Myths You Still Believe about Psychology Pt. 2

There’s so many popular misconceptions about human psychology and how the mind works. Many of you told us that you loved our first video on this topic. So today, we’re digging back in, looking at more myths about human psychology that are very popular. When something really traumatic occurs, do people repress those memories? And do techniques like recovered memory therapy and hypnosis bring those memories back again? Why might people believe this is true? Well, it’s certainly true that we

Forget almost everything that happens to us. Our memories are not like camcorders. We’re not simply recording all of the events in sequence. Instead, we’re compressing the information. Imagine trying to figure out what you ate 17 Thursdays ago for dinner. Chances are you have no memory whatsoever of that event. So then, you might argue traumatic events are just like anything else. We forget the vast majority of what happens to us, so we might forget traumatic events as well. And then, you

Might think we need special techniques in order to get these memories back. There are actually two problems with this argument. The first is that traumatic events, unlike ordinary events like what you ate for dinner one day, are actually far less likely to be forgotten. You’re much more likely to remember a situation where something terrible happened to you than a situation where you just sat down and had an ordinary dinner. The second issue with this kind of argument is that you

Can use a special technique to recover that lost memory. This is where things get really worrisome. While it is true that we sometimes temporarily forget things, for instance, you might forget the name of that celebrity and then get it back again by reminding yourself of movies they were in. If you’ve actually forgotten something, attempting to pull back that memory is actually likely to cause you to reconstruct it. That means your brain will actually predict missing details and fill them in as though

You’re actually remembering them. And unfortunately, we can’t tell the difference between memories that were actually recalling and reconstructed predictions that didn’t actually occur. In fact, memory in general involves prediction and reconstruction. Imagine you’re trying to recall the home that you lived in when you were 5 years old. You might remember some actual things about that home, but other details you might not remember, like what the curtains looked like. But if you’re trying to visualize the home in your

Mind, the curtains will be there. It’s just that your brain might be predicting what they look like based on the color themes and other aspects of the home, rather than literally remembering them. The problem is we can’t tell the difference. We can’t tell whether we actually remember what the curtains looked like or if your brain is reconstructing the curtains based on what’s plausible, based on the actual memories there. Both of these feel the same. In fact, this idea can be shown

Experimentally. On our website clearerthinking.org, we have a free tool called Is Your Memory Like a Photograph? And in it, with your permission, we can create a harmless memory of something someone never actually witnessed. A fascinating and famous example of how memory reconstruction works was demonstrated after the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Psychologists Neisser and Harsch did an experiment where they asked their students to write down, “What were you doing and where were you when you found out that the

Space shuttle had exploded?” After 3 years elapsed, they then had those same students write down what they remembered about what they were doing when the space shuttle exploded. The shocking thing is that many of these memories that they wrote down were really different from what they’d written down on the day of the actual disaster. The false belief that some people have that they can accurately reconstruct fuzzy memories by going through a systematic procedure can actually go completely off

The rails. We saw some horrendous examples of this happen during the satanic panic in the 1980s. Some people believed that something horrible had happened to them, but didn’t know what it was. Using hypnosis or memory reconstruction techniques, they tried to get themselves to remember these bad events. Some of them ended up reconstructing memories that they’d been abused in a satanic ritual. Not only were some of these stories totally implausible, but when police investigated them, they found a total

Lack of evidence. It now seems very likely that many of these memories were false. And not only was reconstructing them very upsetting to the people it happened to, but it often severely damaged their relationships to other people in their life and even caused some people to be falsely imprisoned. I want to try to be nuanced about the relationship between trauma and memory. While it is true that we’re much more likely to remember traumatic things than we are to remember ordinary things, we

Can forget traumatic events, just like we can forget anything else. It is also true that people sometimes consciously suppress traumatic memories. That is, these memories are so upsetting that when they come to mind, people try to immediately put them out of their mind, and they sometimes even try to deny that they ever happened. Interestingly enough, when people have PTSD from severe trauma, they often struggle to not think about the event. The event actually pops in their mind much more

Often than they like, rather than being suppressed. Unfortunately, events that are potentially traumatic are really quite common. Even if we just take a single category, like sexual abuse, depending on the estimation method, we find that something like 10% to 30% of girls under the age of 18 in the US end up being sexually abused. Almost all of these events of claimed sexual abuse are genuine. They’re not fictitious memories and they’re not lies. If a traumatic event happens to you, chances are you

Will remember it. But if you don’t remember it, using a method to try to reconstruct the details is more likely to lead to a false reconstruction than a true one. Does knowing why you have a mental health challenge help you get better in the long term? That is, if you can identify which specific events caused your mental health challenge, whether it’s traumatic events or the way your parents treated you or childhood experiences, does that mean you’ll

Actually get better from those mental health challenges? Well, first let’s explore why people might believe this. It’s certainly true that understanding the deep causes of something helps you solve it. If your clock isn’t working, it’s very important to understand whether it’s the gears that are broken or it’s simply out of batteries. However, it’s not necessarily helpful to know why the gears are broken. It doesn’t matter whether it was because it was dropped or because your cat jumped

On it, as long as you know that the gears are broken and how, that’s all you need to know to fix it. For mental health, it’s similar. It can be very valuable knowing the immediate causes of your mental health challenges. Realizing that your depression stems from viewing yourself as fundamentally unlovable and unworthy, it’s much less useful knowing the distant causes. For instance, whether viewing yourself as unlovable came about because of the way your parents treated you or came about

Because of your bullying as a child doesn’t necessarily matter, as long as you understand that it’s the unlovability that’s causing your depression. Another reason people might think it’s important to figure out the events that led you to have the mental health challenges that you do is because it can be extremely satisfying to do so. It feels like you’re unlocking a puzzle. Wow, so that’s the reason I am the way I am today. However, unlocking that puzzle

Doesn’t automatically make you feel better. You simply understand why you’re that way, but you haven’t yet done the work to actually change. But how do we actually know that you don’t have to understand the originating events in order to treat a mental health problem? Well, we can see it in the data. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the most studied therapies in the world with literally hundreds of randomized controlled trials demonstrating its effectiveness for treating different

Mental disorders. And remarkably, it doesn’t focus at all on the originating events that cause people to be the way they are. It focuses on the way people are today and treating their symptoms, and it does so quite successfully. Let me illustrate this with an example. Suppose that when you were young, you were on a flight that was extremely scary due to bad weather. You developed from this a phobia of flying. Now, there’s a really good chance you’d remember this event,

But if you’re young enough, you may have actually forgotten it. Yet you still may have that fear of flying today. So what’s the most effective treatment for phobias like this? Well, it’s not uncovering the originating event. In fact, some people with phobias will know exactly what that originating event is, and yet they’ll still have the full phobia. One of the most effective ways to reduce anxiety in the long term is to use exposure therapy. This is where the

Person is exposed again and again to the thing they fear in a safe environment and without the use of coping behaviors. Let’s be nuanced about this. Is it ever useful to understand the originating event in order to improve your mental health? It can be useful when it gives you insight into the immediate causal effects. If understanding that the reason you hate yourself is because your parents always put you down leads you to have a better understanding of your

Self-hatred, then it might be useful for treating your depression. But overall, the most effective methods for treating mental health disorders usually don’t require understanding the originating events. And that’s a really good thing, because if we have forgotten those originating events, there’s really no good way that we’re going to be able to reconstruct them. Does venting reduce anger? Does shouting at someone or punching a punching bag because you’re so angry make you less angry? For example, you

Probably heard about the idea of getting your anger out. Some people even say it’s healthy to pay money to go to a rage room so you can break things to really express your anger. Well, first let’s explore why people might think this. When we’re really angry and we express it, such as by shouting at someone or punching a punching bag, it tends to feel good and it feels like we’re making progress and some kind of catharsis is happening. Unfortunately,

It doesn’t tend to make us less angry at the target of our anger. To see why, it’s important to understand what anger actually is. My favorite metaphor for emotions is to think of them like the beeping of a smoke detector. We have an emotion system, analogous to the smoke detector, that’s trying to detect when certain situations occur. The emotion itself is like the beeping of a smoke detector. It’s telling you that something is happening. It’s giving you

Important information. If you learn to ignore the smoke detector in your house, that could pose a real risk when there’s a fire. If you learn to ignore your emotions, you’re also missing out on critical information. So what is anger a detection of? Anger is what we experience when we think that someone is purposely trying to harm or disrespect us or someone else that we value. Anger often gets a bad rap, and that’s because it can cause a lot of problems. Our

Anger can lead someone else to get angry, which can lead us to be even more angry. It can lead to verbal fights and saying things you don’t really mean. It can lead even to physical fights and physical danger. On social media, anger can be a total disaster. It can lead us fixated on accounts of people we hate, and it can lead us to say things that we really regret. But anger can also have a lot of value. It’s telling us important

Information that we believe that someone is trying to harm or disrespect us or someone else that we really value. For instance, we might feel anger at the idea of injustice and it can motivate us to try to improve the world or to stop bad actors. And anger when someone’s trying to take advantage of us can help us assert our boundaries and stay protected. It demonstrates to others that they won’t get away with taking advantage of us. With all this in mind,

Let’s go back to the question of what actually reduces anger rather than maintaining it. If you believe someone’s trying to take advantage of you or do injustice in the world or harm someone you love, simply shouting at them or punching a punching bag is not going to change your perspective on them. So, long-term it’s not going to shift your anger. What actually shifts anger is understanding. If you come to understand that the person is actually not trying to harm

You, you understand their perspective and see where they’re coming from. That will actually make you less angry. Another thing that can reduce anger is forgiveness. Even if you understood that person was trying to create that harm, if you forgive them for it, they’ll tend to be less angry. What about expressing your anger? Well, that can actually go either way. If someone does something that you think is harmful to you and you express that to them angrily, there are

Different possibilities. One possibility is that they say they’re sorry or explain their reasoning and through that you actually become less angry. Another possibility is that they escalate or justify what they did and you actually become more angry as a result. So, whether expressing anger increases it or reduces it depends on how the other person acts and how you react to how they react. So, when we vent our anger by punching a punching bag or shouting at someone, we’re not

Actually doing anything to change the anger long-term. The most effective route I know of to reduce anger is to truly understand something from another person’s perspective or to completely forgive them.

What do these psychological myths we covered today have in common? These are all examples of psychological ideas that are appealing, but they’re usually not helpful. It’s appealing to think if we just work hard enough, we can reconstruct those missing memories. It’s appealing to think if we just figure out the originating events to our mental health challenges, the mental health challenges will go away. It’s appealing to think that if you express your anger or shout at someone, that that’s

Cathartic and that’s going to fix your anger, but rarely are any of these true. If you haven’t seen it yet, we’d love it if you check out our last video on psychological misconceptions. It’s one of our most popular ones and it covers totally different myths than we talked about today. And if you enjoyed this video, I’d really appreciate it if you subscribe. We put out new original content about psychology every week.