Our world is more connected than ever, and anyone can gather just about any information they desire from the internet. This sounds fantastic, but we’re simultaneously learning that it’s truly a double-edged sword. How does anyone know that what they’re reading is true?
Psychologists and editors Stephen Hupp and Richard Wiseman are hoping to help sort out the nonsense in their new book, Investigating Pop Psychology: Pseudoscience, Fringe Science, and Controversies.
Written by a plethora of authors, the book covers 15 different categories of popular psychology (“pop psychology” for short) theories and ideas that we’ve all been exposed to in some manner. Perhaps you’ve checked out your horoscope or taken a personality test, or maybe you watched that popular show about aliens. Pop psychology is quite literally everywhere around us — in books and magazines, TV news broadcasts and movies, and of course, spread on social media. It can be overwhelming, but we can and should learn how to spot false claims and prevent ourselves from falling into the “rationalization trap.”
What’s all the hubbub?
The whole purpose of Investigating Pop Psychology is to assess the validity of these ideas and claims. This is the book that asks, “Is there anything to horoscopes? Why or why not? How do we know? Show your work.” Excluding the introduction and postscript, there are a total of 16 chapters, each covering a different topic like phrenology, cognitive learning styles, dream interpretation, or even spectrophillia (yes, it is what you think it is). Each chapter is written by a different author or authors that are considered experts in their respective fields. Each presents their data in their own unique style, some using humor, others storytelling, and some are more dry and analytical.
Investigating Pop Psychology‘s chapters are set up in a similar and flowing format. The authors open with a basic idea of what most adherents of their topic really believe, and then provide some history and/or backstory on how the belief came to be or gained traction in popular culture. The authors explain what they’ve found within their own research and from other studies, and then provide evidence for the subject’s validity, or lack thereof. You can bet that every single chapter is sourced to the teeth with multitudes of citations (and yes, they’re all referenced perfectly at the end of each chapter).
What’s refreshing about Investigating Pop Psychology is that in some cases, there’s a very clear, “We don’t have enough information to say this topic is totally invalid,” explaining that there’s still much science has yet to uncover. In these cases, the authors ask the reader to be open to future scientific explanations, and provide their own alternative possibilities. In most chapters, the authors discuss the harm that can happen if we don’t approach their subject with caution, such as using alternative medicine instead of seeking professional healthcare. Everything written between the covers encourages taking logical approaches and promotes skepticism as a means to avoid getting sucked down any rabbit holes.
Stephen Hupp as featured by Skeptical Inquirer
It’s great to read a book that inspires deeper thought, but it feels like Investigating Pop Psychology leaves a lot of things unanswered. I found myself often distracted, lost in thought about specific (sometimes personal) experiences or ideas that weren’t addressed.
For example, what would psychologist Stuart Vyse, author of the chapter, “Superstition and Learning,” suggest for a person who’s being encouraged to give up a superstition or ritual, but who might be ostracized from their social community if they do? Or in the chapter “ESP, Psychokinesis, and Sensation,” by James E. Alcock, what could be said about things that are freakishly uncanny? Like that time I experienced labor pains when my best friend went into labor, even though we hadn’t spoken in a while, she wasn’t due yet, and we were over 300 miles apart?
Your bias is showing
Investigating Pop Psychology says that it supports open-minded views. No, they aren’t asking you to be open-minded about brain training or energy psychology; they’re suggesting that a person who believes in any of the topics in this book needs to be open-minded enough to stop believing and “get out of the rationalization trap.” This is a huge miss for me for two reasons.
For one, the audience the authors appear to be authoritatively preaching to is likely not who’s reading this book, or they might have dismissed it very early on. Secondly, these topics themselves aren’t being approached with an open-minded perspective. If you say you want to participate in an open-minded argument, at least pretend to take the agnostic view. Simply saying, “we don’t have evidence to support that claim” is much less dismissive and off-putting than saying, “we don’t have enough evidence, so it must not exist.”
Additionally, while I understand the desire to persuade people to turn their minds away from things perceived as unconventional, implausible, or even harmful, the postscript contains some writing that was questionable and made me uncomfortable. The idea being communicated is that if you believe in any of these things, well, it’s okay, because we’ve “all made mistakes.” Investigating Pop Psychology then implies that believing in any of these things is “stupid.” Using the word “stupid” is probably not going to win friends influence people, at least not in the direction the book’s creators are hoping for.
Richard Wiseman
Last call
It’s mentioned in the beginning of Investigating Pop Psychology that it’s designed to be read by professional skeptics and the skepti-curious alike. The creators additionally suggest it works great as a companion book for an introductory psychology course on the collegiate level, but I think it’s written in such a way that even studious high schoolers could manage. While there are only 153 pages, make no mistake, this book is jam packed full of information. There are a lot psychology-specific technical terms, but the authors do a fabulous job of making them easy to understand.
On the whole, Investigating Pop Psychology is very informative, and there are a lot of funny anecdotes and history to dive into. I can forgive the postscript and occasional smarty-pants attitude in lieu of the high-quality thought put into each chapter. Investigating Pop Psychology is a tool to help both budding skeptics and pros alike. The overall concept is great and very well executed; there’s even a glossary to help find useful information fast. It will definitely call you out on your biases, teach you some excellent ways to deal with misinformation, and provide you with resources to learn more if you’d like to.
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