My fourth TED Talk is 10 myths About psychology Debunked By Ben Ambridge this TED Talk was really interesting to me as like I said, I want to be a surgeon when I grow up.
Ben starts off by stating the first myth about psychology, which is basically are men different from women? He talks about how he saw a study being done on who can throw a ball farther and men do. he saw another study to see if women can read maps better than men and they read a map 33% better than men can.
The next myth that Ben talks about is that learning types are completely not a thing and aren't supported by scientific evidence. He says that if you don't get quite the test scores that you want, not to blame your learning type or study habits, but to blame your genes. Another recent study done at London University shows that 58% of the variation of different students and their test scores was done to genetic factors.
Most people think that left handed people are more creative than right handed people which is the next myth. there is an exception to this theory though, they say that people that are ambidextrous you are more creative because both sides of your brain are working to come up with better ideas.
The next myth is that we only use 10% of our brain, although some people could use their brain a little more than they do.
The 5th myth about psychology is the Mozart effect, which is where if you listen to Mozart, your IQ test results are boosted. Which is not true as they conducted a study that if you listen to a little bit of Mozart, you're smarter than people who have sat in silence before taking an IQ test. But they got a group of people who liked Mozart music and a group of people that have heard the horror storied of Steven King and the results concluded that when they played the music or the stories got a bigger IQ boost from the Mozart and stories but people preferred the stories.
The 6th myth is that our preferences in a romantic partner a product of our culture, they're very cultural specific but in fact the data doesn't back this up.
The next myth id sportsmen go through "hot- Hands Streaks" as Americans call it, where they don't miss a goal or a shot or whatever its called in the sport that you are playing. He said that if you analyze the path of hits and misses statistically, it turns out that it's nearly always at random because your brain creates patterns from the randomness. There is an exception to this as well, penalty shootouts. /Looking at a penalty shootout for football shows that players who represent a country with a very bad record and penalty shootout records tend to take quicker shots than countries with a better record.
This raises a question, is there any way that we could improve peoples performance.(which is the next myth) Which you may think about trying to punish people for their misses and seeing if that improves them, this idea is what participants thought they were testing Milgram's famous learning and punishment experiment. The story goes that the participants were prepared to give what they believe to be a fatal electric shock to a participant when they got a question wrong just because a person in a white coat told them to do so. This is a myth because of three things the 1st is that the participants were to;d that the shock would cause no permanent damage at all. the second is that the person in the white coat was in fact wearing a grey coat not a white coat and thirdly, participants got the shocks just because the person told them to do so.
The last thing that Ben talks about is the overarching myth about psychology which is that psychology is just a collection of theories which we don't know until we test it.
Ben starts off by stating the first myth about psychology, which is basically are men different from women? He talks about how he saw a study being done on who can throw a ball farther and men do. he saw another study to see if women can read maps better than men and they read a map 33% better than men can.
The next myth that Ben talks about is that learning types are completely not a thing and aren't supported by scientific evidence. He says that if you don't get quite the test scores that you want, not to blame your learning type or study habits, but to blame your genes. Another recent study done at London University shows that 58% of the variation of different students and their test scores was done to genetic factors.
Most people think that left handed people are more creative than right handed people which is the next myth. there is an exception to this theory though, they say that people that are ambidextrous you are more creative because both sides of your brain are working to come up with better ideas.
The next myth is that we only use 10% of our brain, although some people could use their brain a little more than they do.
The 5th myth about psychology is the Mozart effect, which is where if you listen to Mozart, your IQ test results are boosted. Which is not true as they conducted a study that if you listen to a little bit of Mozart, you're smarter than people who have sat in silence before taking an IQ test. But they got a group of people who liked Mozart music and a group of people that have heard the horror storied of Steven King and the results concluded that when they played the music or the stories got a bigger IQ boost from the Mozart and stories but people preferred the stories.
The 6th myth is that our preferences in a romantic partner a product of our culture, they're very cultural specific but in fact the data doesn't back this up.
The next myth id sportsmen go through "hot- Hands Streaks" as Americans call it, where they don't miss a goal or a shot or whatever its called in the sport that you are playing. He said that if you analyze the path of hits and misses statistically, it turns out that it's nearly always at random because your brain creates patterns from the randomness. There is an exception to this as well, penalty shootouts. /Looking at a penalty shootout for football shows that players who represent a country with a very bad record and penalty shootout records tend to take quicker shots than countries with a better record.
This raises a question, is there any way that we could improve peoples performance.(which is the next myth) Which you may think about trying to punish people for their misses and seeing if that improves them, this idea is what participants thought they were testing Milgram's famous learning and punishment experiment. The story goes that the participants were prepared to give what they believe to be a fatal electric shock to a participant when they got a question wrong just because a person in a white coat told them to do so. This is a myth because of three things the 1st is that the participants were to;d that the shock would cause no permanent damage at all. the second is that the person in the white coat was in fact wearing a grey coat not a white coat and thirdly, participants got the shocks just because the person told them to do so.
The last thing that Ben talks about is the overarching myth about psychology which is that psychology is just a collection of theories which we don't know until we test it.