Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology

Subject: Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology Sun Dec 26, 2010 7:37 pm

Many of us have seen so many crime shows on television we think we know an awful lot about police procedure and criminal behaviour. But much of what we think we know is in fact wrong, according to an authoritative book published this year by four American professors of psychology*.

Lie Detectors work.

Not often enough. A polygraph machine measures things such as blood pressure and respiration, which allegedly change when someone lies. But they do not change in the same way for all people. A polygraph is accurate for only 60 per cent of innocent people and 85 per cent of guilty ones – not much use when the whole point is that the interviewer doesn’t know who’s guilty and who’s not. These days polygraph tests are seldom admissible in (real) American courts.
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Men who are abused as boys are likely to become abusers themselves.

Not really. In a well-regarded study, one in eight victims of abuse became an abuser when he grew up. This compared with one in 20 men who had not been abused. So, early abuse might increase the risk a bit, but does not make it anywhere near inevitable.

Handwriting reveals personality traits.

Nope. In one thorough study, graphologists (handwriting experts) did no better than chance at predicting job performance. Many other studies back up the complete uselessness of handwriting analysis.

Anatomically correct dolls are a good way of determining whether a child was sexually abused.

Actually, they can – and do - fool interviewers into thinking kids have been abused when they haven’t been, because many non-abused children engage in sexualised doll play.

Most people who commit suicide leave a note.

This old standby of crime fiction is a furphy. No more than 25 per cent do.

The age group at highest risk for suicide is adolescents.

Actually it’s the elderly, especially men.

Most domestic violence is committed by men.

In fact it’s 50:50 – but women suffer more serious injuries.

Criminal profiling helps solve cases.

No it doesn’t, despite Silence of the Lambs and many a TV show. Professional profilers perform better than chance, but barely better than untrained individuals provided with the same information about a crime.

If someone confesses, they did it.

Oddly enough, false confessions are more common than most of us think. People confess to things they didn’t do for many reasons, including pressure from police, a craving for attention, to protect others, or to “pay” for past transgressions. After the hugely famous aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son was kidnapped in America in 1932, more than 200 people confessed. The Innocence Project in the USA has found that 25 per cent of people freed from jail by DNA evidence originally made false confessions or pleaded guilty.

Most rapes are committed by strangers.

You might know this is wrong, but what percentage of rapes would you say are committed by strangers? I, America it is just 4 per cent.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/blogs/crime-and-punishment/10-myths-of-tv-crime-drama/20101223-1967v.html

Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology

Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology

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