Tuesday, August 25, 2009

A great one from Cracked.com

6 B.S. Facts about Psychology that Everybody Believes (Warning: Coarse language)

Among the "facts" our Cracked writer calls out --

"If you let your anger out, you'll feel better." This psychobabble myth is probably responsible for a huge chunk of violent crime in this country, including domestic violence and road rage.

"Just believe in yourself, and you'll succeed!" This mantra has left a lot of kids emotionally crippled and is another contributing factor to violent crime. Nobody's quite as likely to lash out as somebody with artificially inflated "self esteem" whose bubble has been burst.

2 comments:

Kathy said...

Those are funny.

In the vein of self-esteem -- I remember some study done several years ago which looked at students from various countries, measuring their skills in math and science, and also measured their self-esteem. The students from Japan scored the highest in the math & science tests, but were lowest in self-esteem; whereas the American kids were last or at least way down low on the math & science... but they were number one on the self-esteem test. So they were stupid, but felt great about themselves anyway.

Anonymous said...

It's worse than that. Self-esteem boosting can lower your performance.