Being a psychologist has its pitfalls, particularly when meeting new people. When the reply to the question “What do you do for a living” is “Psychologist”, people typically become a little uncomfortable and mumble something like “Oh my-I bet you can tell things about me that I don’t even know” or “You know, I have this nutty uncle. Maybe you can tell me why he does the things he does.” or “I keep having this weird dream. What does it mean?” or even (usually muttered in a whisper) “I sometimes get these really scary feelings, and I think there may be something wrong with me. Can you help me?”
All of these comments reflect a common misconception-the idea that the subject matter of psychology is limited to the study of personality and psychological disorders. Certainly psychologists do study these topics, but they also study many more, including memory, altered states of awareness, thinking and problem solving, human and animal learning, perception, and the functioning of the nervous system. In this course, you will study all these topics, and will learn not only what psychologists have come to understand about these aspects of our functioning, but also about the research that has been critical to the development of this understanding. You will also learn why some topics that are sometimes associated in people’s minds with the study of psychology-such as the study of psychic phenomena-are not really part of modern scientific psychology at all.
Psychology-—The Science of Behavior and Mental Processes
Is psychology nothing more than the science of common sense?
There has probably never been a time when humans did not reflect on the nature, and causes, of their patterns of thinking and behavior. Indeed, the science of psychology is sometimes referred to, by those outside of psychology at least, as the science of common sense. Consider the following example, which describes a situation that was used in one very well known study of human behavior.
Suppose that you had volunteered to participate in a psychology experiment on campus. Upon arrival, you were seated at a table, and asked to undertake a series of dull, meaningless tasks for about an hour. Afterward, the experimenter convinced you to extol the virtues of the tasks you had performed by describing them to other potential participants as highly interesting, worthwhile, and educational. The experimenter offers to pay you either $1 or $20 to do this. Suppose that you go along with the request, receive the money (either $1 or $20), and you are then asked to privately and honestly rate how much you enjoyed performing the experimental tasks.
OK-here is the question for you: Do you think you would rate the tasks as more enjoyable if you were paid $1 to tell someone else that they were fun, if you were paid $20 to tell someone else that they were fun, or would the money have no effect on your honest ratings of the tasks?
Experiment: More Fun If You’re Paid?
The situation described in this example is based upon a famous study in social psychology conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959). The huge majority of people who are asked the question that you were asked respond that they believe they would rate the tasks as more enjoyable if they were paid a larger amount of money ($20) than a smaller amount of money ($1) to tell someone else that the tasks were fun. In the actual experiment, however, the exact opposite of that occurred. Participants paid $1 rated the tasks as considerably more enjoyable than did the participants who were paid $20! Apparently, “common sense,” while undoubtedly common, is not always correct.
The obvious question that should be occurring to you now is-why? Why did the participants paid $1 rate the task as more enjoyable? It is important to note that all participants found the tasks unpleasant when they were performing them. It was only later, after they told someone else that the tasks were fun, that some participants (those who were paid $1) changed their views of the tasks and rated the tasks as enjoyable.
The answer to this question of “why” requires reference to a concept first developed by Festinger called “cognitive dissonance.” Festinger proposed that when we behave in a manner that is inconsistent with an attitude or belief that we hold, we experience a negative state called “dissonance.” One way to reduce the dissonance is to attribute the behavior to some factor other than the inconsistent attitude. In the case of the Festinger and Carlsmith experiment, it was easy for participants who were paid $20 to resolve their dissonance in this way. These participants told someone else that the boring tasks were interesting, but did so for the obvious reason that they were paid a significant amount of money to do so.
But what about the participants who were only paid $1? These participants also went along with the request to tell someone else that the boring tasks were interesting. However, in reflecting on their own behavior, it was much harder for them to attribute their actions to the money, because the amount involved was so small.
How else, then, might these participants reduce their dissonance? They can’t undo the behavior. The only option left is to change their attitude toward the tasks themselves. By deciding that the tasks actually were interesting, their behavior (telling someone else that the task was interesting) and their attitude were no longer “dissonant.”
Go on to the next page for some other “common sense” ideas in psychology-—some of which are true, but some of which are false.
Common sense questions and Answers
- The cells in our brain are called neurons. As we develop from an infant to an adult, the number of neurons in our brain is steadily increasing.
FALSE. In fact, adults have fewer neurons than do infants-a fact that has important implications for our understanding of the way in which experience affects the development of the brain. This topic will be discussed more in the brain development lecture in the section of the course on the brain and nervous system.
- It is possible to perform surgery that separates the left part of the brain from the right part of the brain in such a way that each half is ignorant of what is going on in the other half.
TRUE
- Men experience as many mood swings over the course a month-long period of time as do women.
Hard to believe, but TRUE
- Our bodies usually don’t move at all when we are sleeping except during the times when we are dreaming.
FALSE. In fact, the exact opposite is true. We normally move very little when we are dreaming.
- Hypnosis is quite useful for increasing the accuracy of remembering.
FALSE
- The visual system operates essentially like a camera.
FALSE . The eye is like a camera in some ways, but vision depends upon much more than what happens in the eye. The fact that we sometimes experience visual illusions demonstrates that the brain matters as much as the eye in producing the experience of seeing-and the brain does not function at all like a camera.
- People usually feel uncomfortable behaving in a manner different from the way others around them are behaving-even when they know what others are doing is wrong.
Sadly, this statement is TRUE
- We are not as good at visually identifying people of another race as we are at identifying people of the same race as ourselves (the “they all look alike to me” phenomenon).
TRUE
- Modern lie detectors tests can discriminate truth-telling from lying with better than 95% accuracy.
FALSE
- People with schizophrenia have “split personalities” and may have as many as 100 personalities.
FALSE
