Psychology says if you truly love someone, you want them to be happy, even if its not with you.
Psychology says pain makes you stronger, fear makes you braver and heartbreak makes you wiser.
Psychology says no such things. Those readers who have a formal education in psychology would be annoyed to read the first two sentences of this article. Those who are enthusiastic about its scientific nature will be skeptical about it and I am sure there are some readers who will believe that the lines above are actually said by ‘Psychology’.
The internet is full of ‘Psychology says’ posts. You can find them on every social media platform and they will regularly rack up millions of impressions. In fact, you are more likely to be successful on Instagram if you run a ‘psychology says’ page than a page you run as a psychologist.
What makes us so susceptible to the words “Psychology says”? Why do we assume that whatever is written under the phrase is a gold standard truth brought to us by the most confusing field of science? I share some insights below.
What even is Psychology?
One of the biggest factors making people susceptible to falsehoods spread in the name of Psychology is an utter ignorance about what the field of Psychology is.
I shared some topics we cover in our UG syllabus of Psychology in India and my mom was surprised to learn that we learn actual scientific theories instead of spending our time learning how to read faces or minds. This ignorance means laypeople are unable to differentiate between what would be the subject matter of a psychological study and what is simply gibberish being passed off as science.
Imagine telling a 5-year-old child that physics says those who sleep before 9 PM have the best scores on school tests. The child, assuming they don’t know what physics is, will simply accept the fate of crashing to bed earlier than their wishes because ‘physics’ said so.
That’s what most of these posts do as well. They pass off opinions or intuitive insights as scientific truths. The thing about intuitions is that there will be someone who will have the same intuition or someone who will agree with an assertion. And thus, you have a collection of people believing intuition is backed by science.
Collective ignorance wins.
But that cannot be all.
The Allure of Psychology and Truths
A few days ago I came across a post starting with “Psychology says” from a pretty big influencer on Twitter. When confronted, he said it was something his sister (A clinical psychologist) told him. There are two things to unpack here,
The generalization of a psychologist’s view as psychological truth
The thought that Psychology is a universal science, devoid of context.
Wisdom vs Knowledge
Psychology is ultimately a very human science. It looks into the intuitions, aspirations, ambitions, thoughts, fears and anxieties that drive us. Any study in the field is an attempt to understand the human mind: the most internal and intimate experience we will have in our lives.
It is no wonder that psychologists are seen as sources of wisdom. Physicists, doctors, engineers on the other hand, are seen as sources of knowledge. There is a subtle difference between the two.
Wisdom is a combination of intelligence and sound judgement. It is not simply a knowledge of facts but an understanding of when, where and how the facts should be applied. Knowledge is simply the possession of justified true beliefs.
Psychologists and physicists both strive for knowledge but psychological knowledge is treated as ‘wisdom’ when its actually just knowledge.
‘Psychology Says’ posts go viral not because people respect psychology as a scientific field, they go viral because they see it as a source of wisdom about how to live life the ‘right’ way.
Please remember, all knowledge that psychologists have is highly contextual.
It can rarely be translated from one situation to another. Our opinions on child abuse will be vastly different from our opinion on the death penalty. There is no one truth in psychology. It all depends on context. Laypeople (and sometimes professionals full of hubris) forget that.
The Hunt For Truth
Psychology is not physics. No matter how much it tries to be, no matter how much it wants to be. We will probably never be what physics is. Human minds are too complex for that (at least for now).
In physics, if I told you the depth of a well, you could tell me how long it would take for a ball to fall to its bottom on Earth, Mars, Venus and Pluto. In Psychology, I cannot tell you what a lab participant will do in the next 4 minutes/hours/days.
Physics has certain truths, as do chemistry and biology. No such thing exists in psychology. We long for truths about the human condition, about what makes us human but any answer will be a very complicated one. Posts that say “Psychology says” promise a simple truth or insight into human nature, all human nature.
They are beautiful lies.
So What Does Psychology Say?
Psychology - as a whole - says very little.
Psychology is a diverse field with multiple sub-disciplines. I am listing a few of them in the image below. These are just the prominent branches.
Most of these branches dont agree on even the simplest of concepts like what drives us, what is an instinct, what is the right level of analysis to understand an individual human etc.
Psychology as a whole is likely to agree on very little. Behavioural psychology may say one thing while psychoanalysis goes on a completely different tangent. Clinical psychology may consider a pattern of behaviour as a disorder while neuropsychology calls it simply a misfiring of one or two neurons.
Different fields in it give us different ways of understanding human beings and that is what makes psychology so frustrating and yet so beautifully complex as a discipline.
Let’s not misuse the field’s name for the sake of a few likes and RTs on social media :)
And that is it! I tried my best to offer some insights into the general public’s perception of psychology as a discipline. Do you think I did a good job? Let me know in the comments!
If there is something that came to your mind at the end of this article, I would love to hear from you as well.
Its fascinating how a subject understood so poorly garners so much attention on social media.
Until next time,
Arjun
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I personally LOVE the article. Love the schooling you did throughout and the branches :))
LOVE this article. Very insightful & simply put. Love how you broke down things into sub headings & explained everything so well. The ending says it all, "Its fascinating how a subject understood so poorly garners so much attention on social media." Also, could the heading BE more appropriate for this article!!? XD