Popular Psychology Myths and Misconceptions

Individuals cannot learn information, like new languages, while asleep.

Hypnosis can be used to retrieve memories of forgotten events.

Men and women communicate in slightly different ways, and few of these differences are meaningful.

Playing Mozart to infants boosts their intelligence.

Criminal profilers do NOT do better than the average person when solving crimes.

Adolescence is NOT inevitably a time of psychological turmoil.

Subliminal messages can persuade people to purchase products.

Some people are left-brained, and others are right-brained.

When dying, people do not pass through a universal series of psychological stages.

Most people experience a midlife crisis in their 40s or early 50s.

If a trait is heritable, you can’t change it.

Most individuals with agoraphobia can still leave their houses.

Opposites attract: we are most romantically attracted to people who differ from us. 

Psychiatric labels cause harm by stigmatizing people.

A positive attitude cannot stave off cancer.

Old age is typically associated with increased dissatisfaction and senility.

Dreams do NOT possess symbolic meaning.

Most people only use 10% of their brain power.

Recovered memories from traumatic experiences are almost always accurate.

All effective psychotherapies force people to confront the “root” causes of their problems in childhood.

Our handwriting reveals our personality traits.

Students learn best when teaching styles are matched to their learning styles.

Current treatments in electroconvulsive (“shock”) therapy are physically dangerous and brutal.

The indirect or direct expression of anger towards others does NOT reduce aggression.

People’s responses to inkblots give us minimal to no information about their personalities.