You've heard of your IQ, your general intelligence, but what's your Psy-Q? How much do you know about what makes you tick, and how good are you at predicting other people's behavior or even your own? And how much of what you think you know about psychology is wrong? Let's find out by counting down the top myths of psychology.
Čuli ste za IQ, vašu opću inteligenciju, ali što je Psy-Q? Koliko znate o tome što vas može naživcirati i koliko ste dobri u predviđanju tuđeg ponašanja ili čak vlastitog? I koliko toga što mislite da znate o psihologiji je zapravo pogrešno? Saznajmo odbrojavajući top 10 mitova o psihologiji.
You've probably heard it said that when it comes to their psychology, it's almost as if men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But how different are men and women, really? To find out, let's start by looking at something on which men and women really do differ and plotting some psychological gender differences on the same scale. One thing men and women do really differ on is how far they can throw a ball. So if we look at the data for men here, we see what is called a normal distribution curve. A few men can throw a ball really far, a few men, not far at all, but most, a kind of average distance. And women share the same distribution as well, but actually, there's quite a big difference. In fact, the average man can throw a ball further than about 98 percent of all women.
Vjerojatno ste čuli da su muškarci i žene psihološki gledano toliko različiti da se čini kao da su jedni s Marsa, a drugi s Venere. Ali koliko su oni uistinu različiti? Kako bismo to saznali, najprije pogledajmo nešto što ih ustinu razlikuje i istovremeno stvara prave psihološke razlike. Ono u čemu se uistinu razlikuju je koliko daleko mogu baciti loptu. Ukoliko pogledamo podatke za muškarce, možemo vidjeti tzv. distribucijsku krivulju. Nekolicina je može baciti ustinu daleko, a nekolicina nimalo, ali većina do prosječne udaljenosti. I žene imaju sličnu distribuciju, ali postoje ogromne razlike. Zapravo, prosječan muškarac može dobaciti dalje nego 98 % svih žena.
Now let's look at what some psychological gender differences look like on the same standardized scale. Any psychologist will tell you that men are better at spatial awareness than women -- things like map-reading, for example -- and it's true. But let's have a look at the size of this difference. It's tiny; the lines are so close together, they almost overlap. In fact, the average woman is better than 33 percent of all men, and of course, if that was 50 percent, then the two genders would be exactly equal. It's worth bearing in mind that this difference and the next one I'll show you are pretty much the biggest psychological gender differences ever discovered in psychology.
Sada pogledajmo kako neke psihološke spolne razlike izgledaju na istoj standardiziranoj skali. Svaki će vam psiholog reći da su muškarci bolji od žena u prostornoj orijentaciji i čitanju karte, npr. - i to je istina, no pogledajmo koliko je značajna ova razlika. Malena je, linije su toliko blizu da se skoro preklapaju. U biti, prosječna je žena bolja od 33 % muškaraca i, naravno, da se radi o 50 %, dva spola bila bi potpuno jednaka. Treba biti svjestan da ova razlika, kao i ona koju ću vam sljedeću pokazati zapravo je najveća psihološka spolna razlika ikad otkrivena u psihologiji.
Here's the next one. Any psychologist will tell you that women are better with language and grammar than men. Here's performance on the standardized grammar test. There, the women. There go the men. Again, yes, women are better on average, but the lines are so close that 33 percent of men are better than the average woman. And again, if it was 50 percent, that would represent complete gender equality. So it's not really a case of Mars and Venus. It's more a case of, if anything, Mars and Snickers: basically the same, but one's maybe slightly nuttier than the other.
I evo sljedeće. Svaki će vam psiholog reći da su žene bolje u jezicima i gramatici. Evo rezultata na standardiziranom gramatičkom testu. Evo žena. A evo i muškaraca. Da, žene su u prosjeku bolje, ali linije su toliko blizu da je 33 % muškaraca bolje od prosječne žene i, opet, da se radi o 50 %, to bi predstavljalo potpunu spolnu jednakost. Pa se ne radi o Marsu i Veneri. Ako išta, više se radi o Marsu i Snickersu: više-manje isti, ali jedan ima malo više lješnjaka, luckastiji je, od onog drugog.
When making a cake, do you prefer to use a recipe book with pictures? Yeah, a few people. Have a friend talk you through? Or have a go, making it up as you go along? Quite a few people there. OK, so if you said A, then this means that you're a visual learner, and you learn best when information is presented in a visual style. If you said B, it means you're an auditory learner, that you learn best when information is presented to you in an auditory format. And if you said C, it means that you're a kinesthetic learner, that you learn best when you get stuck in and do things with your hands.
Neću reći koji je koji. Sad ste se zagrijali. Hajdemo vas psihoanalizirati koristeći se Rorschachovim testom mrlja. Vjerojatno možete vidjeti dva, ne znam, medvjeda ili čovjeka ili nešto. Ali što mislite da rade? Podignite ruku ukoliko mislite da se pozdravljaju. Nema baš previše ljudi. Dobro. Tko misli da si daju pet? Dobro. Tko misli da se tuku? Samo nekolicina. Dobro, ukoliko mislite da se pozdravljaju ili si daju pet, to znači da ste druželjubiva osoba. Ako mislite da se tuku,
Except, of course, as you've probably guessed, that it doesn't, because the whole thing is a complete myth. Learning styles are made up and are not supported by scientific evidence. We know this because in tightly controlled experimental studies when learners are given material to learn, either in their preferred style or an opposite style, it makes no difference at all to the amount of information they retain. And if you think about it for just a second, it's obvious that this has to be true. It's obvious that the best presentation format depends not on you, but on what you're trying to learn. Could you learn to drive a car, for example, just by listening to someone telling you what to do, with no kinesthetic experience? Could you solve simultaneous equations by talking them through in your head, without writing them down? Could you revise for your architecture exams using interpretive dance if you're a kinesthetic learner? No; what you need to do is match the material to be learned to the presentation format, not you.
malo ste agresivnija osoba. Uglavnom, jeste li ljubavnik ili borac. A što je s ovom? Na ovu se nema što glasovati, pa svi recite što vidite. Jedan, dva, tri. (Publika viče) Čuo sam hrčak. Tko je to rekao? Prilično zabrinjavajuće. Tip je rekao hrčak. Trebali biste ovdje vidjeti neku dvonožnu životinju i njen odraz na drugoj strani. Ukoliko niste, to znači da imate problema u obrađivanju kompleksnih situacija u kojima se štošta događa. Osim što, naravno, to uopće ne znači to. Rorschachov test mrlja u biti nema baš nikakvu vrijednost kad se oradi o dijagnosticiranju osobnosti i moderni ih psiholozi ne koriste. U biti, jedno nedavno istraživanje otkrilo je da kada pokušavate dijagnosticirati osobnosti pomoću Rorschachovog testa, šizofrenija se dijagnozira kod šestine inače sasvim normalnih sudionika. Stoga, ukoliko niste ostvarili najbolje rezultate na ovome,
I know many of you are A-level students that will have recently gotten your GCSE results. And if you didn't quite get what you were hoping for, then you can't really blame your learning style. But one thing that you might want to think about blaming is your genes. So what this is all about is that a recent study at University College London found that 58 percent of the variation between different students and their GCSE results was down to genetic factors. That sounds like a very precise figure. So how can we tell? Well, when we want to unpack the relative contributions of genes and the environment, what we can do is a twin study. Identical twins share 100 percent of their environment and 100 percent of their genes, whereas nonidentical twins share 100 percent of their environment, but just like any brother and sister, share only 50 percent of their genes. So by comparing how similar GCSE results are in identical twins versus nonidentical twins and doing some clever maths, we can get an idea of how much variation in performance is due to the environment, and how much is due to genes. And it turns out that it's about 58 percent due to genes. This isn't to undermine the hard work that you and your teachers here put in. If you didn't quite get the GCSE results that you were hoping for, then you can always try blaming your parents, or at least their genes.
možda jednostavno niste vizualni tip. Hajdemo napraviti još jedan brzi test da saznamo. Kad pravite kolač, -- ponovno podignite ruke -- koristite li radije knjigu za recepte sa slikama? Da, nekolicina. Prijatelj vam govori kako da to napravite? Ili krenete, pa kud vas put odvede? Ovdje ima dosta ljudi. Dakle,ukoliko ste rekli A, to znači da ste vizualni tip i najbolje učite kad vam se informacije prezentiraju u vizualnom obliku. Ako ste rekli B, to znači da ste auditivni tip i najbolje učite kad su vam informacije prezentirane u auditivnom obliku. A ukoliko ste rekli C, to znači da ste kinestetički tip i najbolje učite kad negdje zaglavite i koristite vlastite ruke. Osim što, kao što ste vjerojatno pretpostavili, cijela je stvar potpuni mit. Tipovi učenja su izmišljeni i nisu dokazani od strane znanosti. To znamo jer su u strogo kontroliranim ekperimentima, kad učenicima damo materijal za učenje ili u njihovom preferencijskom ili u onom drugom stilu, nema baš nikakve razlike u količini informacija koju zadrže. I ako o tome razmislite na trenutak, očito je da to tako mora biti. Očito je da najbolji oblik prezentacije ne ovisi o vama, već o onome što pokušavate naučiti. Npr. biste li mogli naučiti voziti auto samo slušajući nekoga kako vam govori što da radite
One thing that you shouldn't blame is being a left-brained or right-brained learner, because again, this is a myth. The myth here is that the left brain is logical, it's good with equations like this, and the right brain is more creative, so the right brain is better at music. But again, this is a myth, because nearly everything you do involves nearly all parts of your brain talking together, even just the most mundane thing like having a normal conversation. However, perhaps one reason why this myth has survived is that there is a slight grain of truth to it. A related version of the myth is that left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people, which kind of makes sense because your brain controls the opposite hand. So in left-handed people, the right side of the brain is slightly more active than the left side of the brain, and the idea is the right-hand side is more creative. Now, it isn't true per se that left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people. But what is true is that ambidextrous people, or people who use both hands for different tasks, are more creative thinkers than one-handed people, because being ambidextrous involves having both sides of the brain talk to each other a lot, which seems to be involved in creative and flexible thinking. The myth of the creative left-hander arises from the fact that being ambidextrous is more common amongst left-handers than right-handers, so a grain of truth in the idea of the creative left-hander, but not much.
bez kinestetičkog iskustva? Biste li mogli riješiti simultane jednadžbe u glavi bez da ih zapišete? Možete li ponavljati za ispite iz arhitekture pomoću interpretativnog plesa kao kinestetički tip? Ne. Trebati povezati materijal za učenje s oblikom prezentacije, a ne s vama. Znam da su mnogi od vas izvrsni studenti koji su nedavno dobili rezultate GCSE-a. Ukoliko niste dobili rezultate kojima ste se nadali, ne možete kriviti svoj način učenja, ali mogli biste kriviti svoje gene. Ovdje se radi o nedavnom istraživanju na Sveučilišu u Londonu koje je otkrilo da je 58 % varijacija među studentima i njihovim GCSE-rezultatima povezano s genetskim faktorima. To zvuči kao precizna brojka, pa otkud mi to znamo? Kada želimo odvojiti relativne činitelje gena i okoline, najčešće se okrenemo istraživanju na blizancima. Jednojajčani blizanci dijele 100 % okoline i 100 % gena, dok dvojajčani dijele 100 % okoline, ali poput uobičajenih braće i sestara, dijele samo 50 % gena. Stoga uspoređujući sličnosti u GCSE-rezultatima jednojajčanih blizanaca nasuprot dvojajčanim i pomoću napredne matematike, možemo vidjeti koliko je razlika u uspješnosti rezultat okoline, a koliko je rezultat gena. Ispostavilo se da je 58 % zasluga gena.
A related myth that you've probably heard of is that we only use 10 percent of our brains. This is, again, a complete myth. Nearly everything that we do, even the most mundane thing, uses nearly all of our brains.
Stoga nije namjera obezvrijediti sav trud koji ste uložili vi i vaši profesori. Ukoliko niste dobili GCSE-rezultate kakvim ste se nadali, uvijek možete kriviti svoje roditelje, ili barem njihove gene.
That said, it is of course true that most of us don't use our brainpower quite as well as we could. So what could we do to boost our brainpower? Maybe we could listen to a nice bit of Mozart. Have you heard of the idea of the Mozart effect? The idea is that listening to Mozart makes you smarter and improves your performance on IQ tests. Now again, what's interesting about this myth is that although it's basically a myth, there is a grain of truth to it. So the original study found that participants who were played Mozart music for a few minutes did better on a subsequent IQ test than participants who simply sat in silence. But a follow-up study recruited some people who liked Mozart music and then another group of people who were fans of the horror stories of Stephen King. And they played the people the music or the stories. The people who preferred Mozart music to the stories got a bigger IQ boost from the Mozart than the stories, but the people who preferred the stories to the Mozart music got a bigger IQ boost from listening to the Stephen King stories than the Mozart music. So the truth is that listening to something that you enjoy perks you up a bit and gives you a temporary IQ boost on a narrow range of tasks. There's no suggestion that listening to Mozart, or indeed Stephen King stories, is going to make you any smarter in the long run.
No ono na što ne možete svaliti krivnju je dominantnost lijeve ili desne strane mozga jer to je mit. Mit je da je lijevi dio mozga logičan, idu mu jednadžbe poput ove, a desni dio mozga je kreativniji, pa je bolji u glazbi. To je mit jer gotovo sve što radimo podrazumijeva da gotovo svi dijelovi mozga surađuju, čak i u naobičnijim stvarima poput vođenja razgovora. Jedan od razloga zašto je ovaj mit preživio jest to što u njemu ima zrnce istine. Uz ovaj mit povezana je ideja da su ljevaci kreativniji od dešnjaka, što ima smisla jer mozak kontrolira suprotne ruke, pa je kod ljevaka desna strana mozga neznatno aktivnija od lijeve strane, a drži se da je desna strana mozga kreativnija. Nije samo po sebi istina da su ljevaci kreativniji od dešnjaka. Istina je da su ambidekstrualni ljudi ili oni koji koriste obje ruke za različite zadatke kreativniji od onih koji koriste samo jednu za sve jer kod ambidekstrualnih ljudi obje strane mozga često međusobno komuniciraju, što je zaslužno za stvaranje fleksibilnog načina razmišljanja. Mit o kreativnom ljevaku polazi od činjenice da je ambidekstrualni pojedinac uobičajeniji među ljevacima nego među dešnjacima, pa
Another version of the Mozart myth is that listening to Mozart can make you not only cleverer but healthier, too.
ima zrnce istine u ideji kreativnog ljevaka, ali ne previše.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be true of someone who listened to the music of Mozart almost every day, Mozart himself, who suffered from gonorrhea, smallpox, arthritis, and, what most people think eventually killed him in the end, syphilis. This suggests that Mozart should have been a bit more careful, perhaps, when choosing his sexual partners. But how do we choose a partner?
Ima još jedan povezan mit. Vjerojatno ste čuli da koristimo tek 10 % našeg mozga. I ovo je potpun mit. Gotovo sve što radimo, čak i najobičnije stvari, aktiviraju gotovo cijeli naš mozak. Unatoč tome, naravno da je istina da mnogi od nas ne koriste mozak onoliko koliko bi mogli. Što možemo napraviti kako bismo više koristili mozak? Možda bismo mogli slušati Mozarta.
So a myth that I have to say is sometimes spread a bit by sociologists is that our preferences in a romantic partner are a product of our culture, that they're very culturally specific. But in fact, the data don't back this up. A famous study surveyed people from [37] different cultures across the globe from Americans to Zulus, on what they look for in a partner. And in every single culture across the globe, men placed more value on physical attractiveness in a partner than did women, and in every single culture, too, women placed more importance than did men on ambition and high earning power. In every culture, too, men preferred women who were younger than themselves, an average of, I think it was 2.66 years. And in every culture, too, women preferred men who were older than them, so an average of 3.42 years, which is why we've got here, "Everybody needs a Sugar Daddy."
Jeste li čuli za Mozartov efekt? Ideja je da vas slušanje Mozarta čini pametnijima i poboljšava vaš uspjeh na IQ-testovima. Ono što je zanimljivo kod ovog mita jest da unatoč tome što je to mit, imamo i tu zrnce istine. Originalno istraživanje otkrilo je da su sudionici koji su slušali Mozarta po nekoliko minuta ostvarili bolji rezultat na sljedećem IQ-testu od onih koji su jednostavno sjedili u tišini. Za produžetak istraživanja unajmljeni su neki od ljudi koji su voljeli Mozarta i grupa ljudi koji su bili fanovi horor-priča Stephena Kinga. Ljudima su puštali glazbu ili priče. Oni kojima se Mozart sviđao više od priča IQ im je porastao više od Mozarta nego od priča, ali ljudima kojima su se više sviđale priče od Mozarta IQ je više porastao slušajući priče Stephenea Kinga nego slušajući Mozarta. Istina je da slušajući nešto u čemu uživamo
(Laughter)
daje nam injekciju zadovoljstva, pa nam IQ kratkotrajno poraste kad
So moving on from trying to score with a partner to trying to score in basketball or football or whatever your sport is. The myth here is that sportsmen go through "hot hand" streaks, Americans call them, or "purple patches," we sometimes say in England, where they just can't miss, like this guy here. But in fact, what happens is that if you analyze the pattern of hits and misses statistically, it turns out that it's nearly always at random. Your brain creates patterns from the randomness. If you toss a coin, a streak of heads or tails is going to come out somewhere in the randomness, and because the brain likes to see patterns where there are none, we look at these streaks and attribute meaning to them and say, "Yeah he's really on form today," whereas actually you would get the same pattern if you were just getting hits and misses at random.
se radi o uskom spektru zadataka. Ništa ne sugerira da će vas slušanje Mozarta ili priča Stephena Kinga dugotrajno opametiti. Druga verzija Mozartovog mita kaže da vam slušanje Mozarta može i popraviti zdravlje. Nažalost, to se nije pokazalo istinitim ni za nekoga tko je slušao Mozarta gotovo svaki dan, sam Mozart. on je obolio od gonoreje, kozica, artritisa i sifilisa, za koji se vjeruje da ga je na kraju i ubio. Ovo da sugerirati da je Mozart trebao biti malo pažljiviji pri izboru seksualnih partnera. Ali kako biramo partnere? Mit koji šire sociolozi je taj da su naše
An exception to this, however, is penalty shootouts. A recent study looking at penalty shootouts in football showed that players who represent countries with a very bad record in penalty shootouts, like, for example, England, tend to be quicker to take their shots than countries with a better record, and presumably as a result, they're more likely to miss.
preferencije za romantičnog partnera proizvod naše kulture, da su kulturalno specifične. Ali istraživanja to ne potvrđuju. Poznato istraživanje ispitivalo je ljude iz 32 različite kulture iz cijelog svijeta od Amerikanaca do plemena Zulu, a ispitivali su što mi to tražimo u partneru. U svakoj kulturi na svijetu
Which raises the question of if there's any way we could improve people's performance. And one thing you might think about doing is punishing people for their misses and seeing if that improves them. This idea, the effect that punishment can improve performance, was what participants thought they were testing in Milgram's famous learning and punishment experiment that you've probably heard about if you're a psychology student. The story goes that participants were prepared to give what they believed to be fatal electric shocks to a fellow participant when they got a question wrong, just because someone in a white coat told them to.
muškarci su više cijenili fizičku privlačnost partnera nego što su to činile žene. U svakoj kulturi, žene su više važnosti pridavale ambiciji i prihodima. U svakoj su kulturi muškarci preferirali žene mlađe od njih u prosjeku od 2.66 godina, ako se ne varam, a u svakoj su kulturi žene preferirale muškarce starije od njih u prosjeku od 3.42 godine, a zato u našoj kulturi imamo mentalitet "sponzoruša i sponzora". Sada se mičemo od partnerskih pogodaka i promašaja do onih u košarci ili nogometu ili što već volite.
But this story is a myth for three reasons. Firstly, and most crucially, the lab coat wasn't white. It was, in fact, grey. Secondly, the participants were told before the study and reminded any time they raised a concern, that although the shocks were painful, they were not fatal and indeed caused no permanent damage whatsoever. And thirdly, participants didn't give the shocks just because someone in the coat told them to. When they were interviewed after the study, all the participants said that they firmly believed that the learning and punishment study served a worthy scientific purpose which would have enduring gains for science, as opposed to the momentary, nonfatal discomfort caused to the participants.
Mit je da sportaši imaju igre života tijekom kojih jednostavno ne mogu profulati, poput ovog tipa. Ali u biti, ono što se događa kad statistički analiziramo obrazac pogodaka i promašaja, ispada da je gotovo uvijek nasumično. Naš mozak stvara obrasce utemeljene na slučajnostima. Ukoliko bacite novčić, niz glave ili pisma pojavit će se negdje u gomili slučajnosti i zbog toga naš mozak voli stvarati obrasce tamo gdje ih nema, mi gledamo na te nizove i dajemo im značenja i kažemo: "Danas mu baš ide", dok bi isti taj obrazac dobili kad bi samo nasumično postizali pogotke i promašaje.
OK, so I've been talking for about 12 minutes now, and you've probably been sitting there listening to me, analyzing my speech patterns and body language and trying to work out if you should take any notice of what I'm saying, whether I'm telling the truth or whether I'm lying. But if so, you've probably completely failed, because although we all think we can catch a liar from their body language and speech patterns, hundreds of psychological tests over the years have shown that all of us, including police officers and detectives, are basically at chance when it comes to detecting lies from body language and verbal patterns. Interestingly, there is one exception: TV appeals for missing relatives. It's quite easy to predict when the relatives are missing and when the appealers have, in fact, murdered the relatives themselves. So hoax appealers are more likely to shake their heads, to look away, and to make errors in their speech, whereas genuine appealers are more likely to express hope that the person will return safely and to avoid brutal language. So, for example, they might say "taken from us" rather than "killed."
Kao izuzetak ovdje imamo penale. Nedavno istraživanje proučavalo je penale u nogometu koje je pokazalo da su igrači koji predstavljaju zemlje s lošim uspjesima u penalima kao, npr. Engleska, brže odrađuju penale od onih zemalja koje imaju bolji rezultat i vjerojatno kao rezultat toga, skloniji su promašajima. Postavlja se pitanje postoji li način na koji možemo poboljšati naš učinak? Možete ih kažnjavati za propuste i pratiti popravljaju li se zahvaljujući tome. Sudionici Milgramova eksperimenta mislili su da se ispituje učinkovitost kazne na poboljšanje učinka. Vjerojatno ste čuli za taj eksperiment ako ste student psihologije. Sudionici su bili spremni dati ono za što su mislili da je smrtonosni električni udar kolegi sudioniku kad bi dao pogrešan odgovor, samo zato što im je netko u bijeloj kuti rekao da to učine. Ali ova je priča mit iz tri razloga.. Kao prvo i najvažnije, kuta nije bila bijela, već siva.
Speaking of which, it's about time I killed this talk, but before I do, I just want to give you, in 30 seconds, the overarching myth of psychology. The myth is that psychology is just a collection of interesting theories, all of which say something useful and all of which have something to offer. What I hope to have shown you in the past few minutes is that this isn't true. What we need to do is assess psychological theories by seeing what predictions they make, whether that is that listening to Mozart makes you smarter, that you learn better when information is presented in your preferred learning style or whatever it is, all of these are testable empirical predictions, and the only way we can make progress is to test these predictions against the data in tightly controlled experimental studies. And it's only by doing so that we can hope to discover which of these theories are well supported, and which, like all the ones I've told you about today, are myths.
Kao drugo, sudionicima je bilo rečeno prije istraživanja i podsjetilo ih se svaki put kad bi se netko zabrinuo da su udari bolni, ali nisu smrtonosni i nisu izazivali nikakvu trajnu štetu. Kao treće, sudionici nisu zadavali udare samo zato što im je netko u kuti to rekao. Kad su poslije istraživanja intervjuirali, svi su sudionici rekli da su čvrsto vjerovali da je istraživanje o učenju i kažnjavanju imalo značajnu znanstvenu svrhu koja bi dala značajne dobiti znanosti za razliku od kratkotrajnih nesmrtonosnih neugodnosti koje su izazivali sudionicima. Dobro, pričam već 12 minuta. i vjerojatno tu sjedite i slušate me, analizirate moje govorne obrasce i govor tijela i pokušavate odlučiti imate li razloga ozbiljno shvatiti moje riječi. Govorim li istinu ili lažem? Ako je tako, svi ste vjerojatno podbacili.
Thank you.
Iako svi mi mislimo da znamo prepoznati lažljivca
(Applause)
po govoru tijela i govornim obrascima,