Myths and misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes held by introductory psychology students: A BISTOPS collaborative research project

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Myths and misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes held by introductory psychology students: A BISTOPS collaborative research project

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3035773/v1

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Many people embrace myths and misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes, and even taking a course in psychology does not necessarily reduce these misconceptions and beliefs in myths. Holding such misunderstandings can have serious consequences on the decisions people make in their lives. Most studies about psychological myths have focused on relatively small samples and single institutions. A group of researchers, unified by an enduring focus on student learning as an area of research, convened at the Biennial International Seminar on the Teaching of Psychological Science in 2018 to study this issue. We sought to explore the prevalence of these myths and misunderstandings of students who have just completed an introductory psychology course. Thus far our collaboration has generated data from over 1000 introductory psychology students at 7 institutions across the United States and we have confirmed that there is widespread endorsement of many myths. We also surveyed those students’ instructors and found a negative correlation between the amount of time faculty spend debunking myths and myth endorsement. In this paper we briefly describe the process of developing this research project and our initial findings. We also outline the future directions we plan to take, including reconsidering how the introductory course could be taught to maximize the reduction of misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes. We conclude by discussing some of the strengths, limitations and difficulties of this collaborative project.

myths

misconceptions

introductory psychology

collaborative research

At the first meeting of the Biennial International Seminar on the Teaching of Psychological Science (BISTOPS), in Paris in July 2018, a number of possible collaborative research projects were discussed by a group of psychology instructors who share a passion for teaching. One that generated considerable interest involved exploring myths and misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes held by students even after taking an introductory psychology course, the first course typically taken by both psychology majors and non-majors. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary (2020), a myth is a widely held but false belief or idea and a misconception is a view or opinion that is incorrect because it is based on faulty thinking or understanding. It is well documented that people have misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes and that people endorse myths (e.g., Lilienfeld et al., 2010), such as that people learn best when they are taught in a manner that matches their “learning style”, that people only use 10% of their brain, and that excessive intake of sugar is a major cause of hyperactivity in children.

One might think that taking a course in psychology would disabuse people of many common false beliefs. While there is evidence that students who have taken several psychology courses are less likely to endorse myths than those who have taken fewer courses (e.g., Gaze, 2014; Standing & Huber, 2003), and that psychology instructors endorse fewer myths than laypeople (e.g., Simons & Chabris, 2011), there is plenty of evidence that students who have taken a single course in psychology still hold many false beliefs (for a review see Hughes, Lyddy & Lambe, 2013). Given the relatively widespread endorsement of psychological myths, and the fact that many people only ever take a single course in psychology, one of the recommendations of the American Psychological Association’s Introductory Psychology Initiative (IPI) is to organize the introductory course to promote scientific thinking skills, including how psychological science can be used to counter unsubstantiated statements, opinions, or beliefs.

There are at least two reasons why it is important to address and help students to understand their misconceptions. First, people make decisions based on their (mis)understanding of human behavior and mental processes. For example, if one believes that vaccines are harmful or cause autism, one might make the decision not to vaccinate a child leaving that child and others vulnerable to suffering from dangerous diseases. Likewise, believing that eyewitnesses are failsafe sources of information about a criminal event can lead to the erroneous conviction of an innocent person, leaving a guilty one free and able to commit more crimes. Second, confronting students with their misconceptions and myths provides them an excellent opportunity for developing their critical, scientific thinking skills. Thus, a pedagogical approach that addresses these myths, that identifies the root of the misunderstanding and attempts to correct it could be very valuable. So, courses in psychology should work to address some of these common misconceptions.

Although there is a lot of evidence that students endorse psychological myths (Hughes et al., 2013), many of the studies have focused on relatively small samples and single institutions. Thus, the primary objective of our first study was to collect data from as many students at as many institutions as we could.

The Team

Following BISTOPS 2018, a team emerged to begin studying myths and misconceptions held by students in introductory psychology courses. These colleagues were unified by an enduring focus on student learning as an area of research and a desire to improve the effectiveness of introductory psychology courses. Our team was initially comprised of about 10 faculty members who attended BISTOPS 2018. Our goal was to have an international team, but unfortunately, until recently it included only faculty at institutions in the United States. Since 2019 we have recruited other faculty interested in the topic from a range of teaching focused venues such as the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, BISTOPS 2022 and from personal communication about the project from various team members. We now have two faculty members from a Canadian university and there are currently 21 members on our team.

The Instrument

During our 2018 BISTOPS meeting we began creating a brief survey about commonly held misconceptions of human behavior. We called this survey a “Quiz about People” (see Appendix). It included items related to 40 myths or misconceptions about human behavior that should be relevant to the content of the introductory psychology course. We then transferred this into a Qualtrics-moderated survey so that responses could be collected online using a uniform instrument across institutions and so that the data would be collected within the same platform. The survey not only included questions about each of the 40 misconceptions it also required participants to indicate their level of confidence in their response and the source of their knowledge (e.g., from a class, an online source, etc.). Finally, the survey included a number of items pertaining to demographic information about the respondents as well as information about their experience in psychological science (e.g., did they take psychology courses in secondary school, what was their Grade Point Average or GPA (a 4-point scale of academic achievement), what was their intended major, etc.).

Survey Distribution

Before distributing this instrument, each of the team members who were able to collect data pursued Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, requesting exempt status, to administer the survey to students in introductory psychology courses on their campus. This review process varied substantially across institutions, as we discuss, below. Nevertheless, we each did receive approval from our respective IRBs. Once this approval was obtained, we distributed our survey to introductory psychology students during the last 3 weeks of the semester.

We collected responses from well-over 1000 students at 7 institutions in the United States ranging from private liberal arts institutions such as Carthage College and Emerson College to mid-sized universities such as Creighton University to large public universities such as the University of South Florida. We hoped that this range of institutions would allow us to understand whether common misconceptions are held by people from a variety of backgrounds.

In this article, we only summarize some of the major results and refer the reader to our full report (Bernstein, et al, 2023) that presents a complete set of results and analyses. First, we found that, on average, students endorsed just over half of the myths in the survey. This pattern held true across institutions and across participants in differing racial and ethnic groups, but differed by gender, with female respondents endorsing slightly more misconceptions than males. In addition, students with higher self-reported GPAs tended to endorse fewer myths than those reporting lower GPAs.

There was considerable variability in the rates of endorsement across the survey’s 40 items. For example, 94% of respondents believed that subliminal messages can be an effective way to encourage consumers to buy a product and 87% of respondents believed that people have specific learning styles (see our discussion below). At the other extreme, only 15% of respondents believed that “cramming” (a marathon of last-minute reading and review) was an effective method of study.

Having established that myths and misconceptions are widespread among undergraduate students who have just taken an introductory psychology course, our team has begun to address the question of why some of these misconceptions persist and to explore ways in which psychology instructors can attempt to combat them.

As a first step, we contacted the faculty whose students completed our survey and asked them to indicate on a scale of 1 (did not or only briefly mentioned) to 10 (discussed in detail) the 40 survey items. Sixteen of 17 instructors responded to our survey. As expected, there was a great deal of variability in the amount of time instructors spent debunking misconceptions, and there was a moderate, significant negative correlation between the amount of time that instructors reported spending on discussing a misconception and the likelihood of that misconception being held by our respondents (r(38) = -.363, p = .021). This finding is consistent with other studies whose results suggest that instructors’ deliberate debunking efforts can reduce their students’ willingness to endorse myths, at least in the short-run (e.g., Kowalski & Taylor, 2009; 2017).

In the section below, we provide two examples of how this kind of refutational instruction could be or has been used to address two common misconceptions.

Curricular Strategies - Restructuring Introductory Psychology

Bernstein (2017) has suggested that the format and content of introductory psychology courses should be modified to target and disabuse students of commonly held myths and misconceptions. One method for doing this with respect to myths about the recovery of repressed memories, is described in detail on the Association for Psychological Science’s website at https://www.psychologicalscience.org/uncategorized/myth-traumatic-memories-are-often-repressed-and-later-recovered.html

The approach involves first having students decide whether they believe the claim that memories of traumatic experiences can be pushed into an unconscious portion of the mind, but may later be recovered. Then, over the next two class periods students consider a series of questions and search for evidence that supports and does not support the claim:

● What evidence supports the claim and how strong is that evidence? (For Day 2)

● Is there evidence that does not support the claim and how strong is the opposing evidence? (For Day 3)

● Do we need additional evidence before drawing conclusions about the claim, and if so, how could we collect it?

● What conclusions are most reasonable given the evidence available so far?

Through class discussion and critical thinking, students are helped to understand that the balance of the evidence does not support the claim.

A Case Study: Learning Styles

As noted above, one of the most frequently endorsed myths in our survey was the one related to learning styles. Consistent with the literature (Pashler et al., 2008), 87% of our sample endorsed the myth that students learn best when they are taught in ways that match their personal learning styles. Given the prevalence of this myth, and the consequences that it has for both students and faculty, one of the authors (ELC) recently devoted significant effort to debunk this myth in her cognitive psychology course. In a similar vein to the model above, she had students consider the notion of learning styles from many perspectives. Here is her description of this debunking effort:

In the Spring of 2022, I taught a 150-student section of cognitive psychology at a large, public Midwestern university. One of my learning objectives for that course is to reinforce what cognitive psychologists have to say about learning to help students improve their study strategies and ultimately performance in their courses. Given the results of our survey of introductory students, during this particular semester I decided to make a more concerted effort to debunk the learning style myth. Before I introduced them to any material about learning styles, the students were tasked with completing a short paper in which they described their understanding of this concept. I then introduced the students to the six strategies outlined on the Learning Scientists’ webpage found at https://www.learningscientists.org/. I assigned the students to read several articles about the myth of learning styles (e.g., Willingham, Hughes & Dobolyi, 2015). I also provided them with some short videos about the myth of learning styles, such as that of Veritasium found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA. After the students completed the readings and watched the videos, I asked them to think about the extent to which the concepts of learning styles could be positive (e.g., inclusive) and negative (e.g., an excuse for poor performance). I also asked them to describe the kinds of evidence that would be needed to support, and to undermine, the idea of learning styles. In addition, I asked them to articulate why the learning style concept was a reasonable topic to be discussing in a course on memory and cognition. I spent time in class reviewing all this material, in particular focusing on the type of evidence that would be required to support the notion of learning styles and the evidence that would support actually changing instruction to match learning styles. Later in the course when we discussed memory, I connected concepts like “levels of processing” back to the learning strategies we had discussed, such as elaboration. Thus, students were exposed to a lot of information on this topic and were encouraged to think about it from various perspectives.

At the end of the course, I asked students to complete our Quiz about People for extra credit. In contrast to the nearly 90% of introductory level students who endorsed the learning style myth on our original quiz, only about a third of the 113 cognitive psychology students did so. I found this encouraging, but it must be said that some of my students indicated that although they did not endorse the myth on the quiz, they still reported believed in learning styles! This suggests that even given ample opportunity to think critically through such a pervasive myth, a change in beliefs is not guaranteed.

The approach taken in this case study is similar to that suggested by Bernstein (2017) and it is worth noting that efforts to debunk a single myth took significant effort and time both inside and outside of the classroom. Both the students and I were engaged with a lot of material on this topic. It would be unreasonable to think that any course could address many myths in this level of detail. As mentioned above, however, it is certainly worth the effort to debunk some of the most potentially harmful myths about behavior and mental processes.

It is also worth noting that while the myth of learning styles involves complex ideas and has direct personal significance to students, some myths, such as that psychiatric hospital admissions and crimes increase during a full moon are more simple, factual pieces of information that would presumably not require the involved debunking efforts that I took to combat the myth of learning styles.

Of course, endorsing myths is not always harmful or socially significant. For example, even if people believe in the “tongue map”, the idea that different parts of the tongue are responsible for processing different tastes, they are unlikely to make critical life decisions based on that misunderstanding. And, indeed, some myths represent a simplification of something more complicated. That is, some myths contain a grain of truth and students may actually be primarily responding based on these kernels of truth (Redifer & Jackola, 2022). For example, while the tongue map is not strictly speaking correct, different parts of the tongue are more sensitive to certain tastes. Likewise, whereas there is no credible evidence for subliminal perception in advertising, it is true that priming works even when people are unaware of the information that primed their response (Marcel, 1983). In fact, holding such a misconception is understandable given that textbooks sometimes provide incorrect information and our own anecdotal evidence (that we will discuss below) supports prior literature that shows even psychology faculty sometimes endorse psychological myths. Perhaps the fact that psychology faculty are susceptible to some misconceptions about psychological topics should not be too surprising as most of us are trained in a relatively narrow area of research, but in North America, at least, are asked to teach introductory psychology, which covers a wide range of topics relatively far afield from our areas of training. Many of the misconceptions that remain after taking psychology courses are of the mundane and relatively harmless sort, but not all of them fall into this category.

Why Do People Hold So Many Misconceptions?

It is reasonable to think that some of these misconceptions are held because people are not evaluating critically what they are told. The development of critical thinking skills is a common theme in introductory psychology courses in North America (e.g., Bernstein, 2020), so one would assume that introductory students should be able to evaluate the validity of arguments and lead them to be more resistant to misconceptions, especially misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes. Yet, as described above, we found that after taking an introductory course, students were still endorsing numerous myths and misconceptions. It is possible (even likely) that some of the myths in our survey were not mentioned by either the students' instructor or textbook. It is also possible that some of the myths were endorsed by some faculty. In fact, several members of our research team have indicated that they would not score perfectly on the quiz. Moreover, when we recently distributed our survey to a small but diverse sample of colleagues who teach introductory psychology, we found that they endorsed an average of 20% of them. These colleagues indicated that perceived ambiguity of item wording and the use of double negatives had made it difficult to parse some items. Students may have suffered similar comprehension issues. Further, some myths are comforting (e.g., believing one can cram effectively for an exam may justify procrastination) and/or reinforced by anecdotal evidence or misinformation. For example, if students believe or have been taught that they are “visual learners” and they do well on a test after studying diagrams and pictures, their belief in learning styles may become increasingly entrenched. Mere exposure may also contribute to the endorsement of myths. Indeed, the very mention of learning styles (even if it is debunked) may reinforce a false belief. Though not incontrovertible, there is evidence in the literature for this sort of “backfire” effect (Lewandowski et al., 2012). Moreover, given that people often make source attribution errors, they may not remember that the information they “know” comes from questionable sources, such as social media (Redifer & Jackola, 2022). A final and most concerning reason for endorsing myths and misconceptions is the fact that thinking critically about evidence takes effort, and many students (and some of their instructors) are reluctant to engage in that effort.

New Survey and New Study Design

Our first study helped us see the pervasiveness of misconceptions even in students finishing an introductory psychology course. Our future work is aimed at helping us understand more about why people hold these misconceptions and if and how the Introductory Psychology course can help to disabuse them of these misconceptions. We plan to address these next steps in several ways. First, our team has created a revised survey. It includes more items that are more carefully worded and presents response options that go beyond true/false. Further, we plan to use a pre-post design that will allow us to examine how characteristics of individuals are related to receptivity to changing their beliefs. In addition, we will be including a larger number of participants at a larger number of institutions, including some outside of North America, so as to develop a more global perspective. Thus, interested psychology instructors, especially those outside of North America, are encouraged to contact the authors if they would be willing to distribute the survey to their students.

Finally, we are starting to explore ways to design pedagogical practice to address and combat some of the most widely held misconceptions, especially those that lead people to make poor and/or dangerous decisions. We are currently exploring the literature on debunking to identify best practices, including considering why people believe so many psychological myths. Given the degree of effort and time that dispelling misconceptions appears to require, pedagogical practice might be best focused on misconceptions with the most potentially harmful consequences. So instead of trying to address 40+ misconceptions in a course, an instructor might more profitably focus on addressing myths about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, the dangers of vaccinations, or the link between violence and mental illness. The swirling cloud of misinformation that surrounds today’s students magnifies the need to develop strategies to address it and the misconceptions it engenders. We expect to be tackling this problem for years to come.

Strengths and Limitations of our Project

Probably the greatest strength of our collaboration for this project is the large sample size we were able to obtain, and the even larger sample we expect to have for our next study. Moreover, given that we surveyed students at seven institutions that vary in type (small liberal arts, large public university, etc.), we had a relatively diverse set of student respondents ranging in age, ethnicity, geographical region, and educational experience. Thus, our data set is unique. Interestingly, although our sample was larger and more diverse than most studies on myths in psychology, our results were broadly consistent with the literature that is based on smaller samples.

Another strength of this collaborative project has been that having many institutions and many team members means that we hear many voices and perspectives (albeit primarily American). Our team includes members who specialize in neuroscience, cognition, and clinical psychology, among other areas, and hail from many regions. Some members conduct experimental research in their content area and have skills associated with that research, and all are dedicated to and passionate about teaching undergraduates. This allows us to not only think like researchers as we address a scientific topic, but also to think practically about the curricular changes that could address commonly held misconceptions.

The diversity of our research team is a strength of our collaboration, but also presents challenges. For example, coordinating the schedules of dozens of busy people is difficult. Indeed, some aspects of the project were stalled at various times due to difficulties in finding meeting times. Moreover, there was a surprising degree of mismatch in academic calendars across institutions. This left some team members in periods of calm, while others were in the midst of a final exam week or a new semester. The fact that most team members balance heavy teaching loads with scholarly activity and have varying degrees of experience with survey research also created variability in the contributions each member could add to the project. This is to be expected in any team project, and we find that the benefits of having a large number of collaborators greatly outweighs the headaches.

Another significant challenge we encountered in this project has been pursuing Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval at different institutions. It would have been preferable to have made a single proposal to a central Institutional Review Board at one institutions that could have been adopted/accepted by all the other institutions, but unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, most institutions required the team member/investigator at their institution to submit a complete IRB proposal. Further, as we became more familiar with the expectations and requirements at each institution, and realized how different they were, we found the variability in IRB oversight somewhat disquieting. It was particularly troubling that it took over a year to navigate the IRB process despite the fact that the project ultimately received exempt designation everywhere, as we knew it should.

In summary, through this ongoing project we have found that misconceptions are widespread among psychology students and some of their instructors. In addition, we see that helping students address misconceptions by applying critical thinking skills is a necessary endeavor that requires substantial effort and dedication on the part of their instructors. Exploring the prevalence of misconceptions across a large number of students across a wide array of backgrounds has been an interesting process in both our findings and in wading through the logistics of a large-scale collaborative project. There seem to be an endless number of ways that we can continue our exploration. Stay tuned for our next steps.

We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

We would like to acknowledge our collaborative research team: Douglas A. Bernstein (University of South Florida), Jennifer McGee (Oxford College of Emory University),Erin Smith (California Baptist University), Joan T. Bihun (University of Colorado, Denver), Eileen McBride (Emerson College), Adriana R. Uruena-Agnes (University of South Florida), Caroline Stanley (Bridgewater State University), and Kim Lamana-Finn (College of Morris). We thank Kateryna Sylaska (Carthage College) for her assistance in creating the online presence of our assessment instrument.

Ethical Approval

The protocol used to conduct the studies described in this manuscript was reviewed and approved with exempt status by the institutional review boards at each of the institutions where data were collected. All participants reviewed the protocol of this study and granted their informed consent before participating.

Competing Interests

The authors had no financial or personal interests involved in the conduction of this study or in the preparation of this manuscript.

Authors’ Contributions

Both authors contributed to the development and review of this manuscript. The first author provided the initial draft, while both contributed to subsequent drafts. The second author conducted most of the analyses reported within this manuscript, although both authors contributed to their interpretations.

Funding

Both authors received financial support from their respective universities to support their participation in the BISTOPS 2018 and 2022 meetings.

Availability of data and materials

The data and analyses mentioned within this article are discussed in their entirety within an upcoming manuscript by Bernstein and colleagues (in preparation). In addition, interested individuals may contact the second author for more information about the data reported within this manuscript.

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No competing interests reported.

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Myths and misconceptions about human behavior and mental processes held by introductory psychology students: A BISTOPS collaborative research project

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Abstract

Introduction

Description of the Problem

Description of the Study

Brief Overview of Results

What Can We do as Professors of Psychology to Combat these Myths?

A Case Study: Learning Styles

Future Directions

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

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