I don’t have a good outlook on psychology as a field. It’s all influenced by people for leverage and different countries can’t even agree on what qualifies as what (e.g. the definition for social anxiety in one country could be considered the definition for agoraphobia in another). But I think watching Simon Whistler give a very debunked rundown on psychology ten years into his career was the last straw for me this week. Misrepresenting psychology has very annoying implications and it gets tiring to see it done over and over.

To use one example, he mentions the former Axis Power officers in WWII saying they were “just following orders”, which led to the highly rigged Stanford Prison Experiment, which has never been able to be replicated with the same results. Why? They rigged it, some say to support those officers. Here is an instance where history clashes with psychology, because near the end of WWII, German officers started recruiting and enslaving the Jews they were capturing to do the very dirty work they previously inflicted on them. Did these poor souls succumb to the wickedness like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the officers who inspired it would suggest in court? No, they were traumatized and went insane, because this was not in their nature.

Modern psychology is littered with these false rules and expectations. I’m sure many of you have heard a number of them. Maybe you remember the Milgram Experiment or Stockholm Syndrome for example. So let’s play a game. Look back into your life. Think of all the things you’ve experienced and how it all played out. Out of all these experiences, which ones can you talk about that you can point to and say "if conventional psychology was right, this event in my life would’ve never happened how it did?

Example: There is a rule in the field of psychology called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It says that if you question two people a certain way, they will be incentivized to spill beans and betray each other. Me and a friend were once arrested because he got into a fight because someone cheated on his sister and I sped him away. The officers tried inflicting the Prisoner’s Dilemma on us, but we’re both open books, to the point where we knew the whole point was we were willing to face whatever comes. The cops had nothing. They let us free.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 day ago

    There are several problems with your post, I’ll pick a couple and try to quickly go over them:

    the definition for social anxiety in one country could be considered the definition for agoraphobia in another

    That’s not true, someone with social anxiety will have problems being on a video call with other people, someone with agoraphobia not necessarily.

    Simon Whistler give a very debunked rundown on psychology ten years into his career

    His career is not that of a psychologist, so not sure what the longevity of his career matters here.

    the highly rigged Stanford Prison Experiment, which has never been able to be replicated with the same results.

    That’s how science works, someone makes an experiment and gets a result, others either validate or get a different result, and when science has a consensus it advances. Like you have mentioned here, the consensus is that the Standford Prison Experiment results are non-reproductible therefore it’s not accepted by the scientific community.

    Modern psychology is littered with these false rules and expectations.

    You seem to be expecting a 100% cause-effect response, which is not how biological sciences work, the same is true of medicine for example.

    the Milgram Experiment

    AFAIK the Milgeam experiment has been reproduced several times.

    Stockholm Syndrome

    Which is not recognized as a condition. I’m not sure what your point was here, it’s like someone criticizing chemistry because of the atom model an the ether theory.

    you can point to and say "if conventional psychology was right, this event in my life would’ve never happened how it did?**

    That’s not how it works, what you’re suggesting is called anecdotal evidence, and you would find the same problems in any other science, especially biological. For example, I personally know dozens of people who’ve smoked all of their life and don’t have lung cancer, that is NOT evidence against cigarettes causing lung cancer, just because some amount of people don’t get it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cause-effect relationship.

    There is a rule

    It’s not a rule, it’s a theory

    in the field of psychology

    It’s not from psychology but from game theory, which is mostly mathematics.

    called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It says that if you question two people a certain way, they will be incentivized to spill beans and betray each other.

    That’s not what it says at all, it makes no prediction on what people would choose, it’s a dilemma because choosing one option is Bettie for you but the other is better for everyone.

    Me and a friend were once arrested because he got into a fight because someone cheated on his sister and I sped him away. The officers tried inflicting the Prisoner’s Dilemma on us, but we’re both open books, to the point where we knew the whole point was we were willing to face whatever comes. The cops had nothing. They let us free.*

    So it was not a Prisoner’s dilemma, if it had been if you both had talked you would both have served a sever sentence, if neither had talked you both would have served a lower sentence. There’s no option where both walk free in the prisoner dilemma, either only one walks or you both serve sentence, that’s where the dilemma comes from, if both keeping quiet gets everyone free there’s no dilemma.