstrates that most people are unaware of their own biases but keenly aware of them in others.

 hy should we Care? The Dangers of Pseudoscience: W 3 Major Reasons why we should all be concerned about pseudoscience:  he loss of potential gain from other 1. Opportunity Cost: What we Give Up → T alternatives when one alternative is chosen. Ex. Pseudoscientific treatments for mental disorders can lead people to forgo opportunities to seek effective treatments. Even treatments that are harmless can cause harm indirectly because the patient didn’t get real help.  seudoscientific treatments can cause psychological or physical 2. Direct Harm → P damage - occasionally even death.

Ex. Rebirthing therapy to help people with reactive attachment disorder. (Being so attached to your parents that, when you are not around them behavioural problems develop). Rebirthing therapy uses a specific kind of of breathing (breathwork) meant to help you release emotions.  e can apply scientific thinking 3. An Inability to Think Scientifically as Citizens → W skills to all aspects of our lives. We need these skills to reach educated decisions about global warming, genetic engineering, vaccinations, novel medical treatments, and parenting and teaching practices, among dozens of other claims....