1 What Is Psychology? 2 M01_WADE4316_11_SE_C01.indd 2 14/12/12 7:23 AM Ask questions. OUTLINE Psychology, Pseudoscience, be willing to wonder and Popular Opinion Thinking Critically and How does “pop psych” on the Internet and TV Creatively about Psychology differ from the psychology in this book? Psychology’s Past: From the Armchair to the Laboratory The Birth of Modern If you want to think critically, must you always Psychology be critical? Three Early Psychologies Psychology’s Present: If you call yourself a psychotherapist, will you The Four Perspectives of be breaking the law? Psychological Science What Psychologists Do What’s the difference between a psychologist, Psychological Research a clinical psychologist, and a psychiatrist? Psychological Practice Psychology in the Community BIOLOGY, CUltURE, and Psychology Taking Psychology with You very April Fools’ Day, the James Randi then advertising the result as an effective The Nine Secrets of Learning E Educational Foundation announces treatment for flu. its “Pigasus” Awards for the year’s worst • The Performer Pigasus Award: Televan- “charlatans, swindlers, psychics, pseudo- gelist Peter Popoff, who made millions in scientists, and faith healers.” James Randi the 1980s by pretending to heal the sick is a professional magician who, years and receive information about audience ago, became outraged to see charlatans members directly from God. He went bankrupt in 1987, after Randi exposed his and scammers use plain old magic tricks as trick: He had a secret earpiece, through evidence of their “psychic powers” and to which his wife fed him information about prey on unsuspecting victims to make money. those audience members. Now, in infomer- Randi made it his cause to educate the public cials on BET, Popoff offers “supernatural by exposing their fraudulent methods. (The debt relief” in exchange for offerings of awards are named for the mythical flying hundreds or even thousands of dollars. IRS horse Pegasus and for Randi’s habit of say- documents show that Popoff has taken in ing “such and such a belief will come true $23.5 million with this scheme. when pigs fly.”) The awards and their 2011 • The Refusal to Face Reality Award: “winners” include: Andrew Wakefield, the researcher who • The Funder Pigasus Award: CVS launched the modern anti-vaccine panic pharmacy, for supporting the manufacturers by claiming that the measles, mumps, and of “homeopathic” remedies, which contain rubella (MMR) vaccine was linked to au- none of the active ingredient they claim tism. In 2010, the medical journal that had and have been shown to be useless in published his article officially retracted it, randomized clinical trials. Although other and the British medical journal BMJ called pharmacies sell these products too, CVS Wakefield’s paper an outright fraud,finding offers their own store brand of the popular “clear evidence of falsification of data,” homeopathic product oscillococcinum. and that “he sought to exploit the ensuing Oscillococcinum is made by grinding up MMR scare for financial gain,”taking more the liver of a duck, putting less than a single than $674,000 from lawyers who intended atom of it into sugar pills (the equivalent of to sue vaccine manufacturers. Repeated adding a drop of water to the ocean), and studies have found no link between vaccines 3 M01_WADE4316_11_SE_C01.indd 3 14/12/12 7:23 AM 4 Chapter 1 What Is Psychology? Psychologists use scientific methods to study many puzzles of human behavior. Why do people dress up in funny outfits? Why do some people commit horrific and autism. Yet Wakefield continues to ask the public to believe he is the victim of acts of brutality? And what enables some a conspiracy that is out to get him, and many worried parents are not vaccinating people to become accomplished athletes in spite of having physical disabilities? their children. As a result, measles, once nearly eradicated, is back with a vengeance, and children’s deaths from measles and whooping cough are rising for the first time in decades. How in the world can you protect yourself from false claims and scammers? How can you tell the difference between medicines that work and save lives (such as vaccines) from those that are useless (such as homeopathic products)? How are you supposed to distinguish useful information on the Internet from worthless opinions, marketing ploys, and downright rubbish? Wait—here is a website that promises to blast printed information into your brain at a page a second. You can “mentally photo- graph the page at 25,000 words a minute.” Cool! Sign us up! If only it were true. Fortunately for you, you are taking an introductory psychol- ogy course, and by the time you finish it, you will have some good answers about how you can sift through information overload and decide what to ignore and what’s important. Psychology can be defined generally as the discipline concerned with be- psychology The discipline concerned havior and mental processes and how they are affected by an organism’s physical state, with behavior and mental processes and mental state, and external environment. This definition, however, is like defining a car how they are affected by an organism’s as a vehicle for transporting people, without explaining how a car differs from a train physical state, mental state, and external environment; the term is often or a bus or how a Ford differs from a Ferrari. To get a clear picture of this field, you represented by °, the Greek letter psi need to know about its methods, its findings, and its ways of interpreting information. (usually pronounced “sy”). But first, let’s look more closely at what psychology isnot. You are about to learn. • how “psychobabble” differs from serious psychology. • what’s wrong with psychologists’ nonscientific competitors, such as astrologers and psychics. M01_WADE4316_11_SE_C01.indd 4 14/12/12 7:24 AM Chapter 1 What Is Psychology? 5 Psychology, Pseudoscience, and LO 1.1 Popular Opinion In recent decades, the public’s appetite for psychological and medical informa- tion has created a huge market for the kind of outlandish advice and products we just described to you: pseudoscience and quackery covered by a veneer of scientific-sounding language. Pseudoscience promises easy fixes to life’s problems and challenges, such as resolving your unhappiness as an adult by “reliving” the supposed trauma of your birth, or becoming more creative on the job by “reprogramming” your brain. It often plays on the appeal of tech- nology. All sorts of gizmos have been marketed with the promise that they will get both halves of your brain working at their peak: the Graham Potentializer, the Tranquilite, the Floatarium, the Transcutaneous Electro-Neural Stimulator, The marriage of old-fashioned pseudo- the Brain Supercharger, and the Whole Brain Wave Form Synchro-Energizer. science and modern technology has (We are not making these up.) produced products like the “Synchro- The psychology you are about to study—real psychology—bears little relation Energizer,” which supposedly alters to the popular psychology (“pop psych”) and its pseudoscientific relatives (jokingly consciousness, boosts intelligence, called “psychobabble”) found on the Web, on television, and in thousands of self- and enhances sexual functioning, all by help books. It is more complex, more informative, and, we think, far more helpful bombardingView you the with Image lights in and MyPsychLab sounds View in MypsychLab of different frequencies and intensities. because it is based on scientific research and empirical evidence, which was gathered by careful observation, experimentation, and measurement. Scientific psychologyView also the Image in MyPsychLab View in MypsychLab Watch the Video in MyPsychLab Watch in MypsychLab addresses a far broader range of issues than does popular psychology. When people Thinking Like a Psychologist: Debunking think of psychology, they usually think of mental and emotional disorders, personalWatch the VideoMyths in MyPsychLab Watch in MypsychLab problems, and psychotherapy. But psychologists take as their subject the entire spec- Listen to the Chapter Audio in MyPsychLab Listen in MypsychLab trum of brave and cowardly, intelligent and foolish, beautiful and brutish things that people do. They want to know how ordinary human beings (and other animalsListen as to the Chapter100 Audio in MyPsychLab Listen in MypsychLab Explore the Concept in MyPsychLab Explore in MypsychLab well) learn, remember, solve problems, perceive, feel, and get along or fail to get along View the Image in MyPsychLab View in MypsychLab 90 with others. They are therefore as likely to study commonplace experiences—rear- Explore the Concept80 in MyPsychLab Explore in MypsychLab ing children, gossiping, remembering a shopping list, daydreaming, making love, and Simulate the Experiment in MyPsychLab Simulate in MypsychLab Watch the Videomaking in MyPsychLab a living—as exceptional ones. Watch in MypsychLab ect 70 Simulate the Experiment60 in MyPsychLab Simulate in MypsychLab Because so many pop-psych ideas have filtered into the media, education, and Study and Review in MyPsychLab Study and Review in MyPsychLab even the law, we all need to develop an ability to distinguish between psychobabble 50 Listen to the Chapterand serious Audio psychology, in MyPsychLab and between unsupportedListen popular in opinion MypsychLab and findings based Study and Review in MyPsychLab Study and Review40 in MyPsychLab on Are unhappy memories “repressed” and then accurately recalled Read